A competition to design the new 5 euro commemorative coin, set by the Dutch Ministry of Finance, has been won by Stani Michiels, the Belgian artist and free software developer. His winning design, developed entirely with free software, has now been realized and is a legal coin in Holland.

A whole week of success stories for Linux and Open Source, while Microsoft is battling the press, thus the summary from Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. Even the New York Times sees a good positioning for Linux on desktops.

The OpenBSD project has released version 4.4 of the free Unix derivative. New in this version are drivers for Intel and AMD chips, and support for platforms such as UltraSparc IV/ T1/ T2 and Fujitsu SPASRC64-V/ VI/ VIII.

The free wiki project TWiki is currently embroiled in a contentious dialogue. The TWIKI.NET venture is undergoing a new governance model that many developers consider a hostile takeover. Without further ado, developers have decided to launch their own, separate NextWiki.org project.

Developers of the Gnu Image Manipulation Program Gimp have released the second bug fix for the Gimp 2.6.

Intrepid Ibex, the codename for Ubuntu 8.10, has today finally reached the pinnacle, without hesitation. Although the new version of the popular Linux distribution hasn't won any new altitude records, it still brings along a number of interesting features to make life easier for users and
administrators. High among these features are some rejuvenated programs.

After much advance notice and successful pilot projects it is now official: From 2009, Russia will provide its high and primary schools with Linux software. Around 1500 schools will be converted this year.

Norwegian provider Opera Software is releasing almost weekly security updates for its Opera browser. Version 9.62 is to address what the company deems two of its most critical security problems.

HP is now entering the second round of the Netbook match. As advertized, Atom instead of VIA, slimmer, more affordable and most importantly, available with Linux.