An experiment in Nicaragua shows just how powerful Open Source software can be in leveling the playing field. The second poorest country of the Americas now has one of the best software solutions for displaying agricultural data in the western hemisphere. It all started about a year ago.

It's a fact of life that Linux distributions go extinct and it happens more often than our Linux fan base would like to admit. At last count, there are approximately 50 individual distributions that are now extinct. What happens to the poor unfortunates who adopt and use these defunct distros?

About a week ago, we wrote about gaining some space on your Linux Desktop (but the tutorial was focused on Ubuntu) by removing the titlebar of maximized applications - which can be achieved either with Maximus or Compiz. But at the time, we only provided some keyboard shortcuts to handle these windows.

If you read my review of Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” you probably noticed that GNOME’s Epiphany web browser has ditched it’s Gecko rendering engine for the WebKit engine.

Lerdorf announced his departure via the popular Web2.0rhea service Twitter. "Feels a bit odd to be unemployed. Probably crazy to leave the best job I have ever had," he wrote, "but after 7+ years it was time for something new." Twitter is also where Lerdorf voiced his opinion of Yahoo!'s search pact with Microsoft back in July. "As lame as I feared," he said. "Time to find a new job." Yahoo!

Boy, what a tempest I discovered when I posted last week about my disillusionment with Apple Computer and my ongoing migration from OS X to the new and well-reviewed Windows 7. This week I’ve been taking a closer look at Linux.

I have this computer. It came with windows xp pre-installed. I formatted it and installed CentOS Linux for some tests. The computer was then needed for an employee so we put windows xp back on. This is a step by step comparison of installation of the two operating systems on the exact same hardware.