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Hardware and software go hand in hand – one doesn’t work without the other. Despite being so closely linked, the two industries operate very differently. For the most part, hardware is produced in isolation and product designs are concealed by manufacturers, while software is created in a largely open and collaborative environment, available for anyone to use.

Javier Serrano, a hardware designer for accelerator systems at CERN, set out to change that.

Debain is known to be widely ported, being available for as many as nine architectures: i386, amd64, powerpc, sparc, mips, mipsel, ia64 s390 and armel. In the previous Debian 6 release, the distribution added the option of using a FreeBSD kernel (i386 or amd64) with the Debain software collection, and in the next version they intend to provide similar support for the GNU Hurd kernel.

Is it really a news story that IBM has decided to support OpenOffice.org? Considering the fact that Oracle’s move to push the project over to Apache was at Big Blue’s prodding, I’d say not. Still, at least now the players are clearly defined. In addition to lending moral support and giving Larry Ellison a shoulder to cry on, IBM is also donating the code from IBM Lotus Symphony.

Tired of creating complicated passwords? Having trouble remembering passwords for different sites? Mozilla is attempting to eliminate the password and add more privacy with one click.

Asus released a netbook that comes with an unusually large 12.1-inch screen and -- at least in some markets -- Ubuntu Linux. The Eee PC 1215P includes a dual-core Atom N570 processor, 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, up to 2GB of RAM and 320GB of hard disk storage, six hours' battery life, and optional Bluetooth, the company says.

I am not sure about you, but Pardus 2011.1 was one of the more awaited Linux releases this summer for me. Why? Because I considered it to be one of the candidates to replace my previous "boots". Unfortunately, I was not patient enough and already started process of migration from *buntus. Mageia is my current choice for KDE system.

Poor OpenOffice. It’s been open source for so long, and yet its adoption and market importance has always lagged far behind that of peer software like Linux – despite the fact that it’s free and implements a standard (ODF) aggressively promoted by some of the most powerful technology countries in the world. Can this ever change?

Of all the companies that support OpenOffice, there were only two that didn’t support the LibreOffice fork: Oracle and IBM. I could understand Oracle. While Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, didn’t really care about OpenOffice–after all Oracle essentially gave OpenOffice away to The Apache Foundation–I also know that Ellison wasn’t going to let The Document Foundation, LibreOffice’s parent organization, dictate terms to him. But, I’ve never quite understood why IBM didn’t help create LibreOffice. Be that as it may, IBM will be announcing tomorrow that it’s donating essentially all its IBM Lotus Symphony source code and resources to Apache’s OpenOffice project.

So we've been thinking here at the CodeWeavers ranch that we need a good tagline to summarize what we do in a 8 words or less.

Though netbooks have waned a bit in favor of tablet devices, there's still a lot of demand for netbooks and netbook-friendly Linux distros in certain circles. Whether you're looking for a brand-new netbook or to keep an older device current, there's plenty of options for the Linux crowd. Let's take a look at the top five netbook Linux distros.

We have been focusing a great deal on patent infringement controversies lately, so its time to step back into that pleasant world of free and open source software for a visit. And there is some significant news on that front. First, Project Harmony has released version 1.0 of its contributor agreement templates. Version 1.0 includes a rather nifty Agreement Selector tool that generates both individual and entity agreements for your project. Project Harmony does not come down on the side of license-in versus assignment-in; its primary benefit is to assure standardization of language regardless of approach. Check it out.

Distrohopping can be fun, but there's a downside to everything. I’ve been a distrohopper for as long as I can remember. What is a distrohopper you might be wondering? Well it’s a guy or gal who loves using different desktop distros and who frequently hops from one to another. I wrote a column about the Psychology of a Distrohopper a while back that explores what exactly goes on in the minds of distrohoppers.

SAP is joining the OpenJDK project which develops the official open source implementation of Java. SAP's Volker Simonis announced on the OpenJDK mailing list that the company had signed the Oracle Contributor Agreement. This means SAP employees can officially engage in discussions on the OpenJDK mailing lists and contribute patches and enhancements.

Microsoft’s next big offering could be released as a beta in September 2011. How the mighty have fallen. There was a time when anything that Microsoft did would result in pages and pages of news coverage. Today, only Google, Twitter and Facebook can do that, and Microsoft scrambles for media airtime along with everyone else.

Gameolith, a web based Linux game store has been launched with 5 indie games. The store aims to provide an easy way to get your favorite commercial Linux games with bundled DRM. Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora packages and tarballs will be made available for these games.

Some days, it’s just not fair. You know you’re going to post something that’s going to have the fanboys heads spinning, you don’t want to hurt their precious necks, but true journalistic integrity requires you light a flame and watch it burn. This is one of those days. Apparently, Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, just gave a speech Down Under. In it, he compared Linux with Windows and OS X. The phrase you’re all going to enjoy is this one: “I don’t think they’re equally flawed - I think Leopard is a much better system,” he said. “(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.”

After one month of the first delivered Chromebook, I still do not see too much uses for this operating system. It's biggest feature (all in the cloud) could be its disadvantage.

The following tutorial will teach you how to install the 64-bit edition of the Adobe Flash Player 11 plugin on the Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system.

At Phoronix we benchmark Linux, obviously, but of course we also run some tests of Mac OS X, the *BSDs, Solaris and the OpenSolaris-derived distributions, and even Microsoft Windows when doing a hardware/driver comparison to other platforms. It's the platforms that are supported by the Phoronix Test Suite, and with better mobile device support coming, we'll be delivering Phoronix.com benchmarks there too. But there's yet another new platform target with Lillesand: GNU Hurd. Yes, we have benchmarks running now even under GNU Hurd...

You have been playing around with Ubuntu, Fedora or Open SuSE for some time now and think to yourself “why do people all over the web say Linux is so different, it looks and feels just like Windows or Mac OS X for the most part”.