One of desktop Linux’s chief selling points is its near-immunity to malware. Whether this superiority is due to the Unix security measures that Windows lacks, or to the mere fact that comparatively few people use Linux on desktop computers, it makes Linux attractive in an era when all manner of nasty things can be done to computer users by exploiting bugs in the software they run.While Linux may not suffer from the software vulnerabilities of Windows, however, its users are still threatened by attacks that employ social-engineering—that is, those that dupe users into compromising their systems by running code or installing software without understanding the consequences.

For years, free-software advocates have asserted that Linux is ready for the mainstream desktop. Critics have responded that, sure, Linux has come a long way since 1991, but it’s still not for ‘average users’. Until grandmothers can get an Ubuntu system up and running without having to hack a wireless driver or an xorg.conf file, we’re told, the Linux user base will remain limited.

As part of a holiday promotion in US newspapers, Dell today advertised Netbooks running Ubuntu Linux at the starting price of $299. WorksWithU’s sister site, The VAR Guy, has all the details here.

Xavier is the latest K-12 school to move Ubuntu Linux to the head of the class. In fact, the school has deployed more than 600 Ubuntu desktops, according to Pierre Tagle, Xavier’s consulting IT director. During a recent email exchange with WorksWithU, Tagle described why the San Juan, Phillipines-based school has fallen for Ubuntu.

I was delighted to discover yesterday that Adobe has finally released a 64-bit plugin to play flash in Firefox. This should make the lives of a lot of 64-bit Linux users much easier. It also represents a bit of a turn-around in the relations between Adobe and the free-software community.

As a regular participant in support threads on ubuntuforums.org, I’m exposed frequently to people who might be fairly characterized as ‘dissatisfied customers’ of the Ubuntu experience. Something doesn’t work as well as it’s supposed to—no out-of-the-box wireless or dual-monitor support are two of the most popular complaints—and these new users condemn Ubuntu and Linux in their entirety as a result. But are these charges justified, and how should Ubuntu respond?

Former hedge-fund manager Andrew Lahde recently published a “goodbye letter” to his investors in which he philosophizes on everything from the financial crisis to marijuana. Interestingly, in advocating reforms to the United States government that would make authorities less susceptible to corruption, Lahde remarks in passing that this new state should be planned by a group “similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoft’s near monopoly.”

I recently decided to upgrade to OpenOffice 3. As many users know, the Ubuntu developers made the controversial decision not to include OO 3, released in mid-October 2008, in Ubuntu 8.10 (a.k.a “Intrepid Ibex”), out of concerns that it would not be stable enough and would disrupt the Intrepid development schedule (which is strange given the decision to ship 8.04 with Firefox 3 beta as the default browser). But I still made the move to OpenOffice 3.

Ubuntu 8.10, released at the end of October, includes several notable enhancements to the Server Edition.  These new features augment the usability and versatility of Ubuntu on servers, but given the short lifespan of Ubuntu 8.10, I’m left wondering how many system administrators are going to use it.

Neil Patel of Canonical recently posted an outline of the new user interface concepts that Gnome developers envisioned during the “Gnome User Experience” conference in Boston a couple of weeks ago. But are the concepts a good move?