The Ubuntu team announced the beta release of Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat"). Ubuntu 10.10 features Linux 2.6.35, GNOME 2.31, and Evolution 2.30.2, while updating the Software Center UI, adding a new sound app, enhancing Ubuntu One, and revamping Ubuntu Netbook Edition with Canonical's "Unity" UI stack.

The Linux Mint team has released the final version of Linux Mint 9 ("Isadora"), based on Ubuntu 10.04. Linux Mint 9 features a new software manager with 30,000 packages, a new backup tool, and menu and interface improvements, says the team.

A critical vulnerability in the Linux kernel that gives attackers access to root via X server has been patched by Linus Torvalds. Meanwhile, kernel developer James Morris reports on the first-annual Linux Security Summit (LSS), which covered topics including usability, hardening the kernel, and API standardization.

Canonical released a multitouch/gesture stack for Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat"). The uTouch 1.0 stack is equipped with a gesture recognition engine and gesture API for Meerkat, which recently arrived in alpha 3, offering Software Centre improvements and a Netbook Edition revamped with Canonical's new "Unity" interface.

This week's LinuxCon featured some lively discussions over the fate of Linux, says eWEEK. Hosted by the Linux Foundation (LF), the event explored cloud computing, social networking, Android integration, GPL licensing, Linux kernel challenges such as multicore processing and code complexity, and MeeGo, among other issues.

The tenth annual Debian Developer Conference has opened in New York City, marking the first time the event has been held in the U.S. The event will explore the latest developments with the Debian Linux distribution, which underlies Linux distros including Ubuntu, Xandros, and Chrome OS.

Linus Torvalds released the Linux 2.6.35 kernel, adding improvements to multicore support, network scalability, memory management, power management, and Btrfs file-system I/O. Meanwhile, we take a peek at Linux 2.6.36, and note Linux Journal's history of the Linux kernel, Slackware, Debian, and some 450 other distros.

The team behind the cloud-based Peppermint variant of Ubuntu Linux released a scaled-down, fast-booting, site-specific browser (SSB) version. The "Peppermint Ice" distro switches to Google's Chromium as the default browser, and while still supporting native apps, is even more focused on web-based apps than is Peppermint.

The OpenSUSE Project announced the final 11.3 release of OpenSUSE, featuring Linux 2.6.34, the Btrfs file-system, improved netbook support, and desktops including KDE 4.4.4, GNOME 2.30.1, XFCE, and LXDE. Meanwhile, eWEEK Labs reviews Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, praising its virtualization features, despite some "snags."

Team Tiny Core announced the first release candidate for version 3.0 of its small-footprint, in-memory Linux desktop distribution. Tiny Core Linux 3.0 RC1 advances to Linux 2.6.33.3, and offers improved compressed swap in RAM, a 64-bit version, enhanced virtualization, and the Ext4 file-system, says the project.

Spotify yesterday released a preview version of its peer-to-peer (P2P) music application for desktop Linux, packaged as Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 10.04. The software shares most of the features of the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Spotify, but requires Spotify Premium membership.

Reprieved from financial troubles with fresh investments, Mandriva released the final Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring. The latest stable release is touted for offering faster boot times, enhanced "Smart Desktop" file-organization technology, easier printer and wireless configuration, and updates including GNOME 2.30.1 and KDE 4.4.3, says Mandriva.

The VideoLAN project is shipping version 1.1 of its open source VLC media player, adding hardware acceleration, WebM support, and faster HD decoding, but deleting Shoutcast support. Meanwhile, several industry reports suggest possible reasons for Adobe's temporary suspension of its beta 64-bit Linux version of Flash.

The community-driven Fedora 13 Linux distribution has been reviewed by eWEEK, which was highly impressed with its cutting-edge enterprise features. The review praises Fedora security and permissions features such as the AccountsDialog user management utility, and it also likes the new command line interface for NetworkManager.

Bluecherry released an open source driver for version 2 of its Linux-based compression card for MPEG-4 video recording. Redesigned around the Linux kernel's API for Video (Video4Linux) and Audio (ALSA), the GPL-licensed driver primarily targets the Bluecherry MPEG-4 compression cards and related Ubuntu-based video surveillance software.

First quarter global notebook PC revenues grew to $31.1 billion, representing a 31 percent year-to-year increase, says DisplaySearch. Leading the way were mini-note PCs (netbooks), and slates (tablets), which together grew 56.4 percent year-over-year, but tablets may soon start cutting into netbook sales, says the study.

A survey from the Eclipse Foundation, which oversees development of the open source Eclipse IDE, shows that 32.7 percent of respondents use Linux as their primary desktop development system, up almost 6 points from 2009. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro among Eclipse developers.

Linux' share of the desktop market grew to 1.13 percent, says Net Applications, making Linux the only OS to gain in May. Meanwhile, Linux server revenue share grew to 16.8 percent, says IDC, and Linux is now running on 91 percent of the 500 fastest supercomputers.

The MeeGo Linux operating system for mobile devices gained software support at the Computex show this week in Taiwan. Novell and Linpus both announced MeeGo-based netbook distributions, Movial announced a "MeeGo Services" development suite, and Telefonica has weighed in with support for the open source platform.

Google released version 5.0 of its Chrome browser -- including the first stable build for Linux -- promising faster performance, multi-machine sync, and HTML5 utilities. Chrome is also part of MeeGo v1.0 for Netbooks, which was released yesterday -- and our early tests showed zippy performance.