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As the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) kicks into high gear, the hopes, dreams and plans for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 release are taking shape. Over at Ars Technica, Ryan Paul reports on Canonical developer Michael Casadevall's presentation highlighting some of the technical nuances of making Android applications run on Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Ubuntu's popularity aside, it is still esoteric -- Google has the upperhand in non-open source enthusiast name recognition. This no doubt plays into netbook manufacturer's opting for Android on netbooks, even though (as Paul states) Android is still very much a smartphone platform. Android can be modified, of course, but Ubuntu (or any Linux distribution) are already lightweight desktops potentially requiring fewer modifications to work well on netbooks.

Will adding Android compatibility make Remix a more attractive platform option? Can it really hurt?

Sprint needs a hit. Sprint, the beleaguered mobile carrier, announced that it will start selling HTC Hero, a touchscreen phone based on Google?s Android OS, on Oct. 11th for $179.

Google Android: Is the party over? It's open source, hardware-agnostic, and developer-friendly, but why are developers unhappy?

Which licence is best: EPL, GPL or BSD? Open source pundits recently held a smackdown debating the merits of various open source licenses, and here were the highlights.

Useful Ubuntu links. After helping a friend switch to Ubuntu, a veteran compiles a list of helpful sites to know about.

Red Hat CEO: Choose flexibility or Larry Ellison. At Red Hat Summit, CEO Jim Whitehurst took on Oracle's inflexibility as his company launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4.

Missing: Dell Ubuntu desktop PCs. The VAR Guy explores whether Dell has stopped selling Ubuntu desktop computers.

Open source Hive: Large-scale, distributed data processing made easy. Hive is a data analysis and query front end for Hadoop that makes Hadoop data files look like SQL tables.

Microsoft opened Linux-driver code after violating GPL. Did it act simply to head off any potentially embarrassing legal disputes over violations?

SpringSource and MindTouch seek to redefine the application server. Spurred by economic pressures on IT departments, new breeds of app servers are taking shape.

The tech jobs that the cloud will eliminate. IT pros face new competition for their jobs from cloud services. Which jobs go, and which become more valuable?

Hadoop and MapReduce are cheap and scalable for clustered queries, but they're slower than relational databases. Yale researchers have an improvement.

The Ubuntu Linux app store: fact or fiction? The emerging app store, which offers Ubuntu Linux and Debian applications, wasn?t built by Canonical.

Linux slips into Microsoft's warm, deadly embrace. How Microsoft will use the GPL to mount a serious backdoor assault on the core of the Linux platform.

Is Microsoft's GPL2 support really a big deal? It's recently released code is only for Linux Virtual Machines on Windows, not physical Linux servers and Linux desktops.

Red Hat is wrong to insist Microsoft disavow litigation. Did IBM, HP, Oracle, or even Red Hat ever declare that they will never, ever sue open source developers over patent infringements?

Palm's Linux secret makes the Pre. Palm Pre is no thriller as a smartphone, but the SDK reveals the most open mobile platform on the market.