The free virtualization product VirtualBox has released a new version 2.1 that not only supports 3D graphics, but the full VMDK and VHD formats from VMware and Microsoft.

Sun Microsystems have announced a Reference Design Kit for the Ultrasparc T2 with an E-ATX board and processor that works with Linux.

It's been a good week for 64Bit. Following high Bit releases from Wine and Flash, Sun is now offering a Java Plug-In for 64Bit browsers.

Chipmaker Intel is currently working on Linux support for its next generation of USB, version 3.0. The new bus specification promises a 5 Gbit per second transfer speed, ten times faster than USB 2.0.

Hewlett-Packard has partnered with Novell in developing a new, secure Linux desktop product. At the same time, HP has joined up with Mozilla to promote a desktop virtualization project for small business customers.

The many years of hard work and reverse engineering that went into developing the free Nouveau drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards have finally paid off. Nouveau is now included in the repository of the next Ubuntu 9.04 release.

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst sees opportunities for open source firms that might be putting undue burden on their dwindling IT departments because of the current economic downturn. Whitehurst offered his views in a press conference in Munich. His conclusion: "When people look at alternatives, often Open Source wins."

Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst sees opportunities for open source firms that might be putting undue burden on their dwindling IT departments because of the current economic downturn.

MySQL founder Michael "Monty" Widenius warns in his blog against putting the current version 5.1 of the popular database package into production. He's critical of the release policy and fears that the product's quality may suffer.

Sun Microsystems has realized the second quarter announced release of version 5.1 of MySQL.