OSNews

Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?

As I'm working on a long and detailed article about Psion and Symbian (similar in setup to the Palm article), I need to dive into a number of devices that I have never personally owned. One of the devices that was atop my list was what I think is the ultimate Symbian device: the Nokia E7 - the last of the long line of Communicators, released in early 2011. While more detailed information about it will find its way into the Psion/Symbian article, I figured it'd be interesting to give a few first impressions.

The reviews are universally positive, and virtually everyone seems to agree: the HTC One is one heck of an Android device, and quite possibly the best phone currently on the market. Outstanding build quality, great design, fast - and just like the One X before it, it looks like to me it's a far better phone than its Galaxy counterparts. Why, then, is no one buying HTC phones?

It's apparently browser engine day today. After Mozilla and Samsung announcing Servo, Google has just announced it's forking WebKit into Blink. Like WebKit, Blink will be open source, and it will also be used by other browser makers - most prominently, Opera has already announced it's not using WebKit, but Blink. Update: Courtesy of MacRumors, this graph illustrates how just how much Google contributed to WebKit. Much more than I thought. Also, Chrome developer Alex Russell: "To make a better platform faster, you must be able to iterate faster. Steps away from that are steps away from a better platform. Today's WebKit defeats that imperative in ways large and small. It's not anybody's fault, but it does need to change. And changing it will allow us to iterate faster, working through the annealing process that takes a good idea from drawing board to API to refined feature."

Last week, Facebook sent out an invite to a press event, to come check Facebook's 'New home on Android'. The press and bloggers went nuts, proclaiming that Facebook would fork Android and create its own phone. However, if you didn't wear the sensationalism-induced glasses, it was obvious from the invite itself that there would no forking of Android, and AndroidPolice confirmed it today.

Like many OSNews readers, I use Ubuntu. I also use several less popular distros. What is it like to use these lesser-known distros compared to the dominant systems? How does running, say, VectorLinux or Puppy or PC-BSD, differ from using Ubuntu or Fedora? This article offers a few ideas. Obviously, it broadly generalizes about distros for the purpose of discussion.

This could potentially be quite big for Ubuntu and Linux in general. Canonical and the Chinese government have announced a collaboration to build a version of Ubuntu specifically for the Chinese market, which will become the reference architecture for standard operating systems in the country.

Change platforms. Whenever you can. Ever since I got into computing, I've lived according to a very simple adage: change platforms all the time. For reasons I won't go into, the importance of this adage was reaffirmed today, and I figured I'd share it with you all - and hopefully, get a few of you to follow this adage as well.

Ubuntu has come under a decent amount of flack over the past few months, particularly over their decision to use the 'Dash Search' to return results from Amazon by default in their most recent release.

In all honesty, this has taken far longer than I anticipated. Google, the world's largest internet advertising company, has removed several popular ad-blocking tools from the Play Store. While they are technically in the right to do so - they violate the Play Store developer distribution agreement - it's still a bit of a dick move. Luckily, though, unlike some other platforms, you can easily sideload the adblockers onto your Android device.