Triplesourced

Ironically, given the recent announcement that Dell has become the third-party in Novell and Microsoft's controversial twosome, the PC-maker has still seen fit to sponsor the welcoming drinks session for delegates at Red Hat's annual user conference.

Most of the delegates here in San Diego seemed happy to accept Dell's hospitality at the welcoming party of this three-day user conference – at least no one was lobbing canapés at the Dell stand in the corner of the entertainment tent.

Anyway – we'll see what kind of reception Dell gets from Red Hat's chief exec Matthew Szulik and co at the opening keynotes tomorrow at 8.30 am.

With one day to go before Red Hat's annual user conference kicks off here in sunny San Diego, the rumour mill seems to be picking up – and there is some good news and bad news for the Linux distributor.

First the bad news, it seems that long-standing Red Hat partner Dell has jumped into bed with rival Linux distro-purveyor Novell. Just when it looked like Dell was winning some hearts and minds in the open source community, with its support (albeit begrudging) for Ubuntu as a desktop OS, the PC maker has joined the hitherto two-some between Novell and Microsoft. The deal between Novell and Microsoft- mainly based around servers – is underpinned by some foggy deal over patents which saw buckets of cash change hands between the two vendors when it was announced late last year. What this means for Red Hat is unclear but things are sure to be frostier with Dell in future.(Interestingly its almost two years to the day since Michael Dell put nearly $100m into Red Hat back in May 2005)

And now the good news, rumours are floating about of a deal between Red Hat and fluffy online search behemoth Google with various tie-ups being touted including Red Hat's latest operating system – RHEL 5 – or a version there of – being used as the OS for a Google phone? The other more plausible sounding plan is Google's collection of Microsoft challenging online-applications being bundled with RHEL on desktop machines – the Microsoft killer the industry has been waiting for. For some reason neither Red Hat or Novell have been very aggressive about the desktop to date – afraid of being laughed out of court – or just not believing that the revenues are worth chasing – maybe that could be all about to change? The next three days in San Diego should shed some light on which if any of these rumours is anything more – but if you have any issues or questions you want me to chase – add them to the comments section of below.

Red Hat's chief exec Matthew Szulik at last year's Red Hat conference in Nashville

I'm off to Red Hat's annual user conference in San Diego next week to find out what the Linux specialist's plans are for the next 12 months. It has been an interesting year for Red Hat – to say the least – with not only Novell's tie-up with Microsoft piling on the pressure but Oracle opting to release its own version of Red Hat's Linux distro for use with its database apps. But rather than being squished in a pincer movement, Red Hat seems to have escaped largely unscathed apart from reporting a dip in profits for last quarter compared to the previous year.

I have got some good interviews lined up including one with the Red Hat execs involved with the One Laptop per Child scheme, and Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Centre. But it would be great to field some questions direct from ZDNet UK readers – so if you have a burning issue you want to relay to Red Hat then reply to this post below.

If you find the normal questions on University Challenge…erm challenging then imagine the fiendishly mind-melting conundrums that result from basing the show's format around processor design! But that's exactly what a team of plucky journalists and a team of IT managers faced this week in the final of a competition devised by Intel to promote its soon to be launched Centrino-Pro chip-set.

Filmed in CNET's (ZDNet UK's parent company) brand spanking new video suite – the final saw technical editor Rupert Goodwins, site director Matt Loney, news editor Richard Thurston and reporter David Meyer triumph over the IT manager team from Nexus. Team ZD did have a slight advantage in that we were on home-turf and the fact that Rupert knows more about Intel's chip-design than a whole army of Bunny-men. The final score: ZDNet UK - 315 Nexus - 225.

We're still busy compiling and editing the footage but it should be live on ZDNet early next week. Stay tuned.



The calm before the storm: The team for Nexus looking pretty relaxed - they don't know what they are in for!




ZDNet site director Matt Loney gets touched up before filming



Tech ed Rupert Goodwins (second-in blue shirt) takes team ZD to victory




CNET's new state-of-the-art video studio comes into its own

What happens when the high-end of IT marketing nudges up into the lower echelons of the celebrity circuit? We found out last night at a shindig thrown by LG to promote its latest range of LCD TVs. While nothing to do with ZDNet's enterprise IT focus, we somehow managed to have some fun with the free-booze and canapes.

LG managed to snag B-list celebs aplenty including the Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding and Rhys Ifans of Notting Hill fame (is he technically A-list? – maybe A-). Apart from celeb spotting, entertainment was provide by Lilly Allen – who actually managed a good set despite the airport waiting-room like ambience of the venue. Bobby Gillespie was meant to show to do a DJ-set but shock-horror – the rock n' roller was no where to be seen come disc-spinning time.