Kernel release: 2.6.24-rc5, Dec 11, 2007

2.6.24-rc5 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 1786
Files changed: 10052
Files removed: 1258

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced the completion of the LiPS Release 1.0 specifications (download it here), with the intention of enabling mobile industry players to achieve basic interoperability for applications and services deployed on Linux-based phones.

Six months ago, Linux vendor Red Hat acquired the closed source Exadel Studio Pro IDE and pledged to turn it into a fully open source Red Hat product.

Seagate has issued a workaround for Linux users who want to use its Free Agent drives.

Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus's EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device -- codenamed "Cloudbook" -- will ship with the Google Apps-oriented "gOS" Linux distribution early next year.

Switching on a Linux PC for the first time may be a little disorientating as many options are in different places. Follow our guide and find your feet quickly and easily with the Ubuntu version of Linux.

OpenOffice is the darling of the FOSS office suites, and it is a nice suite. It's cross-platform, and OpenOffice Writer is a first-rate word processor with a lot of advanced features. But it's not the only good option for Linux users: Abiword and KWord are excellent lightweight word processors with good feature sets, and both are licensed under the GPL. All three are wonderful. In this two-part series we're going to dig into KWord 1.6, and mine some of its hidden jewels.

Back in 1999 I remember the first PC entered our house coming preloaded with Windows 98. One of the things I liked about it was the defragmentation screen where blocks presenting 'datablocks' on the harddrive were moving over the screen for almost eternally. I remember at that time it seemed like a logical maintenance requirement for any filesystem.

Every couple of years, someone compiles a list of programs that GNU/Linux needs to compete on the desktop. For example, in early 2006, Novell conducted a survey of the applications that people most wanted ported to the platform.

Three cheers for the developers and management of the K Desktop Environment. They have taken a principled stand on the divisive issue of OOXML, the Microsoft Office Open XML document format. And for this the KDE folk deserve a round of applause.

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