You'll find flash file systems used in personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellphones, MP3 players, digital cameras, USB flash drives (UFDs), and even laptop computers. This article looks at a couple of the read-only file systems and also reviews the various read/write file systems available today and how they work. Explore what the flash devices are all about and the challenges that they introduce.

BBC News reports that Microsoft has come up with an interesting strategy to increase usage of its Live Search service: it is "offering "cold, hard cash" to persuade users to shop online using its Live Search engine and help the company catch up to rival Google. The savings range between 2% and 30% on products sold by select retailers through its so-called cashback service... '2008 is the year that search got competitive,' said Bill Gates."

"The Fedora distribution has a reputation for innovation, and the new Fedora 9, released today, is no exception. With features that range from easy filesystem encryption to support for the ext4 format, it includes a wide range of features that are likely to become standard in other distributions in the next six months. But for Paul W. Frields, who became Fedora project leader in February, what distinguishes the release is less the technology than the community that supports it, and how the technology contributes to the larger free software world."

A lot of Windows XP users experienced SP3 aches and pains. This tutorial on PC World has some timely tips on what to do when SP3 installation doesn't go well.

Slowly but surely, Haiku is moving towards their very first alpha release. It 'self-hosted' for the first time in February of this year, but it did require a few hacks to work properly. The need for hacks was removed April 1st (what's in a date) by Bruno G. Albuquerque. Recently, some more progress has been made.

According to BetaNews, Microsoft has announced that they will support OpenDocument (ODF) and PDF in Office 2007 SP2. This comes as a major victory not only for OpenOffice.org and its offshoots, but also for open source in general. Microsoft is planning on making Office 2007 SP2 available in the first half of 2009.

The One Laptop Per Child project, including its leader Nicholas Negroponte, has weathered quite a few storms lately. There was a flood of criticism coming from the open source world when Negroponte stated that Windows might become the platform of choice, and when former employee and contributor Ivan Krstic stepped in the round, both the project as well as its leader had to face quite a few harsh words. All this hasn't slowed down the project at all, it seems, as Negroponte just unveiled the plans for version 2.0 of the OLPC. Instant update: There's a video of the unveiling too.

For those who follow my latest activities since I scaled down my OSNews participation, they know that videography has been it. Recently I tried to get more serious about it and so last week I shot a music video clip for a local Bay Area indie band, the HIJK (song is available for free download on their site). Should not be a surprise either that two out of the three band members are actually software engineers, this is the Silicon Valley after all. The following is an account of how I did everything and I also give some pointers on how to help your own favorite local indie bands with some video promotion. I find it to be one of the many ways to stick it to the RIAA and their status quo in the market. Update: Added a small making-of video.

Vista has not exactly been a massive market success. Sales numbers might be satisfactory due to OEM agreements, but press and public reception have been terrible, and there are several recurring themes in the complaints from people. Microsoft took five of these recurring themes, and addressed them in a document called 'Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista'.

OpenMoko, the project that creates not only a Linux operating system for phones but the hardware to run it as well, has announced some major changes to its software stack. Traditionally a Gtk+ endeavour, this is all going to change rather drastically.

A week ago, the Fedora Project released Fedora 9 into the world. Fedora 9 comes with GNOME 2.22, KDE 4.0.3, Xfce 4.2.2, PackageKit, Firefox 3.0 beta 5, a 2.6.25-based Linux kernel, and much more. As always, the intertubes have been flooded with reviews, so we figured we would summarise a few of them.

A feature at OSNews for many years, the OS Resources page has been a popular reference for OS enthusiasts, but it hasn't been tended very much over the past couple of years, and it's in need of an update. While the OSNews staff will be working on making our own updates, we wanted to involve the readers, so we've set up an OS Resources Wiki to help with collaboration. Please "read more" if you'd like to help out.

It's one of those catch phrases that never really seems to die out. Wherever you look in the operating systems world, at personal blogs written in crummy English, or at high-profile quality websites, there is bound to be someone, somewhere who used it. Even I, myself, used it in articles in a far and distant past, and I'm not particularly proud of it. "Ready for the desktop" is no longer acceptable - in fact, it's on its way out.

When Microsoft said it withdrew its offer to buy Yahoo earlier this month, many people figured the acquisition dance was far from over - that the withdrawal and the subsequent letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to his Yahoo counterpart were nothing more than a move in an ongoing strategic battle. It appears those people were right, as Microsoft just issued a statement regarding Yahoo.