So unreal the name, so real the news: Epic Games is providing its Unreal Engine 3 free to developers. It isn't open source, but game developers can implement it for noncommercial games and applications.

The Scientific Linux distro, which derives from the freely licensed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), is now available in version 5.4.

The current discussion in the Ubuntu forums is about a possible security hole in GNOME, specifically about GNOME registered users having their passwords appear as cleartext on the keyring. Not a bug, say its defenders, but the security concept behind the GNOME keyring.

Mobile specialist Palm strengthens its team by hiring Matthew Tippett, the Linux graphic driver developer since 2003 at ATI, to be in charge of Linux kernel development.

The Linux-Kongress is traditionally where kernel developers exchange honors and advice about new features and enhancements. This year a number of speakers presented performance improvement data and discussed what aspects of Linux can be drawn out even more.

Not long after the release of GNOME 2.8 comes a new version of NScripts. Included are a handful of new ease-of-use functions for GNOME's Nautilus data manager.

In a new FAQ, Oracle explains their position regarding SPARC, Solaris, Java, MySQL, and Open Office to clear up the many questions circulating.

Since July there has been much speculation about the arrival date of the new version of X.org. Now, X.Org 7.5 with multi-pointer support, has been officially released.