If Google were to use Qt, things would be much simpler and Chrome would have a unified interface under Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. But Google isn't satisfied with Qt.

In October 2007 IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Novell and Red Hat for violation of certain virtual desktop patents. Red Hat is now asking the community for help to invalidate it.

Aimed at experienced users, the new version 2009.02 of Arch Linux comes with the new Ext4 data system and a re-worked installer.

Brazil's municipal schools should be getting more than 350,000 power-saving thin clients for their students.

FBReaderJ, a GPL program for e-book display on the Android mobile platform, is now available in version 0.3.0.

Under the auspices of the Open Screen Project, mobile vendor Nokia and software maker Adobe are providing a $10 million fund to help developers create mobile Flash applications. The underlying software will become free at least to some extent, according to Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.

Last week Novell announced a layoff of almost 100 employees "in response to the global economic downturn," without any further details. New information now brings into question the software house's commitment to openSUSE.

The deal is closed: Debian 5.0, code-named Lenny, is officially available.