Canonical has released its third alpha version of Ubuntu 9.04. It brings a few new features to test, including notification settings in the user interface and the much publicized ext4 filesystem support.

Google will close the microblog project Jaiku and publish the source code under an Apache license.

Since its addition to Kernel 2.6.28, the ext4 filesystem can be manually installed in the upcoming Ubuntu release.

Linux kernel developer Jonathan Corbet has just previewed the features of the upcoming Linux Kernel 2.6.29 that includes Btrfs, which he claims is the filesystem of the future.

The Apache Project announced the latest version of Commons Digester, which comes with less dependency and can validate XML code. Programmers use Digester to convert data from XML into Java objects.

Retro, the free implementation of a minimalist dialect of Forth, is now available in version 10.0.

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

Dan Kaminsky, front man of the DNS attacks band the middle of 2008, has delivered a retrospective at the 25th annual Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) on the background and process of DNS vulnerability. But he also set his sights on the future. And outside-the-box thinker Dan J. Bernstein also had a thing or two to say.

Linus Torvalds has kept his promise and released Kernel 2.6.28 right at the Holidays. The little present shows some doings since Release Candidate 9, especially in the DVB-T area and for PCI hotplug devices.

The free virtualization product VirtualBox has released a new version 2.1 that not only supports 3D graphics, but the full VMDK and VHD formats from VMware and Microsoft.