Many small businesses have avoided Linux for a variety of reasons: not enough applications, complexity of installation or that it requires too much technical know-how to run. The technology has matured over many years, which raises the question: how valid are these considerations today?

Today’s Linux is leaps and bounds ahead of yesterday’s. It is absolutely amazing to see how far Linux has come in 10, 5, and even 1 year ago. It is now a full featured lock and load desktop operating system that easily rivals windows. Now if we could only remove the fear factor that I discussed earlier get people to see the light.

Sabayon Linux is a relatively new distribution that is known for its looks with the inclusion of AIGLX, XGL, and Beryl. After the recent release of Sabayon Linux 3.2, the Mini Edition of the 3.2 branch has now been updated. Updates include newer ATI and NVIDIA proprietary display drivers, full NTFS read/write support out-of-the-box, and many other package updates and changes. It also looks very nice from the desktop side with its LiveCD. The Screenshots.

Okay, when you accidentally type
rm LoveLetterFromJane.txt
Your file are gone, can’t resume it at trash, there are no trash, the document are important to you! Oh My God!! you smack your box!

Recently there has been a lot of discussion bubbling up regarding the possibility that Ubuntu will ship proprietary 3D drivers by default for some video cards. My aim here is not to discuss the specifics of that decision, which is still being fleshed out and ratified, but to instead define my views on the bigger picture behind the discussion - features vs. freedom.

This week in DistroWatch Weekly:

• Feature: Distributions in 2006

• News: Fedora revamps RPM, KNOPPIX 5.1, Debian release update, Arch Linux Office Install CD, Dreamlinux interview
• Released last week: SabayonLinux 3.2 "miniEdition", VectorLinux 5.8
• Upcoming releases: Pardus Linux 2007, K12LTSP Linux 6.0
• New distributions: Kuliax
  
• Reader comments

Read more in this year's final issue of DistroWatch Weekly....

Mozilla, the developer of the free Thunderbird e-mail client, has taken a good program and made it better with the release of the version 2.0 beta 1. It is rare that a beta release is not buggy, clunky, and generally a mess -- especially when, as word has it, the developers are changing the code base -- but I was pleasantly surprised by its stability and the dearth of issues.

SuperTux 0.3.0 has been out for hours now. What are you waiting for? Debian (unstable) and Ubuntu (Dapper or Edgy) users:

Linux is better at locking down a computer than Windows. The Linux OS uses configuration settings and user permissions to a much more efficient degree than the Windows administrator account.

The amount of venture capital funding invested in the Linux and open source-related vendors tracked by Computer Business Review rose 131% in 2006, vastly outpacing the IT market as a whole.

Brent Northcutt is something of a ghost in the machine. As a system programmer for I-Land, the 32-year-old Warrensburg resident works his magic in languages with names such as PHP, Perl, and C++. A dedicated adherent to what is known in the virtual realm as the open source movement, Mr. Northcutt is most at home in the Unix-based Linux operating system.

I am planning on changing the world with this article. I can’t do it on my own: I need your help. Despite what people say, Linux does not have a significant slice just yet. By “significant slice”, here I mean 20% to 30%. We are nowhere near it, in fact.

Lots of companies sell Linux servers, but how many promise 99.999% uptime? Not very many, but Stratus Technologies sells systems that offer the kind of fault tolerance that will handle mission-critical applications and leave admins with peace of mind. I had a chance to test out one of the company's ftServer 4300 systems, and it's an impressive system.

Ever wonder why Linux company Red Hat is called that? In an interview with Red Hat Magazine, co-founder BobYoung said that the red hat has long been a symbol of freedom, with revolutionaries in both America and France donning red caps during their uprisings.

• Install Mplayer in Ubuntu

• Compiling RPM From Source RPMs
• Install and Configure Apache2 with PHP5 and SSL Support in Debian Etch
• Basics for the command line - for newbies

Opera 9.10 has been officially released this morning. Having appeared on mirrors several days ago, this release was announced just this morning. This update brings some important bug fixes such as no more crashes with Flash 9, smooth scrolling fixed, and fixes to the Fraud Protection feature.

Also: Install Opera Web Browser in Ubuntu

Consider this scenario... Your machine running GNU/Linux has been penetrated by a hacker without your knowledge and he has swapped the passwd program which you use to change the user password with one of his own. His passwd program has the same name as the real passwd program and works flawlessly in all respects except for the fact that it will also gather data residing on your machine such as the user details each time it is run and transmit it to a remote location or it will open a back door for outsiders by providing easy root access and all the time, you will be impervious about its actions. This is an example of your machine getting rooted.

It was a year full of transitions and surprises, and the next year looks likely to bring more of the same. Here's a look at some of eWEEK's most interesting stories from 2006.

As you might have guessed this is going to be a brazen and shameless plug for the command line. I write it to throw in my tuppence-worth after my own Linux experiences. I am also concerned about a new generation of users coming to GNU/Linux without a proper understanding of the underlying reasons for its superiority over Windows but this not a blow by blow comparison.

Meet Snakebite. Now, you may not have heard of this "Snakebite" game for Linux. That's because it isn't a stand-alone game. Instead, it's a set of custom levels made for the classic game "Rocks n Diamonds". But, as you see from the screenshots, this is nothing like our old friend from Artsoft: