With the large number of projects included in most distributions, there is always a question of who to best donate money to. At present, there is a nifty discussion on Slashdot on this very topic.

A donation to Richard Stallman’s GNU Project would be a worthy cause, without any doubt. Love him or hate him, his contribution cannot be underestimated.

Details are available at help net security.

It looks like you’ll be okay if you’re already running the 2.6.22.7 kernel. Mandriva users can run MandrivaUpdate or urpmi to automatically update.

According to vnunet despite a 22.6% growth in market share, revenue was a paltry $5.42m in Q1 of 2008.

Unfortunately, with easy access to pirate copies of windows available in China a good number of Linux installations will likely be replaced.

In case you missed the news Both Redhat and Suse released updates to their enterprise Linux offerings. RHEL 5.2 and Suse Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 2 are available.

RHEL 5.2 delivers support for 64 processors, 512GB of ram, NUMA, and reduced power consumption features. RHEL 5.2 is also certified for IBM cell blade systems.

Suse Linux Enterprise 10 SP2 is less impressive, providing IPv6 support and “better interoperability” with Microsoft Windows and Office using local NTFS.

In a Guardian Interview published today Mark Shuttleworth mentions that “Netbook Remix” — an ultraportable optimized Ubuntu release — will be announced in the first week of June.

Ubuntu has certainly impressed Larry Borsato at IDG who gives a glowing review.

Mr. Borasto claims that the unnamed version of Ubuntu is consumer ready and a viable competitor to Microsoft Windows. He even claims that it’s even easier to get up and running.

Has Ubuntu done it? Have they achieved their goal of a consumer-friendly Linux distribution?

Wind River systems claims that it’s “Infotainment” system will be ready for you car by August. The system touts a ridiculous number of features, from a ridiculous number of companies.

The Short List:

• Text to speech and voice recognition from Nuance
• Noise reduction from Parrot
• Music management from Gracenote
• Networking from SMCS
• DVD video from Corel

The question remains: will controlling such a system via voice recognition lead to extreme cases of road rage?

The Story on EE Times

Vnunet is reporting that an antique update to the randomness engine has left Ubuntu and Debian users vulnerable for more than two years. The bug allows an attacker to predict the generated cryptographic keys.

Fortunately, a patch is available here: http://secunia.com/advisories/30231/

Despite the news yesterday that they were “well on the way” to developing Linux phones, Nokia announced today that it has no plans to do so.

The Register is reporting that the earlier report was a mistake caused by confusion about what constitutes a mobile phone.

Yes, it’s fast. Splashtop calls it an “Instant-On Desktop”. Running Linux from a ROM (on select Asus motherboards) the system is up and running from a cold-boot in seconds, not minutes. With the web, email, and Skype built-in, there isn’t much else the average home user needs.

desktoplinux.com has the story on this incredible product