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Linspire, the troubled Linux distribution vendor, has recently lost a top executive and a lead developer to the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu, has hired former Linspire staffers Randy Linnell and Brian Thomason.

How different reality often is from flame wars, particularly when the subject is legal. The Software Freedom Law Center has just announced that it "has carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license)".

The same way tabbed browsing revolutionized the web experience, GNU Screen can do the same for your experience in the command line. GNU Screen allows you to manage several interactive shell instances within the same “window.” By using different keyboard shortcuts, you are able to shuffle through the shell instances, access any of them directly, create new ones, kill old ones, attach and detach existing ones.

Long-time Tectonic supporter and contributor Ian Gilfillan is heading up a group of Cape Town free content advocates that have launched a bid to host Wikimania 2008, the annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation behind Wikipedia. Give them your support.

Debian-Installer Loader is a Debian Etch installer for Windows which adds an entry to the boot menu that allows you to start the Debian installation. Unlike the Ubuntu installation with Wubi, real Debian partitions are created during the installation. In the end, you have a dual-boot system (Windows/Debian).

According to the all-knowing (or pretty darn close) Tim at HIS talk "Frank Pecaitis and Medsphere have parted ways". Apparently Pecaitis now works for GE. From what I can tell. Frank Pecaitis was the last of the old-guard leadership still active at Medsphere. Modern Healthcare already broke the story that Ken Kizer is leaving Medsphere"when a successor is found" which apparently has not happened yet. Who is left at Medsphere? This is exactly what I had hoped to prevent: An ongoing pointless lawsuit, leaving the two brother founders twiddling their thumbs, and a company that is tearing itself apart.

"When we're out there competing with Red Hat, [our salespeople] are saying, 'Our Linux is recommended by Microsoft,' and customers that already have a Windows investment say it seems to make sense to pick the Linux that works with Windows."

My article 7 Reasons Why Linux Won't Succeed On The Desktop jump-started anew the debate over why the open-source operating system hasn't made significant inroads on the client side into Windows' user base. The real reason, it seems, is something much more basic than confusion about Linux distros, annoying fanboys turning off potential adoptees, or resistance from average users. What it all boils down to is the almighty dollar. Linux is deceptive in coming across as a free option. Yes, the OS itself can be obtaining for no cost, or, if you buy a commercial version, for a pittance as compared to Windows. The real cost of Linux starts after you install the executable. That's the investment you have to spend in user training, and the support contract you have to purchase.

One of the most welcome additions to OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a new export filter that allows you to save Writer documents as MediaWiki-formatted pages. That's all fine and dandy if you are using MediaWiki, but what about other wiki systems? The answer to this question comes in the form of the OpenOffice2UniWakka export filter. While it's designed to work with the UniWakka wiki, with a bit of hacking you can adapt it to other wiki systems as well, even if you are not familiar with XML and XSLT.

A user or sysadmin posts about problems with a brand new Vista PC on a support forum. Within minutes, a "helpful" soul suggests a fix: "Install Linux!" Enthusiasts have always touted Linux as the best operating system, and they've become more strident and shrill since Vista's launch. Despite Microsoft's optimistic predictions and fervent proselytizing, Vista has received a chilly reception in the marketplace. The reasons are legion: its price tag, the lack of driver support, legacy applications not working on Vista, and the list goes on. Is Linux really better than Vista? Sure. Linux is free, while a flavor of Vista can be as low as $99.95 and as high as $399.95. Linux has a cute penguin for its mascot. Does Vista even have one? Even if it does, it's surely not as adorable as Tux? Let Test Center count the ways.

Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users. Freespire 2.0 was released in early August. This Ubuntu 7.04-based distribution differs from other Linux distributions in that it makes no bones about using proprietary software, drivers and codecs. It includes, as options, essentially all proprietary software that's currently and legally available for Linux.

The folks over at Tux Games have opened up a repository containing a collection of old software titles ported by Loki Games. This repository contains game updates as well as demos for some of their games ported during their short lifespan. At present there are 15 Linux game demos available and 22 folders of updates for software written by Loki.

People apparently are already tuning in to IBM's Symphony. The company reported Wednesday that its free rival to Microsoft's Office suite was downloaded 100,000 times in the first week of release. "To be honest, we were surprised at the speed with which people jumped on this," said Mike Rhodin, general manager of both IBM Collaboration and Lotus Software, in an interview Wednesday. To keep up with the number of people interested in downloading Symphony, IBM tripled the number of download servers it had for the suite of productivity applications in the first few days of its release, he said.

This review is a summary of practically all the features and changes in the latest version of Ubuntu. It covers such stuff as: major improvements on a desktop; compiz fusion overview; screen, graphics and driver preferences improvements; new default desktop search instrument; changes on printing service and Firefox 3 features. As always, new version of Ubuntu is better than previous. But probably this version did the most powerful step forward than any other.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with major GNU/Linux distribution lead developers. This interview is with Clement Lefebvre the lead developer of Linux Mint and he talks with me about his project, development, the community, and his views on free vs open source software.

I like to back up the data on my laptop computer as often as possible, just in case I have trouble with it. I have some large files on the laptop that prevent me from scheduling an Internet backup to my home machine, so I have written a script that reminds me to periodically plug in an external USB drive; then upon clicking continue, the reminder script runs my custom backup script.

People interested in offering and seeking jobs specifically related to Free Software might find the GNU Herds project interesting...

Remember yesterday, when I was railing against -- in no particular order -- Gateway, Ubuntu, Puppy, the Alps touchpad and Vector? A cooler head prevailed today. I stuck with Zenwalk 4.6.1. I may even install the 4.8 release candidate.

Australia's $21 billion ICT trade deficit could be dramatically reduced if the local industry played to its strengths and exported services using open source software, according to industry analyst Jeff Waugh.

Linspire, the company behind the Linspire commercial and Freespire community desktop Linux operating systems and CNR.com, a free Linux software delivery service, has announced the immediate availability of its first commercial paid support offerings for Freespire 2.0 users.