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In case you missed some of the Linux and Open Source content in the 10 Things blog in 2009, I thought I would do a round-up of some of the best posts that appeared, many authored by our own Jack Wallen. If you’re new to Linux yourself (or want to introduce others to the world of open source), these concise lists provide a good jumping-off point on a number of topics.

Not to be left off of the app store bandwagon, Intel has launched a beta version of its software application (app) store -- the Intel AppUp center. Initially targeting apps for netbook computers, the first apps are available for free download or purchase. At the same time, Intel industry partners Acer, Asus, Dell and Samsung also announced store collaboration and plans.

Not content with the roadblocks Apple had erected for users who wanted to connect to their digital devices (that they had paid for, natch), Apple decided to up the ante with its iPod Touch and iPhone series. This meant that a whole new round of reverse engineering was necessary just so that, and this bears repeating a thousand times, users could connect to a device that they paid for and actually access content they legally possess. Does that make sense to you? Me neither. Welcome to the 21st century.

The goal of the new Mozilla Drumbeat effort is to go beyond open source code to encourage and nurture projects that help to expand understanding and participation in the open Web. While Drumbeat is today only in its early stages of development, Mozilla is budgeting more than $1 million in funding for the effort -- a project that it thinks could help to direct the very future of the Internet. "Mozilla has been successful at shaping where the Internet is going in a positive way and in getting people to participate," Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, told InternetNews.com. "At the same time, we feel that if we take a 50- or 100-year view on our mission, which is to guard the open nature of the Internet, it's not just going to be technologists that participate and it's not just technology questions that will shape what the Internet is in 10 or 50 or 100 years."

Richard Stallman has clarified his earlier letter regarding MySQL. I had brought to his attention the claims Monty Widenius is making, implying that Stallman supports his petition campaign to "Save MySQL":

After weeks of research, and pondering, and gazing sadly into my shriveled bank account, I finally took the plunge and bought a hotrod triple-core AMD Phenom CPU, and a beautiful Antec Solo quiet computer case.

Back in early October a tweet by someone I follow alerted me to the fact that the deadline for submissions to the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) was less than 48 hours away. In a lunch break I whipped up a quick proposal for a lecture called "After the Hype - The current state of One Laptop per Child and Sugar Labs". A couple of weeks later I learned that my submission had been accepted.

Linux 2.6.33 will have new and improved drivers for Wi-Fi chips by Intel, Ralink and Realtek. Several drivers for old Wi-Fi hardware have been moved to the staging area and will probably soon be discarded. New additions include various LAN chip drivers and several improvements to the network stack.

Remote access to a computer and internal network’s secured resources - all of it in a simple way that’s following well-known security’s best practices? Sounds impossible, but it’s not. Debian developer Bartosz Fe?ski aka fEnIo explains how to achieve it in Linux.

The 'maddog' about the Google phone: "There has been a lot of discussion about HTC's Nexus One, also known as "The Google Phone". The discussions back and forth about whether it is an "iPhone Killer" are often heated, with issues of whether or not this feature or that feature is better than the iPhone. "

Back in June, when I wrote an opinion piece about the enduring competition between the three major operating systems, I assumed the race would just go on indefinitely. After all, the three systems have been locked in combat for the hearts and minds of the public for years and years, and the likelihood of any peaceful resolution seemed remote, if not impossible. But in a brilliant stroke of diplomatic ingenuity, Lenovo brought to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a single hybrid laptop in which Windows 7 and Lenovo's custom form of Linux called Skylight operate in a sort of time-share using the same screen.

The Wine development release 1.1.36 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.

While we may salivate over the idea of a Tablet computer from Apple and others, when you think about it, do we really need another PC category when the smart phone and netbook seem to have it covered?

MSI and Novell will soon ship MSI's new Intel Atom N450-based MSI U135 netbook with SUSE Moblin Linux v2.1. Loaded with the netbook-focused version of SUSE, the U135 offers up to 2GB RAM, a 10.1-inch screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 160GB or 250GB hard drives, says MSI.

LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, today announced its next Linux Device Driver Development Course class to be held in South Bay, CA from January 25th - 27th, 2010.

I thought I'd start the year fresh with a road map of what we hope to accomplish in 2010. Early in the year, we plan to bring out 'Snow Mallard', our new platform for CrossOver 9. This is going to be an exciting release for us for a variety of reasons. Our Linux users will be excited to see the first ever revamp of the GUI; folks that are weary of the TK look should enjoy the fresh new GTK interface.

The browser and Songbird music player developed out of the Mozilla project have come together in a cooperative framework with Philips in the 2010 models of their GoGear MP3 player series.

Cherokee is a very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. It supports the widespread technologies nowadays: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, virtual hosts, authentication, on the fly encoding, load balancing, Apache compatible log files, and much more. This tutorial shows how you can install Cherokee on a Fedora 12 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

The attempt to introduce software patents into Europe failed a few years ago, but the danger remains. Moves to create a new, pan-European patent could allow them in by the backdoor. The fight to stop them has begun.

Remember the Y2K bug? Ten years after the original scare leading up to the year 2000, IT systems are once again facing problems due to the changing of the calendar year. Now, the issues are stemming from the rollover to 2010 -- or Y2K10, as it's being termed. There are reports out of Germany that millions faced problems with credit and debit card access due to Y2K10 bugs. It's not just consumer-facing technology that has had difficulties. On the enterprise IT side, network and security software has been hit with some Y2K10-related issues as well. Fortunately, several IT vendors are already springing into action to address glitches in their products caused by the new calendar year. Among them is networking giant Cisco.