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On this slightly belated, massively bloated show: We talk to the DPL about Lenny, Fab reviews CrunchEee and the newest CrunchBang and we also have the usual open source releases, news and some gaming-related stuff.

The Thunderbird email client is not a flashy showoff. However, it is a solid, reliable email client, it is not a malware magnet like MS Outlook, and it runs on both Linux and Windows. Migrating from Outlook to Thunderbird is a very sensible thing to do. It requires jumping through a few hoops; Eric Geier is your faithful guide in this two-part howto.

Having always been a Debian person at heart, I eagerly awaited the latest Debian version to hit the mirrors. When Lenny was released, I downloaded the DVD ISO through torrent and installed it. There are three installers built into the DVD: text based installer, graphical installer and an advanced option.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are now providing a way for web site developers to specify a preferred URL for any piece of content on a web site. The problem has been that sites may, legitimately, have the same content on different URLs. This causes problems for search engines which can't easily differentiate between these duplications. Now, a new type of "canonical" link reference can allow a page to express the preferred URL for a search engine to use.

Is your distorted view of virtual reality keeping you from adopting virtualization?

U.S. Linux vendor Red Hat has entered a cooperation agreement with Microsoft in technical support of server virtualization.

Due to recent migration Mercurial Repository for XenParavirtOps to Git Repository at kernel.org procedure of obtaining source code from from the Net has been changed. Base platform to start the test was Ubuntu Intrepid Server (64-bit) with Ubuntu Desktop installed via tasksel. Packages required by installation procedure have been installed: openssl,x11(xorg-dev),gettext,python-devel,gitk,git-core.

Parted Magic has been updated to version 3.6 and includes bug fixes, updates and a number of new programs. Parted Magic can be used to create, move, delete and resize drive partitions and will run on a machine with 128MB of RAM. File systems supported include ntfs, fat, reiserfs, reiser4 and hfs+. LVM and RAID are also supported. The update to the open source live CD collection of hard disk management tools "offers a major overhaul in the way Parted Magic boots and behaves."

Last year, I decided to give Linux a try. Everything was going well, until I started working for a company that uses Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. There's simply no straightforward, reliable way to run Outlook on Linux. I tried Outlook Web Access, but the service strips code from HTML attachments, among other limitations. (The company I worked for prior to my current employer used Lotus Notes, which is probably the only e-mail program in the world more proprietary than Outlook. Organizations must get some huge benefit from using these closed e-mail systems, because they sure make life difficult for users.)

Earlier this year, Freescale announced it would enter the netbook market with its own set of chips based on the ARM architecture, claiming they would yield better battery life than the Atom-based netbooks of today. The company gave a little more info today, and among other things, they want to support Google's Android on their netbooks.

Proxmox VE (virtual environment) is a distribution based on Debian Etch (x86_64); it provides an OpenSource virtualization platform for running virtual machines (OpenVZ and KVM) and comes with a powerful, web-based control panel (it includes a web-based graphical console that you can use to connect to the virtual machines). With Proxmox VE, you can even create a cluster of virtualization hosts and create/control virtual machines on remote hosts from the control panel. Proxmox VE also supports live migration of virtual machines from one host to the other. This guide shows how you can use Proxmox VE to control KVM and OpenVZ virtual machines and how to create a small computing cloud with it.

Open source technology has a role in aiding Singapore's quest to become a hotbed for the creation of innovative products and services, according to a senior government official. Through its 10-year Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) masterplan, Singapore seeks to create an environment where its people, the private and public sectors can collaborate on innovative next-generation ICT products and services, said Tan Geok Leng, CTO of the country's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

Popular musical artists including Peter Buck of REM and Youssou N’Dour are part of a new project to raise funds to put open source software tools in the hands of African doctors. Partnering with Grammy Award-winning artist N’Dour, global non-profit IntraHealth International is releasing a charity album called OPEN Remix. Artists on the album have donated remixes of N’Dour’s Wake Up song as part of the project.

Last week S3 Graphics had released the Chrome 540 GTX, which is their newest and fastest PCI Express graphics card . Similar to when announcing the S3 Chrome 540 GT, in the Chrome 540 GTX press release they once again mention Linux support along with OpenGL 3.0 capabilities. However, they talk up Linux support, but fail to provide the support. We have just heard back though from S3 Graphics' Benson Tao, which is the one that previously told us there would be Chrome 500 Linux support in December along with a beta OpenGL 3.0 driver. What though did he have to say this time?

pngcrush is an optimizer tool for PNG (Portable Network graphic) files. pngcrush is an excellent batch-mode compression utility for PNG images. Depending on the application that created the original PNGs, it can improve the file size anywhere from a few percent to 40% or more (completely losslessly)

Thanks to this press release that appeared on Linux Today a few weeks ago, V.i. Labs Announces CodeArmor Intelligence Support for Linux Platforms, I had a "Oh no, the MAFIAA is coming to Linux" moment:... My first reaction was "Ick! No way!" because the release uses inaccurate buzzwords like "intellectual property" and "piracy", and it sounds like spyware. Yay, spyware for Linux! But something about it piqued my curiosity, so I did a little digging.

Hugin is an excellent cross-platform panorama stitcher favored by many users of not only Linux, but also Windows. It’s used to stitch multiple photos taken in succession into one panorama, and includes the ability to manually align stitching points, as well as lens effects, tunnel correction, and blending of edges and colors to make the image as natural as possible.

For a long time now Microsoft has insisted that potential partners recognise its patent portfolio before signing interoperability agreements. But now Microsoft has stepped out of that box and signed an interoperability agreement with Red Hat that excludes any mention of patents. The agreement is aimed at improving interoperability between the two companies’ virtualisation products. The companies will join each other’s certification and validation programmes as well as provide technical support for mutual customers, as part of the agreement.

I decided earlier this week I needed to rip a DVD and looked around at the available options on Linux. I’m not overly experienced at doing this sort of thing, in the past I’ve always got the job done with applications like dvd:rip but not had a very satisfying experience. I’d heard a while back that the popular program Handrake had now released a Linux version with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and it seemed a good idea to try it out. I have some Mac using friends who really like it and often tell me how good it is for ripping discs. There’s been a command line version of Handbrake on Linux for quite some time I believe but I never used it, I can handle myself pretty well in a terminal but it just didn’t appeal. Handbrake is licensed under the GPL and as such is completely free and open source software, with all these facts and endorsements ringing in my ears I figured I should take it for a spin, no pun intended.

With about a month having passed since the release of Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 "Tydal", the first alpha development release to its successor is now available. Phoronix Test Suite 1.8 "Selbu" will focus on a number of underlying improvements and further polishing from where Tydal was left off. There will also be quite a bit of preparatory work for Phoronix Test Suite 2.0. Selbu is expected for release in the second quarter of 2009.