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Due for a November release, Fedora 12 is already shaping up as an exciting, jam-packed release that targets netbook users, virtualization, improved networking, and much more.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. To celebrate the past five years of brown, we decided to have a look at five ways that Ubuntu has helped make the open source Linux operating system more human.

Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop edition improves on the work of 9.04 to get you going faster, with improved start-up times and a streamlined boot experience.

As Canonical delivers the first Ubuntu 9.10 release candidate to users, ZaReason is preparing to offer Ubuntu 9.10 on desktops, notebooks, netbooks -- and a new server. ZaReason CEO Cathy Malmrose and CTO Earl Malmrose describe their strategy to WorksWithU.

He’s the man who brought open source to Silicon Graphics and NEC and advisor to Warburg Pincus on how to make money investing in open source. "At one point I got the title of open source's undercover agent," recalls Dave McAllister. He was recruited by Adobe as Director of open source and standards with a specific mission: "I was hired to, a) start an open source process and, b) get PDF approved as an ISO standard." So: mission accomplished?

Japanese software firm Access and Israeli mobile design firm Emblaze Mobile today demonstrated a smartphone prototype and device stack based on the LiMo-compatible Access Linux Platform (ALP) 3.0. The Else phone incorporates a Texas Instruments OMAP3430, 16GB internal flash, 3G, WiFi, GPS, and jointly developed "Else Intuition" software.

If you'd like to play with Asterisk and need a cheap SIP phone, the VanAccess IP0020 can be obtained on eBay for as little as $20. But with no included manual and a SIP registration bug in the firmware, this phone can be tricky to configure. This article reviews the IP0020 and shows how to get it working with Asterisk.

Mozilla has confirmed that the release of Firefox 3.0.15 and 3.5.4 have both been delayed until Tuesday the 27th of October. The minor security and performance updates were originally scheduled to be released on the 21st of October, but are being delayed for further beta testing. Details of the planned changes in each update, however, have yet to be confirmed.

What if you didn't need the Internet or a telephone system to communicate electronically with your friends? Imagine you could independently share electronic information with friends through wireless devices without external hardware or software. Think of how excited people get about checking in with friends using Twitter and Facebook. Now, with the right software and your current hardware, people could do those same kinds of activities in their local community--without any need for the Internet or the restrictions of Internet service providers. People could use their wireless devices for personal communications where there is no Internet or when there is no Internet, such as in a disaster situation, or when public networks are banned, such as in places like Iran. We believe that having independent control of our communications networks can be a valuable resource that opens new possibilities for communities.

If you are a Facebook fan then you must have used the official Facebook desktop application.The app is good but it’s not detailed and offers only limited features. You can’t see live notifications of new stories, can’t post a comment and if you need to upload a photo you have to open Facebook in the browser all the way. If you are not quite satisfied with the official Facebook desktop application or other desktop clients have a look at Facebook –Photo uploader. It is a new desktop client for Facebook, released by Adobe with really useful features.

After a few months of development, AWN (Avant Window Navigator) 0.4 is available for beta testing. In case you don't know, Avant Window Navigator (Awn) is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of the screen (or at least it used to, read on!). It has support for launchers, task lists, and third party applets. Version 0.4 brings a lot of new features and improvements, such as 3 new styles, extended mode, you are now able to place it on any side of the screen, new auto-hide modes and lots more.

Gimplabels is a set of scripts for the Gimp image editor that make creating labels and business cards a snap. It works part of its magic by depending on the GUI label designer gLabels

If personal computing is moving to the web, then where are all the lightweight Cloud focused distributions? Meet xPUD, a brilliant little distro that boots straight to a fullscreen browser. It uses a simple, unique interface, and includes everyday software such as a media player and more! We talk with the lead developer about what makes this operating system unique.

Today I installed digiKam and the 62 other KDE packages that go with it in a GNOME-based Ubuntu box. I never like to add 63 packages for a single app. But I did it. Thus far digiKam is most unlike any image editor I've ever used before. Mostly because it's not really an image editor but can do most of the tasks one would associate with just such an application.

This episode includes interviews from Ohio Linuxfest 2009: "40 Years of Unix". Shawn Powers, Doug McIlroy and many more.

In the first two parts of this series we learned how to build a custom Linux kernel. But there are so many options it's easy to get lost. Today we'll clarify some of the more important places where it's easy to go wrong.

Canada's big Internet carriers have scored a major victory, as the telecommunication regulator ruled it is okay for them to slow down some of the Web traffic travelling to customers' personal computers – as long as the companies explain ahead of time what they are doing.

[In typical Canadian fashion, a middle ground was struck here. Disclosure and privacy rules were imposed on the ISPs, which is good. - Barbara]

One of the reasons I haven't done almost any video editing is due to the relative lack of "mature" software for the job in Linux/Unix. Sure there are a half-dozen projects out there, and there is always the video-editing capability of 3D-animation app Blender (which gets a whole lot of developer attention), but when it comes to dedicated video-editing apps, there is the basic Kino and a bunch of others that don't seem ready for real, soup-to-nuts production work.

Sure, IBM partnered up with Canonical this week to promote Ubuntu Linux and open source desktops against Windows 7. But Big Blue’s other big open source move — a growing relationship with Digium — has caught The VAR Guy’s attention. Here’s why. Fact is, desktops no longer sit at the center of the IT universe. VARs are looking for higher margin recurring revenue opportunities — many of which involve network-enabled applications. That’s where the IBM-Digium relationship enters the picture. Digium promotes Asterisk, the open source IP PBX that is turning heads in many IT departments.

One of the interesting features of Mac OS X is its "universal binaries" feature that allows a single binary file to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel x86 platforms. While this comes at a cost of a larger binary file, it's convenient on the end-user and on software vendors for distributing their applications. While Linux has lacked such support for fat binaries, Ryan Gordon has decided this should be changed. This professional game porter has created the FatELF project, which basically brings the universal binaries feature to Linux. The FatELF file format allows multiple binaries for different architectures to be embedded into a single file. Ryan may take this even further by introducing the ability for Solaris and FreeBSD binaries to be embedded into a FatELF as well.