The eighth annual KDE PIM developer meeting in Osnabrück, Germany started out with an extended snowball fight among the Scottish, German and Dutch contingencies. That actual work was being done was evidenced by enhancements to Akonadi, KDE 4.4 and 4.5, and planned further development of the Kontact groupware client.

The development of Ubuntu 10.04 is taking another turn. Lucid Lynx now has a second alpha version that gets rid of HAL.

Formerly kernel and file system developer at the Linux Foundation, Theodore Ts'o has been working at Google since January. His first project: The migration of the file system ext4.

Google's latest release, Android 2.1, comes not only with the mobile operating system but also a developer kit.

Development is moving forward on Symbian, a mobile phone operating system that is largely under free licensing. Version 3 should show all its planned features by the first quarter of 2010.

The first smartphones based on Intel's Moorestown, the Mini 5 with Android and the Lenovo LePhone: the mobile Linux highlights from this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

The San Diego based VIA Telecom, owned by the Taiwaneese VIA Concern, is to become a member of the Open Handset Alliance, the consortium around the mobile operating system Android.

Google has presented its Android mobile phone to the public. What's special about the Nexus One is the 3.5" touchscreen with an OLED display resolving at 800 x 480 pixels and the newest Android 2.1 (Eclair).