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With Windows XP about to finally meet its demise, many users are espousing its replacement with Linux. It makes perfect sense, because there will be millions of machines out there that are no longer supported by Microsoft. Those millions of machines can either add to our already insurmountable garbage problem, or they can continue to be used, sans updates.

Major telecommunications companies are intent on transforming the Internet – from an information center for all of us to a profit center for them. They want to charge consumers extra for use of the websites and applications we want most.

OpenMandriva Lx beta has been released. This is the first beta edition of what will become the first stable release of OpenMandriva Lx, a distribution built around the latest K Desktop Environment (KDE) and desktop technologies from ROSA Desktop and what’s left of the old Mandriva.

This release will be supported for 9 months, it is intended for enthusiasts and users who would like to try out the latest and greatest software. If you're installing Edubuntu in an organisation such as a school, university or non-profit, we suggest you deploy Edubuntu 12.04 LTS (long-term support), which is supported until April 2017 for both servers and desktops. What's New? Edubuntu 13.10 is mostly a refresh on Edubuntu 13.04 without any significant change to the package selection. Notable updates: Unity 7.1.2, LibreOffice 4.1.2, Firefox 24.0, Thunderbird 24.0, Linux kernel 3.11, Upstart 1.10, Python 3.3.2.

The idea that Wikipedia is dying has become one of the Internet's recurrent stories. Because something used by so many people every day is completely free and dependent on the selfless dedication of relatively few individuals, there is perhaps an underlying fear that it will disappear, and it will be our fault for not supporting it better. However, alongside major issues like the need for an influx of new contributors from more diverse backgrounds, one of the lesser-known challenges Wikipedia faces is the rise of "socking", or sock puppetry.

Quick update: today I've uploaded the unofficial system-wide PulseAudio equalizer to main WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander).

Battle Worlds: Kronos, a turn-based strategy game from King Art Games, will launch on Nov. 4 DRM-free worldwide for Windows PC, Mac and Linux, the developer announced today.

The latest work on Wayland's Weston compositor is working in the direction of making it support run-time switchable renderers, such as between the OpenGL and Pixman renderers or theoretically different GL renderers.

Netflix till date has very bad support, actually no support, for streaming in Linux systems. The core issue was the use of Microsoft’s dying Silverlight by Netflix, but Netflix announced their plans to move to HTML5. The switch to HTML5 gives Linux users some hope of running Netflix on their systems as they can play content from Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus and Google Play.

With the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Linux review out of the way, I carried out some benchmarks comparing the performance of the open-source "Nouveau" driver to NVIDIA's official closed-source Linux graphics driver on this Kepler-based GK107 GPU. If using the Nouveau driver as found by default on Ubuntu Linux and others, you can expect the performance to be less than 20% that of the official NVIDIA Linux driver.

Systena began shipping what appears to be the first new mobile device to run the Linux-based Tizen OS. Aimed at developers in Japan, the Systena tablet runs Tizen 2.1 on a quad-core, 1.4GHz Cortex-A9 system-on-chip, features a 10.1-inch (1920 x 1200) display, and offers 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

Forced is a one- to four-player co-op arcade action RPG with puzzle and tactical elements. You are cast as slaves in the toughest fantasy gladiator school of them all, condemned to fight to the death, all the while attempting to win your freedom.

So what happened in four short days? The news of SolusOS and Numix collaboration was a pretty big deal. It combined two potential FOSS powerhouses under one roof. It was certainly an exciting partnership.

Ahead of the Linux 3.13 kernel merge window in a few weeks time, Intel is seeking review of a proposed Power Supply Charging Framework for the Linux kernel.

OwnCloud, an open-source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud vendor, is readying an Open Document Format editor to go with its open-source, private-cloud software.

The Wine development release 1.7.5 is now available. New items include: Improved support for simulated bold fonts; Unicode data updated to Unicode 6.3; Better support for typelib registration on 64-bit and Various bug fixes.

Today in Open Source: SteamOS versus Windows in gaming. Plus: The Fireweb phone, and WordPress 3.7 released

Last month NVIDIA announced they would begin providing open-source GPU documentation and ultimately supporting the reverse-engineered open-source Nouveau graphics driver project for their Linux desktop customers. NVIDIA released some basic documentation in that initial push and now they have followed up with a tiny bit more documentation.

The Wine development release 1.7.4 is now available.

We are glad to announce the release of UbuntuKylin 13.10. In this release, the Linux kernel has been updated to 3.11. We have added more useful applications, such as Youker Assistant, KuaiPan client, fcitx-qimpanel, Unity China video scope, Unity China photo scope and UbuntuKylin wallpapers. Besides, Chinese calendar, Indicator China Weather, Unity China music scope and WPS for UbuntuKylin have been updated. New features: system customization - provides new GRUB selection, slideshow and boot animation; Youker Assistant provides a simple but powerful way for users to use and manage their systems; Unity China video scope - shows Chinese video results searched from Youku service on Dash.