We're really on the subject of software installation issues on OSNews lately, and this story, making its rounds on the internet, fits in quite well. Back in the day, during the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, Microsoft had to make a whole slew of corporate email public. In light of Gates' imminent withdrawal from Microsoft, SeattlePI dug up a little gem among these emails, one in which Bill Gates goes on a full-blown rant about the difficulties he had trying to download and install Windows MovieMaker, back in 2003.

Earlier this week, we reported on the Berlin Packaging API, an effort to consolidate the various different packaging formats and managers in the Linux world. Many compared this new effort to PackageKit, and today Linux.com is running an article detailing what PackageKit exactly is, with a few quotes from the project's lead developer, Richard Hughes.

A Computerworld blog post reads: "You gotta love it. Microsoft has decided that it will ho ahead and kill off easy access to XP on June 30th. On behalf of desktop Linux users everywhere, and our first cousins, the Mac fans, thanks. You've given us the best shot we'll ever have of taking the desktop."

InfoWorld's Tom Yager speaks in favor of the RTFM approach to learning new skills, arguing that the knowledge gleaned from cracking a manual only in search of a specific answer is eroding software quality. "The reason is that developers don't allow themselves the time to look things up before they use them. Statement completion, context-sensitive help, generated code, unit testing, and automated analysis came about expressly to eliminate research and experimentation from the development cycle. The result, I think, speaks for itself. How many rookie coding blunders that lead to security vulnerabilities grow out of inadequately understood usage of a method or resource?"

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously they have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, and Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash. In the latest interview Computerworld chats with Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame about the design and development of C++, garbage collection and the role of facial hair in successful programming languages.

Yesterday, we reported on the statement several kernel developers had signed that urged hardware manufacturers to open up their Linux modules and drivers. "We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable," the statement read. Nvidia, which delivers probably the most prominent closed-source Linux driver, has reiterated its position concerning this matter.

One button, two buttons, three buttons, ten million buttons. Beige, black, white, red with polka dots. Glow-in-the-dark, see through. Right-handed, left-handed, both. Vertical for RSI patients, trackballs for weirdoes like myself, Apple's puck mouse for sado-masochists. The ubiquitous mouse comes in all possible shapes, forms, sizes, and colours, but according to our friend The Analyst, the glorious age of the mouse is coming to and end. Do we believe The Analyst?

Canonical has released Ubuntu 8.04 Mobile Internet Device Edition, a version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution geared towards netbooks, mobile internet devices, UMPCs, subnotebooks, or whatever they're called this day of the week. It has a whole slew of optimisations geared specifically towards Intel's Atom platform, as well as a set of open source applications designed specifically for MIDs, all courtesy of Intel's Moblin project.

A constant thorn in the eye of many Linux kernel developers is the existence of closed-source kernel modules, most notably those by Nvidia and Ati, but also some file system drivers and other elements. Most of the Linux developers have been against these modules ever since they were first used, and in fact, bug reports originating from a tainted kernel are often disregarded and ignored. The kernel developers have now rallied together by issuing a statement urging vendors to release open source Linux kernel modules and drivers.

Linux.com has a review of Opera 9.5, which also includes various benchmarks for Opera, Firefox, Safari, and IE on both Windows and Linux. Linuxcom concludes: "Opera 9.5 is full to the brim with features and improvements and highly customizable. By rolling in apps such as the mail client and IRC chat application, and integrating them into a user's browsing experience, Opera 9.5 is a worthy challenger to Firefox 3. It surely has enough power and features to make it my favorite browser. If only it were free software and open source!"

Although Apple is marketing Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an operating system update with "no new features," under the hood improvements will actually translate into a slew of new enhancements, five of which are described herein.

PsyStar introduced its Mac clone to much media attention back in April, causing many discussions about the company's legal status, the validity of the Mac OS X EULA, and even PsyStar's very existence. It soon turned out PsyStar was a real company, and was actually shipping the OpenComputer Mac Clone to its customers, to generally rather favourable reviews - not stellar of course, but acceptable, with the biggest downside being the inability to use the Software Update tool, forcing users to download OS updates straight from PsyStar's servers - to prevent updates from Apple hosing the OpenComputer. We're a few months later now, and a few things have changed.

The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July. Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning. The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops. The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.

Installing software on Linux. In the world of online minefields, this is the big one. Back in the day, you installed software on Linux by compiling it manually. Time-consuming, but assuming you had a decent knowledge of gcc, make, and maintaining library files, this could actually work. Later one came the package management systems that were supposed to make installing software on Linux a breeze: rpm, dpkg, and so on, and so forth. Since human beings have the innate tendency to assume that everyone else is wrong and only they are right, we are now stuck with 3453495 different Linux package managers. Denis Washington, a Fedora developer, is taking steps to resolve this issue.