Linux rocks; if you have a netbook, a GPS, a portable media player or any of a number of gadgets chances are it's running Linux under the hood. That's because Linux is reliable, it's versatile, it's robust and it has no licensing fees. So why isn't it mainstream in the desktop world? Here's why.

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu's community manager, has been hard at work nailing gelatin to the wall. Okay, not literally, but he's putting a lot of thought into how he can best determine the vitality, growth, needs and wants of the Ubuntu community and how they best mesh with, and give back to, the wider Linux and open source communities.

It looks like we’ve gone from speculating whether we’re headed into recession depression, to speculating just what that depression is going to look like. Yihong Ding, over on the Thinking Space blog,predicts that we’ll have a “Golden Age” of the Web thanks to millions sitting at home with little else to do than putter around on the Web:

Last week I talked a bit about the bipolar world of printing on Linux: the best of times, the worst of times; the easiest and the hardest; the most reliable and the most annoying. I raised a number of questions such as why do print jobs disappear without a trace, then reappear days later?

StarOffice 9 reminds me of the classic Monty Python skit in which Graham Chapman wrestles himself. Although StarOffice is being aggressively presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it seems to be equally marketed and bundled to compete against OpenOffice.org, the free software project that is sponsored by Sun and that shares a common code base with StarOffice.

Linus Torvalds is known, rightly so, as the creator of the Linux kernel. What began as his own hobby project now powers major data centres, enabled the netbook market to exist, and has given rise to many a user group install-fest. It's no wonder his opinion is canvassed regularly but the answer may not always be what you expect. Here are some of the best and most defining.

No matter what Linux distribution or Open Source-based OS you use, be it Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, OpenSolaris, RHEL/CentOS, The BSDs, Mac OS X, or any myriad of others, absolutely none of this would be possible without the determined and often thankless work of thousands upon thousands of programmers

The "edge" for free software over proprietary software comes from volunteer effort. You should spend just as much effort on designing a comfortable and inviting project as you would on any consumer establishment: you may not be trying to convince customers to part with cash for your product, but you are asking volunteers to part with their time for your project (which is not easier).