"Hear what Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates had to say during his last official visit to the UK before he 'retires' later this year. IT PRO attended the special event hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) and, after Gates had done his thing there was a Q&A session with the billionaire and industry figurehead." And also note how some of his answers match up rather nicely with F/OSS.

The Gnome project has released the first test version of Gnome 2.22 this week, including a new Web-browser engine, a new virtual file system and updates for virtual network computing and accessibility.

Transmission is already included in the 4th Alpha release of Hardy Heron, and is set to replace the Gnome BitTorrent client that Ubuntu has used up until now. A stable version of Ubuntu 8.04 is expected to be released in April 2008.

We've all been there. The shiny new PC is loaded with the latest Linux distribution. The desktop has been tweaked, system updates sorted, data imported and packages downloaded. It's time to play some tunes, kick back a bit, watch a film or check out the latest movie trailers online. But your beloved MP3 collection won't play.
Your collection of ripped DVDs – films you legally own – look like parts I, II and III of that classic non-existentialist French trilogy, L'Espace Noir. And you're really beginning to understand the meaning of the word 'teaser' on Apple's movie trailers website. Welcome to Codec Land.

I love Ubuntu. I've been using Linux for years, and I think it's the greatest distribution to date. But let's face it - like it or not, the user experience is worrisome at times. Things don't work, programs act up, and hair gets torn out. These are my personal peeves with Ubuntu - things I've had trouble with, or hear being asked over and over again in Ubuntu support locations.

Traditionally, because of consumer perception, the business models proprietary vs. open source software, Microsoft's own position in relation to the open source community and companies, Windows and Linux are interpreted as situated at opposite poles of the operating system spectrum.

Personally, I never considered album art for my iPod all that important. That has changed now that we have an iPod touch in the family. If I'm missing a lot of album art, the experience of virtually flipping through my music collection, something Apple calls "cover flow," is diminished. iTunes doesn't always offer art for albums I didn't purchase from iTunes. Thankfully, a little GPL-licensed application called Album Cover Art Downloader (ACAD) solved my problem.

I've been running Ubuntu Linux on my notebook, a Sony VAIO TX model, for some time now. I'm impressed with how stable it's been and how a whole raft of features like action-key support (for things like dimming the display) are available directly out of the box, without having to install additional stuff that I needed to download from Sony's site. But because getting used to Linux itself can be jarring for Windows folks, I decided not to just dive in and hope I'm able to swim. Instead, I'm using a gradual approach: I take it to bed with me.