"The era of streaming High-Definition content our PCs is almost here. The latest entry is ABC, which quietly started beta testing its new HD streaming channel. Now you can watch episodes of 'Lost,' 'Ugly Betty,' or 'Grey's Anatomy' in beautiful 720p HD"...unless you use GNU/Linux

when I loaded the live CD six months ago, it was more a case of having a couple of hours to kill. Anyway, I was surprised to find that everything worked…just like that. The more I fooled around with it, the more it intrigued me. I was able to do a lot of stuff without having to do a lot of searching and fixing.

Who remembers Red Flag Linux?

Consider 64 Studio, which packs a whole slew of free and open source multimedia (music and video) content-creation applications such as Ardour, Hydrogen, and JAMin into a 64-bit Debian-derived Linux distribution. The 64-bitness is pretty deliberate: With applications like audio and video creation, having unimpeded access to as much memory as you can is always a good idea.

Groklaw member Tyche got a Dell Inspiron 530N with Ubuntu Linux and when I saw him post that he'd ordered it, I asked if he'd please write up a quick review after it arrived. He has done so, and as you will see, he found getting online so easy he had nothing at all to do to make it happen. Just poof.

Hungary's state Competition Authority raided the offices of Microsoft Corp.'s local subsidiary as part of a probe into the company's relationship with large software distributors. Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as "loyalty discounts" - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products.

"In my last blog post about the real-world cost of Linux, I was struck by the contrast between my words and fellow InformationWeek blogger Alexander Wolfe’s take on all this."