With the proliferation of music services and downloads, it’s easy to forget that many Linux distributions don’t provide support for MP3 and other restrictive codecs. These file types are generally encumbered by patents or non-free licenses and, because of this, a number of distributions will not ship these packages.

Keir Thomas believes that Ubuntu and Mozilla Firefox have forgotten their core values in the rush to popularity. I can't agree.

Socitm president Richard Steel believes open source still lags behind commercial products.

While a few commands, such as 'cd' are built directly into bash; many of the most important commands come from coreutils, a GNU package containing over a hundred commands.

"I'm a computer science major who has been recently getting involved in local grassroots politics in my county and state. I've been discussing the idea with some of my state legislatures of submitting a couple of resolutions, opening up to the idea of switching to open source software in our state's K-12 schools.

As a kind of pint-sized free software fidei defensor I feel obliged to counter some of the misconceptions that are put about on the subject around the Web. But I find myself in a slightly embarrassing situation here, in that I need to comment on some statements that have appeared in the virtual pages of Computerworld UK.

Our computer science department also has a number of computer labs with Linux machines, accessbile remotely and for physical access. There are also a few Windows machines for those who prefer Visual Studio, although these machines are generally inferior when it comes to speed and stability. So why do students still flock to them?