A number of iPhone reviews were released today on the net: NYTimes, WSJ, MSNBC and USAToday. All seem to agree that the iPhone is a worthy device with few flaws.

The Linux community is splitting - right down the middle, at this point - over Microsoft's controversial claims that the open-source operating system infringes on patents it holds. Last Tuesday, Mandriva became the third Linux vendor within five days to say it isn't interested in signing a licensing deal with Microsoft to avoid possible infringement claims. A blog posting to that effect by Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon followed similar declarations by officials at Red Hat and Canonical.

"There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't 'suck' as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this 'usability gap' with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?"

"The Series 5 pocket computer from Psion was launched 10 years ago this week. It was a remarkable achievement: entirely new silicon, a new operating system, middleware stack and applications were developed from scratch in just over two years. This was the last time anyone undertook such a daunting task: it may be the last time anyone ever tries, either."

Firefox add-ons, or extensions, are small programs that run inside the browser in order to customize some behaviors. In theory, it is possible to develop and maintain a multilingual, multiversion and multiOS Firefox add-on. In practice, there are many obstacles to overcome in order to create and to maintain a working Firefox add-on in one language for one Firefox version and for one OS.

As was to be expected, the Longhorn Reloaded team has been shut down by Microsoft. "It is with sad news that I have to inform you that today due to a cesit and decist letter we recived from Microsoft we are no longer able to provide you with a download link to Longhorn Reloaded. It deeply saddens me that although Microsoft hknew about this project for many months they only issued us with this notice a few days after we started to distribute the iso via torrents and ftp server."

"Let's face it; some distributions have better controls for handling display issues than others. Two that do it right out of the box that come to mind include Fedora (Red Hat) and openSUSE (Novell). Each includes tools that minimize the need to do what I gleefully refer to as the 'Xorg dance'. Basically, these options mean you are going to be spending more time exploring what these distros have to offer, yet less time wondering why your resolution looks completely off. Unfortunately, even with the latest release of Ubuntu, we have yet to see this level of functionality."

"The Free Software community is well known for its diversity. This is most obvious at the application level, but even exists in the context of operating systems. David Chisnall takes a break from UNIX-derivatives and explores some of the more esoteric options." Note: From experience, I can say that the author's claim that "Haiku is more or less ready for their 1.0 release in terms of features" is a bit overambitious.

The latest issue of the GNOME Journal has just been published. It features an article about GStreamer audio effects, an interview with Ken VanDine about GNOME 2.18 Live Media releases, an introduction to Accerciser, and a summary of GNOME.conf.au 2007. Writers in this edition are Stefan Kost, Paul Cutler, Eitan Isaacson, and Davyd Madeley, respectively.

"One of the salient points repeated at the WWDC keynote was Leopard's support for '64 bits top to bottom'. However, a close peek at the slide shown this year showed a subtle difference to last year's - the word 'Carbon' was missing. Of course a storm of confusion soon ensued, with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from some quarters and polite shrugging from others. Apple stock fell and rose again, some developers professed bliss while others threatened to leave the platform, non-developers wrote learned analyses about obscure technical points, not to speak of reports of raining frogs or even an unconfirmed Elvis sighting in a Moscone restroom. Allow me to try to explain all (well, Elvis excepted)."

Federkiel writes: "People working with Apple computers are used to a very consistent user experience. For a large part this stems from the fact that the Lisa type of GUI does not have the fight between MDI and SDI. The question simply never arises, because the Lisa type of GUI does not offer the choice to create either of both; it's something different all along. I usually think of it as 'MDI on steroids unified with a window manager'. It virtually includes all benefits of a SDI and and the benefits of an MDI." Read on for how I feel about this age-old discussion.

"At Phoronix we are constantly exploring the different display drivers under Linux, and while we have reviewed Sun's Check Tool and test motherboards with Solaris in addition to covering a few other areas, we have yet to perform a graphics driver comparison between Linux and Solaris. That is until today. With interest in Solaris on the rise thanks to Project Indiana, we have decided to finally offer our first quantitative graphics comparison between Linux and Solaris with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers."

Apple's first Windows beta release of Safari had some nasty bugs, most importantly one where bold text wouldn't render on non-English versions of Windows. Since the 3.0.2 release has 'fixes for text display, non-English systems', this bug might by fixed. In addition, Security Update 2007-006 for Mac OS 10.3.9 and Mac OS 10.4.9 and later has been released. The update addresses two vulnerabilities in WebKit, one of which could lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

According to a notation tucked into the DOJ's joint statement with Microsoft regarding continued compliance with various agreed-upon standards and remedies, Microsoft expects Service Pack 1 for Vista to be in beta by the end of the year. In addition, a Microsoft security executive released data Thursday showing that, six months after shipping Windows Vista, his company has left more publicly disclosed Vista bugs unpatched than it did with Windows XP.