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Google's Andy Rubin talks nuts and bolts about the Linux-based phone software, the lessons of Sidekick, and the beauty of the iPhone.

I have used X10 modules on assorted lights and devices for home automation for several years, and although the remote control facet has always worked well, tying the system into my Linux boxes has never been easy. Numerous small, typically one-person X10 controller projects have come and gone. But one application has survived: Heyu. It runs on desktop Linux machines without requiring the overhead of a Web or database server, and it enables direct X10 control, event scheduling, and more.

Until Red Hat, Novell, or another party focuses around open-source directory services, Linux will be stuck playing catch-up with Windows 2000. I've been covering Linux and open-source software closely since the dawn of this millennium, and over those seven or so years I've become a believer in the potency of the open-source development model.

Once upon a time, Firefox was known for being far less prone to security bugs than Internet Explorer. Things have changed. On Nov. 27, Mozilla released the newest, security-patched version of the popular Web browser, Firefox 2.0.0.10. The vast majority of Firefox users will have the latest and greatest automatically installed on their systems. This latest update includes fixes for three security bugs.

The success of the Everex gPC this month raises once again the possibility that Linux can make inroads into the desktop market. In stock at Walmart, initial sales of the gPC caused panic on a scale comparable to the recent stock market panic. Not only has the gPC sold well - it has also proved popular.

The three biggest community Linuxes are Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. They're all popular. They're all good. But which is the best? Desktop Linuxes are improving so quickly that it's hard even for someone like me, who tracks operating systems the way some people track their favorite NFL team's game match-ups, to keep tabs on what's what with the latest distributions. That's even true for the major community Linux distributions: Fedora 8, OpenSUSE 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.10.

Believe it or not, even virtual penguins have a part to play in the global warming debate. Scott Allen, Europcar chief information officer, says extending the life of desktops is a form of recycling. "Most front-end staff desktops have the booking application and a browser," Allen says. "They don't need anything else so there's no point getting a powerful PC packed with software, which they would never use."

As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format remains in ISO limbo, a trio of countries are pushing forward an adoption of the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead, according to an ODF advocacy group. Government ministries and state services in the Netherlands will begin to add ODF support next April, according to a statement from the Washington-based ODF Alliance. All other governmental organizations there are set to follow no later than December 2008.

Haier America is shipping a WiFi-enabled portable media player (PMP) based on Linux. The "Ibiza Rhapsody" has a 30GB hard drive, and is designed to work with the Rhapsody digital music service, AOL Video, and other digital content services.

Groklaw is the blog that has made a difference. Created as a personal project by Pamela Jones, better known as PJ, in 2003, its stated purpose was to increase understanding of the law as it is applied to Linux and free software.

Eric Raymond made the point years ago that most software is written for use, not for sale. Eric put the number at 95%; that is, 95% of all software is written for in-house use, rather than for sale. If he's right, and I believe he's not far off, then banks, manufacturers, retail chains, etc. are sitting on a massive gold mine of software.

Want a coat with a story behind it? Act fast, and you can buy Lawrence Lessig's hand-tailored coat, as seen in lecture halls around the world through the iCommons 2008 Auction.

As part of its collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Red Hat yesterday opened the beta for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) infrastructure for public use. Unfortunately those wishing to test it will still have to whip out the credit card.

Anyone looking for a summary of the free software movement's concerns needs only to look at Richard M. Stallman's essay "Some Confusing or Loaded Words and Phrases that are Worth Avoiding." Behind the modest title, the essay lists all the classic free software concerns, ranging from insisting on the term "GNU/Linux" for the operating system usually called Linux to efforts to emphasize the dangers of so-called Digital Rights Management and Trusted Computing.

One of the biggest complaints a Firefox evangelist encounters is "it doesn't act or feel like browser X." Internet Explorer users complain that Firefox doesn't look like what they're used to. Opera, Safari, and Netscape users complain that it's missing many of their favorite features. And the social networking gurus point to the powerful social networking features Flock boasts and Firefox lacks. However, all these users overlook one of the most powerful features of Firefox: support for third-party add-ons, which can make emulating the features of other browsers extremely simple.

Firefox has built-in configuration variables to deal with external printing commands. Per default, it uses the UNIX lpr command to send print jobs to the printer. This setting can be overridden..

For readers ofLinux Journal, "IP" almost certainly refers to the Internet Protocol, part of the TCP/IP suite that underpins the Internet. But to most people, if it means anything, "IP" refers to something known as "intellectual property". This widespread recognition is rather curious, because "intellectual property" does not exist.

Urbis.com, written completely in Ruby using the open source framework Ruby on Rails, is yet another social networking site, but with a twist: it was created by a writer, for writers. Urbis.com founder Steve Spurgat is not a developer, but he knew right from the start he wanted his Web site to run on open source software. "I'm drawn to the community around it."

The Taiwanese tech heavyweight Asus has introduced a $400 laptop with most of the capability of a $2,000 Sony or Fujitsu subnotebook; the convenience and usability missing from members of Intel's Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) club; and the goofiest name of the year. How does this Linux-based system stack up to other, larger systems? Surprisingly well...

openSUSE is one of the most popular free-software-only distributions, and it's jointly developed by Novell and members of the community. In the first week of November the openSUSE developers released installable live versions of the distro's latest 10.3 release, one each for KDE and GNOME desktop environments. The live versions are replicas of their install-only cousins in terms of software, and apart from a few quirks, they seem set to replace the older versions soon.