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Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 2.6.34, which is notable for adding two filesystems: Ceph for distributed and cloud-based applications, and LogFS, which is optimized for flash-memory based devices. Other new features include a faster KVM virtualization driver based on Vhost.net technology, says LinuxPlanet.com.

A fast-booting, cloud-oriented, "Peppermint OS" Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, Red Hat clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features including enhanced KVM virtualization and improved WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.

While the release schedules for Ubuntu Linux aren't exactly a close secret -- new releases generally coming in April and October with the version scheme being YY.MM such as Ubuntu 11.04 for the April 2011 release -- Canonical's Robbie Williamson has laid out tentative release schedules for Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu 11.10, and even Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

A amazing new style for Avant Window Navigator called "Lucido Style" was posted @ AWN forums. The code is already available in a BZR branch but it has not been merged into AWN yet. If you want to try it already, I've built Ubuntu .deb packages for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx which you can download below.

Subversion is a free/open-source version control system. That is, Subversion manages files and directories, and the changes made to them, over time. This allows you to recover older versions of your data, or examine the history of how your data changed. In this regard, many people think of a version control system as a sort of "time machine". This guide will help you set up the subversion system, and integrate it with your existing ISPConfig3 installation allowing you control over disk usage, quota and other factors in a very familiar way.

The 5 things I hope Google unveils in Android 2.2. The folks at Apple have made an art form out of annual conferences with big announcements. In recent years we’ve seen the iPhone, MacBook Air, and more recently the iPad unveiled to much fanfare. Not to be outdone by Apple, Google has been making some Waves as well with their annual spring conference dubbed Google I/O.

Library of Congress CIO George Marchand sat uneasily in the witness chair of the hearing room. On a raised platform in front of him stretched a semicircular table, dotted with microphones. Behind those microphones sat all but one of the members of the Inquisition also known as the Congressional Subcommittee on Cybersecurity. 

Samsung likes to play the tart when it comes to a mobile OS, but the Bada Developer Challenge for its in-house environment shows where its affections really lie, with a top prize of $300,000. That compares with the £2,000 that Samsung was prepared to give to the best Android application while promoting its Galaxy handset. The two grand is just for the idea and is UK only, but the comparison still shows how much more important Bada is and how much Samsung is prepared to spend ensuring it succeeds.

Zend, one of the lead commercial PHP vendors, today announced that they have received another $9 million in venture capital funding, led by Greylock Partners. So my question is - if Zend is already successful, both in terms of technology and customers why does it still need additional venture funding? At this point, shouldn't revenue and cash flow from operations be enough to keep the company going?

It's doubtful that anyone really likes having to upgrade, but at some point it has to be done. For those particularly adverse to the upgrade — like enterprise users, with good reason — there are extra-long windows, but eventually even those windows close. Last week, Red Hat announced that the oldest of its supported platforms has officially entered the homestretch.

eXo has announced the release of eXo Social 1.0, an enterprise social networking package which supports OpenSocial, under an AGPL licence. eXo Social is bundled with eXo's GateIn 3.0 and Tomcat 6.0 to allow users to configure a social network "out of the box". eXo Social is aimed at enterprises who want to integrate social networking concepts into their existing infrastructure.

LXer Feature: 17-May-2010

In this week's LXWR we have Jim Zemlin commenting on Linux fragmentation, making the Linux desktop look better, Chrome usage rises and copiers have hard drives? Enjoy!

With Valve's Steam client and Source Engine coming to Linux in the coming months, we decided to check with Epic Games to see how Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux is coming along. After all, the game was released in November of 2007 and nearly three years later the client is still missing with few words having come from Epic Games or Ryan Gordon (a.k.a. "Icculus"), the well known Linux game porter that was contracted to port UT3 to Linux and has done previous Unreal Engine projects.

Automatic driver installations, better mobile broadband and the end of PowerPC support can be expected from Fedora 13. Fedora Linux, the community release of Red Hat, is putting the final touches to its latest release, Fedora 13. Codenamed "Goddard", Fedora 13 has a number of features that will please end users as well as systems administrators. Fedora 13 also ends the relationship with PowerPC processors and now backs the KVM virtualisation system.

Back in Linux's early days, Linuxcare emerged as the first important Linux support company. In 1998, the company made headlines not just in the technology press but in mainstream business publications like the Wall Street Journal as the company that would help businesses switch over to Linux. It was not to last. Poor top management decisions led Linuxcare to lose first its way, and, then, years later, to quietly vanish. Now, one of its founders, Arthur F. Tyde III, has brought Linuxcare back from the grave and made it ready for the 21st century.

OpenOffice.org (OOo for short) is a powerful open source and multi-platform office suite, and is even comparable to Microsoft Office. However, there's always room-to-grow, features to improve, and things to customize. Luckily, the open source community provides a great repository of extensions and add-ons. Today, we'll look at six of them. Now let's get started!

In about 6 weeks the biggest yearly gathering of the KDE community starts in Tampere. To give you all a little taste of Akademy 2010, Guillermo Amaral interviewed Aaron Seigo and asked him about his keynote.

By now, everyone has heard about Diaspora, the free software project to create a distributed version of Facebook, and the fact that it has raised $170,000 in just a couple of weeks. But what people might overlook is the innovative way that Diaspora has raised that money - by offering a graded series of scarce goods in return for monetary pledges. Could this be the future of free software funding?

Now Mac and Linux are often criticized for the lack of good games available under the two platforms compared to Windows. Perhaps Mac is moving in the right direction towards native big budget games however, Linux is not. We may have WINE ,which is something I will do a feature on, but it doesn’t replace the real game.

I know the binaries for the iPhone 3G are taking a while. Everything is basically done and all the code I have is in the source repositories so people are free to build it for themselves. However, I wanted to improve the packaging slightly to ease installation (no longer requiring people to modify ext2 partitions). The release of the binaries (and a how-to) will be sometime within the next week.