German company Neofonie GmbH has announced the WePad, a Linux-based iPad competitor.

"The WePad is a 11.6-inch Tablet that promises to be open and at the same time allowing publishers to have control over their content," writes I4U News' Luigi Lugmayr. "The WePad also positions itself on the side of Adobe by supporting Flash and Adobe AIR. The WePad runs a Linux OS that supports Android and Adobe AIR apps."

"[It's] not just the WePad hardware that sounds impressive (it's said to run a 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, and have a 720p wide-screen display and a Webcam, among other things)," writes Crave's Matt Hickey. "It's also the thought that seemed to have gone into the ecosystem behind the device. It's said to run Android and Linux and have full access to the Android Marketplace, as well as a custom WePad app store."

"We have been told that the WePad will be ready for release in August, which we will then be able to learn much more about the device," writes PR News' Peter Chubb. "Not certain if Apple will worry about its new competition..."

More here from InformationWeek ... more here from Geek.com ... and more here from DaniWeb.

North Korea has released its Red Star Linux-based operating system.

"In late February a Russian blogger purchased and stripped down a copy of the operating system, detailing its features and requirements," writes The Inquirer's David Neal. "The blogger tells us that Red Star requires a Pentium III 800MHz CPU, 256MB RAM and a 3GB hard drive to run. It is Linux-based, but apes the Microsoft Windows look and feel."

"And Red Star isn't just any Linux: it's apparently loaded with hooks designed to let North Korean government watchdogs keep an eye on what users are doing," writes Digital Trends' Geoff Duncan.

"Red Star uses the Korean folk song 'Arirang,' popular on both sides of the peninsula, as its start-up music and numbers years using its its 'juche' (self-reliance) calendar, which starts counting from the birth of state founder Kim Il-sung," according to the Toronto Sun.

More here from Geekosystem ... more here from The Register ... and more here from Fudzilla.

Red Hat has announced the release of version 5.5 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

"RHEL version 5.5... has been reconfigured for Intel's just-released eight-core Nehalem-EX and AMD's almost-as-recently released 12-core 'Magny-Cours' Opteron 6100 Series processors," writes PCWorld's Joab Jackson.

"The developers have added many improvements to the virtualization functions — especially to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor," writes The H Open Source's Thorsten Leemhuis. "Seven months ago, Red Hat integrated KVM as a second, parallel option to Xen, with the release of version 5.4."

"RHEL 5.5 also offers improved support for Windows 7 and extends Active Directory integration," writes V3.co.uk's Spencer Dalziel. "This incorporates improved user and group mapping, while simplifying file system management across platforms."

"It is the fifth update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system, which the company first delivered in 2007," writes The Inquirer's Asavin Wattanajantra.

More here from LWN.net ... and the press release is here.