The First Chink In Microsoft's Linux Patent Armor, Dec 22, 2007

And so Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has finally agreed to give the Samba Team the protocol information it needs to allow systems that use Samba to interoperate as completely as possible with Windows Server machines. Based on the information Groklaw has provided about the agreement, it looks like this might be the first of many solutions to Microsoft's cagey Linux patent talk.

The healthcare services company moved 50 of its 70 applications to Linux over the last two years and will complete the process with the remaining 20 within a year or two.

Netgear has introduced five Linux-based networked attached storage (NAS) products. Targeted at "prosumers" and small to medium-sized businesses, Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ systems offer higher capacities than previous Infrant models, and come in 1.5TB (terabyte), 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB versions, as well as a 4TB rackmount version.

The Ubuntu development community has officially announced the release of Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 2. Ubuntu 8.04—scheduled for release in April 2008—is a long-term support (LTS) release, which means that it will be supported on the desktop for three years and on the server for five years.

Red Hat announced outstanding financial results for its third fiscal quarter, which ended Nov. 30. How outstanding? The Linux company's revenue for the quarter jumped to $135.4 million.

The hottest thing on YouTube this month isn't The Dark Knight trailer or that clip of a baby giving an evil eye. It's video of somebody downloading a copy of Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system.

OggConvert is a simple, GUI-based video transcoder that outputs only to the free Theora and Dirac formats. It couldn't be any easier to use, and it's the quickest way to get a feel for the still-new Dirac codec. No need to tweak pages of arcane settings -- just drag, drop, and watch.

Sometimes putting together a best-of-the-year list is like pulling teeth. There simply isn't enough big news to fill the list out. That was not a problem for desktop Linux in 2007.

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