This is a warning to all Linux users that are currently using the latest Ubuntu OS. Reports claim that some users may damage their Intel network adapters using Ubuntu's latest 2.6.27-rc kernel. Although this is an alpha release and bugs are expected, it might even damage your hardware to a state where you can't repair your NIC. In bug #263555 posted on the bugs.launchpad.net experts say: "In some circumstances it appears possible for the 2.6.27-rc kernels to corrupt the NVRAM used by some Intel network parts to store data such as MAC addresses. This is limited to the new e1000e driver, and reports have only appeared from users of "82566 and 82567 based LAN parts (ich8 and ich9)". The reports seem to be isolated to laptops, but it is not clear if this is because desktop/server parts are not vulnerable, or if use cases simply increase the chances of laptop users being hit. Once this corruption has occurred, recovery may be possible via a BIOS update, but may well require replacement of the hardware. Use of Intel's IABUTIL.EXE is strongly discouraged, as it will worsen the problem to the point where the network part will no longer appear on the PCI bus."

As much as releasing hardware that brings in competition and products at great prices is essential for AMD, backing it up with software is equally important. Company slides that point to tentative time-scales that pertain to AMD's software releases have surfaced. Some of the important software products AMD releases are Catalyst driver suite for ATI products and OverDrive, a tool that provides features to tweak AMD processors and graphics cards, as well as several motherboard parameters for motherboards equipped with AMD chipsets.

The slides also provide a sneak-peak into what could be in store with those releases. VR-Zone has published slides, from which the first one points to release dates for the Catalyst driver suite with respect to release candidates and public releases. The second slide points to time-scales at which software with vital changes are released. We are already past August and AMD has rolled out the feature pertaining to that release, allowing Hybrid Crossfire of AMD chipsets with integrated graphics working in tandem with Radeon HD 3400 series graphics accelerators.

Six months after the release of KDE 4.0, the KDE community today announced KDE 4.1, the second most important release in the KDE 4 era. KDE 4.1 brings support for a lot of new applications and newly developed features. It is also the first KDE4 release to contain the Personal Information Management suite KDE-PIM with its E-Mail client KMail, the planner KOrganizer, Akregator, the RSS feed reader, KNode, the newsgroup reader and many more components integrated into the Kontact shell. Furthermore, the new desktop shell Plasma, introduced in KDE 4.0, has matured to a point where it can replace the KDE 3 shell for most casual users. If you're using KDE Linux distribution, and you find KDE 4.1 to be interesting for you, make sure to take some time and read through the full changelog here. To download the complete source code for KDE 4.1.0 please click here.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) will be releasing the G10IL sub-notebook this September, says Henry Kwan, VP of sales, ECS to Laptop Magazine in a recent interview. What makes the G10IL special is that ECS has managed to squeeze in EDGE, HSUPA, and HSPDA mobile broadband support, but will not feature support for WiMAX. This 'netbook' comes in two screen sizes, 8.5" and 10". The version most likely to enter US markets in September is the 10" model. Prices start US $399. Most likely, the $399 variant could feature a 8 GB SSD with Linups Lite 9.4 Linux. A variant with an 80 GB HDD with Windows XP is also on the cards. ECS says that the G10IL is the first netbook designed specifically for the business user, than students.

ATI has released new Catalyst drivers for all Linux OS users, that bring major performance enhancements to ATI FireGL professional graphics cards. The enhanced 8.49.7 Linux driver represents a significant leap for Linux customers seeking improved performance of CAD and digital content creation applications, offering up to 33% faster OpenGL performance than the previous 8.433.1 driver. If you need them, you can grab them here at any time.

Linux and Unix owners already know and love Wine. No, silly, not the red/white alcoholic beverage, the program. Wine, which has been in development for some time, is a program that allows Linux and Unix users to run Windows applications in a Linux/Unix environment. Wine is getting ever closer to a final version, and this Release Candidate 2 shows this in the list of changes. All that the authors changed from RC1 to RC2 is a list of bugfixes, which can be found here. If you'd like to download the latest version of this revolutionary program, you can check it out here.

When open source software makers made what would eventually become the more current versions of Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X, they undertook a very important task: ensuring that whenever a password was generated to keep confidential data secret, that it would actually be secure. However, they apparently made a rudimentary programming error, and it went out into the world of open source software unnoticed. A couple years down the road, some hackers pointed out with glee that the OpenSSL key generator is basically useless as a security measure (the actual flaw is explained much more thoroughly in the source link). Because OpenSSL is used in far more systems than a couple home servers, we have a serious problem on our hands. Even though the original authors have issued a patch, there's no guarantee that it will get around fast enough to prevent some serious damage.

Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS is to embed a lightweight open source version of Linux called "Splashtop" into all its motherboards it was announced recently. On Wednesday, DeviceVM, the company behind the distribution, said the hardware manufacturer would be putting Splashtop - which ASUS calls "Express Gate" - into a million motherboards a month. Splashtop boots from a flash chip on the motherboard before the main OS is loaded and includes a Firefox Internet browser, e-mail client, Skype and the Splashtop desktop. At first the Linux-based software will be available immediately in the new Intel P45 based P5Q Deluxe, P5Q-WS, P5Q3 Deluxe and P5Q-E series motherboards, due to be out by the end of June. After that the Splashtop OS is planned to be integrated into numerous other ASUS motherboards and even some notebooks in the near future. "In response to great user feedback, our plan is to proliferate Express Gate across our entire motherboard product portfolio, starting with over one million motherboards per month," says Joe Hsieh, General Manager, ASUS Motherboard Business Unit. "Consumers want to turn their PCs on and off like any other appliance, and Express Gate has made that possible."

Fedora 9, the latest release from the Fedora Project, is available for download since yesterday. The free, open source Linux operating system sponsored by Red Hat, promises to include significant new versions of many key components and technologies. The following Release Notes provide an overview of the important changes from the last release of Fedora. To download the new Fedora 9 OS click here.

The newest Ubuntu Linux release, code named "Hardy Heron" and officially called Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is now available for download in two versions - Desktop and Server. The "LTS" version of Ubuntu means long-term support - 3 years for desktop versions and 5 years for server versions. Please refer to the release notes for more information.

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The openSUSE team has released the first beta of the new openSUSE 11.0. New features for this version include KDE 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1, a new installer and 60% faster installation. openSUSE is designed to be one of the easiest-to-use Linux distributations available, although as this is a beta there are still likely to be some bugs. You can download it from here.

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.