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I came away from the second annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit with mixed feelings. I mean, it's hard not to support the group that pays Linus Torvalds to spend his time continuing to lead the poster-boy project for free and open source software. But at the same time, those golden chains are my biggest concern about the Linux Foundation.

One of the great things about Linux is the ability to not only install it on your home desktop computer, but the ability to install it on a USB Key. Installing Linux on a USB Key makes it very mobile and today I am pleased to review a commercial version of Linux on USB key called Mandriva Flash 2008.

Mandriva Linux is a predominantly KDE-centric Linux distribution originating from France. This desktop-oriented Linux distribution which began its production in 1998 owes its popularity to its ease of installation and graphical productive draktools. I decided to review Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (aka Mandriva Linux 2008.1) when I got to know that, this new Spring edition has a full support for the Asus Eee PC and also improved support for mobile device synchronization.

As the release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS rapidly approaches, the all important question is beginning to form in everyone's mind. Upgrade, or freshly install. It's always an interesting discussion to have with fellow Linux users, because there seems to be an almost religious divide between the two camps. Some feel that to really get the full experience of a new version, a clean install is the only way.

They say that every dog has its day. Could the growing popularity of Asus's low-cost EEE notebook launch Puppy Linux into the limelight? The EEE (pictured at right) comes with Xandros Linux, by default, with Windows XP also an option on the newest model. But there's a third dog in the race now, and one that's capable of running circles around either of the weightier contenders.

The annual conclave of free graphics software developers, users, and artists known as the Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is set for May 8-11 in Wroclaw, Poland, this year. LGM organizers are holding a fund-raising campaign this week to help volunteer developers travel to the event. Now in its third year, LGM gathers programmers, users, and designers representing all of the major free graphics applications -- the GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Blender, and Scribus -- and other apps, plus related projects like OpenICC and the Open Clip Art Library. The conference allows the developers to collaborate, share ideas and code, cooperate on cross-application standards, and simply get to know one another. End users and artists are an integral part of LGM, too, participating in meetings with developers, showcasing work, and contributing tutorials.

As you may recall, six US states considered open format bills last year. One of them was Texas, where the result was to charge a committee to do further research and make recommendations about what the Longhorn State should do with its documents. A few days ago, I gave testimony at a hearing before that committee along with ODF Alliance members, Microsoft, and others. Here's what the hearing was like.

Linux, long the laggard to the Windows desktop, is pushing into emerging markets, onto mobile devices and other client form factors, and is poised to give Microsoft something to really compete against, according to attendees at the annual Linux Foundation Summit.

When we looked at Flock 0.9 last year, the social Web browser showed a lot of potential. Now that it's over the 1.0 hump, the Flock team has made good on the application's promise. Maybe too good -- while Flock serves up a lot of content on a single page, you practically need super-powers to take it all in. Once you cut back on the sensory input a bit though, it's a pretty slick Firefox alternative for anyone with a ton of cyber friends.

The ISO has taken over control of the Open XML specification and started a committee to consider harmonization with the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Wednesday was the last day that all resolutions to the new standard, called ISO/IEC 29500, were accepted, according to Brian Jones, a program manager for office at Microsoft who has been involved in the standardization process.

Nevada build 85 id the first SNV build implementing Xen 3.1.2 bits. It's well known that straight forward attempt to install SNV85 DomU at Xen 3.2 Linux Dom0 immediatelly crashes due to broken by Xen 3.2 backward compatibility.

I've been using OpenBSD for a few months now, and one of the problems I've had is the inability to find the master configuration file for .fvwmrc. I've read the man page for fvwm but didnt' read it closely enough. The answer was there all the time. I've grown quite fond of the Fvwm window manager. These days I prefer it to Fluxbox, even, and I have OpenBSD to thank for introducing me to it. (Note: I didn't have the same feeling about Twm, the default window manager in FreeBSD. Even though Fvwm is based on Twm, the former is way, way better than the latter.)

Hardware is always getting faster and with it Windows increases it's system requierments, but Linux does not. In time, this could be an important factor driving Linux's success.

An online retailer specializing in mini-ITX boards, systems, and accessories has started selling mini-ITX and pico-ITX systems pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux. Logic Supply says that as a Canonical Solution Provider partner, it has staff ready to support approved systems under the popular desktop and server Linux OS.

Circumstantial evidence is mounting of one or more private deals having been struck to approve DIS-29500 Office Open XML ("OOXML") as an international standard, a deal that may have played a role in several key national standardization bodies changing their voting position to approve OOXML.

A visiting Red Hat executive has said that wariness on the part of a number of government CIOs over adopting open source is not a reflection of Australia's tech savvy, but the result of a"lack of understanding" of the software and its community.

Analyst Opinion - Last week, I was in China and witnessed the launch of the first generation Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform products based on Intel's new Atom processor. This got me thinking back to what we had before the MID and why some of those products were successful and others were not. Of course, now we can speculate who will be successful with the MID.

[I was reading it and thinking "what's wrong with this guy?" and only at the end noticed who was the author... You can sense Rob Enderle from a mile away! -J.]

I'll never forget attending the first LinuxWorld trade show in San Francisco in 1999, and getting a marketing hand-out from the Abiword team that was printed on re-used office paper. Almost 10 years later, the nimble Word clone has gotten to be "as good as they come," writes Myank Sharma in a detailed Linux.com review.

Canonical, promoter of Ubuntu Linux, has plenty of momentum on the desktop. But as Canonical gears up for a server push, at least one major server vendor says it has no plans to make an Ubuntu server move. Here are the details, from The VAR Guy.

Most of what we offer in Breaking News are roundups of the day's news — a convenient place to find the most important developments and have a chuckle at the same time. It's not that often that I get to do first-hand, on-the-scene reporting, so I was somewhat surprised last week to open an email from one of Cisco's PR reps, offering the opportunity to report an announcement of interest to the Linux and Open Source community. Being the curious sort, I couldn't pass up such an opportunity.