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Theodore Ts'o has renamed the Ext4 filesystem, for which he has been responsible for source and documentation, from extdev to ext4. Linus Torvalds has also incorporated the change into his personal source tree for the upcoming Kernel 2.6.28.

Firefox will soon integrate Geode (via the W3C geolocation API specification) into its browser, thereby exposing the user's current location. Meanwhile Linux users will have to forgo this service in that it involves proprietary software.

The videos show James Bottomley talking about Linux and other Open Source operating systems, calling OS X a luxury jail. Jonathan Corbet presented details on the newly released Kernel 2.6.27 and Intel-CTO Dirk Hohndel gave the closing speech.

Comes quite handy: Dmitri Popov offers as lateste productivity sauce an installation guide for downloading the brand new OpenOffice -- a nice little manual.

As a director of the Linux Foundation and a Linux SCSI developer, James Bottomley opened the Linux-Kongress in Hamburg, Germany this week with a keynote investigating the commonalities and differences among the various Open Source operating systems. He describes Linux as the liveliest variant among them.

The Debian 5.0 release missed its intended deadline of September and the project has been silent as yet about any news of an update. The latest guess from developers' circles is that "Lenny" will not be ready until June of 2009.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) is up in arms over the fact that documentation for Microsoft's OOXML data format is now publicly available on the Internet. Meanwhile, ISO members are nervously watching IBM's behavior in the standardization process. Activists in the Boycott Novell forum have exposed the more than 5,500 page document in PDF, HTML, Microsoft spreadsheet, and various other formats on their website.

Linux-Kongress is by far one of the most traditional Linux conferences, with a focus on development and cutting edge topics. If you're not able to join the program in Hamburg, Germany, in person, enjoy the keynotes from James Bottomley and Jason Corbet for free on Linux Magazine Online.

For quite a while Ubuntu had been including example-content packages with its releases that contained the same content: some audio and video data to test the playback, including a video of Nelson Mandela. Ubuntu contributor Jono Bacon had been calling for renewed content and announced a competition that ended September 4. The competition is now over and Bacon presents the winners.

The upcoming Ubuntu 8.10, alias Intrepid Ibex, is now in beta. Armed with new base elements such as Linux kernel 26.2.7, GNOME 2.24 and X.Org 7.4, Ubuntu 8.10 is due to be released by October. Beta versions of the add-ons Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu-Studio and Mythbuntu are also available for testing.

While the default commands allow you to perform quite a few actions, the extensible and open nature of Ubiquity means that you can easily expand its functionality by installing additional scripts that add new commands. There are dozens of Ubiquity scripts floating on the Web, but here are a few that you might find particularly useful.

The GIMP graphics program includes many new and interesting features in version 2.6. Among others is to offer developers integration with the Generic Graphics Library (GEGL) to allow non-destructive editing of HDR and RAW graphics that are rendered in up to 32-bit color depth per channel.

The developers from Linux-gamers.net launched a new version of their Linux games-focused live distribution. New arrivals included action games Teeworlds 0.4.3, Openarena 0.8.0 and World of Padman 1.2. Also released was a rudimentary installation assistant that for the first time, will permanently anchor the contents of the DVD to the mother board.

Microsoft admits that TCO for education students in developing nations is about the same with their products and Free Software. They further admit that the initial TCO costs of hardware and software are lower with Linux, and that Linux technical people in developing nations command a higher salary than their Microsoft counterparts due to scarcity. I feel that this mandates greater use of Free Software in universities and high schools to help increase the number of locally employed, highly trained Free Software professionals to decrease that scarcity, and to lower the balance of trade problems that occur by sending software royalty money outside of the country.

Brian Proffitt, who joined the Linux Foundation as Community Manager in July, has announced a LinuxCon technical conference for his organization this coming year in Portland, Oregon. The Linux Foundation targets the conference at Kernel developers, end users and all of the Linux Community.

CeBIT 2009, the largest global IT trade show opens March 3-8 in Hannover, Germany. For the first time Open Source becomes a central theme. Linux Magazine, together with the conference organizers and the Linux Foundation, is now encouraging Open Source projects to bid for free booths at the conference.

The GNU Project celebrated its 25th birthday on September 27, 2008. With its GCC compiler and bash shell, GNU was ever at the forefront of today's Linux distribution. To kick off the celebration, British humorist Stephen Fry appears in a video in defense of free software.

U.S. firm Funambol announces an Android version of its Open Source mobile sync application for the new Google/T-Mobile G1 phone. The G1 device had been announced just days ago at a press conference with the development trio T-Mobile, Google and hardware maker HTC. Funambol considers the speed at which their Android integration occurred to be proof of the talent of the Open Source community.

Ekiga, formerly known as GnomeMeeting, is an open source VoIP application with video support. The Ekiga project has recently incorporated major enhancements into its version 3.0 software.

In her ROSE blog Linux Pro Magazine editor Rikki Kite reports about a discussion on the Ubuntu women mailing list. Some women are bugged by the phrase "Ubuntero", which led to bug report 27826. It seems Mark Shuttleworth thinks it's worth changing the name for Ubuntu activists to something gender neutral.