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Just one week shy of Christmas 2008, the Python world saw the release of version 3 of Python. Big deal, eh? Well ... it turns out it was and is, as Python 3 is the first major release of Python designed from the get-go to be incompatible with prior versions of the language. Python is well liked among the Linux Journal readership (winning the Favorite Scripting Language category in 2008), and such a development may come as a shock to some. A detailed description of all of the changes brought into Python 3 can be found in the what's new document, another interesting source can be found on the pythonology blog. Consequently, in this article, I don't intend to rehash such material. Instead, I present my own take on Python 3, as well as discuss what Python 3 means for the new and existing Python programmer.

I no longer have CentOS running on my netbook. It won't be back. At the moment I am not recommending CentOS for anything, not even servers. On my netbook and on desktops in general it has very little to do with the overhyped and exaggerated claims that miscommunication between the developers would lead to the death of CentOS. I have a story I'm writing for O'Reilly Broadcast about that CentOS misadventure, a combination of self-inflicted pain when the developers aired their dirty laundry in public and some in the tech press sensationalizing a story. On servers that story actually does play a significant part in my decision making...

Unreal Tournament 3 was released for the PC nearly two years ago, and there was the promise of a Linux client and it was being worked on by Ryan Gordon, but to this day there is still no such client. Back in March it was said that it was still undergoing work, but there was no ETA for its completion. The work that it was supposedly undergoing was just optimizing the code, bug fixes, etc.

Red Hat has pledged to ensure Malaysia' open source software economy continues to grow with the launch of its Open Source Collaborative Innovation (OSCI) program in the country. Speaking to the media Tuesday in his first visit to Malaysia, the software vendor's CEO and president Jim Whitehurst, said Malaysia is a natural country for Red Hat to introduce the OSCI program as it has a strong record of adopting open source applications.

Up to Novell's takeover of the Suse Linux AG, KDE was without doubt the preferred default for the German distribution. Now openSUSE users are increasingly demanding the return of KDE as default desktop.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala simply have do an apt-get upgrade to update to the latest KDE 4.3 (which was released yesterday) but (K)Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope users have to add the Kubuntu PPA backports so they can install the latest KDE 4.3. IMPORTANT NOTE: The packages for Jaunty are not officially supported. KDE 4.3 will be part of Karmic Koala Kubuntu 9.10 which will be officially released in October. If you still want to continue, you can add these repositories by running the following command in a terminal:

Microsoft's latest 10K filing with the SEC sees the company officially acknowledging that it faces competition from Linux vendors on the client side of its business, namely desktop Windows. Citing Canonical and Red Hat as "competing commercial software products", alongside Apple's products, Microsoft acknowledges that partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been "actively working with alternative Linux-based operating systems" and suggests that competitive pressures on OEMs and the low-price of netbooks are to blame.

Microsoft has introduced together with Windows 2008 a new Hypervisor called Hyper-V. Initially Microsoft only supported Microsoft products and Novell Suse, but recently they added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With this support it is also possible to install the components on CentOS.

Microsoft has warned investors about new threats to its precious client-side tech ecosystem, by listing Linux vendors Canonical and Red Hat as rivals in its annual Form 10-K filing. The software giant also acknowledged Apple’s impressive market share grab in the US, where it now commands fourth place for total shipments.

Lucidor, a desktop program that reads e-books, is available in version 0.6. The open source software can also read and archive Web feeds.

Tiny Core Linux v2.2 is released. It is a very small (10 MB) minimal Linux Desktop, which runs very well on a Netbook.

Hear that? It’s the sound of servers in Switzerland sucking down information from social networking sites. Open-Xchange, an open-source e-mail and collaboration software maker, has set up a test Web site that allows people to pull in their contact information from various social networking services like LinkedIn and Facebook. The goal of the project is give people a chance to take control of their contacts and put all of their personal and work information in one place. By creating what amounts to a connections clearing house, Open-Xchange wants to spur to new types of networking services.

The biggest botnet to date is being virtualized using a network of one million Linux kernels. The virtual machines form an experiment in studying the origins of the malware.

You gotta know when to say "when." It's hard to convince Joe and Mary User to convert to Linux when the first things you hear from them are: "Where's my ?" "Why can't I just have ?" or the ever-popular "This doesn't work like ?" Honestly, it's enough to make me want to tell them to "just buy a Mac and stop calling me." Linux, after all, is for smart people and I really don't find any reason to "dumb it down" for the general population.

Canonical is offering a dedicated, local version of its Landscape systems management and monitoring server for Ubuntu, rather than insist you access the service through the company's own systems. Canonical will next month launch the Landscape Dedicated Server, which is a local copy of the current Landscape service. It will run inside the data center, giving IT managers some piece of mind about security.

The common wisdom is to have a shared home directory in a multiboot setup, but this has its own set of potential problems because it mixes data files and configuration files. So when you're trying out different distributions, your desktop settings may not translate gracefully across all of them. So what's the answer?

Linux system management comes in from the cloud, but it's still not entirely open source. While there is a mad rush toward putting more IT resources into the cloud, not everything belongs in the cloud - Just ask Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical. The Canonical Landscape Ubuntu systems management server is now moving in from the cloud with a new dedicated on site offering. Previously the Landscape service was only available as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud based model. The new Canonical Landscape Dedicated Server expands the commercial support offerings available for Ubuntu Linux as Canonical ramps up its efforts to gain market share against rivals.

Back in March we shared that the open-source ATI driver had gained support for the unreleased ATI RS880 IGP. Well, the RS880 ended up being turned into the 785G due to some problems on AMD's side, but today this new, much more powerful IGP has launched. With that said, another commit made to the xf86-video-ati driver today finishes off the support. The RS880 / 785G IGPs are now properly recognized and the 2D acceleration support is complete.

Learn basic Git concepts and compare Git with Subversion. Distributed version control systems (DVCSs) offer a number of advantages over centralized VCSs, and for Subversion users looking to explore this model, Git is a great place to start. Using Subversion as a baseline, this first of two articles shows how to install Git, set up a remote repository, and begin using basic Git commands.

KDE 4.3.0 is out, and it is a great release. It is unlikely that any one specific thing will strike the user as the most noticeable improvement; rather, the overall user experience of KDE has improved greatly in KDE 4.3.0. The release's codename, Caizen, is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. That has been the goal of the KDE team for 4.3.0: polish, polish, polish. The statistics from the bug tracker speak for themselves: 10,000 bugs have been fixed. In addition, close to 63,000 changes were checked in by a little under 700 contributors. That is not to say that the KDE team did not add a large number of new features: 2000 feature requests were implemented in the past 6 months, meaning that any user's pet feature might well be among the improvements KDE 4.3.0 brings.