Many readers are sending the news that Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon has been released. Download options include mirrors and torrents. Wired has a review based on the release candidate: "Gamers and hardcore media hounds may still feel left out... but we found playing music and watching movies in the new Ubuntu to be every bit as pleasant as it is under OS X or Windows... Wi-Fi, printing, my digital camera and even my iPod all worked immediately after installation — no drivers or other software required... I did have to install additional codecs to get MP3 and Windows Media Audio support."

mrcgran sends us to LXer for an interview with John Hull, a manager of the Linux Engineering team at Dell, where he reports on how the Ubuntu machines have been working out for them so far. "Embracing Ubuntu Linux on our desktops and laptops seems to have really raised Dell's visibility within the Linux community. We have been supporting, testing, developing for, and selling Linux for 8+ years here at Dell, but before the Ubuntu announcement, a lot of people didn't know that we did any of that... Previous to our Ubuntu product announcement... we would have a conversations with vendors about pushing Linux support for their hardware, but without a Linux product offering from Dell for that hardware, it was very difficult to convince them to release Linux drivers. That has certainly changed now... The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon."

00_NOP writes "Linux is growing faster in the server space than Windows says the Dell CEO 'On the server side Linux continues to grow nicely, a bit faster than Windows. We're seeing a move to Linux in critical applications, and Linux migration has not slowed down.'"

RedDragon writes "Ubuntu 7.10 is due out on Thursday, October 18, and in addition to desktop 3D effects, GNOME 2.20, and other features is the use of the Linux 2.6.22 kernel with the tick-less (CONFIG_NO_HZ) kernel feature. But does this mean enhanced power savings when compared to past Ubuntu releases? Phoronix tested Ubuntu power consumption looking back 2-1/2 years at the six Ubuntu releases from Ubuntu 5.04 to the yet-to-be-released Ubuntu 7.10. Testing was done when the system was idling and then under load, and when the Lenovo notebook was powered via the battery and then again with the AC adapter. The Pentium M CPU temperature was also monitored. While Ubuntu 7.10 does include the tick-less kernel feature, more daemons and processes running by default on these modern Ubuntu releases is actually causing an increase in power consumption."

davidmwilliams writes "Linux users can boast long times between reboots, but even so, the startup screens will grace your display at some time. Here's just what your computer is doing during this process, what the messages mean, and how you can take control."

walterbyrd writes "Just months after the last nail in SCO's case, and on the same day as Red Hat's brave words about patent intimidation, a company filed the first patent suit against the Linux operating system. IP Innovation LLC filed the claim against Red Hat and Novell over U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412. PJ points out there is prior art here: 'You might recall the patent was used in litigation against Apple in April 2007, and Beta News reported at the time that it's a 1991 Xerox PARC patent. But Ars Technica provided the detail that it references earlier patents going back to 1984.'"

christian.einfeldt writes "The State of California sued Microsoft for anti-trust violations, and now the proceeds of the settlement of that case are being used to fund the acquisition of computers for any school district in California. The terms of the settlement allow every school district in California to be reimbursed a set dollar amount for the purchase of computers with the software of their choice. Microsoft probably anticipated that school districts would mainly use the settlement to buy more Microsoft products, with a few Apple purchases sprinkled in here and there. But now that Free Open Source Software is being commercialized by hardware vendors such as Dell, System76, EmperorLinux, Zareason.com, and TechCollective.com, acquiring computers powered by FOSS is straightforward. I'm a volunteer sysadmin at a northern California public charter school and in my Slashdot journal I detail the step-by-step process for using Microsoft's money to pay for the Linux purchases of your school's choice." And then there's the Ubuntu team in Belgium that is raising funds by auctioning off a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate that a Microsoft rep gave them at a trade show. So far the bidding is up to 101.76 Euros, about $144.

Kurtz'sKompund writes "Canonical, the company that supports Ubuntu Linux, is trying to work out a deal with hardware vendors such as Dell to make Ubuntu available pre-installed on servers. 'Canonical, despite obviously supporting such a deal, had little to do with Dell's decision. Dell said it was merited by customer demand. Likewise, the decision of whether Ubuntu Server will ship pre-installed will be determined the same way.'"

An anonymous reader writes to mention that IBM Developer Works has a quick look at some of the different projects that are working on replacing proprietary BIOS systems with streamlined code that can load a Linux kernel much faster. Most of the existing BIOS systems tend to have a lot of legacy support built in for various things, and projects like LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS are working to trim the fat.

christian.einfeldt writes "Today, Linspire releases version 6.0, its first new GNU/Linux distro in more than two years. With version 6.0, Linspire is betting that its business model of including licenses for proprietary software and formats such as Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Flash, Real, and Microsoft OOXML will win enough market share among mainstream Apple and Microsoft users to offset the backlash from opponents of proprietary software and formats. Version 6.0 also includes the highly controversial Microsoft patent coverage that has incited wide-reaching negative press coverage in the Free Open Source Software press, forums and blogosphere. But from Linspire's perspective, it's all about those new GNU/Linux users. '"Today we continue the Linspire tradition by offering the choice of a better overall experience for users new to desktop Linux,'" said Larry Kettler, President and CEO of Linspire, Inc. "Linspire 6.0 further bridges the gap between open source and commercial software, combining the best from each into a single easy-to-use, familiar and productive operating system."'"

