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None other than the father of the popular Ubuntu operating system, Mark Shuttleworth, officially announced a few minutes ago the goals for the next version of Ubuntu. Yes, we are talking about Ubuntu 10.10, dubbed Maverick Meerkat...

Most people with an interest in software freedom will turn to GNU/Linux as their operating system of choice. Few realize however, that the vast majority of GNU/Linux distros are not entirely free. Imagine migrating away from Windows, only to find that by installing GNU/Linux you are accepting a restrictive Microsoft license! Many distros promote the use of proprietary software, knowingly show incorrect licenses, and attempt to hide the problem under the guise of an ‘option of freedom’. When the majority of developers of a collection of software don’t care about freedom, neither will their users. Non-free distros make almost no attempts to inform their userbases of the importance of freedom, even though they wouldn’t exist without it. I will discuss how the option of freedom is an unacceptable solution, and propose some real fixes. Read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine.

Ubuntu Artwork in Flickr has finally shortlisted a number of probables for becoming Ubuntu Lucid Wallpapers. And here is our pick. Top 5 Ubuntu Lucid Wallpapers from the ones shortlisted.

While it may not look like a computer, this armored baby is actually a high performing embedded Linux System: just take a look at it's environmental specs (high tech Liquid cooling yum!): Environmental Temperature Operating*: -30°C to +50°C Storage: -40°C to +85°C *Operating temperature range stated is for the liquid-cooled chassis. Humidity: 15-90% RH non-condensing

Mark Shuttleworth shares his dream for the perfect Linux. Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx (10.04) isn't out yet but Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, and his team look toward the October 2010 (10.10) release they're calling Maverick Meerkat. On his personal blog this morning, Mark wrote, "It’s time to put our heads together to envision 'the perfect 10'." Mark, himself, has a new vision for the upcoming release already knowing that 10.04 is almost "in the can." His new vision is one of lightness-lightness in footprint, in deployment and in support requirements. A grand vision but can he do it?

Most of the time at Phoronix we focus on looking at the Linux graphics performance of the software drivers and hardware, since traditionally that has been one of the most troubling areas of Linux hardware support. Tides though have turned as AMD continues to back their own open-source strategy with providing documentation and pushing out code that enables open-source hardware support from 3D acceleration to power management, while Intel continues to back their fully open-source model too. Another area of hardware support that has caused much grief for users has been with printer support. Printers are not nearly as complex as a modern-day graphics processor, but the different vendors have not been quick to offer up any Linux support -- and binary-only drivers frequently back the ones that do. There is one printer manufacturer though that as of last year has begun supporting Linux from top to bottom with their entire line-up of printers. Not only are they providing CUPS drivers, but also they are even printing Tux in the corner of every box they ship right besides the Windows and Apple logos. Do you know who we are talking about? Probably not, but it's Lexmark.

The Wine development release 1.1.42 is now available. The source is available now, Binary packages are in the process of being built, and will appear soon at their respective download locations.

MyPaint is a lightweight, easy-to-use open source painting application that you might not have heard of before. It’s not a photo editor, it doesn’t bother with paths, geometric shapes, text manipulation, or fancy masking options. Instead, it focuses on one and only one use: painting.

Here are another two nice plugins for Gimp, the first one is Sunny landscape ,the second is called Resynthesizer, and can generate textures from a given sample the same way Photoshop’s content-aware fill does, remove objects from a foto, make more of a texture...

Google Docs is maybe the king among Web-based collaborative editing and document sharing applications, but the productivity suite from the all-mighty giant is not the only fish in the sea.

The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the April 2010 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.

Such is the motivation behind the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award, which recognizes 10 Central Texas citizens who have used the power of technology to improve lives locally and around the world. The ten grass-roots honorees for the 2010 Dewey Award are as listed below, with special kudos to Ken Starks of the Helios Project who has gained special recognition for his work in supplying local children with re-furbished computers.

For years Web developers have salivated over some of the features promised in the next generation of Web browsers as outlined by the HTML 5 specification. You might be surprised to learn just how many of the features are already available in today's browsers. In this article, learn how to detect which capabilities are present and how to take advantage of those features in your application. Explore powerful HTML 5 features such as multi-threading, geolocation, embedded databases, and embedded video.

Optimised virtualisation, support for recently introduced AMD and Intel processors, new versions of OpenOffice, PostgreSQL and Samba as well as numerous fresh drivers are all among the major advancements of RHEL 5.5.

The goal of Terminator is to produce a useful tool for arranging terminals. It is inspired by programs such as gnome-multi-term, quadkonsole, etc. in that the main focus is arranging terminals in grids (tabs is the most common default method, which Terminator also supports).

Netfilter maintainer Patrick McHardy recently announced a first alpha-release of nftables, slated to eventually replace iptables as the standard Linux packet filtering engine. Nftables aims to simplify the kernel ABI, reduce code duplication, improve error reporting, and provide more efficient execution, storage and updates of filtering rules. Patrick began with a high level overview of the three pieces that comprise the firewall, "the kernel provides a netlink configuration interface, as well as runtime ruleset evaluation using a small classification language interpreter. libnl contains the low-level functions for communicating with the kernel, the nftables frontend is what the user interacts with." An insightful overview can be found on lwn.net.

The drivetrain is swappable, allowing racers to mix-and-match packs and motors to suit the circuit and their riding style. The software controlling it all runs on Linux — Hussain says it boots up in less than three seconds — and the system bus for power and data features a USB port.

The open source desktop world got a boost this week with the release of GNOME 2.30 -- the latest incarnation of one of the leading open source desktop GUIs that's a part of nearly every major Linux distribution. With GNOME 2.30, the open source effort is adding new features that aim to make it easier to connect to online services, such as social networking giant Facebook. The new release also includes preview technology in the form of the GNOME Shell, which will become a standard component in GNOME 3, the next major release due in six months.

Mark Shuttleworth announced seconds ago that the Metacity window controls will [...]

Those who followed the ODF-OOXML Standards War will remember that Alex Brown, the Convener of the Geneva Ballot Resolution Meeting that approved OOXML, helped broker the final approval of OOXML as a formal, global standard. He's defended his actions and OOXML ever since - until now.