A small revolution in the IT world is about to happen, and we are about to witness it. Microsoft Windows' domination has been challenged many times: first by OS/2 (failed), then Apple (failed), then Java and network computing (failed), then GNU/Linux and Ubuntu (failed, so far). And now, Google's Chrome OS.

Readers of the Linux section on popular Web 2.0 social networking site Reddit discovered a Twitter bot was tweeting stories listed on the site without attribution. As punishment Redditers decided to turn the bot into their puppet, mouthing whatever they commanded.

I hold a grudge, I admit it. Months ago, when X started acting up on my central machine, I realized the time and effort spent trying to fix it could be alleviated completely by omitting it altogether.

In Part 2 of our Q&A with Frank Kardel, we find out how the NTP community handles code security and dive into the long-fought debate over the merits of opens source vs. proprietary software. Beyond that, Kardel addresses where the two can potentially learn from each other to improve software security.

Dear Miguel: During the last couple of weeks there has been a tremendous amount of information pouring about Mono, the free (speechwise) implementation of .NET started by you, Novell's vice-president of Development Platform, and how it should/would be handled by distros. We even had RMS himself come into the fray and tell us his take on it (which he had been mum about till now).

My eldest son is ten years old. He has been using computers in one way or another since he was 4, and he has already seen Linux because I had installed Ubuntu and SLED 10 on his XP computer some years ago. The month has passed and I wanted to see what Christopher thought about using Linux daily.

This time we talk about free software, Mono and whether or not it's a gratuitous risk, Microsoft's broken ODF support, PHP, and MySQL Workbench. Download Kongoni Nietzsche!

Ubuntu is a very well known Linux distribution. Those who have an interest in those things also know that Ubuntu is based on Debian. Now I am noticing that whatever direction Ubuntu is going, Debian is starting to follow.