The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which allows developers to take web applications to the desktop and store data offline, is finally coming to Linux. Adobe announced today that the pre-release alpha version of AIR for Linux is available immediately on the Adobe Labs site. Adobe shipped the 1.0 version of AIR for Windows and Mac last month but was forced to delay the Linux release. According to a FAQ on the Adobe site, the reason for the delay was that the AIR team had to "wait on the core Flash Player's support for Linux to be finalized." Adobe is also releasing an updated alpha version of the Flex Builder 3 for Linux to include support for AIR applications.

The Fedora Project has released its first beta for the upcoming Fedora 9 Linux-based operating system. While not intended for production use, the beta includes most of what you'll find in the final release of Fedora 9, including new Kernel 2.6.25-rc5, GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0.2 desktop environment, Firefox 3 Beta 5, and numerous other improvements and enhancements. The final form of Fedora 9 is slated to arrive later this spring. To download, visit this download page.

After four Alpha releases, the first Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) beta has been released. Codenamed "Hardy Heron", 8.04 LTS comes in two versions: desktop and server edition. These new Linux-based distributions sport a number of application and file browsing improvements, as well as the Wubi installer: a new Windows-based installer which allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. Please see the release notes for details.

DOWNLOAD: Ubuntu 8.04 Beta

AMD today announced that it has open sourced it's AMD Performance Library (APL). Now referred to as "Framewave version 1.0," the goal of this new open source project is to further enable the performance-optimized APL and expand its functionality beyond the existing core media capabilities, ensuring developers have an accelerated conduit to high performance application development. Contributions by partners, customers and the broader open-source software development community will accelerate library optimizations and feature enhancements in-line with their respective needs while AMD software engineers will continue to be dedicated contributors to the Framewave project.

Yesterday, we brought you the news of a fine piece of Linux equipment: a £100 ($200USD) laptop built for mass deployment in classrooms everywhere. Today, we bring you news of what exactly will be under the hood. The whole kit and kaboodle runs off of an optimized Debian kernel, and has a slew of useful applications. To make things simple and to spread the Elonex ONE brand, all applications will be branded. For example, to access the internet, you use ONEInternet, to write stuff you use ONEWord...etcetera.

Anywho. As far as hardware goes, the laptop will sport 1GB of flash-based storage, 128MB of DDRII RAM, a seven-inch 800x480 screen, two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and an audio jack. Networking will be provided by an 802.11G adapter, and a 10/100 Ethernet adapter. The processor is still very much unknown, but it is likely going to be a LNX Code 8 Mobile Processor running at 300MHz. Expect official specifications, and product deployment, on February 28th.

To combat the Asus EeePC, American company Elonex will be offering a Linux-based laptop for roughly £99 ($193/€132). Dubbed the "One", we can confirm that it will have Wi-Fi connectivity, Ethernet networking, a solid-state hard drive, at least two USB ports and audio jacks. It will also weigh less than a Kilogram. The cheap laptop was designed around the classroom. The entire case is about as tough as a turtle shell, and the business-half of the laptop (the part without the screen) can be detached from the laptop at any time, and hooked up to any type of display, in case the monitor fails. Elonex will be taking the One to Birmingham, UK, on February 28th for The Education Show. Elonex will unveil further details/specifications on February 28th.

Ubuntu and Red Hat are the most used Linux distributions among the 35,000 members of content-management vendor Alfresco's community, the company found in its second survey of trends in enterprise open-source software usage. The surveys help inform Alfresco's technology strategy, according to Ian Howells, Alfresco's chief marketing officer. "It's important for us to know which platforms to test against first," he said, adding, "It's in users' interest to give us good data." Among Linux operating systems, usage of Ubuntu and Red Hat stood at 35 percent and 23 percent, respectively, according to the survey. Suse, OpenSuse and Suse Enterprise collectively garnered 13 percent; Debian, 15 percent; and "other" distributions usage of 14 percent. Users also reported using a variety of proprietary enterprise software. Among Windows users, Vista adoption was just 2 percent, compared to 63 percent for Windows XP and 28 percent for Windows Server 2003.

