Can I vent here for a moment about well meaning, but clearly out-of-the-loop, friends that seem to think everything on the Internet, especially when it comes to safety, is a real situation that needs our attention and should be sent to every mailing list they are on?

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A few months ago I started sensing the need for a replacement for my aging and ailing HP Omnibook 4150. That machine's audio capabilities were negligible even with external hardware, but it had been serviceable for writing articles and as a portable MIDI composition environment. Alas, after years of travel and abuse the Omnibook's hard drive gasped its last breath of life. I had no fear for my data, the drive had been backed up, but clearly the time had come to buy a new portable computer.

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At long last, Atheros has opened up the last binary barriers to making completely open-source, Linux-friendly drivers for its popular Wi-Fi chipsets.

Well, the holiday season is upon us once again, and that means it's the beginning of what, for many geeks, is a time of unnatural, enforced, repeated and prolonged socialization. Yes, it can be an uncomfortable time for those of us who aren't perky, extroverted cheerleader-types, and we here at LinuxInsider are no exception. So it was with great relief that we came across a few posts in the blogosphere that promised some welcome, Linux-inspired distraction. Another group photo? Sure, we'll be right there! Ha.

Making labels for DVDs and their cases is an often overlooked task. Many discs are lucky to have some terse information quickly scrawled on them after burning. But there are some fine open source applications available for creating labels for CD-ROM and DVD disks and printing jewel case inserts, including gLabels, kover, and cdlabelgen.

Just imagine that. Google taking the smartphone war directly into Apple territory. Sure, most people would not care about this, but if Google does this—and most probably not even Google directly, but someone else using Android's codebase—it would really make things interesting.

If, like me, the default black background of the GRUB menu looks boring to you or if you would like to change the default backdrop to something of your choice, like your girlfriend’s photo for example, then follow along!

Typeanalyzer says Linux Journal is one of The Guardians. That is,

The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done.

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If you’re new to Linux, a few common mistakes are likely to get you into trouble. Learn about them up front so you can avoid major problems as you become increasingly Linux-savvy.

In January, James Whitehurst became president and CEO of Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat. The 41-year-old came to the software company, which sells and services the Linux open source computer operating system, from Delta Air Lines, where he was chief operating officer and had worked on, among other projects, development of the discount travel Web site Orbitz. At Red Hat, Whitehurst, a native of Atlanta and 1989 graduate of Rice University, will be part of a collaboration between the company and IBM to develop a personal computer that doesn't rely on Microsoft software.

This was a good week for distro releases—Fedora 10 finally landed and Ubuntu 9.04 reached alpha status. It was also a busy week for SCO. The dying UNIX vendor received and then appealed the final judgment in its dispute with Novell.

Yesterday, November 27th, the Ubuntu developers discovered yet another security issue (actually, more than one) in the Linux kernel packages. These vulnerabilities affect the following Ubuntu distributions: 6.06 LTS, 7.10, 8.04 LTS and 8.10 (also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu).

It seems that Sun being prepared to talk the talk about OpenJDK had a far greater effect than walking the walk. But for all of that, opening up Java was the right move, and I'm excited to see what inroads the OpenJDK will have made in another two years from now.

The battle of the operating systems is intensifying in Nepal, and it looks like free open source software like Linux is emerging as a viable alternative to commercial software. People usually are only too happy to grab anything labeled "free," but free and open source software was finding it difficult to make much headway against the commercial giants. Ironically, it was the fact that pirated Windows operating systems are cheap and sometimes come free with the hardware that made it difficult for FOSS to have a following.

This guide shows how you can use CrossOver Linux Pro 7.1.0 to run Windows applications on Ubuntu 8.10. CrossOver is based on Wine. It is not available for free, but maybe you are one of the lucky guys that grabbed a CrossOver copy for free a few days ago; otherwise you can install a 30-day trial version to test it.