A couple of months back, at Australia's national Linux conference, a young Microsoft employee sat down with me and discussed ways in which Microsoft has contributed to open source.

John Dvorak, a well known PC Mag columnist and cranky geek, announced today that Ubuntu 8.10 is "a winner." Even the cranky geek likes Linux? It must be great. It is, and that's why we'll be seeing a lot more of this soon.

This is somewhat of a simple observation on my part, but one of the things I've noticed of late is how the cry for Ext4 is growing, and fast. Sure, recent benchmarks make it look like the ultimate solution. But I don't recommend moving to the Ext4 file system just yet.

The ubuntu community is one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever been a part of, it has a much more diverse set of people and ideas than other development communities, but retains a strict sense of community and togetherness.

Kubuntu 9.04 is due out in April, and as always, I couldn’t help but to start testing it early and get a good look at what we will be expecting come release day. I’ve been using Jaunty for a little over a month now, and I thought I’d share some of my experiences. In summary, if things keep going the way they are now, Jaunty will be the one to watch out for this year.

There are a lot of Linux portals out there, but, until now, none of them have really seemed like the right central source for Linux information. This isn't to say there aren't great Linux websites out there, but many of them are of a different kind. This website, for example, is primarily focused on news. What has been missing is a community-powered portal for Linux.

I have a bunch of designers at my job, and they all carry around an apple. No not the fruit, you know the vastly overpriced and over-hyped electronics brand. These guys think they are so cool. While Linux is actually a lot cooler then apple, it's not perceived by enough people as being cool.

In a recent article, Jack Wallen built a case for the ascendancy of Linux over Windows. Now Kris Littlejohn steps up to argue the converse.