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Phoronix has covered some details on the progress of Fedora 13 development before and now has more details on the recently approved features. Features are approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, a fully elected community of members in the Fedora community. The full list of Fedora 13 features is here and it is planned to be released on May 11, 2010

I've been investigating switching my desktop distribution from Kubuntu to something more... Seriously maintained. I love debian, and consider it one of the best distros out there, but Ubuntu's KDE variant is downright pathetic.

Combining the potential for language and platform flamewars, a new web framework for Mac OS X is making the rounds this week with the promise of writing web apps using Objective-C and Cocoa. Has the time come to use low level languages (with high level libraries) for web development?

InfoWorld's Galen Gruman writes that the main potential game-changing attribute of the Nexus One - that Google is selling the device direct - does nothing to move the industry past carrier lock-in. "At first, I wanted to credit Google for making a tentative step in the direction of smartphone freedom. But that step is so tentative and ineffectual that frankly I think it's a cynical fig leaf covering the usual practices," Gruman writes. At issue is a political battle regarding walled gardens in the U.S. cellular market, a fight that will take years to result in any true consumer freedom. "The only way we'll ever get the ability to choose a smartphone and carrier independently is for the platform providers that count - Apple, Google, and RIM - to first develop only multiband 'world' smartphones and then refuse to sell their devices (or in Google's case, use its Android license to forbid the sale of devices) to carriers that block or interfere with device portability."

Today there are many operating systems available. Every vendor or community round it tries to make it as good as possible. Having different goals, different legacy and different cultures, they succeed in it more or less. We (end users) end up with big selection of operating systems, but for us the operating systems are usually compromise of the features that we would like to have. So is there an operating system that would fit all the needs of the end user? Is is the BeOS clone Haiku?

Early this year, we reported that the alpha versions of REBOL 3 ran on Syllable Server, based on the unmodified Linux version. Now we have followup news. R3 has been split into its planned core interpreter library and an open source host environment for integration with as many systems as possible. Kaj de Vos has got this version to work on Syllable Desktop (screenshot). This is the first time that a version of REBOL can run there (besides emulating a complete other operating system on Syllable Desktop), so this is a major step towards the project's REBOL cross-platform strategy.

InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.

UMPCPortal reports on a new 3G-connected handheld computer called the PsiXpda: PsiXPDA UMPC Launches in UK, US, Europe. Apparently, PsiXpda is made by a former Psion engineer with rights to use the Psion 5 series design, which explains that familiar sliding clamshell shape.

InfoWorld's Mel Beckman conjectures on the functionality necessary to make the Google 'smartbook dream' a reality, prioritizing the features any smartphone/netbook hybrid would require to succeed. From multitouch, to SSDs, to dual-boot capabilities, the list goes beyond what early Android-based entrants have to offer but remains within the realm of possibility, especially if Google CEO Eric Schmidt's hints at a future Chrome/Android OS convergence come to fruition.

The Codezero team has released version 0.2 of their L4 microkernel. In this release, the microkernel is fully capability checked, and they introduced the notion of containers to provide isolated execution environments.

Distrowatch takes a first look at Fedora 12 and concludes that it is an excellent release with faster package management including yum with the Presto plugin that pulls in delta updates by default, improved security such as a smooth SELinux configuration and hardware support. "After spending several days with Fedora, I find that I'm happy with this release. The live CD by itself was a bit underwhelming, but the distribution as a whole has been excellent. This is probably the most stable and most polished release the Fedora team has put together to date."

Phoronix has a done a set of benchmarks with the Fedora 12 Intel driver and concluded that it performs better than previous releases of Fedora. "Compared to Fedora 11 especially, Fedora 12 offers much-improved Intel Linux graphics. Besides just the frame-rates being better, when using Fedora 12 we have encountered less problems with kernel mode-setting and quirks with different hardware configurations. In fact, the Intel experience is quite pleasant atop Fedora 12. This is good news for those running Fedora 12 now and should be even better news for those that will receive these updated packages in their distributions next year."

InfoWorld has compiled a list of 10 not yet widely adopted enterprise technologies that will have the greatest impact on IT in the years to come. From whitelisting, to NoSQL, to I/O virtualization, each class of technology is analyzed for its potential to solve significant IT challenges - mobile app dev, power conservation, data glut - over the long haul, as opposed to how it may currently be implemented or how today's iterations currently perform.

One of the advantages of ZFS is that it doesn't need a fsck. Replication, self-healing and scrubbing are a much better alternative. After a few years of ZFS life, can we say it was the correct decision? The reports in the mailing list are a good indicator of what happens in the real world, and it appears that once again, reality beats theory. The author of the article analyzes the implications of not having a fsck tool and tries to explain why he thinks Sun will add one at some point.