Gnome 2.16 is out; not sure when this happened, but it must have been pretty recent.
Mandriva has released Mandriva Linux 2007, reportedly shipping with “both AIGLX and Xgl 3D technologies”.
In addition, it sounds like parties such as IBM and Sun Microsystems continue to push Ubuntu into the enterprise. IBM would seem to have some conflict here, as I know they are also a strong Novell (Suse) partner. I suppose this is what you’d call “hedging your bets”.
IBM are strong partners with a number of Linux companies - Novell and RedHat included - adding Ubuntu to ‘the stable’ isn’t such a big thing, nor much of a surprise.
Truly, I was a little surprised. Supporting Ubuntu makes sense to people like you and me, but what would make sense to you and me isn’t always what huge corporations actually do. A conservative prediction probably would have been that they would stick closer to distros which are viewed as “commercial” — ie, Red Hat & Novell.
And while this is cool news, in all honesty, I expect IBM to push a little harder on Suse and or Red Hat over Ubuntu. That doesn’t mean I prefer that, but it’s what I would expect.