U.S. company Codeweavers today offers a special Google Chrome version of their CrossOver runtime environment for free download, giving Linux and Mac users the opportunity to test the search engine vendor’s new browser.

With the release of its Mobile Edition 1.0, Linux distribution Foresight has joined the race to dominate the netbook market.

Unison is offering the first commercial version of it's software product combining telephony, e-mail, address book, calendar and instant messaging.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, wants a more elegant and user-friendly Linux-Desktop for it's users. In a full blown statement at this year’s OSCON, Ubuntu grounder Mark Shuttleworth proclaimed: ‘'The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, into something that is art'’.

The battle in the virtualization market enters a new phase: Sun Microsystems released new versions of its virtualization software Sun xVM. And a few days ago Red Hat announced its takeover of Qumranet, makers of the virtualizer KVM. Meanwhile Microsoft and Novell are teaming up to counter with their own Microsoft Hyper-V and Suse Linux Enterprise Server offerings.

RSS preview, Atom-feeds and improved bookmarking facilities are the new features in the upcoming version 9.6 of the Opera Web Browser.

Ubuntu promoter Mark Shuttleworth took on the traditional role of code-naming the next Ubuntu version on the Ubuntu mailing list. Version 9.04 is henceforth known as Jaunty Jackalope.

Free project WINE now offers the newest version (1.1.4) of its runtime environment. Among its features is better support for Google Chrome.