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One of the pleasures of Linux is that you can try out different distributions to see which one works best for you. You like Ubuntu, but you want to fine tune the desktop engine? OK, try Kubuntu with its KDE desktop then. Some worthwhile distributions, however, don't get as much attention as they deserve. So, here's my list of five great distributions that you might want to try.

In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, apparently the US economy isn't doing too well these days. There is a lot of news lately about banks failing, government bail-outs, and natural disasters that will cost us all a lot of money (thanks, Ike).

I was appalled after reading the rather rash statements made by Jim Zemlin the Executive director of the Linux Foundation. Let's break down his rather strange comments made to the press and later appeared in the New York Times. Does he represent your views?

John Lilly became chief executive of Mozilla Corp. in January, moving up from his role as chief operating officer. He's been with the company that created the open-source Firefox browser since 2005, the year Firefox 1.5 was released. Before Firefox, Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the Web. Now Microsoft's share is down and Mozilla's share is 20 percent. The size of the organization makes Mozilla's tremendous success that much more remarkable. Headquartered in Mountain View, it has fewer than 200 employees.

As November's national election looms in the United States, voters can expect increasing coverage of the hot-button issues through the mainstream media and campaign ads. On issues important to the open source and free software communities, however, information is harder to come by. Today we take a look at what the Democratic and Republican candidates say about questions close to the FOSS voter.

IBM has had enough of the silliness that goes on at some of the standards bodies it belongs to. So Big Blue now has a new policy: No shenanigans. Setting standards for hardware, software, communications protocols, document formats -- is a job that's way too important to be done in the dark, says IBM.

Hey Mac fanbois, how come if Apple is so brilliant did it take so long to patch holes in OS X Java. Holes that Sun had patched in Linux 5 months before?

Everyone loves open source - well, everyone apart from Microsoft, that is. The only problem with open source is deciding how much code control you're willing to relinquish, especially when open source puts your precious bits and bytes - and ultimately your own product plans - into the hands of your competitors.

Visa announced plans Thursday to develop payment and payment-related services for both Nokia mobile handsets and those running Google's new Android platform. In addition, Visa announced a pilot program that enables U.S. Bank Visa cardholders to transfer money using a mobile phone. The announcement looks to revive the efforts of credit card companies to push consumers toward mobile payments and mobile commerce.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I only know about 5% of what VLC can do. Everyone knows it's a dependable, free, cross-platform media player. But read through the release notes for the latest version, 0.9.2, and you will see a dizzying array of server, network streaming, and conversion functions, most of which I have never even touched -- and the new VLC exposes a lot more of that functionality. You can grab source code and Windows and Mac OS X binaries from videolan.org. Ready-made builds for Linux are not as easy to come by; VideoLAN prefers to work through distros' packaging systems, and the hot-off-the-presses 0.9.2 is not yet available in most of them.

The Fedora project is back on track after its recent "infrastructure issues" with new package signing keys as well as packages and updates signed with the new keys. Fedora users should be able to pick up the new key and update their systems now, with a minimum of hassle—just verifying and accepting the new key. But, no further information has been released about exactly what went wrong, leading to more speculation and some worry in the Fedora community.

Should European governments favor open-source software when they hold tenders for public contracts? Economists and policy-makers appear to think so, but industry giants, including Microsoft Corp., argue that this would be discriminatory and are considering legal action to prevent this from happening. A public consultation on a new set of guidelines regarding software interoperability in the public sector in Europe closed this week, sparking submissions from 50 lobby groups and firms from all corners of the software industry.

Yes, Windows 7 Alpha code will surface at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference in October. But it's time to ask the question: Can traditional closed source software projects -- where only Microsoft is allowed to debut the code -- march forward? Here's more on the debate.

Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is asking users of Ubuntu Server edition just exactly how they are using it and in what kind of organisations. Ubuntu is the popular Linux distribution for the desktop, laptop, thin client and server which brings together the best of open source software every 6 months. Ubuntu is free, and is downloaded from mirror sites around the world.

Linux is all that and a bag o' chips. Find out why. 5 good reasons why you should consider Linux for yourself.

Devil-Linux might sound hellish for a Linux distribution, but this live CD offers many blessings for your server needs. Originally developed as a router/firewall distribution, Devil-Linux has expanded its functionality to include nearly every service that a server might offer. It can function as an LDAP server, a VPN server, an email or file server, and more. As stated in the documentation, Devil-Linux runs directly from a CD or DVD-ROM only, so you don't need to install anything to a hard disk -- just keep the Devil-Linux configuration files that automate the configuration upon reboot on a diskette or USB drive. Since access to the live CD is read-only, it's impossible to install rootkits or other malicious software to the distribution.

Ekiga, formerly known as GnomeMeeting, is an open source VoIP application with video support. The Ekiga project has recently incorporated major enhancements into its version 3.0 software.

Can Open source methodology, with its promise of spreading benefits through new varieties of intellectual property, and which has played a major role in software development, also play a role in nanotech development?

Should European governments favor open-source software when they hold tenders for public contracts? Economists and policy makers appear to think so, but industry giants including Microsoft argue that this would be discriminatory and are considering legal action to prevent this from happening. A public consultation on a new set of guidelines regarding software interoperability in the public sector in Europe closed this week, sparking submissions from 50 lobby groups and firms from all corners of the software industry.

Seeing the Fedora Project pass its five year milestone got me thinking about the early days of the community-based Linux distribution and how far it's come. At the time of its launch, I was plenty worried. Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) was effectively killing off its namesake Linux distribution – Red Hat Linux -- and turning over the development into a community-based Linux distribution called Fedora Core. How could Red Hat do such a thing? Long-time users like me were calling it total madness and surely a recipe for disaster. History has proven me wrong.