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.

Free blog software WordPress notifies of a security update in its 2.6.2 version.

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

The second early Firefox 3.1 test version (code-named Shiretoko Alpha 2) provides at first glance a video tag, which allows audio and video to be played in free Ogg/Theora format.

Google touts its Javascript engine version 8, among other things, as setting new speed records for its Chrome browser. Linux Magazine found during a benchmark test that the next Firefox generation can keep up with it.

Sponsored by the Linux distributor Red Hat Inc.,the Fedora project has introduced a new scholarship program for students around the globe who have contributed to free software, particularly to the Fedora project.

For many people, the summer is an ideal time to go on vacation. Summer of 2008 was also a productive time for Amarok developers.