Mark Shuttleworth's child, Ubuntu, with spin-offs of Kubuntu (KDE optimized) and Edubuntu (Educational optimized) have released their third alpha release (a.k.a. "Flight") today, coincidently on the same date as Fedora Core 5 Test 2. Ubuntu Dapper Drake (v6.04) Flight 3 brings fourth many software improvements such as simplifying the menus and a new default desktop panel configuration. Both single installer and LiveCD variants are available for download here. Ubuntu v6.04 Flight 3 features GNOME v2.13.4, Linux kernel v2.6.15, and X.Org v7.0. Keeping up with Ubuntu's numbering system, Ubuntu Linux Dapper Drake will be finalized in April of 2006.

Red Hat has made available today Fedora Core 5 Test 2 (FC5T2). Test 2 is a series of development releases in the way to Fedora Core 5, which at last report is scheduled to be released on March 15, 2006 while FC5T3 should make its debut on February 13. Of course, all of these release dates are tentative as Fedora 5 had already been delayed once, along with FC5T2, after some development snafus with SELinux. Fedora Core 5 Test 2 is presently available from many of their mirrors and is available on a 5 CD set for each of the supported architectures. It is interesting to see the move from four to five CDs as Stentz (4), Heidelberg (3), and Tettnang (2) have all used a four CD collection, and lately the Fedora developers have attempted to eliminate some of the similar packages in its collection for both KDE and GNOME. Some of the packages making their way into the second testing release for FC5 is KDE v3.5.0, GNOME v2.13.4, Linux 2.6.15 kernel, and X.Org v7.0. Of course, we are greatly anticipating the public release of Fedora Core 5. Tomorrow we will be delivering an array of screenshots at Phoronix, and a small feature at pyroCPU in regards to the updated Anaconda installer found in Fedora 5.

In case you missed the announcement this past week from our friends at OSNews, John Litter of O'Reilly LinuxDevCenter has published an interview with Aaron Seigo, which details a few new features and reveals some information about KDE 4. K Desktop Environment 4 will mark the merge to TrollTech's Qt version 4 C++ GUI development solution, new multimedia system, and a horde of other enhancements. KDE 4 is tentatively set for a release this fall (2006), while the GNOME developers have scheduled the release of GNOME v2.14 for this Spring.

One of the cases to have embraced our systems recently has been the CaseBuy AI-01. In addition to switching power supplies, PSU testers, and USB vacuum cleaners, they maintain a fair selection of various ATX computer cases. The AI series consists of the 02, 03, and 04 variants, while CaseBuy also offers EC, TD, Mio, and Micro-ATX enclosures. Although the case features, and exterior appearance, may look rather oblique it does offer a metal mesh design for slightly improved airflow through the chassis. On the inside, is the same basic design that numerous manufacturers use without any screw/tool-less items and simply a generic offering. However, if you feel the chassis may suit your needs, below are a few pictures taken from our facilities.

This week at Phoronix we have published a fair amount of articles. Starting off, we had a look at OCZ Technology's OCZ DDR 2 PC2-4200 1GB Gold GX XTC, after we had looked at the OCZ EL PC-4000 2GB Gold GX XTC at the start of the new year. We had also finally shared our findings on the PC Partner RC410MS7-A82C. Although the article will tell the entire story, the notice attached to the article shares an insight on what to expect. The PC Partner motherboard had originally entered our facilities this past December, and upon our completion they had requested holding the article for a period of approximately two weeks, to allow their engineers time to investigate the issues that we had discovered with their LGA-775 motherboard. Coincidently, during this time, PC Partner is claiming a new company policy for 2006, and with this latest strategy they will be pulling many of their products from the United States market and surrounding mass segments. Thus the PC Partner RC410MS7-A82C will be available in very limited quantities and in isolated areas of the world. However, they will market the motherboard to their various OEM partners. With that said, the intent of this article is to display the ATI RC410 + SB450 performance under Linux, as well as related results on competing Chipsets, AND the motherboard will not be available for retail purchase under the PC Partner brand. Most recently, today, we offered up our review of the Realm Systems BlackDog 512MB. The BlackDog is presently the world's smallest Linux server, and depends upon the keyboard, mouse, and display of any computer running Microsoft Windows or Linux in order to interface with the device. Once more practical applications are unleashed, thanks in part to Project Black Dog, its popularity is likely to increase. On the software side of the things for this week, we offered screenshots from IndLinux Rangoli v1.0 BETA, Nonux v2.2, and Mozilla Thunderbird v1.5. Look forward to yet another exciting several days this coming week. ATI users for both Linux and Windows may have noticed the lack of any new display drivers for the second week of January, however, they are likely to come out before you know it :)

America's Army: Special Forces (AASF), the game developed by the United States Military for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux, is soon going to be encountering its version 2.6 release. Phoenix, the America's Army Community Manager, has announced in the forums that this next AASF release will bring fourth two new maps - Border and Dusk. Border deals with a terrorist cell in a small village while Dusk takes place as the enemy operations are ambushing a small convoy. Map information can be found here and here. Screenshots can be found here. There is still no word yet on any other possible enhancements made in this upcoming release, nor is there any public ETA on a possible launch. Hopefully upon the Windows America's Army Launch, Linux/Macintosh users will not see the void experienced with the v2.5, and primarily v2.4, release, as the porting process is handled externally by Icculus.

