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Lucid Lynx, otherwise known as Ubuntu 10.04, is now in the final stretch. Yesterday the Ubuntu Developers announced the Release Candidate, the penultimate release before its final April 29 release.

HTML5, the latest version of the Web's underpinning language, has been in development since 2004 and, although not finished yet, is starting to affect the way the web works. We look at some of the best features of HTML5, specifically the ones already on the way to users' desktops.

Microsoft's Kin phone is a strange departure for the company. No doubt you've heard that Microsoft has released the Kin, the company's first smartphone. If you've been following the news then you've probably also seen the pictures and marvelled at how it is possible for a company with that much money and technological know-how to produce something that looks more like a toy than a real phone.

You've heard of Linux but are you ready to make the switch from Windows? Tired of Windows? Ready to look for an alternative? As a desktop user there are really only two options: Linux or Mac OS X. The second pretty much requires that you buy some Apple hardware before you can run it. Linux, on the other hand, will run on most hardware, even some of the older hardware that lurks around homes and offices. Linux is also free to download so you can try it out before having to spend any money.

Although Ubuntu Lucid Lynx has not yet been released, Canonical chief Mark Shuttleworth has already named its successor: Maverick Meerkat

Canonical, IBM and Simmtronics release low-cost Ubuntu netbook for emerging markets

Adobe's Flash is still the dominant rich media platform on the Internet, but HTML5 is coming. Love it or hate it Adobe's Flash technology is a key part of the Internet as it currently exists. It hasn't always been so and it may not remain so for much longer if the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft have anything to do with it.

If you decide, for any number of reasons, not to get an iPhone then there are numerous choices available

The Mozilla Foundation has stopped development of a mobile version of its Firefox web browser for Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform. The reason for the decision is that Windows Mobile 7 doesn't support native applications. Until this decision Windows Mobile was one of just two platforms that were supported by Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox. But, with the launch of Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft closed down the option to create native applications for the platform.

Firefox mobile is heading to Android, slowly. The mobile version of Firefox's browser, called Fennec, is still only available for the Windows Mobile and Maemo platform, a soon-to-be redundant operating system only used on a couple of Nokia devices. Despite Mozilla's insistence that Firefox Mobile will be available for a wider range of mobile devices, including Android, there is little evidence of this progress.

Announced at the Mobile World Congress, details of Microsoft's new mobile OS are starting to become clear.

Open source application developers are switching their efforts to Android, according to a new study. Google's Android mobile phone operating system is winning many fans. And now it appears to be winning the hearts of open source developers as well. Which is good news for users looking for more applications, and good news for the future health of the Android ecosphere.

Proprietary giant is licensing open source to its partners. What is going on? Over the past few weeks Microsoft has been licensing Linux to a number of its partners, most notably Amazon. Although the idea of Microsoft, a company steeped in proprietary software, licensing open source software is ludicrous it's not completely unexpected. It's also not the first time Microsoft has played the Linux patent game and we can expect to see more deals in the future. So what's going on?

Switching to Linux is easy if you know how to run Windows applications on it. For many users considering switching to Linux the biggest hurdle is a question of whether they can find a suitable replacement for their favourite Windows applications. While sites like LinuxAppFinder list hundreds of open source application alternatives it's not always as straight forward as that. Many users are bound, for one or other reason, to using a particular application, be it because there is no way to convert existing data or because company policy demands they use a particular application. Fortunately there are a number of ways to run a good deal of Windows applications on Linux.

Previews of Firefox 3.7, which will in time become 4.0, are now available. The Firefox developers have released a new preview version of Firefox 3.7 which includes many of the features planned for Firefox 4.0. The preview release includes special protection against rogue third-party processes that could crash the browser.

The Linux world is all excited about Ubuntu's new look but surely there are more important things that need to be done to make Ubuntu more appealing?

One of the big changes in Ubuntu 10.4 (aka Lucid Lynx) is the built-in social networking tools. These include a menu bar option for posting updates directly to any number of social networking sites. This change has been introduced for the first time in the third alpha release, made last week. Called the MeMenu the tool expands on the existing "presence" menu to add a text box for updating the users status on any of their accounts. The existing presence menu includes rudimentary options for marking a user available or away on their instant messaging account. The MeMenu uses the much-improved Gwibber tool to broadcast the status updates to all networks.

When Google first released its Chrome browser no-one really knew how popular it would turn out to be. Initially its major failure in the face of Firefox's extensive extensions database was that it couldn't be extended with additional plugins. Now, however, there is a growing list of extensions available for Chrome. We look at some of the best.

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system is doing good things for the company's market share. Microsoft looks to have hit something of a winning streak with the release of its Windows 7 operating system. Following the relatively dismal performance of Windows Vista, Windows 7 is being rapidly taken up by home and business users alike.

It's may be a twee name but MeeGo could be the next big thing. It sounds like something a child would say, or the name of a baby's toy, but MeeGo has much bigger aspirations in mind. For those that weren't completely sucked into the Mobile World Congress last week, and consequently missed the announcement, MeeGo is the name of a new - yes another - mobile phone operating system launched at the conference. In truth it's not really so much new as being a new collaboration. In this case between Intel and Nokia and their respective Moblin and Maemo operating systems.