Tracking Linux Prereleases: OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora

Linux 4 Comments
"We often hear from readers who want to track the development process of their favorite Linux distribution but don't know where to start. Budding Linux enthusiasts frequently ask how the release cycles work, what the version numbers mean, and what options are available for end-user testing prior to official releases. The answers to those questions differ depending on the distribution, but we are going to attempt to address those questions for Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE - three of the most prominent desktop Linux distributions. We will also provide a brief visual comparison of upcoming versions with screenshots of the prereleases."
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First Look at Ubuntu 8.04 ‘Hardy Heron’ Beta

Ubuntu 103 Comments
"I like Ubuntu. With each incarnation I'm seeing improvements and betterments that make the OS better, more robust, more user friendly and more fully-featured. In fact, Ubuntu 8.04 is the first Linux distro that I've come across that I would consider loading onto my notebook to replace Windows. Throughout my testing Ubuntu 8.04 beta has been reliable and performed flawlessly. Bottom line, Hardy Heron is, for me at least, the best Linux distro ever," writes Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.
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‘Evidence Mounting: Windows 7 Going Modular, Subscription’

Windows 50 Comments
"When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most 'modular' yet. Having never really been comfortable with the idea of a single, monolithic desktop OS offering, Microsoft has offered multiple desktop OSes in the marketplace ever since the days of Windows NT 3.1, with completely different code bases until they were unified in Windows 2000. Unification isn't necessarily a good thing, however; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS. A singular yet highly modular OS could give Microsoft the best of all possible worlds: OSes that can be highly customized for deployment but developed monolithically. One modular OS to rule them all, let's say."
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Awesome 2.2 Released

  Submitted by Julien Danjou Desktop environments 10 Comments
Awesome 2.2 has been released. "Awesome is a floating and tiling window manager initialy based on a dwm code rewriting. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and awesome. Windows can be managed in several layouts: tiled, maximized, dwindle, spiral, floating... Each layout can be applied on the fly, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. Managing windows in tiled mode assures that no space will be wasted on your screen. No gaps, no overlap. Other layouts can be used for different purpose. If you do not want to use the tiling management, you can use the floating layout wich will let you organize your windows as you wish, like any other window manager."
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Haiku Alpha 1 Status Update

  Submitted by jeanmarc Haiku 31 Comments
"This is the first Haiku alpha 1 status update. The goal of this status update is to provide information on how the project is going. There has recently been an consensus that it was about time to start preparing a first alpha for a myriad of reasons. To me personally, the fact that it is about time to show off the enormous amount of work that has been put in the project the past number of years. Another good reason - in my opinion - is to get everyone behind one goal: preparing the code for a first release. So what's the goal of this status update? Well, with a large number of developers actually working on the different components of the operating system, it is easy to lose track of what is going on. You can consider this a news update."
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Why Apple Fans Hate Tech Reporters

  Submitted by marc anton Apple 60 Comments
"There are many tribes in the tech world: TiVo lovers, Blackberry addicts, Palm Treo fanatics, and people who exhibit unhealthy affection for their Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners. But there is no bigger tribe, and none more zealous, than fans of Apple, who are infamous for their sensitivity to slams, real or imagined, against the beloved company. "It's funny - even if I write a generally positive piece about Apple, I still get more complaints from Apple partisans" than from opponents, Mossberg says. He has even coined a term for the effect. "I call it the Doctrine of Insufficient Adulation."
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From GNOME to KDE and Back: Computing Habits Hard to Break

Editorial 126 Comments
"I used KDE as my primary desktop from 1996 through 2006, when I installed the GNOME version of Ubuntu and found that I liked it better than the KDE desktop I'd faced every morning for so many years. Last January, I got a new Dell Latitude D630 laptop and decided to install Kubuntu on it, but within a few weeks, I went back to GNOME. Does this mean GNOME is now a better desktop than KDE, or just that I have become so accustomed to GNOME that it's hard for me to give it up?"
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OLPC Security Expert Resigns Over Reorg As Project Flounders

Hardware 8 Comments
Ivan Krstic, the director of security architecture for the One Laptop Per Child Project, has resigned in response to recent changes in management within the organization. His resignation comes at a difficult time for OLPC, which has suffered from numerous setbacks in recent months. The price has increased from USD 100 to USD 188 during development and demand for bulk sales has been slow. OLPC faces other problems as well, including numerous delays, a dubious USD 20 million patent infringement lawsuit from Nigerian keyboard maker LANCOR, and a rocky relationship with Intel."
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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Beta Released

  Submitted by Philipp Esselbach Ubuntu 46 Comments
The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has been released. "Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 7.10 with even more virtualization support and security enhancements - enabling AppArmor for more applications by default, improving protection of kernel memory against attacks, and supporting KVM and iSCSI technologies out of the box. The Ubuntu 8.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, UbuntuStudio, and Mythbuntu, also reach beta status today."
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Squeak Ported to Syllable Desktop

  Submitted by Kaj de Vos Syllable, AtheOS No Comments
Kelly Wilson has ported Squeak to Syllable. Squeak is a multimedia environment based on the Smalltalk programming language. There are no video and sound drivers yet that interface between Squeak and Syllable, so the Squeak graphical environment is not available yet. However, headless Squeak programs that don't need a graphical user interface run, and this screenshot shows a web site in the ABrowse WebKit-based browser, produced by the Seaside web application framework.
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Novell Aims SLES 11 at Sun, Red Hat

SuSE, openSUSE 16 Comments
The next version of Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server will focus on migration technologies and virtualisation, in order to entice users from Unix and take market share from Red Hat, according to a roadmap announced at the company's BrainShare meeting in Salt Lake City. Version 11 of SLES is not due until the middle of 2009, but Novell has announced six main 'themes' for the release, including mission critical servers, virtualisation, interoperability, green IT, Unix migration and desktop Linux. Speaking of SUSE, openSUSE 11.0 alpha 3 has been released.
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Apple Launches Safari for Windows

Apple 72 Comments
Apple has released the first version of its browser, Safari, for Windows. Safari 3.1, which was launched on Tuesday, will run on Windows XP or Vista and, of course, Mac OSX. Apple released a beta for the Windows-supporting version in June last year. Apple has claimed that the browser is the fastest available for Windows. In a Tuesday statement, Cupertino said it "loads web pages 1.9 times faster than 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2 runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers". Don't think you have Safari for Windows installed? You might want to check again.
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Solaris SPARC to x86 Software Highway Opens

Solaris 8 Comments
"Sun Microsystems has gone totally native. Customers can now run unmodified SPARC/Solaris applications on x86 systems thank to a partnership with Transitive. The two companies also plan to craft a new package for running native x86 applications on SPARC machines. Transitive this week announced that the long in beta QuickTransit for Solaris code has moved into production form. It even gets a Solaris Ready Logo and all."
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