One of the problem with operating system updates is that you often need to reboot the system. While this is nothing but a minor nuisance for us desktop users, it's a bigger problem when it comes to servers. Ksplice is a technology that allows Linux kernel patches to be applied without actually restarting the kernel.

"The latest version of Microsoft's flagship operating system, Windows 7, is available for pre-order in the UK. Amazon said that sales of Windows 7 in the first eight hours it was available outstripped those of Windows Vista's entire 17 week pre-order period."

"Microsoft has announced pricing for Azure that marginally undercuts Amazon on raw computing for Windows-based clouds but remains more expensive than the mega book warehouse's Linux option. The company has said it will charge $0.12 per compute hour for its Windows Azure Compute. Amazon's price for an ondemand Windows instance starts at $0.125. Amazon's Linux-based service undercuts Windows, with pricing starting at $0.10 per computing hour. Add in storage, and Azure's price will creep up further against Amazon: Azure will charge $0.15 per gigabyte stored versus $0.10 per gigabyte each month from Amazon."

During his keynote speech at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Steve Ballmer has dismissed Google's announcement of Chrome OS. "There's good data that says 50 percent of the time that someone's on their PC, they're not doing something with the Web browser," Ballmer said, suggesting that an ideal operating system would provide both rich online and offline integration. It is not sure yet what Chrome OS will exactly offer.

Microsoft plans to use Windows Embedded to combat rival operating systems in smartbooks and a number of other devices meant to always be connected to the Internet that Microsoft calls CIDs, or consumer Internet devices. In this interview Kevin Dallas, the general manager of Microsoft's Windows Embedded business, discussed Microsoft's strategies for smartbooks and other devices, such as the company's Haiku concept device.

YouTube will be phasing out support for Internet Explorer version 6. "Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly."

That was my first reaction when I saw the headline. Should Hannah Montana and Linux even be allowed to be in the same sentence? Someone apparently thinks so. According to IT Knowledge Exchange, Hannah Montana Linux, obviously designed with Hannah Montana fans in mind, emerged recently on Twitter, being tweeted and re-tweeted so many times. It's been hosted at SourceForge and is currently available for download, but you had probably get your copy quickly because I'm sure the long, iron arm of Disney will find out about this project and quickly shut it down. Big companies are often touchy about their trademarks.

So we finally meet! You can't imagine how hard I've tried to get my hands on a machine that could run AmigaOS 4 in all its glory. I've never used the Amiga before - not during its heydays, and not during its afterglow - so it meant an unexplored world for me. You can imagine my excitement when ACube Systems, makers of the sam440ep board that runs AmigaOS 4.1, offered a review machine to me, built around their own PowerPC sam440ep flex motherboard.

Mark Shutttleworh, the head honcho over at Canonical and Ubuntu, has given an interview to derStandard.at during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. He talks about GNOME 3.0, the struggle to improve the user experience on the Linux desktop, as well as various other things.

"After just over one month in market, we wanted to take the opportunity to THANK YOU for all your feedback and support of Bing and provide an update on our early results. We’ve been really pleased to hear so much positive feedback, and we appreciate all you who’ve taken the time to pass along your ideas on how we can continue to improve."

It seems like only yesterday when Haiku was nothing more than a mere promise. Oh how the times have changed, as evidenced by yesterday's news: Colin Guenther has ported the FreeBSD WiFi stack to Haiku, and managed to get a connection, browse the internet, and download a large file.

"The next version of Office moved a step closer to reality on Monday as Microsoft released an invitation-only technical preview of Office 2010. However, the release of the software will be limited. Attendees of this week's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, as well as the recent TechEd show, will gain access to the desktop versions of Office 2010." More here.

Analyst firm DisplaySearch has done a study into the notebook market, and from that study they conclude that in 2009, netbook shipments will grow to 20% of total notebook shipments. At the same time, sales of "normal" notebooks will remain flat year-over-year.

Even though news has been slow the entire week due to the fact that it's summer and people are more interested in vacation than in technology news, we still had a lot of interesting stuff this week. Google obviously captured the headlines with its Chrome OS, but we also talked about Mono, Richard Stallman, and many other things.