Dell this morning kept on its promise and began offering the XPS M1330 with Linux in the US. The system is the first XPS in the country to come preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. The American model, however, is more limited than versions in Europe. Coming in black color only, the M1330 in the US will lack the 64GB solid-state and 320GB hard drive options of its overseas equivalent. At $954, the stock model ships with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5450 (2MB cache/667MHz FSB), 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 120GB 5400 rpm hard drive, and Intel GMA X3100 video. Upgrades boost the system up to 2.2GHz (Core 2 Duo T7500, 800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache) along with 4GB of memory and a 200GB 7200 rpm hard disk. Orders begin today with stock systems arriving in customer hands in less than two weeks.

Anyone paying the slightest attention to the Linux-on-the-desktop scene will have noticed that desktop environments are featuring more and more eye-candy with every release. While this has had the predictable effect of increasing processor usage and memory requirements (although the pretty things can always be turned off), it seems that the newest version of the K Desktop Environment graphical user interface will use nearly 40% less memory than current version 3.5 despite having a lovely composited windows manager (think Aero but free). The figure comes from a test run by German magazine Pro-Linux who ran tests comparing the performance and memory footprint of the second release candidate of KDE 4 compared to the latest version of KDE 3.5.

All ASUS Eee PC owners can now take advantage of the new eeeXubuntu custom version of the Xubuntu 7.10 Live CD written specially for Eee PC. This distribution comes with fully-integrated ASUS Eeee PC hardware support, including native wireless drivers, functioning Ethernet support, tweaks for low-resolution desktop environments, and other miscellaneous fixes. You can download the eeeXubuntu 7.10r2 distribution from here.

ASUSTeK has attempted to clarify recent accusations that it has violated the GPL (general public license) by failing to provide source code for the modifications it made to the Linux-based operating system (OS) shipping on its Eee PCs. ASUS stated that it has always respected the spirit of the GPL and the failure to make the source code available was due to an omission by one of the company's software technicians. The company is working on publishing all the related source code onto Linux forums and will provide downloads soon. ASUS had provided a download on its web site which it labeled as the source code of the Eee PC's Linux OS, however, customers with experience in the open source community recently determined that the file did not in fact contain the entire source code as required by the GPL license leading to accusations that the company was in violation of the spirit of the open source community as well as copyright law.

Despite of widespread critics among certain groups of end-users, Microsoft Windows Vista operating system (OS) captured additional part of the market in October, whereas other operating systems from Microsoft reduced their installed base. At the same time, platforms from Apple reduced the shares of the market they command. In September the share of Windows Vista-based personal computers used to browse the Internet was close to 8%, 7.91% to be precise, up insignificantly, according to data collected by Net Applications, a provider of Web tools. The shares of Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems decreased to 3.16% and 79.07%. The share of systems based on Mac OS decreased to 6.55% in October, down from 6.61% a month before. Other operating systems, namely outdated Windows versions, Linux OSes and so on, which have been losing market share for many months now, are now used in 3.31% of devices that are browsing online.

Members of the Linux community have complained that the hot new sub-notebook from ASUS, the eeePC, may have violated the spirit of the Linux General Public License (GPL). Some Linux advocates claim the EeePC has not included required source code with the installed Xandros Linux distribution and does not easily enable users to install another distribution. However, there are indications that EeePC fans probably don't care. The ASUS EeePC has been hailed widely as a breakthrough product that could widely integrate Linux in the consumer computing marketspace. However, some Linux purists are upset that the EeePC uses Xandros, a Debian-based distribution which charges license fees and has a similar patent protection agreement with Microsoft to the one signed 12 months ago by Novell. The full story plus all the complaints can be found here.

Shuttle Inc., the market leader in the Mini-PC sector and manufacturer of Multi-Form-Factor solutions, is now also selling its Mini-PCs with the Linux Operating System in the UK. The two compact PCs made of aluminium can be individually configured in the official Shuttle Systems Configurator. They are delivered pre-installed and ready to connect and include the 24 months Pick-up-and-Return Service for reliable help in the case of a warranty claim.

Fedora, a Linux-based operating system, will launch tomorrow in its latest "Version 8 - Werewolf" incarnation. There should be several new features in this release.

For example, several custom spins (variations aimed at a particular user group) will be available, namely: Games, Developer and Electronic Lab. Pulse Audio will bring per-application sound control, for example. Codec Buddy will appear as well, this time doing all the hard work of searching for and installing codecs all for you automatically. Among other features are a new firewall, a new look to the OS, as well as Online Desktop.

