Tuesday November 24, 2009 5:29 AM AEST

While Google's Chrome browser has gone through beta to a final release and back to beta on Windows, we're still waiting for solid word on the Linux release. We know it's coming, but what beyond that?

Debian was one of the first Linux distributions, and it pioneered much of what we take for granted in Linux systems today. But has Debian had its day?

The new SUSE Studio tool make it easier than ever before for millions of system admins to build their own custom Linux systems, and share them online.

It's fair to say that Linux hasn't been doing well as a gaming platform lately. But World Of Goo is bringing Linux users clever, engaging gameplay, beautiful hand-drawn 2D artwork, and an enchanting, if somewhat bizarre, story.

Nokia announced last week that as of version 4.5, the Qt GUI toolkit, most famously used as the basis of the KDE desktop, would change licences from the GPL to the LGPL.

I know I'm setting myself up for disappointment here, but with the new year upon us, I thought it was time to dig out the inflatable crystal ball and look at some of the things the Linux world has to look forward to in 2009.

One area where Linux has traditionally been quite weak is in hardware-accelerated video playback, and which Nvidia is trying to fix.

Flash video has transformed the Web, and is also a constant form of irritation when you're not setup for it. Now Theora aims to solve all those Flash licensing issues one and for all.

Many many months ago when I started blogging here, I came up with a list of three things -- 3G networking, monitor hot-swapping, and Eee PC support -- that I wanted to see added to Ubuntu by the time 8.10 shipped. Now that it's out the door, it's time to see how those wish list items have gone.

Dell's "Latitude ON" system could see notebook batteries running for days at a time by the end of the year, including in the new Latitude E4200 and E4300 notebooks.