It’s a sad fact of life that as we get older our ability to learn new skills and retain information lessens. Which explains why a five-year-old child can pretty much rebuild a PC while their grandparents have trouble finding the on/off button. Believe it or not, Linux could be the answer to the elderly’s prayers thanks to a new PC called SimplicITy.

News broke recently about Microsoft holding a private auction in hopes of offloading Linux-related patents to patent trolls. The executive director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin has called out Microsoft to stop its petty covert war against Linux. This seems to be the latest evidence that proves Microsoft could be playing dirty to win.

In a discussion around Microsoft’s deal with Yahoo, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft made some interesting comments against competitors, Apple and Linux. Ballmer indicated that unlike its competitors, Microsoft has established the perfect balance as to where the company wants to be.

A Linux executive has a vision of the future in which personal computers will be given away free by telecommunications service provider in exchange for a contract, just as cell phones often are today.

A study by IBM reports that IT staff find setting up Linux desktops easier than expected. The news came as an executive for the firm called Windows Vista the best recruiting tool for Linux desktops.

The introduction of the netbook has heralded an era of cheap, portable and convenient computing, but what does the future hold for the netbook? TECH.BLORGE spoke to Lenovo’s Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, about his vision of the future of netbooks, which involves Windows 7, bigger screens, built-in 3G, touch integration, and lower prices.

For the first time, Linux is now used on more than 1 percent of computers. While not a major breakthrough, it means the system has beaten Apple in their respective marches to a milestone.

The latest edition of the Ubuntu operating system, is out today. Aside from various stability and performance tweaks, it’s main new feature is a cloud computing technology designed to match that offered by Amazon.

Lenovo’s Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, has predicted that Linux will only ever be a niche player as an operating system for netbooks.

Microsoft escaped with a rap on the knuckles from their antitrust woes with the United States Justice Department. They are not faring nearly so well with European authorities.

In a bizarre twist to Microsoft’s torrid relationship with Linux companies, the company has decided to sue TomTom for allegedly violating its Linux patents. This move comes as quite a surprise from a company that has been claiming that Linux violates its patents for almost a decade.

Very few business models are based upon asking the competition to copy your products. However, the OLPC foundation has now done exactly that, and sees it as a path to success.

The Defense Department has ushered in a new era of government involvement in Open Source software by opening Forge.mil, the DoD equivalent of SourceForge.

Google has always maintained that Android was designed to run on a broad range of devices beyond mobile phones. Now that developers have hacked an EeePC netbook to run Android, the question remains whether it will be a success on the big screen.

While some might argue that it’s too early to call, Red Hat’s open source model seems to be paying dividends despite the soft economic climate. Could penny-pinching managers looking for cheap solutions be a boon to the open source industry?

After the bad publicity of a security hole in its servers, Red Hat has better news to crow about. The latest version of its Fedora OS is out and from the rave reviews, Fedora 10 looks like it might give Ubuntu serious competition.

The Intrepid Ibix or Ubuntu 8.10 drops 30 October. Canonical Ltd, the operating system’s commercial sponsor, announced the release of both server and desktop updates.