If you've ever wondered how Google manages to deal with all the information thrown at it in a given second, much less an hour or day, then listen up because we now know the answer: Protocol Buffers. Even better, Google has branded them with the Apache license and turned them out into the wild.

Selling Linux is nothing new — enterprise outfits have been offering "premium" versions for years, while commercial Linux support is a gainful industry of its own. The lucre-for-Linux lineup added a new outlet yesterday, as Canonical Inc., sponsor of the wildly popular Ubuntu, announced a deal with Best Buy to sell boxed versions of the distribution in its retail stores.

The virtualization market is growing by leaps and bounds, but the market leader will be bounding forward with a new boss on board, as Diane Greene, co-founder and President/CEO of VMware was forcibly removed yesterday by majority-owner EMC.

Everybody who has worked on a public project has experienced negative feedback — indeed, there are days here at Breaking News when reading comments and email is less than joyful — but the good usually balances out the bad. Not so, it seems, for a section of the Debian community, however, as a recent survey has revealed that some developers have begun receiving death threats.

Yesterday was a dreary, rainy day — at least outside the newsroom here at Breaking News — but the meteorological presence at GNOME HQ was decidedly more pleasant, as the Foundation announced the appointment of Stormy Peters as Executive Director.

If you're the do-it-yourself sort, one who likes to pick exactly what they want and cut the fluff, then today is the day to celebrate, as Gentoo — Linux the way you see fit — has reached its first milestone for 2008.

In a stunning turnaround of a case that kept the Linux community captivated for months, Hans Reiser has confessed to strangling his wife and lead authorities to her body in exchange for a reduced sentence.

The annual linux.conf.au — Australia's Linux conference supreme — is already off to a good start for 2009, just months after the 2008 event and before the memories have had time to fade.

If you've been looking for an open and standard format for exchanging documents, search no more, as yesterday brought the official ISO approval of Adobe's Portable Document Format as an international standard.

Everyone already knows that the Firefox World Record attempt went over like Fourth of July fireworks — so much so that they blew the boxen away — but the big finish has finally arrived: Guinness has certified Download Day 2008 as a world record.

The ongoing patent battle between Trend Micro and Barracuda Networks — a case that has galvanized the Open Source community in defense of the ClamAV project — took a new turn yesterday as Barracuda filed a coutersuit against Trend Micro seeking damages for infringement of their own set of patents.

In what is being called the first out-of-the-box Open Source router, Netgear yesterday announced the immediate availability of the WFR614L Router, complete with an entirely Open Source firmware package.

There are a lot of things you want to have if you're going into the computer service business: quality tools, generous liability coverage, a basic idea of how computers work. If you're planning to open up shop in Texas, though, you'll be needing something else: a private investigator's license.

Early reports yesterday alleged that Xandros had secretly purchased Linspire, an accusation later confirmed by Xandros executives. We now have fresh details on the deal, straight from the mouth of Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros and freshly installed President of Linspire.

The latest effort to outwit the spate of sham companies extorting patent royalties is a group effort to cross the bridge before the trolls can get there.

Hewlett-Packard inched closer to matching IBM's command of the tech market yesterday with the announcement that the U.S. investigation into the company's acquisition of Electronic Data Systems has ended with a thumbs up from Uncle Sam.

A report surfaced yesterday from a minority shareholder and former Linspire exec that the company has secretly sold itself to Xandros.

If you've ever wanted your very own top-level domain — ima.geek or noobs2.pwn — it's you're lucky day, because the guardians of the internet have opened the floodgates — provided you've got the cash.

Nokia — the pulp-miller cum cellphone powerhouse — made a bold stroke for the Open Source world last week when they announced the purchase of Symbian Ltd. — then gave away its flagship product.