For FOSS fans, there's no better place to be this week than Hobart, state capitol of the Australian state Tasmania. That's where Linux.conf.au 2009 is being held through Saturday, January 24.

Developer Stefan Dirsch is responsible for maintaining the openSUSE build scripts of the fglrx driver. In a message on the openSUSE developer mailing list, he appeals for a successor to take over the maintenance.

Core components of the Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 are now available as open source. Re-named Open Web Server 1.0, Sun Microsystems has released the server under the BSD license.

Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer Shuttle has released a series of mini-desktops running Linux. The next generation will have power-efficient VIA Nano processors.

The US market researcher IDC has recorded an increase of 1.8% in European PC sales for the last quarter of 2008. A weak rise compared to 2007.

Foomatic is now released in version 4.0. The software creates PDFs, describes external drivers better and includes PPD extensions.

U.S. chipmaker Intel reports a fourth-quarter 2009 revenue of $8.23 million that is 19% less than the previous quarter and 23% down from a year ago.

Free office solution OpenOffice.org is still in the best of shape, based on reactions from project members to Novell developer Michael Meeks's recent pessimistic view. The Linux Foundation is one of many who are concerned. All want one thing: more.

Linux and free software will get some prominence at the upcoming CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, March 3-8. A star-studded preview event will open the show, and a press conference has already taken place in Munich.

Hardware provider Hewlett-Packard has released a Linux version for its mini-laptop. HP wants to be clear from the outset that disabling the Linux command line interface in the product is not an act of heresy.