ZDNet Must Read

• First LibreOffice Release arrives

  LibreOffice 3.3, the first version of the OpenOffice fork, is now available for your office work pleasure.

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• Five ways to avoid Windows 8

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 20, 2012, 12:14pm PDT

  By year’s end, Windows 8 is going to be on every new PC around. You won’t have to use it though. Here are five ways to skip getting trapped on the Windows 8 Metro.

• Google to centralize Android development and sales

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 16, 2012, 9:05am PDT

  According to a Wall Street Journal report, Google is going to radically shift how it works with its partners in developing and selling Android.

• Linux at 21: A new Linux Foundation t-shirt contest

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 15, 2012, 3:06pm PDT

  Got design chops? Love Linux? Want to go to LinuxCon in San Diego or Barcelona, Spain later this year on the Linux Foundation’s dime? Read on.

• Red Hat celebrates 10 years of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 15, 2012, 12:44pm PDT

  Ten years ago, Red Hat was just another Linux distributor, then they got serious about the business market and everything changed.

• Execs: Red Hat to debut EL7 in late 2013, take lead in cloud era

  By Paula Rooney | May 15, 2012, 10:49am PDT

  Red Hat held a press conference today to predict its ascendancy as the top dog in the cloud era, driven by its open source subscription model, open source community driven development model and cloud technologies.

• Fedora 17 & GNOME 3.4: Return to a useful Linux desktop (Review)

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 14, 2012, 9:38am PDT

  Fedora 16, thanks in large part to GNOME 3.2, was an awful Linux distribution. With this new version, and GNOME 3.4, Fedora 17 is back to being a useful Linux distribution.

• Richard M. Stallman, free software leader falls ill at conference

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 11, 2012, 7:57am PDT

  Richard M. Stallman, creator of the concept of the free software and president and founder of the Free Software Foundation fell sick at a technology conference in Spain.

• Red Hat to debut OpenShift PaaS solutions for on-premise enterprise use soon

  By Paula Rooney | May 9, 2012, 10:58am PDT

  As it prepares for battle against VMware on the cloud front, Red Hat announced today that it will launch later this year its fee-based PaaS service with support and will begin shipping this summer integrated PaaS solutions that enterprises can deploy on premise that give its developers freedom to innovate while allowing IT to manage how apps are developed and deployed

• Dell readies Ubuntu Linux laptop for developers

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 9, 2012, 10:49am PDT

  Dell is working on an Ubuntu Linux-powered laptop that will be just for developers.

• Copyrights, APIs, and Oracle vs Google

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 8, 2012, 2:25pm PDT

  Can application programming interfaces be copyrighted? The Oracle vs Google jury was instructed to rule as if they could be copyrighted, but the final call, and the fate of programming as we know it, lies in the hands of Judge William Alsup.

• Apache OpenOffice 3.4 makes official debut; LibreOffice makes its case

  By Paula Rooney | May 8, 2012, 9:46am PDT

  Let the games begin. Tuesday, the Apache Software Foundation announced the first official release of Apache OpenOffice, version 3.4, since Oracle donated it to the ASF in mid 2011.

• The muddled mess of the Oracle vs. Google trial

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 7, 2012, 3:46pm PDT

  There were no winners in Oracle vs. Google. Only losers, including all programmers, and perhaps everyone else as well.

• Ubuntu 12.04 vs. Windows 8: Five points of comparison

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 7, 2012, 9:28am PDT

  The leading Linux desktop and the number one desktop of all, Windows, are both undergoing radical transformations, but which will be the better for it?

• Linus Torvalds likes the Google Chrome OS Linux desktop

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 4, 2012, 9:38am PDT

  Torvalds, still annoyed at the direction that GNOME 3 has taken, has some nice things to say about Google’s new Chrome Aura Linux desktop interface.

• Red Hat debuts OpenShift Origin project, takes swipe at VMware's Cloud Foundry

  By Paula Rooney | May 1, 2012, 1:27pm PDT

  Red Hat has announced an open source project called OpenShift Origin that will provide upstream code and improvements for its year-old OpenShift PaaS. The open source Origin components are being released under the Apache v2 license.

• What's what with Barnes & Noble and Microsoft

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | May 1, 2012, 1:26pm PDT

  In an unexpected twist, Microsoft buried its Barnes & Noble lawsuit hatchet, and formed a partnership. Why did the two make a deal and what comes next? Here’s my take.

• Is Apache overextending itself as rivals devour its core web server share?

  By Paula Rooney | April 30, 2012, 8:19am PDT

  Has the Apache Software Foundation overextended itself by taking open source projects like OpenOffice and Cloudstack off the hands of proprietary giants while its famed HTTP web server continues losing ground to NGINX?

• VMware, Piston partner on OpenStack layer for Cloud Foundry

  By Paula Rooney | April 30, 2012, 6:16am PDT

  VMware has partnered with enterprise cloud computing vendor Piston Cloud Computing to develop an OpenStack interface to VMware’s Bosh developer toolchain for its open source Cloud Foundry Paas. VMware is trying to establish itself as a viable open source friend to developers

• Oracle vs. Google: Dead lawsuit walking

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | April 29, 2012, 5:52pm PDT

  Oracle’s case is as dead now as when it began. Like SCO with its insane attacks against IBM and Linux, Oracle doesn’t have a leg to stand on in its Google litigation.

• Ubuntu 12.04 arrives and it's great

  By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | April 26, 2012, 8:40am PDT

  Canonical’s latest Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04, is now available for your home and office and it’s a winner.