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Last week we released Phoronix Test Suite 1.0 and one of the article requests we received as a result was to do a side-by-side comparison between the popular desktop Linux distributions. Ask and you shall receive. Today we have up 28 test results from Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 9, and Mandriva 2008.1.

Banshee 1.0 was released a couple of days ago. Here's an article reviewing the most notable features of Banshee together with upsides and downsides of this GNOME audio player.

Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging application allows the use of AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

Even the biggest fanatics of the black console box won’t hold it against me if I say that in the respect of interacting with the computer, the future belongs to the GUI. And along comes the question: how will the desktop environments of the future look like? To envision them, we’re going to take a look at the interfaces available today, at typical and non-typical solutions given us by their creators, which finally will lead us to the question: is this still about the improvement of the comfort of work or something else?

Mandriva is the leading European Linux distributor. It was founded in 1998 under the name Mandrake, producing the Linux Mandrake distribution. The name Mandriva was adopted in 2005, following a merger between Mandrake and Conectiva (a Brazilian Linux distributor) and also a trademark lawsuit in which Mandrake was sued by Hearst Publications, an American company which syndicates a comic strip named Mandrake the Magician.

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 8.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

Slackware has a well earned reputation for reliability, stability, and performance. It may also be the least user friendly major Linux distribution on the planet short of building Linux From Scratch.

Encoding is a CPU-intensive operation. Whilst encoding, using optimised code is crucial. In this short article I will explain how I gained a 300% speed boost when encoding DVDs and will show how having the program’s sources and being able to talk to the maintainers sometimes really, really helps. Welcome to doing things “the GNU/Linux way”. For the full story go to FSM

Quick and easy shell script to help setup openssl, openssh and zlib, while creating new ssh host keys, network-wide using rsh.

A software tool aimed at helping users administer macro benchmarks like kernel compile time tests has achieved its first stable release. Version 1.0 of the Phoronix test suite can download and compile various well-known open source packages, or users' own software, generating detailed XML/HTML reports.

Before to comment in details the latest production of Mr. Matusow, I'd like the reader to pay attention to the following: in his post, Mr. Matusow's mentions: Collaborative Development: 9 times, OSS: 8 times, Free (as in Free software): only once. So could you ask, what is this collaborative development, this new syntagm Mr. Matusow is using all over the place? Well, buried deep towards the very end of his post, Mr. Matusow gives us a definition of sort:

Anybody who spends time trying new free software applications and distributions will soon notice that version numbering and labeling is next to meaningless. These days, versioning rarely gives an accurate idea of the state of development, except relative to other builds of the same project. It is simply a label that distinguishes one build from another. That's too bad, because a properly labeled release can give users a sense of how advanced the build actually is.

In our “winner take all” society, The VAR Guy is starting to wonder: Can open source companies like Concursive, Compiere and EnterpriseDB ever escape from the shadows of their larger and more successful rivals (SugarCRM and MySQL)? Before you answer, consider these lessons. First, let’s look beyond the open source market and zero in on the search industry.

At a hastily convened press conference Bill Gates announced that he personally thinks that "Linux is the best OS ever." Linux #1. He added, "Mundie and Ballmer are idiots. Their talk about how open source software damages intellectual property or how Linux is a cancer, is moronic. When I heard these attacks I felt sick to my stomach. How could a company that I poured my blood, sweat and tears into spread these untruths? My conscience guides me, that's why I'm before you today."

Since Amarok 2 is on its way with all the fuss around it and the currently stable 1.4.9.1 version will probably be the last in the 1.x series, I decided to make a review of the last stable Amarok. Debian Lenny will ship with this version (or any later version before Amarok 2), probably making it the most stable Amarok experience up to date.

Lately, there has been a lot of noise about Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix. In an unrelated (and definitely lucky) interview with The Guardian, Mark Shuttleworth hinted that Canonical were about to announce a version of Ubuntu for a new class of devices created by accident by Asus with the EeePc (talk about corporate luck…). Th buzz about this was monumental. But… what is Ubuntu Netbook Remix? Here is the answer… Read the full article at FSM

Open Source is still a disruptive idea. It has moved beyond that in server operating systems, of course, with Linux on 20% of servers shipped these days. That’s known as being “mainstream.” But the effects of open source development and business models continue to be heavily disruptive as they spread into new technology markets. Disruption often benefits consumers directly. Cell phones are the next device that will move to open standards. Whether the big providers like it or not.

We're saved! Or rather, Windows XP is -- at least for the time being. Microsoft announced this week that it is extending the cut-off date for sales of the older edition of Windows until 2010, specifically to serve the needs of customers who are planning to buy one of the new wave of low-cost laptops due to arrive this summer. It's not hard to see why. The mini-laptop that started it all, the Asus Eee PC, shipped with Linux pre-installed, and many of the new machines are likely to take the same road. In fact, some PC makers are reportedly so enamored with Linux that the news of an XP option might fall on deaf ears. This is a fascinating development, and with any luck it could be the start of a promising new trend.

Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer facing a mandatory 25-to life term for killing his wife, might disclose the location of Nina Reiser's body in exchange for a reduced term, Alameda County District Attorney Thomas Orloff told Threat Level on Friday. "There's been some overtures," he said. "But everything is in its preliminary stage." Another source familiar with the proposal, speaking on condition of anonymity because no deal has been struck, said Reiser, the prosecution and Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman would have to sign off on the proposed deal. Under the plan, Reiser's cooperation could reduce his April conviction from first-degree murder to second degree.

Constantine Murenin offered a history of the OpenBSD hardware sensors framework during his talk at BSDCan 2008, describing how it was originally based on a port from NetBSD, then evolved and was eventually ported to all the BSDs. He also discussed his own involvement with the framework, having ported it from OpenBSD to FreeBSD as a Summer of Code project, and how his port was merged into DragonFly BSD. At the end of the talk, there were some interesting ecxhanges between Constantine and Poul-Henning Kamp, the latter explaining why he'd had the code backed out of FreeBSD and why he continues to oppose it being merged back in.