The Pyro Firefox-Based DE

  Submitted by Moochman Internet 8 Comments
Two preview articles give a taste of the new proof-of-concept desktop environment Pyro. Based on Firefox, used in conjunction with X's compositing extensions, Pyro allows web applications to behave like full-fledged ones running alongside traditional Linux apps. Perhaps most tantalizing of all, Pyro is a simple Firefox-extension-install away. Ars Technica has a backgrounder on the project, while Desktoplinux spotlights potential security concerns.
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Why I Quit: Kernel Developer Con Kolivas

  Submitted by danwarne Linux 177 Comments
"Con Kolivas is a prominent developer on the Linux kernel and strong proponent of Linux on the desktop. But recently, he left it all behind. Why? In this interview with APCMag.com, Con gives insightful answers exploring the nature of the hardware and software market, the problems the Linux kernel must overcome for the desktop, and why despite all this he's now left it all behind."
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‘Vista Use Grows As Mac OS X Stays Flat’

  Submitted by flanque In the News 58 Comments
Break out the salt, boys and girls, it's time for some statistics again. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August." Do with it as you please.
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Vista a Dud, Says Acer’s Lanci

  Submitted by Uncle Fester Hardware 63 Comments
The head of PC maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, has hit out at Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, saying that the 'entire industry' was disappointed by it. Few buyers have purchased new PCs specifically for Vista, Acer's chief says "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," the head of the world's fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday. Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales, he said. "And that's not going to change in the second half of this year," Mr Lanci said. "I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista."
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Review: Nokia N800 with Skype

  Submitted by luna6 Wireless 23 Comments
This article reviews the Debian Linux-based Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. The basics of the internet tablet are covered as well as the new features available after the latest July firmware updates. Most notable new features would be a full fledged Skype client and SDHC support.
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Translated Syllable Live CDs

  Submitted by Kaj de Vos Syllable, AtheOS 1 Comment
For the first time, the Syllable project has published translated versions of the Syllable 0.6.4 Live CD. Besides the regular English version, ten other languages are available: Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Magyar (Hungary), Polish, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Other translations are currently not complete enough. The Spanish version is available from a new Syllable community website for Latin America. Also, Flemming Sorensen ported Battle for Wesnoth this weekend (screenshot), a fantasy strategy game.
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The Future of the Gentoo Foundation?

  Submitted by Innova Gentoo 77 Comments
"Over the past few days, I discovered that the Gentoo Foundation's charter is in the process of being revoked by the state of New Mexico, apparently due to regular paperwork not being filed by the trustees. What this means is that the Gentoo Foundation is currently hanging for its life by a string, and at any day could cease to exist as an entity. That is the very bad news. The good news is that I was able to talk to Grant Goodyear (trustee) this morning on the phone, and I have confirmed that Grant had received my email about the revocation issue that I sent 2 days ago and that he will be resolving this critical issue in the next couple of days by filing the appropriate paperwork with the state of New Mexico, and this paperwork will also remove me as President of the Foundation."
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Windows 7: Preventing Another Vista-esque Development Process

Windows 83 Comments
Six months ago, after a long gestation period, Microsoft finally released Windows Vista. Vista is a huge release; not only because of the long list of new features, but also because of its sheer size, and number of bugs and other oddities and downsides. The development process that lead to Vista has left many with a very bitter aftertaste; features were cut, codebases were scrapped, release dates postponed. A few days ago, Microsoft released some sparse details on Vista's successor, internally dubbed 'Windows 7', and in order to prevent another Vista-like development cycle, here is what I would advise Microsoft to do. Update: APCMag reports that Julie Larson-Green, who was the driving force behind Office 2007's new Ribbon user interface, has been transferred to the Windows 7 GUI team.
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ReactOS 0.3.3 RC1 Released

  Submitted by frik85 OS News 21 Comments
The ReactOS project has released the first release candidate for version 0.3.3 of their Windows NT-inspired operating system. "We just released the first pre-release (RC1) of the upcoming 0.3.3. Certainly, it contains even more bugs than the alpha-quality software could contain, but we are still doing our best to reduce amount of certain glitches and misbehaviour."
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Next Version of Windows: Call it 7

Windows 128 Comments
Microsoft is planning to ship its next major version of Windows - known internally as version '7' - within roughly three years, CNET News.com has learned. The company discussed Windows 7 on Thursday at a conference for its field sales force in Orlando, Fla., according to sources close to the company. While the company provided few details, Windows 7, the next client version of the operating system, will be among the steps taken by Microsoft to establish a more predictable release schedule, according to sources. The company plans a more 'iterative' process of information disclosure to business customers and partners, sources said.
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The Road to CoreObject Part 1: EtoileSerialise

OpenStep, GNUstep 14 Comments
CoreObject is intended to be one of the foundation pieces of Etoile. The current roadmap calls for an experimental version in 0.3, a stable interface in 0.4, and a completely stable version in 0.5. "What is CoreObject? Basically, it's a replacement for a filesystem as a programmer and user interface. Files (in the UNIX sense of the word) never were a good abstraction; an untyped series of bytes is no use to anyone. The operating system needs to deal with things like this, but programmers shouldn't have to. We already have a much nicer abstraction than a file; the object. Unlike files, objects have all of the structure and introspection that we want in order to be able to interact with them programatically. In EtoilE, we want to treat everything as an object, and objects as first-class citizens."
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RISC OS Open: One Year on

RISC OS 1 Comment
"It occurred to me this week that RISC OS Open is one year old this month. I checked by searching back through the news archives. Yes, there it is: the first proper mention of ROOL popped up on July 9 2006. That was an exciting moment. Unexpected too. Castle had taken the brave decision to begin the release of the RISC OS source code. ROOL, a new company founded by five experienced RISC OS enthusiasts, was the vehicle through which RISC OS source code would be made available to those who could handle it."
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Linux Kernel 2.6.23 To Have Stable Userspace Driver API

  Submitted by liquidat Linux 51 Comments
Linus Torvalds included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now the last patches were uploaded and the API was included in Linus' tree. The idea of the API is to make life easier for driver developers: "This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses."
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