Close to year's end, U.S. chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has released the Linux code for its ATI R600 and R700 microprocessors.

The Sabayon project has released its version 4.0 of the multimedia friendly Gentoo derivative just in time for the Holidays and calls it the "next big thing."

Dan Kaminsky, front man of the DNS attacks band the middle of 2008, has delivered a retrospective at the 25th annual Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) on the background and process of DNS vulnerability. But he also set his sights on the future. And outside-the-box thinker Dan J. Bernstein also had a thing or two to say.

Newly appointed CTO of the Linux Foundation and kernel developer Ted Ts'o is appealing to the Debian project to adopt a more pragmatic attitude about its Linux distro. The provocation for his advice is the current controversy over Debian's next 5.0 "Lenny" release.

Linus Torvalds has kept his promise and released Kernel 2.6.28 right at the Holidays. The little present shows some doings since Release Candidate 9, especially in the DVB-T area and for PCI hotplug devices.

It didn't quite make the planned 200TB, but with 175BT in 30 hours, openSUSE 11.1 has again set a new download record.

Current balloting for Debian Lenny's future has led to strife in the organization. Secretary of the free project, Manoj Srivastava, has resigned his position. A possible consequence is that the next version will undergo further delay in its release.

The Ubuntu Community has laid its second alpha version of Ubuntu 9.04, alias Jaunty Jackalope, under the Christmas tree.

Linux undertaking Red Hat has recorded a 24.3 million dollar profit in the third quarter of 2008, bettering last year's numbers.

The Linux Foundation is sponsoring an official contest for an inspirational Linux commercial. The winner will get fame and fortune and a trip to the Linux Symposium in Tokyo.