Apple and Linux are engaged in battle – a battle to win over disgruntled Windows users. But who will win, and what will the consequences be for the loser? The most commonly held belief amongst Apple and Linux fanboys is that both factions are engaged in some kind of a war with Microsoft. The truth is that if you look at the market share figure for Windows, Mac and Linux, both Mac OS and all the Linux distros that have ever been released are dwarfed by Windows.

The Pegasos book is a free multilanguage ebook dedicated to the Pegasos computer from Genesi/bplan. It is a 223 pages PDF document, splitted in 4 volumes, which contains information about the Pegasos I and II PowerPC computer and all its main supported operating systems. The latest version (V2.3) can now be freely downloaded both in English or in French. Partial older versions are also available in Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian language. Elsewhere, VmwAROS is a pre-configured AROS environment for VMware. New beta 0.5 improves reliability, networking, development and gaming, with more software and bugfixes.

It seems that each distribution has found a niche: Red Hat and Ubuntu are the leaders in their markets, and SUSE is a comfortable runner-up. However, history has shown us that businesses are not content to stay still too long or play second fiddle. So, what will Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu have to do in the new year to gain new ground?

The Syllable project has published the second version of the Linux-based Syllable Server. A number of fixes were made, most notably to terminal initialisation and printing. GhostScript is included now. Some of the Syllable-specific initialisation scripts are executed now. Many packages were updated, including GLibC, CoreUtils, BASh, ORCA and the printing packages. Several new packages were added. IPTables is included, so Syllable Server can be used to build a firewall. The wireless tools are included for configuring wireless networks. The ALSA userspace library and tools were added to provide full access to the audio system, instead of relying on OSS emulation. All separate binary packages for Server 0.1 are still valid on Server 0.2. On Syllable, binary compatibility is maintained as much as possible.

APCMag sums up the information we already have on Windows 7. "We're still in the long dark before 7's dawn, but the earliest signs are encouraging: a new streamlined kernel, an inbuilt VM for running old software, a revised and simplified UI... There's every chance that Microsoft intends Windows 7 to rise from the ashes of Vista and be what Mac OS X was for Apple."

DistroWatch reviews Geubuntu, and concludes: "For Enlightenment and Ubuntu fans this distro is custom made for you. It takes the best of Ubuntu and combines it with a great desktop environment. If Ubuntu or Kubuntu is a bit too heavy for your equipment, then Geubuntu just might be what you need. It might also be an idea for those who find Elive a bit overwhelming, or those who like to be a bit different from the rest of the crowd."

"Opera Software filed a complaint with the European Commission yesterday which is aimed at giving consumers a genuine choice of Web browsers. The complaint describes how Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer."

"GNOME theme engine designer Andrea Cimitan has implemented support for transparent widgets in the Murrine GTK theme engine, bringing Vista-like translucent glass effects to the GNOME desktop. Cimitan used RGBA colormaps to implement the feature and says that, with only 10 or 20 extra lines of code, translucency can easily be added to other theme engines that support RGBA. Cimitan says that the addition of translucency effects proves that critics of GTK are wrong. "n the last week I've seen a lot of people claiming about 'lacks' of Gtk+ capabilities," wrote Cimitan in a blog entry. "Some of them still think that Gtk+ doesn't have RGBA support... Or it will require nasty hacks. This is absolutely false."

"The year is winding down and while we have a lot to look forward to next year, what were the greatest Linux innovations of this year? This year at Phoronix, we have published over 325 articles, with most of them being Linux hardware and graphics reviews, and that is in addition to over 700 original news entries. After spending much time in considering what the "best" and most substantial Linux gains over the year have been, we have comprised a list of what we believe are the greatest Linux innovations of 2007 along with our reasoning behind these decisions."

"Microsoft's Hilton Locke, who used to work on the Tablet PC team and now works on the Windows Shell team, let us know today that if we are impressed with touch on the iPhone, then we'll be blown away by the touch features of the upcoming Windows 7." More here.

Written entirely in x86 assembly language, MikeOS is designed as a learning tool for assembler and basic OS design. New features in 1.1 include a Mac OS X build script and various improvements to the Handbook, which explains how it works and how to make your own first OS.

The crown jewel of Nokia right now is the E51 and Hi-Mobile.net sent us one over for a review. Some of you will be surprised by this comment as there are other and more powerful Nokia phones out there, but there's a reason for it. Read on to read it.

A lot was said lately about the Vorbis/Theora vs h.264/AAC situation on the draft of the HTML5. As some of you know, video is my main hobby these days (I care not about operating systems anymore), so I have gain some experience on the field lately, and at the same time this has made me more demanding about video quality. Read on for a head to head test: OGG Theora/Vorbis vs MP4 h.264/AAC. Yup, with videos. And pictures.

Lazy programming is a general concept of delaying the processing of a function or request until the results are needed. Thinking in terms of lazy programming can help you rid your code of unneeded computation and restructure programs to be more problem-oriented.