Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth has blogged about the next Ubuntu LTS release, 10.04. Most interestingly, he has called upon Red Hat, Novell and Debian to collaborate on a co-ordinated release date -- thereby giving the distros a very similar (or identical) set of software. This would certainly help in terms of support and using cross-distro packages, but would it also hinder innovation?

Here's a fascinating article looking at how OpenOffice.org stacks up against the Moore's Law of hard drives. Kryder's Law, a variation of Moore's Law, explains the trend that "magnetic disk areal storage density doubles annually". Just how fast is OOo growing in comparison to hard drive sizes? Click the link to find out.

...and as usual, it's chock full of the very latest apps and features. Most notably: Gnome 2.22, KDE 4.0.3, the PackageKit package manager, Upstart boot scripts, Ext4 filesystem and Firefox 3 beta. See this page for screenshots, and here to grab a copy (or get it on an upcoming LXF DVD).

After 14 years of development, the Wine project has finally made a release candidate available. From here, towards the full 1.0 release, only bugfixes will be added to the code -- no new features. If all goes well, we can expect to see 1.0 sometime in June.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) server system (i386). You can find all the software used here in the Ubuntu repositories, so no external files (apart from a fixed Ubuntu Xen kernel to enable networking for the virtual machines) or compilation are needed.

ReiserFS filesystem creator Hans Reiser has been found guilty of the murder of Nina Reiser, his estranged wife. Nina disappeared in September 2006 - but a body was never found, leading to speculation that she had moved back to Russia.

Yes, the Hardy Heron is here! This is the new Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, and is possibly the most eagerly anticipated distro of all time. Read on for our hands-on look at the new features, with screenshots galore...

In 2003, Red Hat halted its regular Linux distro in favour of RHEL and Fedora. To some users, this was a sign that Red Hat had given up on the desktop market. But now the company has announced Red Hat Global Desktop, a distro "designed exclusively for small, reseller supplied, deployments in emerging markets (e.g. primarily the BRIC countries)".

A freshly baked kernel is cooling on the Linux windowsill: see Torvalds's announcement, and this page for a comprehensive list of new features. If you're feeling particularly daring, you can download the source code from kernel.org and build it!

A new version of the newbie-friendly Mandriva distro is available, featuring a new media centre, audomatic codec installation, Eee PC support, better parental control options, and KDE 4.0.2 in the package repositories. You can buy a boxed set online, or download from here.

This opinion piece on Newsvine states so, arguing that developers can't be forced to work on something if they're not passionate about it. The article also points out that competition is a good thing, and leads to innovations in all the desktop environments. Has the author got this spot-on, or is he looking at the situation through rose-tinted specs?

Here's a comprehensive set of 3DMark tests pitting CrossOver Games against Wine. Like Cedega, CrossOver Games is a commercial version of Wine tailored for entertainment software, and supports many popular titles including World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted a status update for the Linux Driver Project, which aims to improve hardware support in Linux. From the update: "The Linux Driver Project (LDP) is alive and well, with over 300 developers wanting to participate, many drivers already written and accepted into the Linux kernel tree, and many more being currently developed."

Starting in September, 9000 PCs currently dual-booting Ubuntu Linux and Windows will shift full-time to Linux, according to this story. One of the advantages touted is that students will be able to use the same software at home as they do at school, which "strengthens equality of opportunity".

Deep breath: a new version of the GNUstep Live CD is available; Slackware 12.1 is on the way; Gentoo Linux 2008.0 beta 1 has been released; betas of Firefox 3 are coming in thick and fast; and the Qt 4.4 release candidate is ready.