With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute.

The average consumer might not know much - if anything - about high-end technologies like pNFS, PCIe and 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE), but they could revolutionize the consumer PC market in ways that most consumers can't even begin to imagine.

Red Hat has no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market, but will continue to place its bets on a desktop for commercial markets.

Rolex, movies, Gucci, and even Sharpie pens, among other consumer goods, are well known for reaching a level of ubiquity where people start producing fakes or knock-offs. From our industry, even Steve Jobs’ personal brand warranted a knock-off in the form the FakeSteveJobs blog. Linux, too, has reached that level of ubiquity and maturity.

There's a major battle for OS domination in the consumer electronic space that may make the ones occurring on PCs and smartphones small by comparison.

Okay, it has been about a month since Red Hat said it had no plans to offer a consumer Linux release. Lots of folks went ballistic. The VAR Guy didn’t. Instead, he took some time to digest the news. And now he’s ready to say — definitively — that Red Hat made the right decision. Here are five reasons why Red Hat should ignore pleas for a consumer Linux release.

The European Commission has proposed creating a single strategy for the protection of industrial property rights in Europe. The Commission wants to integrate its strategy for industrial property rights and encourage smaller businesses to protect rights.

We know Linux has enough potential to be a consumer desktop and we also know that Linux has less than 2% of desktop market share. Let's admit the truth. Linux enthusiasts may site a thousand reasons on why Linux does not sit on consumer desktops, or conversely why people are not ready to Linux even after Linux is absolutely ready.

It has been confirmed that Dell is developing a consumer PC line that will run multiple versions of Microsoft Windows and Linux software at the same time using virtualization platforms to perform the magic.