Yes, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has passed a budget plan which proposes the inclusion of Open Source software in areas like health care, prison and many other to bring down costs by considerable amounts.

Ubuntu Tweaks has released the version 0.5.0 of the software. Ubuntu tweaks is a revolutionary software which takes customizing Ubuntu to totally new heights. This betters our experience of using Ubuntu. It has got many new features like syncing data from the web, a better UI and lots more.

The plasma desktop effect of KDE is remarkably beautiful. It not only looks beautiful, but also has a good amount of usability. But, the interface is available by default only on the KDE desktop environment.
Here is an easy way to get the effect on Gnome along with Emerald and Gnome. The tutorial works on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

Splashtop is one of those application which makes eye-candy out of low power, low memory and small laptops, namely the netbooks. Netbooks seem to be the next big thing. We saw it with the fast paced development of netbook OS last year and now with netbooks stealing the show after smart-phones, everywhere.

Zack Whittaker will start using Ubuntu 9.10, starting Monday, the 11th at Midday London time and even better, will live blog his experience. This event if successful, can help Ubuntu reach even more of audiences who are still afraid to use it.

Mozilla Firefox, has moved up the browser market and has set up many new records. It has taken huge market shares from Internet Explorer and the ending of 2009 has been breathtakingly profitable for the browser.

Mozilla Firefox has organized a Firefox Home Tab design Challenge under the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge series. The contest is an attempt to design a Home Tab for Firefox with maximum usability.

The Ubuntu manual is a project with a complete guide on using Ubuntu from scratch, HowTo articles and comprehensive guides. The manual is written and maintained by the Ubuntu Manual Team. This project aims at providing a professional help system to advanced users and at the same time, keep it easy to use for beginners.

Did you all know, Avatar used graphics designed by a four time Academy Award winning visual effects facility based at New Zealand. It has done graphics for X-Men, did it for I Robot and now, it has also done it for Avatar.

The folks at lesswatts.org have devised a number of ways to save power with Linux. The results have been obtained from continued stress-testing on all mobile, desktop and server machines and have been favorable so far.

MySQL fans from around the world have joined forces to save the project from going into the hands of database giant Oracle, which is set out to buy Sun Microsystems.

Lenovo has launched its Skylight smartbook which uses Linux as the default OS. The laptop like mobile device has a 10″ screen and in built features like 3G, 20 GB of flash storage and 10 hours of battery life on a single charge.

Linux Mint has organized a Wallpaper Challenge through its podcast, episode 28 at mintcast.org. The prizes on offer are an IBM R51 for the first prize and IBM R40 for the second prize. Both the laptops will come with Linux Mint pre-installed.

Linux has been around for really long time now, but the way Linux advanced in the last few years has been remarkable. Over the last decade, Linux has reached a stage that it can successfully challenge Windows in terms of ease of use and features.

BrowserLinux has a browser based interface and also lets you use your desktop storage optionally. This combines best features of Google Chrome and Puppy Linux.