Gartner reports surging global handset sales in the second quarter, with Android taking second place over Apple's iPhone in smartphone OS market share. Meanwhile, the "partial fork" of Android from the Linux kernel has been debated at LinuxCon, with some claiming it's a temporary split, while others warn about the fork's long-term impact.

Linux is now in the mainstream of enterprise adoption, according to analysts presenting new research here at the LinuxCon conference.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is preparing a "Zeen" Android e-reader that interfaces with a new HP printer, says an industry report. Meanwhile, HP has postponed its WebOS-based "Hurricane" tablet to 1Q 2011

The fragmentation of mobile Linux needs to be addressed, Qualcomm executive Rob Chandhok told developers at LinuxCon

Linux has been around for almost two decades now. It has become a resounding success as a server OS (for example as the L in the famous LAMP stack), and more recently as a mobile OS (Android). But what about on the desktop?

To many, open source software isn’t just about getting something for free, it’s a statement about how the world should be. Here are seven projects that have, quite literally, changed the world.

Stephen O’Grady and Simon Phipps have both recently published interesting posts on the current state of open source, with Stephen pondering the relative growth of open source and Simon wondering whether the “commercial open source” bubble has burst.

Unleash the iPhones of war! The Army’s announced the winners of their first-ever mobile phone app development contest. And the general behind the program says some of the applications will be in the field “within a year.”