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News

• PHP user group lauds Microsoft's open source contributions

  Microsoft has often come up short in its attempts to thaw out relations with open source communities, but the company seems to have found success with PHP developers.

• Open source expert takes on the hardest job at Microsoft

  A few months ago, Gianugo Rabellino traded his Linux and Mac PCs for a Windows 7 laptop, left the open source company he founded and moved to Redmond for a new job with Microsoft. His goal: improve Microsoft's credibility within open source circles.

• Google employees may be getting Xoom tablets

  Google employees may be getting new tablets, Motorola's CEO said on Monday.

• Splashtop Linux: A free Chrome OS alternative

  Web surfers tired of waiting for the official release of hardware featuring Google's Chrome OS now have a browser-based alternative right at their fingertips: Splashtop Linux 1.0, a downloadable instant-on operating system tailored to life in the cloud.

• Fedora and openSUSE Linux drop Unity efforts

  Canonical made quite a splash last fall when it announced that the Unity interface used in its Ubuntu Netbook Edition would become the default interface in the Linux distribution's desktop version as well beginning with version 11.04, or Natty Narwhal.

• Why you need to have a Linux LiveCD

  As a longtime fan of Linux, I'm a big believer that most business users would benefit greatly by dumping Windows and switching over to the open source operating system instead. It's stable, it's reliable and it's highly secure, among many other advantages.

• Microsoft to WP7 app developers: Use our open source licenses

  Microsoft has prohibited developers from using GPLv3-licensed open source software in any application distributed on the Windows Phone Marketplace. But Redmond is pushing mobile application developers to use packages based on an open source license created by Microsoft.

• Novell Moonlight upgrade tracks Silverlight improvements

  The Novell-sponsored Mono Project on Tuesday will offer a beta version of Moonlight 4, an open source Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application plug-in that tracks the most recent Microsoft release, Silverlight 4.

• Canonical opens up catalog of Linux-friendly components

  Though hardware compatibility with Linux improves with each passing day, users of the free and open source operating system can still encounter problems with particular devices and components.

• Competitive benefits drive businesses to open source

  Vendors of proprietary software are fond of warning potential customers thatopen source software isn't ready for business, typically citing subpar features or a higher total cost of ownership (TCO).

• Debian 6.0 breaks free of restrictive licenses

  Following a full two years of development, the Debian Project on Sunday released version 6.0 of its namesake Linux distribution, code-named "Squeeze."

• Myriad updates come to open source software

  January was a busy month for open source software, with numerous packages receiving key updates and improvements. Since so many have been released in rapid-fire succession, now is a good time to take stock of what we've seen so far.

• Web store and in-app purchases coming to Android

  Google on Wednesday introduced a new Android Market Web store and said in-app purchasing is coming soon.

• Dell releases Ubuntu-powered cloud servers

  Dell has released two servers for the U.S. market that have been customized to run Ubuntu-based cloud services, the company announced Wednesday.

• Linux vendors teaming up for an app store

  There seems to be no end to the momentum propelling Linux into the mainstream these days, and this week news came out that's surely among the most exciting developments yet.