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LinuxCertified, Inc. announced its next two day, hands-on course that provides attendees with experience in creating Linux kernel source code within various subsystems of the Linux kernel. This course teaches attendees to acquaints developers with the fundamental subsystems, data structures, and API of the Linux kernel

When Attachmate disclosed plans to buy Novell, I had plenty of questions. Chief among them: Did any other companies bid on Novell? And what happened to Novell's rumored SUSE Linux sale to VMware? I went looking for answers and found a few by speaking with Novell Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon. Here’s the update.

As Linux gains more popularity, the number of major commercial game vendors supporting Linux has not increased, but independent developers are certainly taking notice. Here are four more Linux games that are sure to distract you from real work. Be sure to play them only when your boss is not looking. Enjoy!

I've been keeping my eye on Debian Squeeze (and Sid) for the past few months via live images, and in the course of the release's life there have been changes in the application lineup. Notable inclusions in the now-frozen Squeeze are the Ubuntu Software Center as an alternative way of managing applications. Yep, you read right: Debian is using the Ubuntu Software Center. It looks like Debian's developers are in a more cooperative mood than they get credit for. I for one am glad to see such cross-pollination between Ubuntu and Debian.

This is exactly why Red Hat is one among the most remarkable open source success stories that are changing the world as we know it. According to Forbes, when you consider the current rate of growth of the company, Red Hat will likely reach $1 billion in annual revenue in 2011 itself making it the first ever open source firm to achieve this feat.

ZT Systems announced what it says is the first commercially available ARM-based development platform for the server market. The Ubuntu Linux-based R1801e 1U rackmount server employs SSD (solid state disk) storage and eight ARM Cortex-A9-based computer-on-modules (COMs), providing 16 600MHz cores while using less than 80 Watts, the company says.

In a post on the project's mailing list, Fedora Project Leader Jared K. Smith has announced the election results for the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo), the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and the Fedora Board.

The Linux Foundation has published its third annual report about Linux kernel authorship. The statistics included in the paper illustrate growth trends in the kernel development process and provide insight into how the labor is distributed among individual contributors and corporate sponsors. The kernel has seen modest growth in its base of contributors over the past year, though the rate of development has seen a marginal decline.

Based on the run rates of the current quarter, Red Hat will likely reach $1 billion in annual revenue in 2011. Only a handful of companies, probably less than 20 software firms, have ever hit this milestone. Red Hat will be the first open source-focused company to break the billion dollar barrier. Certainly Richard Stallman did not envision this when he created the paradigm of Free Software. Such an event may be more in tune with what Eric Raymond, Tim O’Reilly, and others had in mind when they reframed Free Software as Open Source.

Linux developers continue to push out new kernels at rapid pace, though over the course of the last year the pace of new code commits has slowed, according to a new report from the Linux Foundation. The report also notes that the top contributors to Linux kernel development have shifted over the last year to include more contributions from mobile vendors. The new report from the Linux Foundation is the third annual 'Who Writes Linux' report, summarizing kernel contributions and activities over the past year.

Every day we read of new Linux distributions (GNU/Linux to be correct), and sometimes happen to want to try them “on the road”, even those who do not have a live version. The first program that comes to mind, I think, is precisely Qemu. But I also think that there is also an attempt to find a more friendly alternative. The second choice I think is VirtualBox, a Qemu-based solution that gives to you at once and without effort everything you need. But is it really necessary to use a program that adds to our Linux machine other useless processes? For me no. Of course, to switch from Virtualbox to Qemu I think, all of these tasks should be accomplished by a graphical interface “mouse-proof” and the terminal should not be used.

These bye-laws define the internal organization of The Document Foundation. They cover the Community processes for contributions made to the projects of The Document Foundation. These bye-laws do not apply to the actual structure and governance of The Document Foundation as a legal entity, which are addressed in The Document Foundation's legal statutes.

It's now two months since Linux Game Publishing went offline due to a failure of their only web server and full service has still not been restored. Last week their service was partially restored with the LGP DRM system going back online along with some of their other web-sites, but the main Linux Game Publishing web-site is still down with no update since the 23rd of November.

Oracle is claiming ownership of yet another open-source project. This time, it's the Hudson project, the popular software build and monitoring service originally developed by Sun Microsystems. The giant has told users they are welcome to move the service to non-Oracle-owned servers, but if they do so, they can't call it "Hudson" anymore. Users have already moved code to new servers in an effort to deliver improved service.

The Linux World is rarely dull, but last week was an emotional roller coaster for users of openSUSE and Ubuntu. First Novell was sold to Microsoft and Attachmate with no mention of the fate of openSUSE. Then Ubuntu founder Shuttleworth told reporters that Ubuntu may switch from the six-month release cycle to daily updates. Both items garnered lots of speculation, elation, and worry until both parent companies finally addressed them.

The progress made by the LibreOffice folks so far is impressive, at least when it comes to attracting contributors. The third beta was released on November 18th, and seems to have impressive momentum. The release notes list 118 contributors who’ve helped with the development just between beta 2 and beta 3. How’s it looking so far? Don’t expect miracles, but it’s shaping up nicely.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that may have a significant effect on the threshold under which patents can be invalidated in the US. In Microsoft Corp v i4i Limited Partnership, the court will look at the standard of proof by which patents can be declared invalid. In most civil cases in the US, the standard is "preponderance of the evidence", but in patent invalidity cases the Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit has stated that the test should be "clear and convincing" evidence - which is a much higher threshold to achieve. If the Supreme Court decides this standard should be revised it could be of significant benefit to defendants claiming that patents being asserted against them are invalid.

Recently, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu shocked the Ubuntu Linux world when he announced that the next release of the popular Linux, Ubuntu 11.04, would use Unity instead of GNOME as its default desktop interface. Why move from pure GNOME to Unity? As Shuttleworth explained to the Ubuntu developers, "Lots of people are already committed to Unity -- the community, desktop users, developers, and platform and hardware vendors." In particular, he noted, "Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) favor Unity. They're happy to ship it."

To those that missed it in our Phoronix Forums where it was discovered, NVIDIA two days ago uploaded a new binary Linux (x86/x86_64) driver to their FTP server. This NVIDIA graphics driver is marked as the 260.19.26 beta, but they have yet to officially announce this new release or even provide a change-log.

In Linux, a lot of design makeover starts with a mockup. We have already experienced it first hand with the clever redesign of Nautilus called Nautilus Elementary. The following Evolution mockups are so impressive that I really hope someday these changes will be implemented in Evolution partially at least.