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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”.

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on a CentOS 6.0 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

Major initiatives from Tech Data and Synnex have done little to ignite reseller enthusiasm for open source email, ERP, CRM and other applications. So, how will open source march forward with resellers? Here's the answer.

Mercy killing

Adobe has just released a beta of Flash Player 11, which includes native 64 bit clients. This is big news for Linux users, who are easily some of the most enthuastic adopters of 64 bit operating systems, and who may have been feeling a little left out after Adobe dumped AIR for Linux.

Amid its march toward $1 billion in annual revenues, Red Hat continues to invest more money in Jaspersoft -- the an open source business intelligence company. I've openly wondered -- multiple times -- if Red Hat will ever fully acquire Jaspersoft. Here's my current answer.

Adobe has released a beta of Flash Player 11, touting 64-bit support across Windows, Mac OS, and -- after a year-long hiatus -- Linux. The software includes a new set of low-level APIs for GPU (graphical processing unit) acceleration, H.264/AVC and H/264 compression technologies, cross-platform vector printing, a secure random number generator, according to the company.

Canonical has announced today that their next Ubuntu Developer Summit, for the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS release, will take place from the 31st of October to the 2nd of November. Like last year's Ubuntu 11.04 summit, this UDS will again be taking place in Orlando, Florida.

LinuxCertified,Inc. a leading provider of Linux training, will offer Linux system administration bootcamp on July 30 - 31, 2011 near San Francisco (South Bay). This workshop is designed for busy information technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas. All attendees get a free Linux laptop.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 is released already and the changes we expected to see in Ubuntu 11.10 is slowly starting to show up. Among other things, the most important change is the arrival of GNOME 3.0 stack. Ubuntu is not based on GNOME 2.x anymore. Most of the default Ubuntu themes have been ported to GNOME 3.0 and lot of other things are changing as well. Read our detailed Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2 review.