As was recently mentioned arriving at our location this week has been the Nikon CoolPix P1. This 8.0 megapixel camera with 3.5x optical zoom is a great compact camera with an incredibly bright 2.5-inch LCD display. Here are a few original sample photographs taken by the Nikon CP P1 with a resolution of 3264 x 2448 and all other visual settings were maximized in the point-and-shoot mode.

Although ASRock is generally considered to be a "budget manufacturer", as a division of ASUSTek, they have been quick to release a motherboard that is supportive of ATI CrossFire Technology. While we have yet to see any prominent ASRock motherboards here in the United States that are capable of NVIDIA Scalable Link Interface (SLI), they are presently offering their 775i915P-SATA2 motherboard, which is supportive of ATI's Multi-GPU Technology. Their 775i915P-SATA2 part is surprisingly based off of Intel's 915P (Grantsdale) + ICH-6 Chipset. However, the innovative engineers at ASRock are on the heels of yet another CrossFire-compatible motherboard. This upcoming CrossFire motherboard is going to be dubbed the 775XFIRE-ESATA2. While we have yet to see an official specifications sheet for this Intel LGA-775 motherboard, it will feature SATA2 support and will perhaps be powered by one of ATI's recent Intel RADEON Xpress 200 CrossFire solutions. We will pass along additional information upon retrieving the information, and as a time-frame for the release, ASRock is simply stating that the new model will apparently be coming soon, and if it does feature an ATI Chipset it will likely not wait for the new RD580.

Arriving at our labs this week is Nikon's CoolPix P1. The Nikon CP P1 offers 8.0 effective megapixels, 3.5x optical zoom, 2.5-inch LCD display, and 10-step aperture priority mode. In addition, the digital camera offers Nikon exclusive features pertaining to red-eye reduction as well as D-Lighting, which is an integrated technology for repairing photographs with dark images. However, another one of its selling points is the ability to wirelessly transfer photographs from the camera to any WiFi-certified printer or computer. Unlike some of its competitors, this 8.0MP camera has all of its 802.11b/g capabilities integrated into the camera housing, and all that is required from the computer is to install the appropriate drivers and software. The troubling point, however, is that it requires Nikon's proprietary camera software in order to transfer the photographs, and of course, the binaries are presently limited to Microsoft Windows XP. We have already contacted Nikon numerous times in attempts of opening up their WiFi software/drivers, or simply the wireless developer information, to spur a FOSS project to allow alternative OS users access to the Nikon WiFi support. Thus far, we have not officially heard back from any representatives, and if needed, we will simply work on reverse-engineering the product. To help in this movement, we recommend contacting Nikon Corporation via e-mail or telephone. We will keep pyroCPU updated with information on bringing P1/P2 wireless camera support to Linux, while later this weekend we will be posting some photo samples from the Nikon P1.

Grisoft, the company who has been offering FREE anti-virus support to Microsoft Windows support for quite some time has extended their collection of virus protection to support GNU/Linux. Grisoft AVG Free is slated to be the first commercial=grade anti-virus product for Linux home users. The intent of their free version is strictly for private and non-commercial use. Some of the Linux AVG Free features consist of:

- Rapid virus database updates for the lifetime of the product
- Small update files that do not drain system resources
- Automatic update functionality
- AVG On-Demand Scanner, which allows users to perform scheduled and manual tests
- AVG’s advanced virus detection methods (heuristic analysis, generic detection, scanning) designed to provide maximum virus protection

The free edition of Grisoft for Linux can be downloaded here. The Linux binaries are available in three i386 RPMs for Red Hat, Mandrake/Mandriva, and SuSE. The latest release at the time of writing is v7.1.0022. Keep in mind, some of the other Linux anti-virus software available is ClamAV, AMaViS, Kaspersky, and AntiVir. In addition to the avggui GTK interface, avgscan and avgupdate are command-line utilities available for performing security maintenance. For demonstration purposes, below are a few in-house screenshots from Grisoft AVG Free for Linux as it was installed on a Fedora Core 4 machine.