Microsoft recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEMs will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. It's the end of an era.

Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group recently hosted its first Kernel Walkthrough given by Bart Trojanowski. Bart starts with a one-hour presentation introducing some Linux development background, file layout and data types. The code walkthrough following the presentation covers some important files and Linux list and bit modification APIs.A Google Video version (presentation only) is also available.

It's no surprise that Vista's vanilla operating system hasn't fared too well with some users. That said, why not customize it to make it better? ExtremeTech describes five useful and free Vista utilities designed to enhance Microsoft's latest operating system. One such application is TweakVI Basic, which allows users to customize Vista's user interface. Another is Launchy, which is a handy startup/launching application.

Codename Midori is a derivative of Singularity that is meant to supersede Windows, and it is more than just a research project. Singularity, is an experimental microkernel and operating system project started in 2003 for which Microsoft posted the source code back in March. Unfortunately Singularity was developed exclusively for research purposes and is not intended for practical use.

OpenMoko launched its highly anticipated FreeRunner smartphone, a Linux-based handset that's completely open in both hardware and software, and is designed to encourage third-party modification and customization. Although the FreeRunner's software platform is still incomplete, the device has attracted considerable attention from mobile software developers and Linux enthusiasts.

Even if you love it, there are some things for which Windows is clearly a silly solution. Richard Stiennon lists 10 of the worst uses of Windows he's seen, including using it to display a static green arrow over the open TSA security lanes at Detroit Metro.

Giga-byte and and mobile phone service provider Chunghwa will launch the M528 MID ('mobile internet device') in Taiwan this August. The Linux-based device will have a 4.8-inch touchscreen and use an 800MHz Intel Centrino Atom processor.

We'd like to formally welcome Quentin Hartman, Tony Steidler-Dennison, and Amjith Ramanujam to the OSNews team. We had a huge response to our recent call for contributors, and if you were one of the people who contacted us, we're not done with you yet. Whether you're interested in contributing daily news or writing articles, we'll be contacting you soon, and these new editors are specifically tasked with helping to marshall the efforts of the other contributors. These new editors join Thom Holwerda, who's taking a sabbatical while trying to recover from RSI, David Adams, our Publisher and business manager, Adam Scheinberg, our webmaster and back-end guru, and Eugenia Loli-Queru, who is still occasionally lured out of retirement until the trolls and platform zealots earnest advocates remind her why she found it less stressful to take up videography. Welcome, n00bs!

LinuX-Gamers Live is a live DVD from Germany based on Arch Linux that includes nothing but games. Version 0.9.3 was released in June and provides an excellent means of sampling Linux games or setting up a home arcade.

I find a large number of people around me who have used vim a few times while writing programs. Very few of them have grown into becoming effective vim users. The majority drop out because of its initially daunting interface. A good number of the interested users switch to emacs, because they think the 'power' just isn't there with vim. I am not saying emacs is bad, but I just cannot stand decisions made on lack of information.

So should you pay up to $35 for their lowest 5GB plan, you just might be able to actually watch two HD films. Of course you can go over your limit if you're willing to pay $1 per additional gigabyte, a markup over cost of only 1,000 to 1,500% by Time Warner Cable. That's a bad deal however you slice it -- unless you work in marketing.

Even though the White House "strongly support" the FISA bill, and contends it is necessary to provide "our intelligence professionals the tools they need to keep our Nation safe," and urges the Senate "to act as soon as it returns from its recess," the Bush Administration is willing to veto the legislation and forgo these tools unless the telecom immunity is given effect immediately.

According to job postings discovered by Microsoft-centric blog UX Evangelist, Microsoft is already thinking Windows 8. The good news? Most of the jobs are technical roadmap and planning jobs, which suggests that Redmond is starting their thinking well ahead of time. We should be able to update you on how successful this job search turns out to be sometime in about 2012.

Gary Richmond at Freesoftware Magazine looks at Acer's Aspire One, the latest ultra portable laptop computer to feature GNU/Linux. It runs Linpus Linux Lite, a hacked version of Fedora 8. At last we have a version of Linux not tainted with the kernel source code issues and GPL violations that characterised Xandros on the Asus EeePC.