There is an editorial on ExtremeTech focusing on the Gnome implementation found on SuSE 8.1. The article is comparable to the critisisms against Red Hat for the way they delivered KDE to their users.
Major technology companies and DesktopLinux.com today announced their sponsorship of the inaugural Desktop Linux Summit to be held in San Diego on Feb 20-21, 2003. The Summit will be the first event entirely devoted to desktop Linux and will be hosted by the top executives of leading technology companies worldwide including Codeweavers, Hewlett Packard, Lindows.com, Lycoris, MandrakeSoft, Sun Microsystems, SuSE, and Ximian.
The Justice Department is trying to determine whether Microsoft is sharing details about its Windows operating system with competitors as required under a proposed antitrust settlement, the Los Angeles Times reported. Investigators want to know whether Microsoft has withheld formulas that could allow rivals to write programs that work well with Windows, the newspaper's Web site reported Wednesday night, quoting unidentified executives of software companies.
When the topic of Linux distros comes up, most people think of Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse or some other popular and well-known product. Each of these distros has a flashy GUI installer, a well known brand name in the Linux world and large distribution in stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and others. Earlier this week, we've looked at each of these, focusing on the new features and capabilities in the latest release. Read the rest of the review at ExtremeTech.
"Anyone wondering why MS execs Steve Ballmer and Brian Valentine are so bent out of shape about Linux should check out SuSE's most recent distro, 8.1, for insight. For a desktop PC or small-biz network it's already miles ahead of Win98-SE and ME and closing fast on XP for ease of installation and use by first-timers."Read the review at TheRegister.
Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced the release of its Windows XP embedded operating system with Service Pack 1, meeting its promise to deliver new Windows XP Embedded technologies within 90 days of the client release.
From QNXZone: QNX Software Systems has released the Patch A for all versions of QNX Momentics. There is no readme or changelog available, so the only information available on what is included in the patch is from the short summary on QDN that reads as follows: "It provides enhancements and addresses some of the general issues pertaining to Voyager, Phplay, and Photon microGUI".
It is always cool seeing less popular operating systems to be endorsed by the media. Linux has been mentioned or shown in quite a few movies so far, but this is BeOS' turn to be briefly shown on a new, independant movie, titled "Apartment Story". The movie was produced by The General Coffee Company Film Productions, who by the way, also do... software (mostly for BeOS). Check out the trailer and watch the brief BeOS scene.
"SuSE is one of the oldest and most recognized GNU/Linux distributions in Europe, provided by SuSE Linux AG. Even though it is not quite as well known in the United States as Red Hat, the leading Linux distribution (commonly called distro) it is one of three distros that you are most likely to find in stores that carry Linux software (the others are Mandrake and Red Hat). There's ongoing debate about which of these distros has the easiest installation style, which of the vendors has the most interesting and useful packaging, and which of them is the "best"."Read the review at ExtremeTech.
"I recently got a copy of my new book, 'Mac OS X for Unix Geeks', and as I anxiously await its arrival in bookstores, I have a little time to reflect. So, I'm offering the top ten tips that I gathered while working on the book. These tips will show you the differences between Mac OS X and other flavors of Unix; help you find the bits that resemble the Unix you are used to; and even feather your nest with XFree86 and ports of popular open source applications."Read the article over at O'Reilly.
Sourcemage, under the leadership of Ryan Abrams (of BeGroovy fame), is a source-based GNU/Linux distribution based on a Sorcery metaphor of "casting" and "dispelling" programs, which the team refers to as "spells". New features include new dependency sorting, 'invoke' (used to be 'skry') a menuing tool for installed spells, a number of bugfixes, and some new asthetics.
"I suppose it's a losing battle, but it's one worth fighting, anyway. What makes me think of it is a thread I noticed on the freedesktop.org mailing list. In that thread, Andreas Pour, with whom I do not agree about much, defends obvious common sense against what over the last couple of years has been a growing onslaught. He's absolutely right, but that isn't always enough."Read it at LinuxAndMain.
"Redmond has a new line of equipment designed to help turn your home into a wireless network. In the short term, at least, that's good news for the industry." Read the article at Business 2.0.
"The "premier release" of Xandros, formerly known as Corel Linux, is being released today at the Xandros.com Web site. Individual users can pick up a copy for $99, and corporate/enterprise users will see a discount price for multiple licenses. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Xandros to play around with. This distribution is Linux through and through, but it could just be the Linux that will truly snag a market that is looking to escape from the confines of Windows."Here you can also find an interview with Ming Poon of Xandros. OSNews published the world exclusive preview of Xandros Desktop (Beta 3), just a month ago.
When you first heard about Linux, it was probably Red Hat Linux, and for good reason. Red Hat entered the market in 1994 and has become the largest and most recognized company dedicated to open source software. Red Hat now has more than 500 employees and 15 locations worldwide, with headquarters in Durham, North Carolina. The review is at ExtremeTech.
In response to the recent reviews of Debian 3.0 seen here and elsewhere, Debian developer Colin Walters has opted to start a Debian desktop subproject. The announcement e-mail states: "There is no reason we cannot make Debian easy to use for the masses. I personally want to be able to completely replace the Windows XP machine that my mom uses. We're a fairly long way away from that, but I strongly believe in the power of free software. We've come this far, and we can go much farther." The temporary location for the homepage of this project is here which will hopefully be moved to debian.org.
The Linux kernel mailing list continues to be the locus of sometimes contentious discussion between Richard M. Stallman and advocates of the limited-license BitKeeper code management program that is currently used to store the pieces of the Linux kernel as it is developed. It actually reached the point Monday where there was a discussion as to whether Stallman should be banned from the kernel list.
"The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview."
