Kernel release: 2.6.27-rc5, Aug 28, 2008

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

Files added: 4034
Files changed: 14923
Files removed: 3955

Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives.

IE8 plays catch-up in other areas, too. The Address Bar replicates Firefox 3's Awesome Bar; no longer used just for typing in addresses, it searches your history and RSS feeds to provide alternative results.

Dell unveiled Wednesday two new laptops and two desktops in its Vostro range designed to meet the needs of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), governments, and educational institutions in emerging markets in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.

Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to buy closely held PostPath Inc. in a $215 million deal, highlighting the networking giant's bid to expand its business-applications portfolio. PostPath, Mountain View, Calif., makes Linux-based email and calendaring software that it markets as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange software.

As my colleague Martin Heller recently observed, smart coders always optimize the slowest thing. Trying to optimize every trivial performance issue in your code is just chasing your own tail. You should find the one problem that's causing the biggest performance hit and fix that first.

There are some Linux system administrators out there who should be glad, very glad, they don't work for me because I'd be firing them today.

...have you ever heard of a community version of the open source operating system displacing one of the popular commercial distributions? That's exactly what happened in Germany's third-largest public TV and radio station

Walk into the Ponto Frio electronics store here, which proudly displays a penguin-shaped logo, and you will find a healthy supply of Linux PCs alongside the usual Windows machines.

The much-hyped "year of the Linux desktop" may still not be with us but there’s no doubting the free open-source operating system has gained significant traction in the last year. One reason for this is, with equal certainty, the mess that is Windows Vista. Here's how it's actively driving new interest in Linux.

If you needed any further testament to the colossal failure that is Microsoft Windows Vista, just read this Wall Street Journal article detailing PC manufacturers attempts to design around Vista's shortcomings, shortcomings that no amount of marketing are going to fix.

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