At the end of last week, Linus Torvalds released the fifth pre-release version of Linux version 2.6.33, with the final release expected in 4 to 5 weeks time. At this stage in the development cycle, it is usually predominantly more minor changes and fixes which find their way into the main development tree.

With all of these problems raising their ugly heads at each release there comes a noisy round of complaints from those who believe they have a right to complain about FREE software. Like every squeaky wheel these complaints are annoying and contribute towards tarnishing what many believe is a good Linux distribution.

"I just watched Mark Shuttleworth’s Keynote on aKademy. The discussion afterwards was mainly dominated by his suggestion to switch KDE’s development cycle to a 6 month release cycle. Here is a closer look at what Mark said - and what KDE did in the past."

During distro comparisons, many call a lack of release cycle for PCLinuxOS one of its negative aspects. In my opinion, this is the most attractive and positive aspects of the small distribution. Not to take away from a distribution that sets a release cycle...I understand that normal release cycles are a must with companies and software engineering.

On Thursday night, Linus Torvalds released an eighth pre-release version of Linux 2.6.29 and hinted that this could be the final 2.6.29 release candidate. "What's coming in 2.6.29" series with an overview of driver news from a range of areas.

If you’ve been following the Ubuntu release cycle you know that the .10 release is forth coming. Slated to hit the bandwidth October 29th, 2009, 9.10 promises to have quite a number of new features that should please even the most discerning of Linux users. But what can you expect and how should it run?

Expected for release in May, Linux kernel version 2.6.34 contains several new network drivers and various advancements designed to improve network performance or increase network configuration flexibility, which will particularly impact virtualisation

Ubuntu 9.10 had its beta release last week and the final release is coming in just three weeks, but this late in the release cycle, it has been decided to pull in the final Mesa 7.6 version. Pulling in this newer code that provides OpenGL acceleration on Linux provides numerous bug-fixes along with support for a greater number of OpenGL extensions on different hardware and other improvements.

Linux Mint represented my return to Linux. It was the first distribution I tried that "just worked", and since that day I have not had Windows installed on any of my personal PCs. I have, however, jumped between a few different Linux distributions, and have recently settled on Fedora 15.