Web sites saw visitors deserting Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser in favor of Apple's Safari, Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome in December, according to Web analytics company Net Applications.

The Wikimedia Foundation has raised the necessary funds to operate Wikipedia until the end of June, the nonprofit organization announced Friday.

I can do many things with the greatest of ease on the Linux desktop. But, as I discovered while doing my community Linux overview, recording a Linux desktop video isn't one of them. Oh, boy, is it ever not one of them.

When you're talking Linux, three big names always pop up: Canonical's Ubuntu, Novell's openSUSE and Red Hat's Fedora. Ubuntu has ridden a groundswell of both consumer and commercial support to its current ranking as the most popular Linux distribution. OpenSUSE, with its business underpinnings, has always been popular in Europe and has been making inroads in the U.S. And it is largely thanks to Fedora that Red Hat has become the biggest Linux company with a major role in community Linux.

The Web development frameworks Rails and Merb have decided to end their rivalry and join forces in a single project, they said last week.

The Small Sister open source privacy project has released a first beta of its SmallMail application, allowing individuals to send e-mail messages that can't be intercepted or traced by governments or snoops.