OSNews

"Canonical has announced the availability of the first Ubuntu 10.04 beta release. The new version of Ubuntu, codenamed Lucid Lynx, is scheduled to arrive in April. It will be a long-term support release, which means that updates will be available for three years on the desktop and five years on servers. Although the Ubuntu developers have largely focused on boosting stability for this release, they have also added a number of noteworthy new features and applications. One of the most visible changes is the introduction of a new theme - a change that is part of a broader rebranding initiative that aims to update Ubuntu's visual identity." It might just be me, but I find the new theme ghastly. Compare this to this (my desktop). Oh, and Metacity - I can has anti-aliasing?

Thanks to the efforts of Neil Cafferkey, it has been possible since early March to install and boot AROS from a USB stick (if your BIOS supports this functionality, obviously). There is an ongoing topic about this at Aros-Exec, and the Icaros Desktop Blog talks about it as well.

"I am against software patents because it is not reasonable to expect that the current patent system, nor even one designed to improve or replace it, will ever be able to accurately determine what might be considered legitimately patentable from the overwhelming volume of innovations in software. Even the most trivial of software applications involves hundreds, potentially thousands of design decisions which might be considered by those aggressively seeking patents as potentially protectable inventions. If even the most basic elements of these are patentable, as they are currently, the patent system will be fundamentally unable to scale to meet that demand. As it is today."

Haiku's new web browser, WebPositive, has seen a new update. This new release benefits from updates in app_server and enables better text and canvas rendering. The new WebKit-based browser also has new support for bookmarks and additional usability improvements. Find out more at the developer's blog.

"Many of us who tried out the Windows Phone 7 simulator were disappointed to discover the simulator didn't contain a lot of the functionality that was being shown off at Mix10. It turns out Dan Ardelean has published a modified or 'unlocked' version of the simulator that contains virtually everything that was displayed. The front page is now full of apps that work, the settings menu is a long list of options for those apps. Unfortunately the download of the .bin file has now been pulled, but I was lucky enough to get a copy. Check out the 10 minute video of Windows Phone 7 [plus another video]." It even has a nice task manager and file explorer - undoubtedly for testing purposes. It's Windows CE 6.0, after all.

"Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, fell the most in more than 15 months in Nasdaq trading after forecasting sales this quarter that were less than half of analysts' estimates. Revenue in the period ending in May will be less than USD 150 million, Chief Financial Officer Doug Jeffries said yesterday on Palm's third-quarter conference call, compared with the USD 300 million average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company also reported its 11th straight quarterly loss."

"There has been much speculation over what OS 6.0 could possibly look like. We were recently hit with these images of what appear to be of a device running OS 6.0 with a similar screen resolution of a storm or storm2. These spy shot images come highly regarded as real from one our best connects. We're hoping to see it soon on a physical device and so until then take from it what you will."

"With chip makers continuing to increase the number of cores they include on each new generation of their processors, perhaps it's time to rethink the basic architecture of today's operating systems, suggested Dave Probert, a kernel architect within the Windows core operating systems division at Microsoft."

"The city of Amsterdam has been involved for several years in building Citynet, a partnership between the city and two private investors to wire 40000 Amsterdam buildings with fiber. And it's not just fiber, it's open access fiber - any ISP can sign up to use the infrastructure and deliver ultra-fast Internet access. In 2008, the European Union ruled that the city's involvement in the project was in fact legal, and that it was not improperly interfering in the market. We asked Herman Wagter, CEO of the company that built Citynet fiber project, to talk about how he got the job done, and to explain the challenges of rolling out fiber in a densely crowded European city." In case you're wondering: no, I don't live in Amsterdam. My small hick town has plans for fibre too, however.

"With the release of hundreds of pages of court documents in the legal dispute between Google and Viacom over the presence of copyright material on YouTube, Google has released a statement on the case. The statement was attributed to Zahavah Levine, YouTube chief counsel."