Over the years, we've had many people ask if they could join a mailing list that would give them a digest of news from the OSNews site. Though we have made extensive use of RSS that makes it easy for RSS addicts to get their OSNews fix, a lot of people find it more convenient to be reminded of the latest topics by email. We've resisted so far only because we have always had other things higher on the priority list. But wait no more! We now have two lists: one for all OSNews postings, and one only for original feature articles. Currently, the mailing is set to be generated every night. If you have any feedback, suggestions, or requests for the new mailing list service, please post them in the comments. Signup for: Main List or Features-only List.

Erik Huggers, a Microsoft guy at the BBC, takes a look at Fedora 9 as his first Linux desktop and finds it surprisingly good."I am glad that I got a chance to test drive Fedora and as a result have come to believe in the potential of Linux as a mainstream operating system.As Ashley said in this post last year, the BBC does a lot of work with open standards already - but in the future we plan to do more.We want to make iPlayer work on all operating systems including open source ones like Fedora and I am confident we'll make good progress on this before the end of the year."

"Last week's news about Apple's use of SproutCore triggered a lot of discussion about the future of rich Internet applications, run-time environments, and JavaScript frameworks. While SproutCore has been referred to as "Cocoa for the web," its developer Charles Jolley says that the framework was "inspired by Cocoa," not really a port of Cocoa. But what if someone ported not just Cocoa, but also an Objective-C runtime the runs entirely in JavaScript via a browser? Well, the developers at 280 North did just that." Ars has the entire story.

The AIX operating system and other UNIX-like operating systems need a way to communicate with the kernel. This is done through the use of a shell. The Korn shell is the default shell used with AIX. Discover how to automate many tasks and save a great deal of time by writing your own Korn shells scripts.

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.

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?"