Just six short months after Fedora 9 hit the tubes, in flies Fedora 10 to give you something new to tinker with over Thanksgiving break. The latest iteration of the Linux-based OS bundles in OpenOffice 3.0 and touts a "wide range of improvements in areas such as virtualization management, networking, boot time and security." Don't mind us, though -- you can delve as deep as you like in the release notes while your download progresses.

[Via PC World]

We've never really thought of Red Hat as being a consumer-focused Linux provider, and it looks like the company is content to stay in the enterprise -- the company announced today that it has no plans to enter the consumer space. Red Hat says that as a for-profit public company, the focus on the bottom line precludes a risky bet on a consumer-oriented Linux desktop, and that it sees history as being "littered" with failures. Instead, the company is going to work on getting businesses to switch over to managed Linux desktops, which seems like a safe, if somewhat dull strategy. Still, that's a pretty big potential market to give up, especially as more and more UMPCs and MIDs hit the scene with Linux pre-loaded, and distros like gOS and Ubuntu (seven days till Hardy Heron, kids!) increase consumer awareness. Still, we can sort of see why Red Hat is willing to safely make money in the corporate game -- but we prefer our Linux a little more punk rock.

[Via Mobile Tech Today]

He we go again. Like an evil pope preparing to recapture the Holy Land, Jeff Jones, Microsoft's self-proclaimed "Security Guy" (and Microsoft Director) just published the Vista One Year Vulnerability Report. As you can see from the graph above, JJ's methodology concludes that Microsoft's Vista easily bests the first year vulnerabilities found in XP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Apple's own OS X. As contentious as the report is, is anyone else reflecting on the fact that Vista is more than a year old for businesses (almost exactly one for consumers) yet XP continues to ship standard on many PCs?

[Via Slashdot]

Well, would you look at this. Not even a week after Steve Ballmer insinuated that Red Hat users owe Microsoft money for using its patents, IP Innovation has filed a lawsuit against the firm (along with Novell) in the accurately nicknamed "patent troll magnet state (that'd be Texas)." The firm, which also threw a lawsuit Apple's way earlier this year, is claiming that both entities have infringed on the very same patent. As if that weren't enough, Groklaw's digging found that the plaintiff is actually a subsidiary of Acacia, which just so happened to hire on two prior Microsoft execs in the months leading up to this filing. If you're interested in feeding your desire to conjure up some sensational conspiracy theory even further, feel free to grab your coffee and hit the read link.

[Via Digg, thanks Ziemowit P.]

If you'll recall, it was around this time last year when ole Steve Ballmer fessed up and stated that Linux users probably owed him a nickle or two, and apparently, he's yet to get over it. Reportedly, Mr. Ballmer was speaking out last week "at a company event in London discussing online services in the UK" when he proclaimed that "people who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us." Furthermore, he went on to "praise Novell for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders." Of course, we're sure he means well and all, given that all he "really" wants is "an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds." And a few dollars too, right?

[Via TheInquirer]

HP has started selling its first pre-loaded Linux computers, although it's arguably a rather backwater offering. You see, the HP dx2250 is HP's first pre-loaded Linux machine, but it's only available in Australia, and only in this iteration. The desktop machine runs 1.6GHz AMD Semprons up to the 2.8Ghz AMD Athlon 64 X2, comes with 2GB of RAM, HDD up to 250GB, and CD drives up to Multi-Format burners. You'll have to pay around $500 for the pre-installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop version too: this ain't no Dellbuntu deal.

[Via The Inquirer]

If you keep abreast of technology news (and we know you do!) then you've surely been following the latest chapter of the Microsoft vs. Linux struggle, wherein Microsoft gets Novell, Linspire and Xandros to put pen to paper on shadowy and vaguely suspicious agreements concerning "interoperability" and "indemnification", more than likely stemming from the 235 undisclosed patents Redmond claims Linux infringes upon. While some have bent to the will of Ballmer and Co., Red Hat and Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) are holding their ground. Red Hat says it will not pay "innovation tax" to Microsoft, while Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth more poetically describes the aforementioned deals as, "Trinkets in exchange for air kisses." As far as we can tell, that's the kind of talk that immediately precedes a bar brawl.

[Via Digg]

What with the OLPC project and Intel planning to make cheap computing for the masses, we've got to wonder what the world was playing at up until now. As the horribly termed "emerging markets" start to emerge, Red Hat is getting into the low cost computing game with the "Red Hat Global Desktop," a low requirement operating system and software package which was announced at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego. The system will include a range of productivity applications, management systems that work on a scale of 10 to 10,000, plus what the Red Hat guys call a "modern user experience": fingers crossed that means no command lines. The Global Desktop is part of Red Hat's involvement with the One Laptop Per Child project, but it'll also be supported on Intel's range of lower specification and cost computer line, if your wish is to replace Microsoft's little OS.

[Via The Inquirer]

Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about the OLPC, Negroponte, and the Sugar interface, in comes the man himself using the "W" word in an open-sourced conversation. Curiously enough, Nik Neg has not only stated that the present is "perhaps the most critical stage of the OLPC's life," but he also blurted out a quasi-firm $176 pricetag that would be attached to them. Additionally, he went so far as to admit that "XO's developers have been working with Microsoft so a version of Windows can run on the machines," and while no direct linkages were drawn to the recent $3 software package that the firm had announced, the writing is somewhat on the wall. Furthermore, a whopping 19 state governors have reportedly shown interest in grabbing a few of the inexpensive machines for their own schoolkids, and while the creator initially stated that the XOs were "designed for a totally different situation," he was also quoted as saying that business in the US "couldn't be ignored." C'mon guys and gals, how about a little less conversation and a little more action?

Read - Hints of Windows on OLPC
Read - US schools could adopt OLPC