The inability to play the latest off the shelf commercial games has been a thorn in the side of Linux for a long time. With companies such as Valve starting to embrace other platforms, will that be the catalyst Linux needs to become a first class citizen?

In the land of Linux, there are three giants. Three distributions which have stood the test of time and from which most others have come. What makes these three unique and how have they shaped Linux as we know it today?

Gentoo is a source based distribution which lets the user decide how to optimize their system in many ways and includes building for a specific CPU architecture. Linux Magazine benchmarks four such options; i486, i686, pentium3, core2, and throws in Ubuntu for good measure.

The nouveau project has done it! Finally, an open source 3D driver for NVIDIA video cards has arrived and will ship with Fedora 13. Let's take a look (including a few benchmarks).

Psst. Hey, would you like to hear an Ubuntu secret? OK, how about five secrets?

The major derivatives of Ubuntu are well known, but what about the others? Just because they aren't as popular doesn't mean they don't have something to offer! We introduce five of the least known, yet simply outstanding distributions.

This week the first milestone release of openSUSE was made available. Together with the KDE 4.4 release candidate and excellent integration of GTK applications such as Firefox, openSUSE simply provides the greatest KDE experience available to date. Here's why.

Is the success of Linux directly proportional to its ability to integrate with existing proprietary systems like Windows? If so, should free software developers be spending more time integrating with it instead of building better software for free platforms?

Canonical is looking into selling proprietary software like Adobe's Photoshop and Apple's iTunes within its distribution, Ubuntu. This would undoubtedly be helpful for certain end users wanting to switch to Linux, but is it good for free software in the long run?

Bill Gates said he would get China addicted to Windows and then "collect sometime in the next decade." Now they are indeed coming to collect, but thanks to Linux their plan could backfire, badly.

Microsoft still has a stranglehold on the desktop and servers for small business. While wheels are in motion for the former, the answer to the latter may already be here.

The next twelve months will be good to Linux and Free software, but we won't capture the market just yet.

Linux's history can be measured in both releases 2.0, 2.6, and so on, and in its major distributions, which brought these releases to the masses at large. Here's my list of the top five major Linux distributions that had the most impact in the operating system's brief history.

Mandriva is a long surviving Linux distribution, often touted as the best for new users. Is this really so? With an ever changing game, will Mandriva's methods last long term?

Everyone loves a shiny new kernel. The latest one, 2.6.32, was released on Dec. 3 and there are some nice updates/fixes for file systems and IO in general. But there is a very important change for the CFQ IO scheduler that you need to understand.

Google recently released the source code for their upcoming operating system, Chrome OS. Many who tried it have felt that it leaves a lot to be desired. So, is their head in the clouds, or does it actually deliver what was promised?

The big news of the week: Google Chrome OS is out in the wild. Sort of. If you're willing to roll up your sleeves a bit and do some work, you can get your hands on Google Chrome OS, but it's not quite ready for everybody just yet.

The latest release of Fedora is out, offering a number of major improvements over its predecessor. Just exactly what does it have to offer the end user, and is it worth the upgrade?

After nearly a year in development, openSUSE 11.2 is ready to be unleashed! A peek under the hood shows a lot of new and interesting changes since 11.1, including updated desktops and a preview of WebYaST.

As Ubuntu's popularity increases, how can we help to ensure that new users get the best experience possible?

Ubuntu's new Karmic Koala 9.10 release has been highly anticipated as the greatest release ever. In truth, it falls flat on its face in a time when Linux really needed to shine.

Gentoo is a source based distribution which lets the user decide how to optimize their system in many ways. Linux Magazine benchmarks three of the most common GCC optimizations; -Os, -O2 and -O3, and throws in Ubuntu for good measure.

If personal computing is moving to the web, then where are all the lightweight Cloud focused distributions? Meet xPUD, a brilliant little distro that boots straight to a fullscreen browser. It uses a simple, unique interface, and includes everyday software such as a media player and more! We talk with the lead developer about what makes this operating system unique.

In 2008 the Gentoo Foundation ceased to exist, sending rumors of Gentoo's demise and ultimate death circulating around the Internet. Almost two years on, the distro is still here and celebrating its 10th anniversary. How close did the distro come to disaster, and where does it stand now?

Gentoo, the most popular source based distribution, has turned ten years old. What benefits does a such a system provide over its binary distros? As Linux becomes more and more popular, is there still a place for source based distros?

The netbook phenomenon was going to hail in the reign of Linux on the desktop. It hasn't, yet. Now however the Moblin project is changing the game, so much so that we just might see Linux take back that market share which it lost in the very beginning.

Linus recently stated that Linux is "bloated and huge," but what does that really mean? He is, of course, talking about the code in the kernel itself, rather than the wider implementation as a desktop. Even so, does this really need fixing, and is it even possible?

If you've been looking for a lean, sleek, well supported operating system for your netbook then look no further. Due out next month, Karmic Koala Netbook Remix has a cleaner interface, complete hardware support and numerous other improvements. Let's take a look.

Some complain that there is simply too much choice in the free software world and far too many Linux distributions. Well, now there's another called Lubuntu. A derivative of Ubuntu with the LXDE desktop, it's super light and very fast. Finally, there's an Ubuntu perfectly suited to those older, low end machines!