David Adams Archive

Okay, if ever there was an off-topic post, this is it. In yesterday's Ask OSNews article I drew a comparison between using a hard-to-learn but superior nail puller and an "easy-to-use" one and similar truths about OSes. An OSNews reader who has also invented a better nail puller emailed me to tell me about his tool, the Nail Jack, and I think it's pretty cool. So I thought, "I'd bet that there are some tool-loving OSNews readers out there who would be interested in winning a cool hand tool." So I'd like to announce OSNews' very first hand tool giveaway drawing. Read More for details. Updated: winners announced

A reader asks: Why is Linux still not as user friendly as the two other main OSes with all the people developing for Linux? Is it because it is mainly developed by geeks? My initial feeling when reading this question was that it was kind of a throwaway, kind of a slam in disguise as a genuine question. But the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I felt. There truly are a large amount of resources being dedicated to the development of Linux and its operating system halo (DEs, drivers, apps, etc). Some of these resources are from large companies (IBM, Red Hat, Novell). Why isn't Linux more user-friendly? Is this an inherent limitation with open source software?

A friend of OSNews asks: "You might have heard of our Open-PC project. The idea is to collaboratively build a completely open PC, with free software and free drivers. We prepare an operating system image, do online services and support and choose the hardware. Then we work together with hardware manufacturers who build and sell the PC. We already have one manufacturer in Germany who committed to work with us. We will sell the first version of the Open-PC this fall. The problem is that it is expensive to ship the PC from Germany to the United States, so we are looking for a second manufacturing partner in the US. Can you recommend a company? I think the ideal would be a mid-size PC manufacturer who has experience with assembling custom PCs, experience with Linux and is able to ship the PC economically within North America." This seems like a great candidate for crowdsourcing. So, OSNews readers, can you give our friend any leads?

Michael Arrington didn't feel like joining my revolution (officially, at least) but he did decide he'd had enough, and claims that he's paying a termination fee and dropping his iPhone. He'll be using an Android handset instead from now on. TechCrunch has been the epicenter of griping about Apple's handling of the App Store, and I don't imagine that just because Arrington is leaving his iPhone behind that they'll quit covering the issue over there.

If you haven't been to our OS Resources page lately, you haven't missed much action, because like many online resource pages, a lot of effort went into it long ago when it was launched, but it's been lacking attention since, with only occasional updates. Alas, thus is the sorrow of Web 1.0. We'd like to drag OS Resources into the participatory web, and let the OSNews community help keep it up to date. Wiki seems like an obvious solution. So I'd like to ask, dear readers, is there a Wiki system that you think would be especially good for a small-but-growing OS Resource guide? There's Mediawiki, of course, but it seems a bit heavyweight and user-unfriendly for something small and simple. I've had good experience with Mindtouch Deki, but thought I should examine other options before picking it. So what do you think? Is Wiki the way to go, if so, which one? And what would you like to see in our new OS Resources?

How does the Alpha Geek establish dominance over the other techies in the herd? With a self-consciously old fashioned, expensive, and fussy computer accessory, of course! We take a look at the Das keyboard and see if it's that much better than the mushy crap keyboard that came bundled with your Dell.

Today's a slow news day, so I thought it would be a good day to bring up an idea I've been incubating. I've been contemplating launching an OSNews-like site on the topic of Enterprise Computing. Obviously, OSNews covers the OS-related aspects of heavy-duty business, scientific, and academic computing already, and sometimes news on databases, app servers, cloud computing and other related topics too, but a lot of the kind of news that is useful to enterprise IT people falls outside of OSNews' purview, and it's appropriate to keep it that way. But I think that the enterprise IT world could use an OSNews-like site to aggregate and examine the latest news in that sphere. So my question to you, dear OSNews readers, is this: Do you agree? Would you be interested in reading and participating in a site on that topic? Would you be interested in being involved? If so, I'd like to recruit a few editors to help me launch it. Read on for more details. Update: Are there any native Korean speakers who read OSNews? If you are one, and you'd be willing to help me out with a short project, please contact me.

A Mono developer responds to a request for "a calm presentation of why Mono is desirable, why it is not a threat, and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default" answering the three questions individually, then attempting to address general anti-Mono sentiment.

What is it about gadget geeks? If there's one obsession common to all the generations of geekdom, it's got to be the desire for unification of all needs into one tool. It started out modestly. Maybe with the guy who fashioned his flint so he could easily both scrape and cut the animal hide. Then there was the guy who first put a nail puller on the back of a hammer, and on to to the combination compass/signaling mirror, the Swiss Army Knife, Leatherman, and an astounding array of multi-purpose hand tools. But it was with the advent of electronic gadgets that things really started to get out of hand. Read on for a rumination on multi-purpose gadgets and a review of a combo DSL/Wi-Fi/VoIP router.

Five Four years ago today, OSNews published some interesting articles. Apple announced it was dropping PPC for x86 (that one was a bombshell). That news was met with fear, excitement, and a fair bit of skepticism. Five Four years later, that decision has gone down as one of the smartest, gutsiest moves in computing business history. Congratulations to Apple's engineers for making it go so smoothly. We also examined whether "soon" personal computers will have the ability to respond to stimuli from the outside world, by seeing and interpreting video or other signals. We're still waiting on that one. (And the project we linked to is now a dead link). Note: due to a back-end Snafu, this one didn't post until the fifth, but it's still an interesting date in OSNews history, so enjoy.

In our latest "Ask OSNews" installment, a reader asks: "Do you think Apple will ever have a standalone Windows version of their email app so that us Window users can download and use it? My family and I currently use Incredimail and occasionally Thunderbird."

Over the years, we've occasionally run an "Ask OSNews" feature, wherein a reader asks us a question and we answer it publicly. Lately I've really been enjoying Slate's Dear Prudence advice column and the ever-interesting Straight Dope, and I thought we should see if we can get more OSNews readers to submit questions, and turn Ask OSNews into a more-regular thing. If your question falls outside of our domain expertise, we'll try to track down an expert to help out. And of course, our responses will always be supplemented by further advice from OSNews readers in the comments. Questions are welcome on any topic ranging from OSes and computing to science and geek culture. Contact us with your questions. (Please include "Ask OSNews" in the subject). Today's question is from a young student in Hungary who's seduced by the faraway siren song of Apple's marketing and wonders, "should I switch?"

This week I received a triumphal press release from the Open Document Foundation, announcing that the just-released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 has native support for the ODF (Open Document Format) file format. This makes the latest MS Office "the last major office suite to support ODF." This set me to thinking about how movement and advancement in several areas of technology and interoperability may well invigorate the alternative OS world.

Over at Wired Gadget Lab, they're taking a look back at several people who've gone to a bunch of trouble to hack up and deal with the pitfalls of netbooks running OSX. As the story's title states, it ain't pretty. In a nutshell, they found that even if you load a nice OS onto a cheap, tiny computer, you still have to deal with the inherent downsides of a cheap, tiny computer, and when you run an Apple OS on a non-Apple machine, you'll have some software problems. I read this article with great interest, because a few months ago I bought an MSI Wind (the same netbook that this guy used) with thoughts of putting OSX on it. But this article set me to thinking about netbooks, the mythical Apple netbook, and Apple's Newton legacy.