posted by Thom Holwerda on Tue 20th May 2008 07:46 UTC, submitted by Rahul
A week ago, the Fedora Project released Fedora 9 into the world. Fedora 9 comes with GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0.3, Xfce 4.2.2, PackageKit, Firefox 3.0 beta 5, a 2.6.25-based Linux kernel, and much more. As always, the intertubes have been flooded with reviews, so we figured we would summarise a few of them.Lifehacker takes a look at the ease with which you can make your Fedora 9 installation live on a USB thumb drive. You do not need Linux installed to do it (there is a Windows program), any files you already have on the drive will remain untouched, and any tweaks and settings you make will be saved for the next time you boot up. It takes three clicks to create such a system, and Lifehacker is enthusiastic about the whole concept.
Monkey_bites is also thrilled with the live USB concept, but also details another interesting improvement in Fedora 9: PackageKit. "Fedora 9 introduces a nice upgrade to PackageKit which allows you to treat all your updates the same whether they're RPG, UM or Apt," they state, "There's also a new feature that detects when you're missing a piece of software needed to open a file. PackageKit will pop up a window offering to install what you need (provided there's a free software package available)."
Linux.com has a longer review, and they conclude:
Aside from the problems with PackageKit -- and, to a lesser extent, the inclusion of KDE 4.0.3 -- Fedora 9 manages to balance innovation with a high degree of usability. Over the last few months, Fedora has been increasingly compared favorably with Ubuntu on both accounts, and, to a large extent, it deserves this praise. If anything, it has probably exceeded Ubuntu in innovation, with at least a dozen major new ideas in every release. It is a rare release, too, in which Fedora's menus and dialog do not show minor tinkering to fine-tune the user experience.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 23:46 UTC
"This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 15:39 UTC
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 11:04 UTC
"Microsoft today issued a brief statement promising to make 'essential patents' available to competitors at fair and reasonable licensing rates, and promised not to sue companies making products that infringe these patents. The actual patents themselves weren't disclosed, but Microsoft joins both Google and Apple in making recent statements on so-called fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing terms. Such licensing terms designate certain patents as essential to complying with industry standards, making them available for licensing at (supposedly) lower-than-usual rates." This industry is dysfunctional.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/10/12 0:13 UTC
"Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren't inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy." He might use Star Wars as an analogy (I strongly dislike Star Wars - Trekkie here), but it sums up very well how I feel about computing today.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/12 23:22 UTC
"Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows graphics processing units and central processing units on a single chip to collaborate - boosting processor performance by an average of more than 20 percent."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/12 23:19 UTC
"Microsoft revealed today that it plans to launch the highly anticipated 'Consumer Preview' version of Windows 8 on February 29th. The company will hold an event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 29th to launch the Windows 8 Consumer Preview between 3PM and 5PM (CET)." Still haven't seen any indication they've addressed the core issues with Metro (no window management, no real applications). If they don't, this release will be entirely useless to anyone who uses computers beyond Facebook, weather applications, and Twitter.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/08/12 23:15 UTC
"While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn't require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. 'The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,' the lead researcher says." In a way, the efforts by Hollywood and the corrupt US Congress is actually increasing the resiliency of peer-to-peer technology. Karma.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/07/12 23:41 UTC
"People who have the latest Symbian Nokia smartphones can now update them to Nokia Belle - bringing a fresh look to their screens thanks to the latest user interface. Once you have installed Nokia Belle you will still have the same phone, but it will feel like new, with improved performance." Love the version name.
Linked by fran on 02/07/12 23:27 UTC
"Research in Motion has said the native software development kit for Blackberry 10 will be committed to open source. The firm, which has a history of basing its business on being a closed system, is shifting more and more to open source. Its upcoming Blackberry 10 native SDK will include many open source code resources."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/07/12 17:55 UTC
Let this be a lesson. After posts by John Gruber and Shawn King, this happened to Violet Blue. "The misinformation gave a significant number of people fuel to stalk me, attack me for hours at a time, malign, insult me in disgusting ways, threaten me with weapon-specific violent death (an axe), and lead social media attempts to force me to lose my job over the matter. Many referenced John Gruber, and/or his post as they did this. Plans were openly made to make media to attack me - another Angry Mac Bastards podcast." Disgusting story, and sadly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened, as Blue notes in her article. I don't like talking about these matters (you don't want to know the kind of crap that gets thrown my way at times), but I can assure you my inbox has seen its share of pure vitriol after Gruber links to an OSNews piece. It ain't pretty.More News »
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