Originally Yellow Dog Linux v5.0 was slated for late December release, but after a few delays, they have announced the impending release of YDL 5.0 for Power Macs. YDL v5.0 has been available for the Sony PlayStation 3 since November, but here is the Mac delivery schedule: install and source ISOs available for download via YDL.net Enhanced accounts at the end of February 2007. Two weeks later, DVDs will ship from the Terra Soft Store. Two weeks after that, you can download install and source ISOs via the public mirrors.

DevLoop has just published a free paper (US mirror) benchmarking some popular database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, DB2, Informix, Sybase SQL Anywhere, on Linux using JDBC. The focus here is on non-real setups where we can analyze the individual aspects that might affect system performance. The code is available (GPL) so that anyone can reproduce the results.

"Yesterday was our big day at Google, and we can say with a good degree of confidence that the Haiku Tech Talk was quite successful. We had a very special guest for this event: former Be Inc. CEO Jean Louis Gassée, not only joined us at Google for our presentation, but also gave a few words of support and encouragement for our project. It was great to have JLG's presence, as well as that of the several ex-Be engineers who showed up for the talk. We were also glad to see JAVA for BeOS developer Andrew Bachman join us for this special event. Take a look at the pictures from the presentation."

"The following photographs were taken at the 3GSM World Congress 2007 show in Barcelona. The Access Linux Platform is the new Linux based mobile platform from Access (PalmSource), seen as the successor to Palm OS (Garnet)."

"Klik is unique among software installation systems for Linux, in that each package installed through klik is self-contained, isolated from the rest of the operating system. Klik isn't a package management system; rather it's an application that lets you download and run software without installing it."

"Quartz Composer is a visual development tool that can turn most any data into amazing, live-action graphics and animations, using a programming model that is easy to understand and work with. This article shows you how to use the stunning graphics abilities of Quartz Composer along with the easy development of Dashboard to create fun, beautiful widgets that attract attention and display information with rich visual content."

"The Ubuntu Technical Board has made two technical decisions of which we would like to inform the Ubuntu community. Both of these decisions concern the upcoming 7.04 release of Ubuntu, scheduled for mid-April." Ubuntu 7.04 will not activate binary video drivers by default, essentially meaning nothing will change from the previous releases. The second change is a major blow to the PowerPC architecture and thus owners of Apple PPC hardware: "The PowerPC edition of Ubuntu will be reclassified as unofficial. The PowerPC software itself and supporting infrastructure will continue to be available, and supported by a community team." Translation: Ubuntu PPC can shake hands with the dodo.

Another Patch Tuesday and Microsoft comes out with a variety of patches, and this series is more critical than a month ago. The critical vulnerabilities are in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Antivirus. All of them could allow remote code execution.

"Portland is a new open source project that promises to simplify the deployment and commercialization of Linux applications by helping them run on multiple desktop environments, including Gnome and KDE. Although still young, Portland is available today, and it looks to be improving rapidly. Get started using the XdgUtils toolset in Portland 1.0."

After helping develop the Xerox Alto's Bravo word processor and leading Microsoft Office development for years, Charles Simonyi left Microsoft in 2002 to found his own company, Intentional Software. His company's novel goal: to ease software-development headaches by abstracting the software's requirements away from the code itself, similar to the way that WYSIWYG word processors abstract the document from the formatting tags that underlie it. "Software as we know it is the bottleneck on the digital horn of plenty," he says. "It takes up tremendous resources in talent and time. It's disappointing and hard to change. It blocks innovation in many organizations." Code should be abstracted into models that are easier for end customers to visualize and to modify, he argues. This article, written by Dreaming in Code author Scott Rosenberg, provides an overview of Simonyi's life, ideas, and current initiatives.

This is a response to the first part of the word processor review recently featured on donationcoder.com. I have WordPerfect Office X3, OpenOffice.org 2.1, and MS Office 2003 all installed on my computer, and the article stirred up some of the opinions that have gradually come to settle in the depths of my mind. So here are my thoughts.

Michael Dell offered up some harsh advice a decade ago on how to fix struggling Apple Computer, words that now provide an ironic sting for the newly minted CEO of his own slumping company. "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," he said at a technology conference in the fall of 1997. Of course, Apple's investors and Chief Executive Steve Jobs have gotten the last laugh. Back then, Jobs had just returned to lead the company he had founded, beginning what would become an exceptional transformation. Dell, on the other hand, has watched its business go the other way, and Michael Dell has been recalled to the helm to get it back on track.

This week FSF Europe announced the release of its Fiduciary License Agreement, a form of copyright assignment in which a free software project can place its collective copyright under the control of a single organization or trustee. The agreement is designed to reduce the problems in managing copyrights in large projects, and to reconcile differences in copyright worldwide. However, exactly how important, useful, or necessary the FLA is depends upon whom you talk to in the free software community. To some extent, FSFE even seems to be operating contrary to the advice of the original Free Software Foundation in the US.

"Many a geek was excited when Nokia announced the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in late 2005. Its form factor, functionality, and price indicated to me that my dream device had arrived. When I finally purchased one and reviewed it, my dreams were dashed. While attractive, the Nokia 770 was underpowered, leading to sluggish performance. The menu navigation was not thought out well, and some of the applications felt unfinished. With little advance notice, Nokia released the 770's successor at the beginning of 2007, the Nokia N800. Is it powerful enough to rekindle the fires of gadget lust or will it be another heartbreaker?"