Car giant Toyota has become the latest corporation to join open source alliance The Linux Foundation, as it looks to strengthen innovation in its in-car information and entertainment services.

It’s been a while since there was talk about a major desktop OS launch. This one isn’t as big as a Windows or OS X launch, but still important in some way. Today marks the launch of the version of Ubuntu, 11.04.

Canonical have unveiled the beta 1 of the latest incarnation of its Linux operating system - Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). Time to take it for a test spin.

There are dark mutterings among Open Saucers against one of their more successful brethren and it highlights one of the main problems within the Open Sauce movement. Over the years, Ubuntu has slid from being the champion of Linux to the level where its name is mentioned in dark whispers.

Linux is already fast, but it's about to get a whole lot faster thanks to a new patch that's been developed. The patch, created by Linux kernel developer Mike Galbraith, is 233 lines long and tweaks the kernel scheduler and cutting down latency by a whopping factor of ten.

The Linux desktop has been around for more than a decade now. Despite its best efforts, and Microsoft's dumbest mis-steps--I'm looking at you Vista--it's never owned more than a fraction of the market. Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company plans on changing that with its Unity desktop.

The Linux Foundation has agreed to a merger deal with a consumer Linux groups. Under the deal, the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) will be absorbed into the Linux Foundation and will operate within the foundation as a working group.

Ubuntu is to make its Unity user interface the default shell with the next release of its Linux platform, in a bid to make its software as slick-looking as rivals', and to help push its adoption on tablet devices.

As an outspoken fan of Linux, I'll make no bones about where my preference lies -- and that I think the success of the Mac is mostly a matter of marketing. Whatever your own personal beliefs, though, there's no denying that there are certain things Linux clearly does better than Mac OS X. If you're trying to decide on a platform for your business, these factors are worth keeping in mind.

Gamers on Linux are used to there being a limited choice of 3D APIs. OpenGL is an excellent cross-platform solution, but a lot of development these days are on Direct3D – which is from Microsoft and obviously not on Mac OS X or Linux. Well, not on Linux until this week.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth revealed today that Ubuntu 11.04 will be codenamed Natty Narwhal. In a blog entry, he described the reasoning behind the codename and discussed some of the features that are planned for the release.

Wine, the project that lets Linux users run Windows apps within Linux, has released a major update that fixes a number of bugs and includes 64-bit support. Wine 1.2 includes a new set of icons, a number of fixes for video rendering – improving Windows gaming – and better font anti-aliasing and handling of desktop link files.

Many watchers and pundits, from big corporates, such as Novell to a million tuxhead blogs, saw the price and unpopularity of Vista as a golden opportunity for the Linux operating system to sneak in and steal a slice of the desktop market. But has Window 7 seen off any threat from open source operating systems? In other words, has Windows 7 killed Linux on the desktop?

The Linux desktop has come a long way, but are there still improvements to be made? At least one group of dedicated hackers thinks so, and is working with Ubuntu to improve it.

Tablets with the Ubuntu OS could become available late in next year's first quarter, said Chris Kenyon, Canonical's vice president of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) services. The OS will be a lightweight version of Linux with a simplified, touch-friendly user interface.

The next edition of the Ubuntu Linux distribution could come with added Google, with rumours circulating that Canonical is looking to replace Mozilla's Firefox with Google's Chrome browser.

A lack of knowledge and awareness about how to use Linux mail servers could be contributing to the disproportionately large number of Linux machines being exploited to send spam, according to new Symantec Hosted Services research.

Fusion Garage has announced the availability of its Joojoo tablet in the UK, beating the cappuccino firm's delayed Ipad launch outside the US.

Canonical has published the release candidate for Ubuntu 10.04 — codenamed Lucid Lynx — which adds consumer-friendly features, better integration with cloud infrastructure, and a new look.

Google's Android, the increasingly important embedded Linux, had one major problem: it had been moving slowly away from the Linux mainstream. Now, after the recent Linux Foundation Collaboration Conference, Android and Linux are coming back together.