It's hard to take CNET seriously. Megatrolls from CNET tend to include people like Don Reisinger, who generate outrageous headlines just to flame and receive attention. It's sad to see similar nonsense from Matt Asay. His suggestion is so absurd that it's hardly worth repeating and Savio Rodrigues has already swept it aside.

When Microsoft employee, Brandon LeBlanc announced that Microsoft ruled the netbook world, he was exaggerating, shall we say, just a wee bit. I was going to stomp on him but Chris Kenyon of Canonical, the business that stands behind Ubuntu, beat me to it.

A landmark event occurred today when the Open Source Channel Alliance launched. Although far from perfect, the alliance shows that Linux and open source applications are gaining momentum with mid-market resellers and solutions providers. The problem: Red Hat is a driving force in the alliance, and Canonical isn't involved.

As the central element of Linux, the kernel is equally central to open source software in general. Because the community has such a stake in its design and success, the kernel has proven to be the hub around which much discussion revolves. The kernel's creator, Linus Torvalds, also has a stake in its success, and he takes part in the discussion.

Microsoft may view its legal settlement with TomTom as a patent victory of sorts but it’s a hollow and meaningless win in the eyes of some in the open source community.

Back when I looked for and found, despite difficulty, the perfect Linux netbook for my wife, we were thrilled to open a box that was the first pre-installed Linux machine we ever purchased.

On the face of it aptitude, a Debian package manager looks like some RGB monitor and a file manager from Ms-dos.

There’s a dirty little secret to technology conferences: Most of them suck to some degree. It’s about time someone started thinking about how to make conference time more valuable and less stale, especially now that companies are cutting back on travel to shows.