Little known company IP Innovation is attempting to sue both Red Hat and Novell for patent infringement involving Linux. According to the firm, both Red Hat and Novell's Linux distributions violate patent number 5,072,412 for a "User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects" - a patent dating back to December 10th 1991 - as well as two other patents. The orginal statement is as follows:

Red Hat's and Novell's infringement, contributory infringement and inducement to infringe has injured plaintiffs and plaintiffs are entitled to recover damages adequate to compensate them for such infringement but in no event less than a reasonable royalty.

This is the first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux.

While some current Linux users got Linux to escape from their perceived problems with Vista, other Linux users are attracted to Linux because of Vista-like features. The developers behind Vixta are banking on the latter. While the SourceForge project is hardly ready to compete with Vista on a competitive scale, it certainly is gaining momentum. Vixta is based on the Fedora core of Linux, and has five goals in mind. Vixta must...

• Be Absolutely free, in every sense.
• Spread Linux to the "masses".
• Not require any advanced configuration.
• Be User-Friendly.
• Be Eye-catching, and have a familiar look and feel.

All Linux users can now download free of charge the latest Mandriva Linux 2008 operating system. 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, Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6, and everything else you've come to expect from the latest Mandriva Linux release. You can learn more about Mandriva Linux 2008 in the release tour.

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ATI has just released brand new Linux display drivers (version 8.41.7) designed to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux suite and Novell/SuSE product suite. This release of the Catalyst Linux driver introduces significant OpenGL performance improvements for a variety of ATI Radeon graphics accelerators for OpenGL consumer based games such as Doom 3 and Quake 4. This release of Catalyst also supports all ATI Radeon HD 2000 video cards.

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AMD today announced plans to extend its leadership position in graphics software with major enhancements to performance and compatibility for ATI Radeon graphics for consumer Linux users. These improvements are planned for subsequent releases of ATI's Catalyst software package beginning in early September. This announcement represents a significant first step in redefining the graphics landscape for Linux consumer users. Moving forward, AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well.

It seems as though you are not allowed to put the word 'Linux' in your Xbox Live Motto. There is no obvious reason behind this, but this almost certainly will put the Linux community up in arms. Most Linux users/enthusiasts probably do not like the idea of Linux being associated with a countless assortment of other profanities and obscenities.

While Gutsy Gibbon remains in Alpha testing, the ambitious developers of the Ubuntu distribution of Linux have already laid out plans for the next version. Dubbed 'Hardy Heron', developers hope to have the entire distribution released by April 2008. Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager, is asking fans of one of the easiest Linux distributions around to help the developers by sending in ideas of what they want to see in Hardy Heron.

If anyone has any ideas for Hardy Heron, please send them to the Ubuntu development team.

While the final version of 'Gutsy Gibbon' is not expected until late October at the earliest, the latest alpha shows some very nice new features. The most notable is a polished interface with which users can choose graphics drivers, install dual monitors, and set the default resolution. Gibbon will also have a special version of Firefox, which boasts a "plug-in finder wizard compatible with the software download mechanism apt, as well as with an integrated extensions manager." The printer management system also is getting an upgrade, as is the Gnome window management system. The beta Gnome 2.20 features a nicer desktop search, fast user switching, and a new security framework.

If you feel like testing the latest version of Ubuntu, get the latest version (Tribe 5) here.

For quite some time now, Dell has been offering Ubuntu on it's desktops and laptops in America. However, that was it. Dell only sold Linux computers in America. Thankfully, Dell plans to change all that. The Inspiron 6400n laptop and Inspiron 530n desktop will be the first Linux-equipped Dells to ship in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and China. Dell customers that want Linux pre-installed on their computers will have a choice between Novell's SUSE Linux and Ubuntu. European customers will soon be able to order Linux versions of the 6400n laptop for £329, and the 530n desktop for £399.

Following in the footsteps of other major computer manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo (formerly IBM's PC division) is set to launch a new line of notebooks at the end of the year which will come pre-loaded with Novell's SUSE Linux operating system. Customers will be able to obtain direct support and updates for the hardware and software running Linux, with the machines being offered to both commercial firms and individuals. This announcement coincides with the start of the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco earlier today and should help to mix things up with Microsoft a little bit as the open source competition continues to gain momentum.