The look and feel of Mac OS X appeals to many free software supporters. Mac4Lin icon and sound themes, in addition to the new Avant Window Navigator Dock clone, emulate this look. Also, the development team behind pdfsam offers a model for remunerating programmers of free software.

The Debian-based distro Sidux will shortly have a new version, code-named Pontos, that will concentrate on getting the Kernel 2.6.27 changes integrated error free.

Novell developer Michael Meeks has warned of an increasing imbalance in the OpenOffice.org Project. His concerns: too few developers, inadequate code maintenance and the gradual withdrawal of companies like Sun.

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."

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.

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.