Ben Sutton

The Standards Blog carries the news that OSDL and the FSG have merged.  This is great news for Linux because it means that many significant parties will work as one group, the Linux Foundation.  One coordinated effort will help accelerate the growth of Linux.

“I’m pleased to share some news that I expect you’ll be reading about in lots of other places today: Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG) signed an agreement yesterday providing for the two groups to combine forces to form a new organization – The Linux Foundation.  The result of this consolidation will be to dedicate the resources of the combined membership to “accelerate the growth of Linux by providing a comprehensive set of services to compete effectively with closed platforms.”  

Read the news here.

Xfce, the lightweight desktop environment, has signed off a new release.  With over two years of updates this is an anticipated upgrade.  New features include the new Thunar file manager, better access to removeable media, icons on the desktop(!) and many more tweaks and changes.

After more than two years of development, Xfce 4.4.0 has just been released.  Xfce 4.4 features new tools such as the much awaited Thunar file manager as well as several huge improvements of its core components. 

For a screenshot tour visit here, to download the release go here.

According to Extreme Tech Novell have launched a website offering a comparison of Linux and Microsoft Windows Vista. The website focuses on cost showing how SUSE Linux Enterprise and Open Office match up against Vista and Office 2007. This is interesting in light of the recent Novell and Microsoft partnership.

Novell has just launched a Vista/Linux comparison site, in anticipation of the Jan. 31 arrival of the retail version of Windows Vista. Unsurprisingly, Novell’s site reminds users that SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) is already here, and promotes it as the better upgrade for Windows business users.

The GNOME Hacks Repository has received some attention lately from the Linux blogosphere.  If you run GNOME this is a useful site to bookmark as it allows users to share their experience and provides a mechanism to rank the tips.

GNOME Hacks is a repository for all those little tricks that people have worked out that do something useful or cool with their GNOME Desktop. If you’ve come up with something neat, submit it here so that other people can benefit from your experience.

As you read the hacks, you can either upvote or downvote each hack, so that other users know what’s good to read. The best hacks will appear in the popular list. You can also make your own comments and suggestions for each hack.

The site can be found here.