If you thought using free software protected you from the privacy invasion and forced advertising that are often bundled with proprietary platforms, you may have thought wrong. Until recently, the alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) sported a feature in Firefox called "Multisearch," which modified Google searches in order to collect data about user behavior.  Here's the story.

If you like the reliability of Debian Stable, buy yearn for some newer packages from Testing or Unstable, you can have it all. Juliet Kemp shows us how to run a mixed Debian installation and pull packages from whatever version we desire.

The amount of time a given release of a Linux distribution is support is of paramount interest to its users. After all, large-scale deployments depend on stability, and stability means support. Some users of openSUSE are liable to be feeling a bit shaken this week, after the project announced that the support period for its releases has been cut by a fourth.

Sabayon is a Gentoo Linux-based, multi-purpose distribution. Previous releases of Sabayon came in one huge DVD iso image with the option to install your favorite desktop. However, the latest release is available in iso images distinguished by desktop environments.

Among desktop Mail clients, Mozilla Thunderbird is still a popular choice. Thunderbird unites many advantages, including the flexibility we all know from Firefox. One of the greatest joys for me is customizing Thunderbird’s look and feel.

Michael K. Johnson, a familiar name currently at rPath, has posted an interesting set of suggestions on ways to reinvigorate Foresight development; he starts by suggesting that they drop rPath as the base system.

The H Open: "According to a developer blog from Mozilla, the pop-up informs users that Firefox 3.5.2 is twice as fast as Firefox 3.0.13 and includes new features. "