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Basic screenshot software is really handy to have on hand, even if you don't use it often. If you rely on screengrab tools often, however, you know how important it is to have software with lots of tools and features. No matter what your screen capture software needs are, you're sure to find something you like in this list of the top six open source options.

Over the weekend someone stumbled onto a Chrome browser build for Chrome OS on Google's servers. We've seen several false-alarm looks at Chrome OS, and while it is only the browser, it provides a glimpse into the direction Google's going.

Kontron announced a fanless, Mini-ITX-based box PC that supports Intel Celeron or Core Duo CPUs and consumes 37 Watts. The Kontron Concept Box 751 offers three gigabit Ethernet ports, six USB 2.0 ports, four serial ports, a 2.5-inch HDD bay, and an IEEE1394 Firewire port, says the company.

A few RPM developers from Red Hat and Novell met at the openSUSE Conference 2009 in September. The results of the meeting are now online.

Imagine being able to search for help online without leaving your desktop application. An About dialog you could use to contact the developer. A site where you could post works in progress directly from your desktop for criticism. These are a few of the entries in KDE's recent social desktop contest. They are also some of the first examples of what Aaron Seigo of the KDE project calls "freedom services" -- applications that bring cloud computing directly to your computer and seamlessly integrate the desktop and online services.

Apple's Grand Central Dispatch technology introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" was open-sourced under the Apache license last month by Apple and now it has worked its way into FreeBSD. This software, which helps in optimizing applications for multi-core systems, has ported the libdispatch library from GCD to FreeBSD and made Grand Central Dispatch more POSIX friendly.

Smokin' Guns is a free FPS and Open Source game that take you back to the old time of the 'Old West'. Based on the engine of Quake 3, Smokin' Guns has all the attributes of a traditional FPS

Mandriva posted the final development release of Mandriva Linux 2010, complete with the Moblin v2.0 netbook environment. Based on Linux 2.5.31, Mandriva 2010 RC2 offers a choice of KDE 4.3.2 and GNOME 2.28 desktops, plus Intel Poulsbo chipset drivers, guest accounts, and the Nepomuk collaborative desktop.

As we reported recently, the ApacheCon 2009 conference is rapidly approaching, to be held November 2nd through 6th in Oakland, California. The conference will feature sessions and speakers talking not only about web server- and services-related topics, but about the Hadoop software framework for data-intensive queries, and the many sub-projects that the Apache Software Foundation oversees. The event is partly intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation, and we already ran a post from Jim Jagielski, co-founder and chairman of the foundation, on Apache's future.

Computer manufacturer ASUS has published the Linux source code for its Seashell line of netbooks. Previous to the companies Seashell line up, ASUS netbooks were often available with Linux as an option for the pre-installed operating system (OS), usually at a lower price. With the release of its current Seashell models, the 1008HA and the 1005HA, however, Windows XP has been and still is the only pre-installed OS option available.

The number of public administrations in Belgium that use the open source office productivity suite OpenOffice is rising steadily. And with it the use of the open document format ODF

I'm sure you've seen this is as often as I have, even from supposed Free Software advocates: "I can't switch completely to Linux now because I still need this $foo application. When a free alternative appears then I'll switch." They may or may not be sincere; they are certainly missing the point. Because it's not enough to just sit around and wait for the Magic Software Fairy to deliver your perfect applications with all the bells and whistles for free.

At the Maemo Conference in Amsterdam Suresh Chande announced that Nokia has contracted KO GmbH to write a mobile office viewer using the KOffice libraries. The presentation by Suresh was given with the Nokia N900 smartphone, using the new Office Viewer. The improvements in KOffice have largely been in the libraries, on top of which a Maemo-specific GUI was written. KOffice became faster and more stable, and the various file import filters have been greatly improved. This includes the beginnings of MS Office 2007 import support. Thanks to this work the KOffice document viewer for Maemo will be able to properly read files created with a wider range of office applications, and all other users of KOffice 2.x will benefit.

The only thing changing faster than mobile devices is the business model for distributing your applications.

Canonical is touting private cloud capabilities in an upgrade to its Ubuntu Linux OS being announced on Tuesday. Available for free download on Oct. 29, Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud), an open-source cloud computing environment based on the same APIs as Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). Businesses can take advantage of private clouds, Canonical said.

The World Wide Web is more like the Wild Wild West, and there are Linux programs to help parents steer their children away from the bad neighborhoods. Matt Hartley looks at a number of programs that put control in parent's hands.

Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala will both be released this month. We look at what the two new operating systems will offer.

Asterisk, the open source IP PBX, is turning 10 years old. And Digium, the fast-growing provider of commercial Asterisk solutions, is hosting the Astricon conference this week. All sounds well. But The VAR Guy will raise seven key questions when he speaks with Digium officials later today. Here they are.

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7; 32-bit versions only). andLinux uses coLinux, a port of the Linux kernel to Windows which allows andLinux to run almost all Linux applications in Windows, without modifications and comes in two flavors: KDE and XFCE. Since andLinux installs a full operating system, you'll need to make sure you've got quite a bit of free space on your hard drive. The KDE version eats up more than 4GB of space while the XFCE version takes about 2GB. If all you want to do is run a single Linux application like Amarok, Ardour, or Cinelerra, you might be better off checking out KDE for Windows and waiting for the developers ro port your favorite applications. But if you want to be able to run any Linux application you like without rebooting, andLinux is worth checking out.

Open source software the key to cost-effective business phone systems, says Gavin Henry, saving tens of thousands of pounds at the outset Aberdeen-based Suretec Systems, the successful open source IT systems specialist, has launched a telecom business to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses looking for cost-effective and highly featured telephone systems. Oil and gas sector companies, along with professional services, travel and public sector organisations, are all taking an interest in the huge cost savings that can be achieved with open source products – and now for their telecoms systems, too.