Despite personal beliefs, everybody treads a bit more carefully on Friday the 13th. But no amount of precaution could protect the Open Source community from the wave of bad luck that fell last Friday. Oracle finally lived up to the fears many have been afraid to speak.

After several delays and many months behind schedule, Debian 6.0 appears to be one step closer to release. As of August 6, the testing branch is now frozen except for fixes and translation updates. This puts Final on track to possibly be released by the end of the year.

In an early morning announcement, LinuxCon kicked off with an introduction from Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the The Linux Foundation, to the newest member of the Linux Foundation Board, Rob Chandhok of Qualcomm. Qualcomm joins companies like IBM, Intel, NEC and Oracle as a platinum level sponsor of the foundation.

In the tradition of Nimblex and SUSE Studio comes an alternative for those who prefer Debian. Debian Live Studio allows users to build their own Debian Live system with just a few mouse clicks.

In a country where the legal system is based on precedents, a judge's recent decision just may make the use of Linux a whole lot easier.

On August 3 Nexenta hosted a conference call to announce a new open source project called "Illumos." Illumos is an open source alternative to a critical part of the OpenSolaris distribution free from the binds of Oracle.

The old "Ubuntu doesn't contribute back" argument cropped up again when Dave Neary released a report of the talk he gave at GUADEC on the contributions made to the GNOME desktop environment. He found that Red Hat and Novell contributed the most, and that Ubuntu and Mandriva (primarily a KDE distribution) were among the lowest.

There was a time when Linux was notorious for having what was called "fugly" fonts. Things improved a bit over the years, but thanks to expiring patents things are about to get even better.

OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 was released on June 4 and a new master workspace was branched off for the upcoming 3.3 on June 5. The code in this branch will be stabilized and later become the product release that will find its way onto your desktops.

On July 22 a $35 (or 1500 INR) hand-held Linux computing device was unveiled by Shri Kapil Sibal, the Union Minister for Human Resource Development of India. The goal of the project is to lower the price to around $20 in time and eventually reaching the amazing price of $10.

When Oracle began the acquisition of Sun, few doubted that MySQL was the main asset of interest. With MySQL still breathing six months later, users hoped Sun's other projects would survive as well. But despite Oracle's early claims and intermittent assurances that OpenSolaris would remain open source software, very little else has been said.

Spotify is a streaming music service that previously was only available to Windows and Mac users. Spotify offered a way for music lovers to enjoy their favorite tunes on their computers and gadgets legally. But Linux users were left out in the cold... until July 12.

Mandriva S.A. issued a press release to announce the restructuring of its core business organization. While specifics were still not given, the main message did come through: Mandriva will survive, in some fashion, for a while anyway.

openSUSE 11.0 was originally slated for "end of life" on June 15. But due to the requests from users, the SUSE Security and Maintenance Team has decided to extend the maintenance period until 11.3 is released to the public - avoiding the 26 day gap in security coverage.

After a long and anxious month of delays, Mandriva finally released their 2010.1 Spring update with lots of goodies for all. In related news, PCLinuxos, a derivative of Mandriva, released what they've dubbed their Quarterly ISO updates in several flavors. Mandriva 2010.1 Spring

Compiz is a compositing window manager that enables users to enjoy clever desktop effects and transparency. Compiz is included in many distributions' default installs and in many others' repositories. At one time its future was in question with new major desktop environments planning to incorporate their own effects.

Two popular Linux distributions recently released new developmental versions on the road to their finals. One is early in its cycle and the other is about to cross the finish line.

Previously OpenOffice.org used Sun's Java Media Framework to play back audio and video in documents. It seemed to work well for a while, but as time went on Java became more outdated. So, developers have decided to implement the widely used GStreamer framework.

Many Linux projects use Debian Linux as their code base for developing their distributions. Perhaps as many as 120 distributions are based on Debian and some include SimplyMepis, sidux, KNOPPIX, Elive, and Parsix. Perhaps the most widely known and used is Ubuntu. Ubuntu receives negative comments because many feel its developers don't contribute back upstream.

It was over six weeks ago that rumors, later confirmed as true, circulated stating that Mandriva's financial situation was so dire that it was considering buy-out offers to try to avoid having to close its doors. This news struck many Mandriva users and developers hard and all held their breath waiting for further news and the release of Mandriva Spring 2010.1.