"Operating systems come with cultures as much as codebases. I was forcibly reminded of this fact over the holidays when several family members and neighbors press-ganged me into troubleshooting their Windows computers. Although none of us had any formal computer training, and I know almost nothing about Windows, I was able to solve problems that baffled the others - not because of any technical brilliance, but because the free software culture in which I spend my days made me better able to cope."

"DeviceVM's SplashTop is sharing a booth this week at the CES with ASUS. At their booth we were allowed to check out a SplashTop demo running on an ASUS notebook! This notebook has yet to be introduced by ASUS, but it's intended for high-end gaming and comes with SplashTop Linux as a complementary operating system. This version of SplashTop is slightly updated and has new features too."

"LV2 is a simple but extensible successor of LADSPA, intended to address the limitations of LADSPA which many applications have outgrown. By creating LV2 'extensions' (which can be done independently), virtually any feature is possible for LV2 plugins and hosts."

It has been making waves on the net for a few days already, and I don't want to keep anyone deprived from this utter piece of brilliance. "Mommy, why is there a server in the house?", a children's book made by Microsoft to 'help your child understand the stay-at-home server'. "Big people have a server at the 'office'. The office is a big place where people go and do boring things." Not everybody will appreciate the twisted humour, but I sure do. Utterly brilliant, this. Update: There is more!

The source code to the original SimCity game has been released under the GPL, with all references to the SimCity name removed due to copyright trademark issues; it is now called Micropolis. You can download the source code, or read a bit more about it. SimCity is one of the most critically acclaimed games in history.

Linux.com reviews the Asus Eee PC. "The Asus Eee PC has been heralded as a groundbreaking new computing experience and great for children. While the computer didn't bowl me over, my kids were another matter. When you hear about how small the Eee is, believe it: the unit measures approximately nine by six inches and weighs a mere two pounds. It's hard to take something that small seriously because it looks like a toy (and its name sounds like a sneeze). Open the lid, however, and you'll find power and features that belie its diminutive size."

PC vendor Lenovo has promised ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for some time now. Lenovo will deliver the goods the week of Jan. 14. Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads.

Daniel Robbins, original creator of the Gentoo project, offers a solution to fix the recent leadership crisis at Gentoo: "I have received permission from my employer to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation, renew its charter, and then work in some capacity to help to get Gentoo going in the right direction from a legal, community and technical perspective."

Noel Dellofano, who is part of the ZFS dev team at Apple, has a post on Mac OS Forge announcing a late Christmas gift: she is making available binaries and source code (plus instructions) of the ZFS filesystem for Mac OS X. "ZFS is a new kind of filesystem that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management. We've blown away 20 years of obsolete assumptions, eliminated complexity at the source, and created a storage system that's actually a pleasure to use."

KDE 4.0.0 has been released onto the world. "The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era." KDE 4.0 is the first release of "KDE 4", but take note that the developers have clearly stated that KDE 4.0 is not KDE 4, but more of a base release with all the underlying systems ready to go, but with still a lot of work to be done on the user-visible side. Download it from the KDE 4.0 info page. Update: Screenshots.

"The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 3 is the third alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features."

"SWsoft today announced the release of the beta version of Parallels Server, the company's hypervisor-powered server virtualization solution. Parallels Server is the first virtualization solution designed to run on Apple hardware, including Mac Pros and Xserves, and the first to run multiple copies of Mac OS X Server v10.5 Leopard on a single Apple computer. Parallels Server also runs on any x86 or 64-bit Windows or Linux-based server."

Gizmodo has been running an interesting series of videos (part I | part II | part III) where they interview Bill Gates. They chopped the interview up into smaller pieces (as in, 2 minutes a pop), but the fourth installment only lasts 16 seconds. Bill Gates does say something very honest and open, though. After Gizmodo asked him what product of the last five years he would've wanted polished a little more, Gates answers: "Ask me after we ship the next version of Windows. Then I'll be more open to give you a blunt answer."

"MenuetOS is an operating system in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications. Menuet has no roots within UNIX or the POSIX standards, nor is it based on any particular operating system. The design goal has been to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS, which normally complicate programming and create bugs." Version 0.76 of the 64bit version has just been released.