OStatic

On Tuesday, at approximately 10 am Eastern (US), the Fedora Project will make its Fedora 10 ( Cambridge ) final release available for general download.

This release has focused on delivering a number of improvements, including faster booting, smoother start up of the graphical server, ad hoc network sharing, remote virtual installs, and easier installation of GStreamer codecs from third party sources.

Most people who attend an open source conference typically walk away with t-shirts, stickers and other accessories branded with the logo of their favorite distro or open source project. If you don't go to those events, you can still buy cool stuff to show your support or to give as gifts this holiday season.

Here are some Web sites to check out:

PCWorld reports that the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Group has confirmed that Amazon will have XO laptops for sale on Monday, November 17th. The XO laptops at Amazon are sold in the same manner as they were initially at the OLPC site, with a $400 donation securing a laptop for the customer, and a laptop for a child in a developing country. This donation (or at least the portion used to purchase the laptop for the child) is tax deductible.

OLPC's vice president of software engineering, Jim Gettys, said that the XO laptops sold through Amazon will be Linux based (though some countries are opting for Windows versions), and that there is some talk of selling the XO through Amazon in other countries.

These are good times for Linux users. Ubuntu's 8.10 release recently went live, Fedora's 10 release is coming up in mere weeks, and openSUSE will finalize its 11.1 offering in December. Even if none of these distributions are your first choice for daily use, they are popular and are frequently worth checking out on liveCD, even if you plan to continue using your current distribution.

This is where I admit I've been remiss. Taste aversion is a funny thing, and a few previous experiences with Fedora left a funny taste in my mouth. I have not seriously sat and looked at a Fedora release since FC2. As Fedora's new release started to take shape, I was hearing a lot of positive things -- comments about how good it looked, and how fast and solid it was. It seemed the right time to overcome the mental block I'd developed, and see what the fuss was about.

Last Thursday, the OLPC Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the availability of the Fedora Sugar Spin LiveCD. This release incorporates the Sugar Desktop Environment in to a Fedora liveCD.

It's an easy way to try out the Sugar environment and associated applications without touching your existing system.