For many of us, our first painful introduction to old-school Linux installs came from installing early versions of Red Hat. Like most early Linux installs, it was a highly technical, highly finicky process that was best left to the experts.

Fedora 9, the latest release from the Fedora Project, goes up for download on Tuesday. The ninth release of Fedora ushers in a number of changes aimed at making the venerable distribution a more newbie-friendly desktop, but longtime users needn't fear a great dumbing down; version 9 packs plenty of power user punch as well.

Nexuiz runs on an improved Quake engine called DarkPlaces. The engine has been undergoing on-and-off development by Lord Havoc, the game's creator, for several years. On icculus.org, Lord Havoc says he developed a custom OpenGL-only engine for DarkPlaces, and other modifications that "support Windows WGL and Linux GLX and have greatly improved graphics and image quality."

We tested openSUSE, Ubuntu 8.4, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Linux One, Fedora, SimplyMEPIS, and CentOS 5.1. All performed well, and each had at least one truly outstanding feature.

One thing missing, though, is a CD/DVD drive. With Linux, all your software is available over the Internet, so you may not even need to read or burn discs. But you can always add an external drive for around $50. An extra $50 gives you double the memory and a traditional 120GB hard disk drive.

This month's Harvard Business Review features a case study of a company debating whether to open source its software. Here's a mini review of the article.

With the arrival of Ubuntu's Hardy Heron last week, it is perhaps an understatement to say that conversation on the Linux blogs was plentiful.

The 701 was first shown in June 2007 and was launched the following October. It quickly won plaudits for its compact, highly portable size and its low cost. We loved it, but like most Eee users we found the screen to be just too small. The sub-notebook's battery life also left much to be desired.

While the Asus Eee PC and Intel's Classmate and Netbook platforms have convinced us that low-cost, low-power laptops can be genuinely useful, we still long for something a little more upscale than the plastic construction of those systems. HP's bold entry into the mininotebook market comes in the form of the 2133 Mini-Note PC, a 9-inch laptop with a tailored look and magnesium alloy chassis that starts at $599 for Windows (or $499 for Linux) and tops out at $749 with extras including Bluetooth, a Webcam, a 7,200rpm hard drive, and 2GB of RAM.

If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it's that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can't ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue.

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