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The Linux Foundation announced a trio of FOSS community members have been elected to its Technical Advisory Board (TAB), joining seven seven existing members whose job it is to collaborate on with the Foundation on issues of concern to the Linux community. Also re-elected for another term are Linux kernel developer John Corbet and Novell's Greg Kroah-Hartman.

Rounding out the rest of the TAB:

The Linux Foundation rolls out some new member benefits this week, along with a membership classification just for students. Though there were already a ton of cool membership perks to begin wtih, new access to employee purchase pricing on products from HP, Dell, and Lenovo is a really terrific addition to the list.

A $99 annual membership to the Linux Foundation has always included a personal Linux.com email address, but now current members have the option of keeping their address for life with an additional one-time fee of $150. New members who want this option will pay $249 upfront and $99 per year after that.

Poor Linus Torvalds. All that kernel work and what does he get in return? Four random people running around the Internet impersonating him for nearly a month. In attempts to throw people off the track, the Fake Linus Torvaldses (Torvaldii?) used Twitter and identi.ca to talk about everything from recoding the Linux kernel in Ruby to tattoo removal. Some bloggers even attempted to find out which people were behind the masks by peppering the FLTs with questions designed to draw out their true identities.

LinuxCon got underway today and shortly after the real Linus Torvalds concluded a panel on the Linux kernel, the impostors were revealed. Event organizers also announced which FLT garnered the most votes for crowd favorite.

And the winner is:

When someone regularly attracts the kind of media coverage that Linus Torvalds gets when he so much as blinks, you start to think you know everything about a person. If you've been following Linus on Twitter lately -- okay, the fake Linus -- then you've probably learned more about him in the last three weeks then you ever wanted to know.

I, however, had a few lingering questions burning a hole in my cerebral cortex so I caught up with Linus via email to ask what I wanted to know. Since the voting for everyone's favorite FakeLinusTorvalds is over and LinuxCon is right around the corner, I'm told these answers were provided by FLT #4... or were they?

You be the judge.

If you've been paying attention on Twitter and Identi.ca, lately then you've no doubt had a few laughs over the hilarious and sometimes slightly (okay, really) offbeat status updates from FakeLinusTorvalds. As Kristin wrote recently, four different people have gone incognito to impersonate the real Linus Torvalds -- with his blessing, of course -- to poke some good natured fun at one of the community's most respected people.

Now it's time to decide who has done the best masquerade job before their true identities are revealed at LinuxCon later this month. Voting starts today so get ready to cast yours here and help decide who gets to take home a Silver Penguin Award. You'll even get a chance to win free admission to the conference just by voting for your favorite FLT.

The Linux Foundation (LF) announced today it has chosen technology expert Axel Petrak to be the new Director of Europe, Middle East and Africa. His responsibilities include working with businesses and the Linux community to coordinate workshops, technical workgroups, and events that will further increase the adoption of open source in Europe.

As the number of government and educational systems using open source technology increases around the globe, it makes good sense for the Foundation to designate a go-to person for regional activities overseas. Petrak brings 25 years of IT experience to the table, including 13 years spent in various senior management positions at Intel GmbH in Germany.

The Linux Foundation has added another member to the fold. mimio, creator of the only interactive teaching platform available for Linux, joined the foundation and plans to use popular tools such as the 'App Checker' to ease code development as it makes Linux applications more portable than ever before. Having educational software and appliance vendors on the membership roster of the Linux Foundation is a terrific way to reinforce that open source technology is indeed compatible with the needs of educators and learning institutions.

The Linux Foundation announced this week that all major Linux distributions are now in compliance with the federal mandate by U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) that helps ensure the world won't run out of Internet addresses anytime soon.

Last month, the open source community was buzzing over a report released by the Linux Foundation that placed the value of the Linux ecosystem at around $25 billion. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, we caught up with Amanda McPherson, the foundation's VP of marketing & developer programs, to get her thoughts on the study, what the results mean for the community, and what the take-away message ought to be.

Last month, the open source community was buzzing over a report released by the Linux Foundation that placed the value of the Linux ecosystem at around $25 billion. Now that the dust has settled somewhat, we caught up with Amanda McPherson, the foundation's VP of marketing & developer programs, to get her thoughts on the study, what the results mean for the community, and what the take-away message ought to be.