With our sister site TuxRadar covering the latest Linux developments, you'll have noticed that we're no longer posting news stories here on the LXF front page. But stay tuned -- we'll soon have a brand new front page with at-a-glance info on the latest forum threads, magazine editions and more...

KDE 4 had a rough start, but the sparkling new 4.2 release may be feature-packed enough to silence the nay-sayers. OSNews reports on the updated features and changes, and also has an interview with developer Aaron Seigo.

Computerworld Australia has a chit-chat with Linus Torvalds, looking at the state of the kernel after nearly 20 years of development, the rise of netbooks, Windows 7, and cloud computing. As usual, Torvalds doesn't mince his words and has plenty of strong opinions, especially on the "disaster" of KDE 4.0.

Ubuntu head honcho Mark Shuttleworth is looking forward to a good, clean fight with Microsoft when Windows 7 is released. "I think it's going to be a great product, and every indication is we will see it in the market sooner rather than later" said the BDFL. Shuttleworth is eyeing up the netbook market as a potential area of growth for Ubuntu, and Microsoft also wants to get Windows 7 on the mini machines.

With the final release two months away and an alpha version available, it's time to look at OpenOffice.org 3.1's new features: eye candy, better charts, replying to notes in the margin, overlining, macros in Base, RTL improvements for Arabic and Hebrew, and (believe it or not) better sorting. Download and report any bugs you find.

Most of us know JavaScript as a browser-embedded language for manipulating web pages, but it's also a powerful standalone language in its own right. Seed, a new project to provide JavaScript bindings for Gnome, has been receiving a great deal of attention recently -- Ars Technica has a detailed look.

Ever wondered what happens to the results of the Popularity Contests in Debian and Ubuntu? Datamation has an overview of the statistics, showing that 85% of Ubuntu installations run Gnome, compared to 50% for Debian. There's also analysis of OOo and mail client usage.

When Qt 4.5 arrives in March, it'll be released under the GNU Lesser General Public License as Nokia has announced. This will allow developers to write closed source software that links to the Qt library without buying a commercial licence. See this page for some answers to common questions about the change.

The Vietnamese government has issued an instruction that all state agencies should start using open source software. OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird and Firefox will lead up the migration effort, although there's no word yet on whether this move will eventually lead to Linux adoption.

Debian 5 (aka Lenny) creeps ever closer, but there's a bit of a ruckus within the development team as Ars Technica reports. Debian 5 will include binary firmware blobs for enhanced hardware support, but some developers feel that it goes against the spirit of purity for which the distro is so well known and respected.

Got an Eee PC? Looking for a new distro? Ubuntu Eee has shuffled off its mortal coil, but Easy Peasy has arrived to take its place, supporting Asus's line of machines and other netbooks.

As we all look ahead to the future of Linux in 2009, it's worth refreshing our memories with the big developments of 2008. CRN sums up the 10 Coolest Open Source 'Products' of the last 12 months, harking back to the releases of OpenOffice.org 3, Firefox 3 and various distros.

While many pundits initially dismissed netbooks as a fad, this report for DisplaySearch shows that micro-netbooks are here to stay, with 160% market growth in the third quarter of this year (over quarter two). Most major PC vendors now have a netbook or two in their lineup, and given the widespread use of Linux on these machines, we can expect our favourite OS to win over many more users in 2009. Fingers crossed!