Has open source been positive or negative for its primary (commercial) proponents? That's the question I asked myself yesterday about Red Hat, Sun, and Novell, and found the answer interesting. I looked at these three as they, more than any others, have results that can be isolated and directly attributed to open source.

As you might expect, GNOME 2.22, the latest version of the popular desktop, which was released last week, has some functional tweaks and new default applications.

Just hours after the BBC said it had fixed the iPlayer streamed TV service to prevent DRM-free file downloads, a London-based programmer has bypassed the new protection.

QGRUBEditor is a system tool to view and edit the GRUB boot loader. It offers many features and it is the perfect solution for those who want to change the way GRUB works, without messing with GRUB’s configuration files.

Overall, Linux is not known as a resource hog. The free operating system is a fairly lean machine out of the box -- some distributions moreso than others. Still, there are some tweaks you can make to any Linux installation to speed things up.

Instead of buying OLPCs or Classmate PCs, one community in Brazil is looking at their own solution to bring technology into their schools (using Linux of course). Their solution is a touchscreen desktop computer, according to CNet. At around $550 and lacking the mobility of the OLPC, it is not, however, clear if this new solution is really better.

The Japanese are hyping Vista SP1's impending release, but a roll of toilet paper printed with highlighted features is kind of uncalled for. You kind of have to feel a little bad for Vista -- it just keeps getting crapped on these days.

Doing pagination that's a little advanced can be more complex than it needs to be. A new extension makes it all a lot easier.