Getting proprietary vendors to provide Linux drivers for their products has not traditionally been an easy process — indeed, that may be the understatement of the year. Convincing them to release Open Source drivers has proven even more difficult. (Read: Near impossible.) It's a day to celebrate, though, at least for Atheros users, as the company has just released a completely free wireless driver for its WLAN chipsets.

Six months ago, security expert Dan Kaminsky stumbled upon a flaw so serious and widespread that it could bring the entire internet crashing down — at least for those on the wrong side of the bug.

Predicting the release date of a new stable version of Debian — which eschews a set release schedule in order to bring about a release when it is ready for release — is a task composed of a lot of perception, at least a little participation, and a bit of psychic prediction. It seems the crystal ball has once again been uncovered, as the Debian Release Team has announced a full freeze on the lenny testing branch as a precursor to a full release in September.

Eddie Davidson, the 35-year-old man sent to prison in April for mass spamming, escaped from a minimum-security federal prison in Colorado on the 20th by forcing his visiting wife into their car and speeding off before authorities could respond. U.S. Marshals, assisted by the FBI, Colorado authorities, and — for unexplained reasons — the IRS, have been searching for him for the past five days, a search that has tragically ended with the discovery of his suicide, along with the murder of his wife and child.

Whether you call them "ultra-portables," "netbooks," or "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Computinis," it can't be denied that the low-cost, lightweight, Linux laptop has taken the technology world by storm. Conspicuously absent, however — perhaps excepting the somewhat ill-fated gPC — is a lightweight desktop for those who live online — until now, that is.

Nobody can deny that in computing, security is important. One of the most popular tools for Linux security — indeed, the Readers Choice winner for favorite security/system admin tool four years running — is SSH, and among the most popular implementations is OpenSSH. As of Monday, there is even more to love, as OpenSSH released version 5.1.

No matter what you think of them, software patents can be troublesome things. The Open Source community has certainly had its patent tribulations, and even companies that depend on their own patents to build the bottom line have run afoul of the patent police on more occasions than they want to remember. That may be a thing of the past, however, as new decisions out of the Patent and Trademark Office seem poised to send software patents packing once and for all.

Listen up Open Sourcers: You're slackers! That's the latest word from Fortify Software, the result of a study by the security-software vendor into the security of Open Source Software, an undertaking aimed at "informing" enterprise users of the "risks" associated with the Wild West of non-proprietary software.

Do you love content management? Really love it? Is your favorite CMS all you can think about? If so, then get ready, because the 2008 Open Source CMS Award race is out of the gate and headed for the backstretch.

The big story, at least in security, last week was the plight of San Francisco city workers who were frantically trying to regain access to the city's network after the only network admin with access refused to reveal his passwords and was jailed. With the dust beginning to settle, the picture is starting to clear up a bit.

Linus Torvalds — founder, creator, and general master of all things Linux — is not exactly known for being bashful or slow to share his thoughts. To quote the man himself: "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise." This week, though, he's gotten an extra share of attention.

Long-suffering market second-spotter AMD hasn't been having a particularly good — well, let's say "stretch" — lately, and things haven't gotten any better this week, as two divisions and a top executive collected their cards yesterday just as the European Commission leaned on arch-rival Intel for anticompetitive activities.

Google's Android platform for mobile phones — one of the hottest mobile Linux offerings in the work — suffered what appears to be a major setback Monday, after Google's Developer Advocate blew the lid off the internal Android secret stash a la the Eli Lily legal team.

The epic battle between the Open Source world — represented by Novell — and evil proprietary patent trolls — played by SCO — has finally played out, at least partly, as Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah has released his decision in SCO v. Novell — and it's not a happy message for our beloved friends at SCO.

A study by researchers at the University of Arizona has revealed that taking over the world — or at least a whole lot of computers — may be easier than we think, using nothing but a server and a simple software repository.

The Software Freedom Law Center — which at this point is quickly becoming the law firm of BusyBox, BusyBox, and GPL — is on the case again, having filed two more GPL-violation lawsuits on behalf of the developers of BusyBox, this time against Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer.

As many loyal readers will know, the brilliant-but-before-its-time BeOS operating system is near and dear to our hearts here at LinuxJournal.com. This being the case, we were overjoyed to learn that a new Ubuntu derivative labeled PC/OS is bringing back echoes of those bygone, halcyon days of BeOS glory.

Just over a month ago, we brought you the news that Red Hat had washed its hands of long-term patent litigation with Firestar Software over object-oriented software and relational databases. We now learn the deal came just a month too early, as last week the Patent and Trademark Office invalidated the patent in question — the result of a "brother-in-arms" effort by Red Hat competitor Sun Microsystems.

If you like to be on the cutting edge, to have the very latest release of everything, then get ready, because Version 2.6.26 of the Linux kernel has just come down the pipe.