For the tinkerers and testers, 2010 is shaping up to be a perfect year. Almost every desktop and application we can think of is going to have a major release, We've selected the few we think are worth keeping an eye on and that can be installed easily.

Another day, another company developing Linux-based tech falls into line with Microsoft's intellectual property wonks. Japanese Flash maker I-O Data Device Inc has agreed to cough up an undisclosed sum of cash to Microsoft under a Linux software deal.

Microsoft is dropping its Linux and Unix search cores in the Fast Search and Transfer enterprise search products it has been providing since it acquired FAST two years ago.

There are some things in life, like good manners, which never go out of style, and there are other things, like clothing styles that fall in and out of fashion, but when an IT skill falls out of favor it rarely ever comes back. Here's our list of 10 dying IT skills. If any of these skills are your main expertise, perhaps it's time to update your skill set.

After removing Google's Android driver code from the Linux kernel, Novell Fellow and Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has argued that the mobile OS is incompatible with the project's main tree.

Don't let an old, unusable version of Windows stop you installing Ubuntu on your PC.

Linux's main merit, as a kernel and an ecosystem, is its open source nature. That means the software that runs on it has little choice but to be open source. This doesn't mean closed-source software is unavailable on Linux—just that it's got the deck stacked strongly against it.

Terminal must Die. Call the mortuary, tell them; there should be one on the way.

Few days after the fact now, but:

It's been a long time in coming, but it's finally here! Don't let the version number fool you! The openSUSE 11.2 release features new and massively improved versions of Firefox, OpenOffice.org, GNOME, KDE, and more than 1,000 open source desktop applications. openSUSE also includes a full suite of server software and a rich selection of open source development tools.

Apps to keep track of your DVDs, music and all your other stuff.

A patent granted to Microsoft has stirred up worry that world's largest software company wants to claim Unix's "sudo" as its own. Sudo is a Unix program used to raise a user's privilege level to accomplish tasks that require administrative privileges. It allows a user to temporarily execute commands as the root user.

October 2009 marked an important milestone in the history of computing. It was exactly 40 years since the first Multics computer system was used for information management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is regarded as the foundation of modern time-sharing systems. Multics was the catalyst for the development of Unix and has been used as a model of operating system design since its release four decades ago.

A software developer has uncovered a bug in most versions of Linux that could allow untrusted users to gain complete control over the open-source operating system.

What do French gendarmes, Andalucian school children, Wikipedia and San Francisco International airport have in common? It is not the set up for a tortuous pun. Instead all of them are big users of the free Ubuntu operating system.

Slax is a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Despite its small size, Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.

This is a wishlist of sorts on what to give a Linux geek. In the list is Chumby, a Linux-based digital photoframe/email monitor/audio-video player and more.

There are numerous media center applications available on Linux. Sofa is only one of the few that looks like Apple's Front Row, which is some sort of a controller for all your computer's multi-media content.

CHM files are Compiled HTML Help files that Microsoft use for its Help application. Here are several CHM viewers like chmsee, kchmviewer, gnochm, Help Explorer Viewer for Linux and xchm.

Based on articles that speak about having better browsing experience. The first one involves setting up a local caching DNS and the next guides in setting up and configuring a personal proxy server called polipo.

Mobile phone manufacturers are now trying to get the same user experience as that of the Apple iPhone, into their devices. Linux-based devices will not be that far behind.