There are hundreds (at least!) of different Linux-based operating systems. Most people will be familiar with some of the big names - distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian and Mandriva. Most of the well-known Linux distros are designed to be used as general purpose desktop operating systems or installed on servers. But beyond these distros are hundreds of others either designed to appeal to very specific audiences or to fulfill the somewhat niche needs of some users. We rounded up some of the most interesting Linux distros out there that you might not have heard of.

Once upon a time the successor to OpenSolaris 2009.06 was supposed to be OpenSolaris 2010.02 and then it became OpenSolaris 2010.03 with a release date in March and then who knows what happened. There hasn't been an update to the OpenSolaris operating system now in a year nor has there been any communication at all to developers or end-users by Oracle about their plans after taking over Sun Microsystems. All indications were that Oracle would at least deliver an OpenSolaris update in 2010'1H, but it looks like that won't happen...

Back in April was the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, but now arriving two and a half months later is the second beta of the forthcoming RHEL6 that's a major update to Red Hat's enterprise Linux operating system...

Red Hat's John Poelstra who is the Program Manager for Fedora and its "feature wrangler" has proposed an interesting feature today for Fedora 14: to actually ship it on time. The goal would be to not only ship Fedora 14 final according to their release schedule, but the alpha and beta releases too...

The HURD was meant to be the true kernel at the heart of the GNU operating system. The promise behind the HURD was revolutionary â€" a set of daemons on top of a microkernel that was intended to surpass the performance of the monolithic kernels of traditional Unix systems and in doing so, give greater security, freedom and flexibility to the users â€" but it has yet to come down to earth.

So, the iPhone 4 has been out for a while, and is getting mostly pretty good reviews - there's one major sore spot, though. Apple made this hoopla about their fancy antenna thingie, but as it turns out, this thingie is kind of a design flaw, causing signal loss (and dropped calls) for some people. Despite downplaying by Steve Jobs himself, AnandTech has done a thorough investigation, and they've found out that the problem - which affects every mobile phone - is a whole lot worse on the iPhone 4 due to the new antenna. At the same time, however, the iPhone has much better reception in low signal situations. What?

Well, it sounded nice when Qualcomm announced an open-source 2D/3D kernel driver for their Snapdragon platform that's used by phones like the Nexus One and Dell Streak, but it turns out that their user-space Linux driver that hooks into this kernel driver is currently a closed-source blob. This has led to the eternal debate about open-source kernel components but with only closed-source components...

Opera 10.60 has been released July 1 for Mac OS X and is available for download. The features highlighted on the changelogs page are: layout engine (codename 'Presto'), HTML5 with support for offline web applications, WebM, which has been available in Opera (in a special build) on the very day of the announcement at the Google I/O conference, web workers for running scripts in the background without impeding the browsing experience, and geolocation. Version 10.60 is also available for Windows and Linux/BSD.

While it wasn't a very important link in the story about the iPhone 4's antenna issue, we did link to an article over at Boy Genius Report which supposedly contained emails coming from Steve Jobs. Apple has told Fortune and Engadget that these emails are, in fact, not from Steve Jobs. Apple claims they're fake. Also, on a funnier note, I'm assuming all of you have already seen last night's brand new Futurama episode in which they make some serious fun of Apple, Google, the iPhone, and its fans?

Zack Rusin has written a new blog post where he compares writing free software graphics drivers to running a crocodile petting zoo and wireless bungee jumping...

Merimobiles has begun selling a seven-inch tablet for $200 that dual boots Android 2.1 and Windows CE 6.0. The Witstech A81-E is based on an unnamed ARM Cortex-A8-based processor clocked to 600MHz, and is equipped with 256MB RAM, 2GB flash, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an optional GPS receiver, says the online retailer....

While Wine 1.2 was expected for release in June, it didn't happen as when nearing the end of the month there ended up being a fifth release candidate as the blocker bug list still wasn't cleared. We're now into July and there are still 42 bugs blocking the release (the blocker bug) so here's a sixth release candidate...

Back in May we reported on the Lightspark Flash Player that was developed by a free software developer using Adobe's released SWF/Flash documentation and has hit a point where its ActionScript 3.0 support is nearly complete, has a JIT engine that leverages LLVM, supports OpenGL rendering, and boasts various other features as an open-source Flash Player alternative to Adobe's binary plug-in. Today a new release candidate of Lightspark 0.4.2 is available...

For those not preoccupied by any Independence Day celebrations in the United States, the long overdue release of Compiz 0.9 is out and ready for testing! Compiz 0.9 represents a major rewrite and overhaul of this compositing manager...

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister offers 10 reasons why the PC is here to stay despite Steve Jobs' recent pronouncement that the iPad signals the end of the PC era. 'Depending on whom you ask, the iPad will save journalism, rescue the book publishing business, transform the movie industry, change the way we communicate, and make the perfect omelet. But there are plenty of reasons to suspect that at least some of these predictions will prove overly optimistic. Even more dubious is the idea that the iPad signals a true sea change in computing,' McAllister writes. Chief among the reasons the PC is not dead yet are desktops' comparative cost-effectiveness, the lack of versatility of mobile devices, the fact that desktop and mobile OSes don't mix, and limitations inherent to tablet devices' dependencies on the cloud.

Pixel Qi has begun shipping its power-saving, transflective LCDs to do-it-yourselfers, who can install them in 10.1-inch netbooks. The displays work in both color and monochrome e-paper modes, and are said to require up to 80 percent less power of an ordinary display....

Having completed its acquisition of Palm late last week, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is now laying off Palm staff & in the double digits,& says All Things Digital. Meanwhile, HP is giving away free Palm Pre and Palm Pixi phones with a two-year contract on AT T and Verizon, says eWEEK....

The Russian porting team ofGerasim Troeglazov &Evgeny Abdraimov write that Qt 4.7 has recently been released bringing with it some imporvements and newly ported applications to Haiku...