After a one week delay from the scheduled release date, the Fedora Project has released the first alpha version of Fedora 16, codenamed “Verne” earlier today.

Linus Torvalds announces the release of the final stable version Linux 3.0. With the release of Linux 3.0, Torvalds has finally brought Linux out of the 2.6.x series, which had been in development for more than seven years.

Microsoft has contributed 361 changes/patches to the Linux kernel 3.0, which makes it the seventh largest contributor to the kernel and fifth largest corporate contributor. Has Microsoft turned a page? Are they embracing Linux and open source software?

VLC developer Ludovic Fauvet says that scammers are taking advantage of the availability of the VLC source code to trick users. The scammers are adding malware and adware to VLC and releasing them as the original product.

Linux Mint developers have announced that they will not base Linux Mint 11 KDE on Kubuntu. Instead, it will be based on Debian.

Ubuntu 11.10 will have a fully revamped version of Gwibber – Gwibber 3.1. While the earlier version of Gwibber was made using Python and Webkit, Gwibber 3.1 is made using Vala and GTK3.

The sixth release candidate of Linux 3.0 was supposed to be the last one. However, Torvalds has decided to have one more release candidate – Linux 3.0 rc7.

CentOS developer Karanbir Singh has announced the availability of CentOS 6.0 for download. CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System) is a Linux based operating system that is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The Indian Government has announced that open drivers are a requirement for the hardware that will be procured under the e-governance projects.

After the delay. Canonical has released the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10. Meant for development purposes, this release has a number of new features that will finally make it to the final release in October.

According to the original release schedule, Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 2 was supposed to be released on 30th June. The release date was missed and now, it has been revealed that the second alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 will be released on 7th July.

Thunderbird has replaced Evolution as the default email client in the daily build of Ubuntu 11.10

Facebook has banned a number of KDE applications from uploading photos and deleted the photos uploaded through these applications before.

Almost all the major Linux distributions are using LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. Today, it has been announced that Debian Squeeze too will get LibreOffice in the backports.

Canonical has decided that it is time for the Software Center to replace Synaptic. So, in the next daily build of Ubuntu 11.10, Synaptic will no longer be installed by default.