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The MeeGo conference is running from tomorrow through Wednesday in San Francisco. This is the first conference for the Moblin-Maemo-mix since Nokia parted ways to team up with Microsoft and ship Windows Phone 7 on their future devices, but there's interesting work still going on in the MeeGo world. In particular, of interest to many Phoronix readers will be the fact that it sounds like the adoption of the Wayland Display Server is going quite well within the MeeGo world. It appears that there's already an experimental version of MeeGo Tablet UX working atop Wayland.

This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with VirtualBox 4.0 on a headless Ubuntu 11.04 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI.

When it comes to operating systems people have always looked up to Windows and Mac OS X as the front-runners of the OS battle. However, due to recent efforts of the ever-growing Linux community, this scenario has changed only to accommodate Linux as a beleaguered underdog. Thanks to its escalating popularity amongst desktop users worldwide, the open source operating system has already been deemed as a serious competitor to Windows and Mac OS X . Similarly on the server side, many corporations are switching to Linux due to its reliability and speed. So then, what is it that makes Linux so special when contrasted with other OS’s namely Windows and Macs? Why are many people switching to an operating system that is not only free but is not even backed by any multi-million dollar corporation? This article answers many such questions

Mageia RC1 is released! "Mandriva Fork", This is the last development release before the first stable version of Mageia. This release is mainly about bug fixes andmageia-logo translation updates

There's a very old thread @ Ubuntuforums which includes a python script to get NotifyOSD notifications for Skype. Since the first post, the python script has been improved by many users and it now provides both Ubuntu Messaging Menu integration (with all the features the Messaging Menu provides like the envelope icon changing color when you have a pending notification, etc.) as well as NotifyOSD notifications for Skype.

Though not for newbies, it's a great distribution for people who want a lightweight, stable, user-friendly distribution i.e. the stability of Slackware without the hassle.

Speaking of games, Linux users never had much of a choice. But the ever growing importance of web as a platform and web browsers as the tool is encouraging. Even if the big league game developers completely ignore Linux in the future as well, Games, like other applications, could become totally platform independent. Chrome Web Store is growing in importance everyday, which was evident during the recently concluded Google I/O 2011 event. Chrome Web Store gives you a glimpse of what future is going to look like for all of us. Anyways, here are some of the most addictive games available for download in Chrome Web Store.

Miguel de Icaza took time out from his hectic starting-a-company schedule to chat with me this morning about his new Mono venture, Xamarin, which he and other Novell ex-pats are just getting off the ground.

How to DIY a (Linux) OS to serve exactly one function. Or maybe two or three functions. On your laptop. (This is not at "how to" but rather a "How would I")

Converting videos on the Linux desktop isn’t exactly difficult, but it can be tricky. There aren’t all that many conversion tools out there, and some of them aren’t all that easy to use. Take, for example, ffmpeg. It’s pretty much the top of the heap when it comes to video and audio conversion. But it’s a command line tool that requires you to remember a number of options. Even WinFF, a graphical front end for ffmpeg, isn’t all that user friendly. But what can you do if you want to convert a video to, say, upload to a video sharing site or to fit on to a mobile device? And do it quickly and easily? Give Arista a look.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is creating a process for wider participation through working groups and new affiliate programmes which will influence its thinking on its future mission. The programme was unveiled at last week's Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco by OSI board member Simon Phipps. The plans are the result of the OSI's planning for reformation announced in March.

Map-based navigation: it's one of the killer apps for any mobile platform. The only sticking point is getting the maps. Downloading map tiles on the fly is the default solution for most navigation apps, but pre-loading makes more sense when it's possible. Unfortunately, open source navigation apps have earned a reputation for clunky and awkward map-loading interfaces. This weekend, let's look at a simpler method, so you can get on the road quicker.

I'll admit, I'm somewhat interested in Google's Chromebook concept. The Chromebook is Google's spin on the "netbook". Announced in May last year, Chromebook goes on sale in mid-June. The Chromebook runs Google's Chrome OS, which is based on Gentoo Linux. While Linux has appeared on netbooks in the past (and were the only option on the very first netbooks) this is another example of the flexibility of Linux. You can use Linux as a base for almost any computing platform - it's small, fast, and supports a variety of hardware.

If you are interested in a new laptop pre-loaded with Linux or shipped with a bare drive for self-install read on. About a month ago, April 22nd 2011, I quietly posted a "press release" about the laptop line we are using for Linux, FreeBSD and FreeDOS installations. Since we were just getting lined up for offering these laptops and had not actually installed anything on one yet, I did not want to post all over the world until we had a chance to vet one.

"What is GNU Screen? it is a terminal multiplexer and you can run multiple console-based applications simultaneously. The best part of it is that you can leave it running on remote machines and come back to pick up your console sessions. It’s like VNC or Remote Desktop but for UNIX console." "With that feature GNU Screen is indispensable when it comes to do console sessions on low speed connection. If you got disconnected then all you have to do is reconnect and continue with your work. Or if you do something that takes a long time to finish, say maybe archiving and backing up many files, then simply launch it from your GNU Screen session then detach from it and disconnect. Later on you can come back and reattach again to check the progress."

I hoped Ubuntu would do the right thing and start an official derivative featuring the GNOME 3 environment. That has not happened. But there is a new project, the Ubuntu GNOME Remix, offering a PPA today and an ISO install image at some point in the near future.

The Linux Foundation's MeeGo project announced the final release of the open source Linux-based MeeGo 1.2, including the first finished version of its tablet UX (user experience), plus updated netbook and in-vehicle infotainment UXes. MeeGo 1.2 features new telephony and wireless communications features, as well as location and sensor/haptic capabilities, says the project.

I've been following the open source OpenStack cloud effort since it was first announced in June of 2010. I mean come on, how many times does a tech journalist like me get to interview NASA about enterprise open source tech?

I've always been an advocate for using the packages supplied by the distribution/project you happen to be running as an OS. Rarely do I go outside the "official" repositories for something shinier and newer. That's changing, and swapping the Chromium browser in Debian Squeeze for the Google Chrome browser directly from Google is my latest shift in this direction.

Fedora is a Linux community project sponsored by Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and is set to release Fedora 15 on May 24th. Security improvements are a key focus in the Fedora 15 release with a number of innovations. "We have better support for encrypted home directories that get mounted when you log in and that goes a long way to help people feel that their data is secure," Jared Smith, Fedora Project Leader told InternetNews.com.