“Activities” in Plasma Active 2 group similar content like apps and contact together, and the “Peek&Launch” bar allows you to switch to another running app. Apparently, Plasma Active 2 has a recommendation engine that learns usage patters and makes suggestions.

While this battle was ongoing, Java founder James Gosling joined and left Google. The Lindholdm email revealed some important facts and Groklaw has presented an analysis of the entire matter. In addition to those events, Google appealed to the Patent and Trademark office (PTO) to re-check Oracle Java patents. The re-examination was favorable for Google, as the PTO has rejected some of Oracle’s Java patents.

Ubuntu has released Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 1, only seven weeks into the release cycle. The version is still in alpha and is meant to be a sneak-peek into the upcoming LTS release.

Decentralized ideas are drool-worthy. However, not all of them are able to add business value to the world. I really wish one of these projects give their better counterparts a run for their money.

The final build of Linux Mint 12, which features GNOME 3 with MGSE layer on top of it, is now available for download.

The French Governement has floated a tender involving support for open-source software, and the contract is worth two million euros, operational for three years.

Linux Mint has recorded an impressive 40% increase in one month. We can easily guess that these are disgruntled Ubuntu users disappointed at the poor usability factor of Unity. The Mint team deserves credit for doing it right.

Vim turning twenty is as much of an achievement for vim as it is for its parent project vi, which turned nearly thirty-five, implicitly!

The vital files in a Linux file system are arranged across various directories and sometimes, this gets redundant. Fedora project aims to consolidate all of this into a well-defined structure.

ALAC is also known as ALE (Apple lossless encoder) and can store files with almost half the file-size of an uncompressed file. The advantage here is that the compression is lossless, so there is absolutely no loss of data during the compression.

Some people argued initially that Ubuntu was hurting the Debian project by stealing away talent pool from it. However, they realized sooner that it only complemented Debian and the growth was mutually beneficial for both these projects. Ubuntu has never looked back since.

The tool of choice for creating Ubuntu live CDs has been Unetbootin all this long. However, this time, Canonical is going with a new tool call Universal USB Installer. Universal USB Installer has been around for a long time.

We go an a visual screenshot tour of Ubuntu’s newest release, the Oneiric Ocelot.

The experience of Ubuntu 11.10 is available on the web and you can actually try it even before you download any CD or DVD image.

Ubuntu 11.10 comes with the new Linux kernel version 3.0 which has automatic defragmentation, support for new hardware and new drivers. Gnome has been upgraded to version 3.2.