Fifteen months ago we exclusively showed off SplashTop from DeviceVM, which was an instant-on Linux environment embedded into ASUS motherboards and since then it has worked its way into products from other OEMs. DeviceVM continues to work on further refining SplashTop by adding in virtualization support and other features, along with a promised developer SDK. Phoenix Technologies, the company producing the BIOSes for many of the motherboards on the market, is today introducing their SplashTop competitor. HyperSpace is the Phoenix Technologies product being unveiled this morning with several distinct differences from SplashTop.

XenStreet: "A few months back I wrote a review about gOS on one of my blogs which received some raving reviews. I did not just review it, but decided to start using it as my default Linux desktop."

Chris Mason, lead developer of the copy-on-write BtrFS filesystem, has appealed for its inclusion in the Linux kernel.

Linux Magazine: "This year the challenge will be to create a one or two minute video or audio "advertisement", suitable for displaying on the web in sites such as YouTube and others, but captured, edited and otherwise produced using Free Software"

Chao-Kuei's Notes: "Please say it loudly in your blogs or emails, in as non-technical terms as possible. Then we will turn around and show your opinions to the confused governments and journalists who still believe Microsoft's claim that OOXML is an open format, and put an end to that lie."

Think of the two most popular laptops trends, namely big screens and small screens. Now put them together and what do you get? Yep, the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds with one big screen and one small screen. Is this genius or simply the maddest laptop ever?

OLPC News: "As part of a small personal project, I've been reading through the court exhibits presented in Comes V Microsoft. One of those exhibits is a chain of internal Microsoft emails discussing how to get Windows XP on the OLPC."

Bloggers took a moment to contemplate the upcoming year and what it means for open source software and Linux in particular. There were some New Year's resolutions and a few holiday gifts still floating around in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Cyber Cynic: "One of the neat things about Linux has always been that you can run it on just about anything: iPhones, xBoxes, PS3, you name it, you can run Linux on it. So, why not, the good people at DeviceVM thought, make a desktop Linux that came bundled in a PC's motherboard: Splashtop."

451 CAOS Theory: "From Freescale’s perspective, and from a Linux fan's, the future looks nice: thinner, cheaper netbooks, many of which will be based on Linux, that run as long as eight hours on a charge."

Oh, no. There goes Tokyo... Forget about using Mozilla with Wget ;) Today's post is a follow up to some questions we've received about our previously posted scripts designed to allow you to find your search index rank on Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live and Ask.com.

EeePC: "If you want to recover your Acer Aspire One netbook to its default state, Acer uploaded a disc image on its FTP server from the default Linpus Linux installation."

IT Wire: "Leah Duncan loves cheese and salami. And given that fact, the Australian Linux community is probably lucky that she didn't like the micro-organisms used in the making of such foods enough to complete a degree in Microbiology some years ago."

When I set up an OpenBSD box, I generally use CUPS — the Common Unix Printing System. But during the boot sequence for OpenBSD 4.4, the machine would take a few long minutes to load the CUPS daemon, cupsd, before displaying the login prompt. Fortunately, the fix couldn't be easier.

The Open Road: "Somehow, I missed that. Vaughan-Nichols points to HP shipping Linux, Dell shipping Linux, etc., but come on: a trickle of retail activity does not a "Year of the Linux Desktop" make."

Internet news: "The lawsuit between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Cisco may be critical in shaping the future of the open source ecosystem, according to legal experts closely watching the saga's next stages."

My impressions of the Linux operating system are coloured by memories of the first time my computer-whiz friend unveiled his sort-of-new copy of Redhat Linux to me. Upon installing it we were greeted with an unceremonious command console that might as well have been written in the ancient tongue of the long-dead tribe of Gnitth Shhta Star-God worshippers. In the ten or fifteen years since that first Linux install other operating systems have shown up, like XP and OSX, that have mostly pulled my attention away from Linux.But I’ve also heard all the reports about how Linux is different nowadays. Linux still has that indie cred that I experienced all those years ago that makes it seem just a little bit more elite than its competitors, and power-nerds everywhere seem to be cajoling me into trying it. Lucky for them I have an incredibly weak will. So I’ve decided to give in to peer pressure, light me up some Linux, and trip my way through the alternative operating system carnival in the sky.

Catonmat: "This is the third and final part of a three-part article on the famous Awk one-liners. This part will explain Awk one-liners for selective printing and deletion of certain lines."

The Linux Distillery: "Software piracy is a scourge on the world of computing. Yet it's a problem the open source community doesn't have. That makes sense; it's all freely available. But this raises the question: if it's free how do the developers make any money?"

Freescale's new i.MX515 processor is built for netbooks -- low-cost Linux netbooks, specifically. Working with organizations like Pegatron, Freescale has drawn up a reference design for OEMs that ties in its processor, Ubuntu Linux and Adobe Flash Lite to create a netbook that could retail for as low as $200.