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.

The Puppy Linux project has released version 5.0 of its fast, small-footprint Linux distro, based for the first time on Ubuntu. Puppy Linux 5.0 is built from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx binary packages, and debuts a "Quickpet" application suite, choice of browsers, and a boot-to-desktop feature.

Novell announced SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 11 Service Pack 1 (SP1) in server and desktop versions. SLE 11 SP1 advances the server version's virtualization capabilities with full support for KVM, while boosting high availability clustering support, and the desktop version updates audio, Bluetooth, and multi-monitor support.

[Updated: 8PM] -- The 2010 SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) has announced a new round of speakers for the show, to be held June 11-13 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Some 52 speakers have been announced, including Jon "Maddog" Hall (pictured), and Ubuntu and Fedora events have been scheduled.

Linus Torvalds (pictured) announced the release of Linux 2.6.34, which is notable for adding two filesystems: Ceph for distributed and cloud-based applications, and LogFS, which is optimized for flash-memory based devices. Other new features include a faster KVM virtualization driver based on Vhost.net technology, says LinuxPlanet.com

A fast-booting, cloud-oriented, "Peppermint OS" Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, Red Hat clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features including enhanced KVM virtualization and improved WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.

Canonical demonstrated a fast-boot version of Ubuntu, said to launch a running browser in less than 10 seconds. Ubuntu Light is based on a new netbook- and touchscreen tablet-oriented desktop environment called "Unity" that will also drive the Ubuntu Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat").

The Linux Foundation (LF) announced keynote speakers for LinuxCon, scheduled for August 10-12 in Boston. LinuxCon will feature keynote speakers including Virgin America's Ravi Simhambhatla, GNOME's Stormy Peters (pictured), the SFLC's Eben Moglen, and Forrester Research's Jeffrey S. Hammond, and will host a Linux Kernel Roundtable.