[A while ago] I talked about how the CEO of Mandriva seemed a little unprofessional in his open letter about suspicion that MS paid a Nigerian company (called TSC) in charge of the Classmate PC deployment/training to dump Linux in favour of Linux after the deal. What I should have also add was that one should be patient and have a little faith in your fellow man.

Mary Jo Foley notes some of the highlights of Microsoft's patent/interoperability deal with Novell, following Microsoft's own press release celebrating the deal. She says something, however, that I'm not sure I agree with

MS has been doing their usual patent FUD, while Novell is sprouting how wonderful interoperability is. Same agreement, two different views. Now that's odd. Typically, you'd expect all parties involved in an agreement to be singing the same tune. So what's going on here? Well, someone points out the obvious.

"The Network Neutrality Squad (NNSquad) is an open-membership, open-source effort, enlisting the Internet's users to help keep the Internet's operations fair and unhindered from unreasonable restrictions. [...] We invite individual, commercial, nonprofit, government, and all other Internet users and stakeholders (including ISPs) to participate in the Network Neutrality Squad..."

Over 12 months go I asked my readers whether open source software reduces your pirating and the result was very half-and-half. Well, this year I've asked the same question again and the results have shifted.

I know that it might not seem like it at times, but I’m a big Ubuntu fan. I haven’t fully figured out how and where it fits into my computing ecosystem yet, but I know that it does have a place there. One aspect of Ubuntu that particularly impresses me is the clear development time-line that is published and adhered to. You always know what’s coming and when to expect it.

I cannot count how many times I receive e-mails where I hear about the poor soul who opted to take whichever distro for a test drive, only to discover that Compiz, Beryl, and these days; Compiz-Fusion has left the user scratching their head. To be clear, I believe you should be using Linux for intelligent reasons: secure, free and customized to suit your needs.

This week, WalMart has begun selling a new computer called the gPC for the price of $199. Instead of using Microsoft Windows, this incredibly inexpensive Linux-based computer runs an operating system which is fittingly called “gOS”.