diegocgteleline.es writes "After 3 months, Linus has released Linux 2.6.23. This version includes the new and shiny CFS process scheduler, a simpler read-ahead mechanism, the lguest 'Linux-on-Linux' paravirtualization hypervisor, XEN guest support, KVM smp guest support, and variable process argument length. SLUB is now the default slab allocator, there's SELinux protection for exploiting null dereferences using mmap, XFS and ext4 improvements, PPP over L2TP support. Also the 'lumpy' reclaim algorithm, a userspace driver framework, the O_CLOEXEC file descriptor flag, splice improvements, a new fallocate() syscall, lock statistics, support for multiqueue network devices, various new drivers, and many other minor features and fixes. See the changelog for details."

Da Massive writes in with a link to a story on KOffice 2.0, the next generation of the KDE office suite due sometime next year. In an interview with KDE spokesman Sebastian Kugler, Computerworld reports that KOffice 2.0 will be leaner, faster, and enjoy a cleaner code base than OpenOffice. It will also feature more applications, including an Access-like database creator, a flowcharter, and an image manipulation tool. KOffice is not yet fully compatible with ODF but the claim is that 2.0 will be.

apokryphos writes "Novell's long journey from NetWare to Linux is finally complete, with Open Enterprise Server 2.0. Linux-Watch takes a look at the newly-released OES 2.0: 'Now, with OES 2.0, the NetWare operating system kernel, NetWare 6.5 SP7, is still there if you run it, but it runs on top of the Xen hypervisor. You can also run the NetWare services, or a para-virtualized instance of NetWare, on top of Xen with the SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) 10 SP 1 kernel. So, if you're wedded to NetWare and its way of doing things, you don't have to wave good-bye to it.'"

AdamWill writes "Mandriva Linux 2008 is now available for download on the official site and on the network of public mirror servers. In 2008 you will find KDE 3.5.7 and the new GNOME 2.20 already integrated, a solid kernel 2.6.22.9 with fair scheduling support, OpenOffice.org 2.2.1, cutting-edge 3D-accelerated desktop courtesy of Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, and everything else you've come to expect. We have integrated a reworked hardware detection sub-system, with support for a lot of new devices (particularly graphics cards, sound cards, and wireless chips). There is a wizard to import Windows documents and settings, a new network configuration center, and a set of improvements to the Mandriva software management tools. Read about the new features in depth in the release tour, or view the release notes. The One installation CD is the recommended download: it comes with a full KDE desktop and application suite, NVIDIA and ATI proprietary video card drivers, Intel wireless firmware, Adobe Flash and Sun Java browser plugins, all included."

Peace Frog writes passed us a link to an in-depth review of the newest version of OpenOffice. Instead of just the normal bug fixes, 2.3 has added several new features. Examples include: "A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org. A significantly different chart tool. New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site." The general impression from the review is that the OO team is doing an excellent job of responding to feedback from previous releases.

An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"

PMcGovern writes "Deadline for nominations for SysAdmin of the Year 2007 is this Friday Oct. 12. The award is sponsored by Slashdot, SourceForge, Digg, Usenix, Lopsa, Splunk, and Naspa. The first 2500 sysadmins nominated win a free SysAdmin Rockstar tee shirt. Prizes include a MacBook Pro, a non-bricked Apple iPhone, Gibson guitar, Splunk license, a full-paid trip to the LISA conference, cases of Red Bull, and more. If you know a sysadmin that goes beyond the call of duty, nominate them."

An anonymous reader sends in a link to a blog posting by Con Zymaris arguing for competition regulators to force the unbundling of Windows from consumer PCs. The argument takes the form of knocking down one by one the objections raised by "unbundling skeptics."

netbuzz writes "The director of Microsoft's Open Source Lab, Bill Hilf, has added a new duty — general manager of Windows server marketing — to his already established role of shepherding the company's efforts to have open source software peacefully coexist with Microsoft technologies. What the company calls a 'natural evolution' of Hilf's job description may not be considered quite so natural among segments of the open source community that eye every Microsoft move with suspicion if not hostility." Bill Hilf answered Slashdot's questions two years back and sounded quite friendly to OSS; yet at other times he has come off like a hardcore Microsoftie.

00_NOP writes "According to a report on Softpedia, citing Net Applications, Linux usage on the desktop doubled in 2006 — 07: though from a miserable 0.37% to a still not brilliant 0.81%. Given that Linux is free, is based on peer reviewed source (and so inherently more secure in the longer term) and that hardware support is now pretty good, how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?" Of course the focus of the article is that Vista is kicking butt over Mac/Linux, which is not particularly surprising.