Apart from well-known editions such as the normal Ubuntu and Kubuntu, the Ubuntu project includes several other variations as well. One of those is Ubuntu Mobile, which targets Mobile Internet Devices and netbooks. While this release currently uses GNOME Mobile, Canonical's David Mandala has stated that they may look at Qt 4.5, which will be released under the LGPL, as a development environment.

All those Windows Mobile users waiting for Windows Mobile 7 are going to have to wait a little longer, but at least now they'll have something to keep them busy while they wait. Next month, Microsoft is reportedly planning to unveil Windows Mobile 6.5 and accompanying services at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, which is taking place between February 16 and 19.

Last week, news got out that Microsoft had been charged with breaking competition laws by the European Commission. The EU stated that Microsoft has broken competition laws because it bundles its Internet Explorer browser with Windows, which gives the browser an unfair advantage over competing browsers such as Firefox and Opera. OSNews readers debated this topic lively, and it seems we can use this story to continue the discussion: Opera Software's CEO Jon von Tetzchner joined in on the fun.

One of the biggest problems when it comes to running Windows on netbooks has to do with the type of storage medium the cheaper models prefer: solid state drives. SSDs need to be treated differently from normal, mechanical hard drives because SSDs don't like small write and delete operations. For Windows 7, Microsoft promised performance improvements when using SSDs, so the guys and girls at TweakTown decided to do a preliminary benchmark between Windows Vista SP1 and the Windows 7 beta. The results are clear.

"Ars takes a close look at Seed, a new framework that allows software developers to build GTK+ applications with JavaScript. The popular web scripting language could soon become the dominant application extension language on the Linux desktop."

Microsoft has been sued by a small Wisconsin business for allegedly misrepresenting the capabilities of its Live Communications Server product, selling the company more licenses than it needed and not providing a refund or other products to solve its original problem. Imagineering International filed its lawsuit in December in the Fond de Lac County circuit court in Wisconsin, accusing Microsoft of breach of contract and breach of warranties, among other offenses.

Remember those lovely laser discs that education systems seemed to so lovingly embrace back in the 80s and 90s? The discs resembled what today's children would probably call a giant DVD, and these would be placed upon a massive tray to be sucked into a player twice the size of your VCR (VCR? What's that?). All of the memories associated with these players may bring tears to the surface, but you're going to have to face the truth sooner or later: Pioneer just ended production of its last three laser disc players, meaning that replacements for the said players, assuming you own one, will now be gone... forever. Stock up and buy a couple, and you'll be able to enjoy those massive discs for years to come instead of using them as frisbees. Honestly, though-- how did the laser disc player last this long?

When we reviewed the Windows 7 beta, we did so on a standard desktop machine. However, the big thing in hardware right now is not the desktop, but the netbook segment. Since Microsoft claims that Windows 7 is geared towards netbooks, I decided to give the beta a go on my trusty Acer Aspire One. Read on for installation instructions if you don't own an external DVD drive, and a few very short first impressions.

Protothreads are a type of extremely lightweight threads - each protothread requires only two bytes of memory - that are usually used for embedded firmware programming, where memory is at a premium. Protothreads combine the low overhead with event-driven programming with the algorithmic clarity of threaded programming.

The ReactOS project has seen some major progress during 2008. The project, which aims to create a Windows NT-compatible operating system, has published a 'year-in-review' article concerning 2008, detailing the various area of work. It provides some interesting insights into the project's development.

Using an Mini-ITX motherboard and some spare parts lying around my study, I was able to put together an extremely powerful internet filtering appliance that is not only powerful but fast, reliable, and darn near impossible to circumvent by computer savvy teens. Most parents do not want to bother becoming the internet police of the household but today's internet is a very hostile place with many different opportunities for trouble.

The subject of Apple CEO (and Messiah) Steve Jobs has been in the news quite a bit lately. It's nearly making me sick, the nonstop debate -- not about his health, but rather, about whether or not it's okay to discuss his health in the first place. I'm here to tell you: it's perfectly fine. Long ago, Steve Jobs forfeited his right to any privacy on this matter. Read on and I'll tell you why.

The PC industry is going through a very, very dark period right now, with the netbook being the only bright spot on many manufacturers' balance sheets. Since the saving grace of the industry is powered by Intel's Atom chip, it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's also the only positive element in Intel's abysmal quarterly results.

The concept of Namespaces provides a way to help avoid problems with multiple functions, classes, and constants of the same name being defined multiple times. PHP 5.3 borrows much of the syntax and design of Namespaces from other languages — most notably C++. However, it does deal with Namespaces in a somewhat unique way, which may cause problems for those familiar with Namespaces. This article takes a close look at PHP V5.3 namespaces, which is one of the most anticipated and the most debated feature in this release of PHP.