One of the coolest features of Ubuntu on servers is vmbuilder, which makes it super-easy to roll out guest machines.  Here’s a look at this tool, and some thoughts on where it fits in to Ubuntu’s enterprise strategy.

Just about a year ago, Ubuntu developers undertook the first “100 Papercuts” campaign to fix trivial bugs on the desktop.  But servers get papercuts, too, and the server team has been working for the last several months on its own papercut-eradication effort.  Here’s a look at what’s been done so far, and what’s planned for the future.

It would be great if all PDF files could be easily manipulated without relying on bloated, proprietary, update-obsessive applications (I’m looking at you, Adobe).  But the fact that that’s not the case doesn’t mean Ubuntu users are out of luck when it comes to editing PDFs.  Here’s a look at some of the PDF editors available for Linux, and how well they work.

At first glance, it will be difficult for Canonical and Ubuntu to compete with Apple’s dominant iPad in the tablet market. But now that I’ve had some time to really think about the situation, I think the iPad will help to re-ignite Ubuntu’s Mobile Internet Device (MID) effort against Microsoft Windows. Here’s why.

As we wrote recently, KVM has a lot to recommend it as a virtualization solution in Ubuntu 10.04, especially in the server room.  But how ready is it for the desktop, and can it contend with applications like VirtualBox when it comes to ease-of-use?  Read on for a comparison of two of the Ubuntu world’s most popular virtualization products, and some thoughts on which one is better for desktop users.

If you use Windows software on Ubuntu 10.04, chances are you’ve encountered the new feature in Lucid Lynx that prevents .exe files from being run without the executable bit set.  This might be good and well for some users, but is it really the best approach to security?  Here are some thoughts.

In a brief but bold statement, Dell’s U.S. website suggests that Ubuntu is safer than Microsoft Windows, especially for customers looking to avoid viruses. The statement, spotted by TheVARguy.com, also suggests that Dell will begin shipping Ubuntu 10.04 on selected U.S. systems sometime in mid-2010. Here’s an update.

When the Maverick Meerkat, better known as Ubuntu 10.10, debuts in October, it will bring with it a new default browser for Kubuntu users in the form of rekonq.  If you’re a KDE user dissatisfied with Konqueror and Firefox, here’s what you can look forward to next fall.

One of the areas in which open-source software has truly come into its own during the last few years is virtualization.  The latest LTS release of Ubuntu, which offers a variety of Free virtualization solutions, makes this abundantly clear.  Below, we take a look at some of those options, with a focus on KVM, and consider their meaning for Ubuntu users.

A couple weeks ago, Google, along with a number of other groups, famously advanced the WebM codec as a supported video format for HTML5-enabled browsers, in an attempt to finally put forward a standard that all parties involved can agree on.  How far has the Linux community come since then in implementing support for the new codec?  Here’s a look.