Sun has made a significant step for providing users and developers better access and freedom with Java. Sun announced this week they will be open sourcing key parts of Java under the GPL. In effect most users should not see a direct impact on their Java usage, however in the long term Java will have a more widespread usage, subject to fewer problem and more readily available on different systems.

It appears as though NTFS support in Fedora is no longer considered to be a “Forbidden Item”. A request has been made to include NTFS-3G into Fedora Extras. This has always seemed silly to me. The kernel has had NTFS read-only support for years. The kernel source shipped by Fedora includes the source to the driver. However someone thought that it violates some rules if shipped in binary format, but not in source.

AMD released their first X86 based 64 bit processor over 3 years ago. While the original processors, Opterons, were for servers, the desktop variants, Athlon 64, soon followed. Due to the open nature of the Linux kernel, distributions of Linux supporting the 64 bit architecture were readily (and freely) available before Windows. In the past year, the Athlon 64 has made its way into laptops and more users are finding 64 bit versions of their favorite Linux distributions satisfactory for their needs.

In a serious blow to the freedom of the internet as a whole, the US House of Representatives defeated the Net Neutrality vote that would have prevented telecommunication companies from discriminating how and which websites can be accessed by end users. The effects which by far are not exagerated are listed on the It’s Our Net website. The bottom line is your internet provider (broadband, dial-up, etc) is not restricted from treating all websites equally.

Over the last weekend I installed Fedora Core 5 on a Dell Latitude D810 laptop. Unlike Jason’s laptop criteria, I basically required a Dell laptop. I wanted the D610, however it was unavailable and I had to settle for the D810. Even though I customized it, I really did not have any control over what hardware specifically would be better for Linux. However one luxury I was afforded was to be able to maximize the provided features.