Monthly Archive:: February 2008

The Linux Foundation has posted the second half of its long and thorough interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds, part of the Foundation's 'open voices' podcast. While the first part of the interview focused on the Linux development community, this time Torvalds sounds off on everything from patents and innovation to the future of Linux. According to Torvalds the reason Linux hasn't taken off is that most people are happy with the way things are. “If you act differently from Windows, even if you act in some ways better, it doesn't matter; better is worse if it's different.” Torvalds also attributes much of the frustration with Windows Vista to this same idea. In other words, it's not that Vista is worse than XP, but it's different and that causes distress among users.

And more Haiku news; Ars took a short look at Haiku. "As an open source enthusiast and former BeOS zealot, I'm very excited to see Haiku reach this level of usability. I look forward to the day when it is a viable operating system for day-to-day use, and, when it achieves the requisite level of hardware compatibility, I fully intend to install it on my Eee PC, where Haiku's extreme responsiveness and fast boot time will be of significant value. Although Haiku and its technologies aren't quite as relevant today in the face of more modern and advanced operating systems, many of the traditional advantages of BeOS that are present in Haiku still have value today in some contexts."

Innotek has been bought by Sun. The press release reads: "Sun today announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the provider of the leading edge, open source virtualization software called VirtualBox."

Fluxbuntu's aim is to be a lightweight, productive, agile, and efficient operating system; this review takes a look at Fluxbuntu and whether it lives up to the challenge of creating a user-friendly experience on a tight resources budget. The review discusses included applications, ease-of-use, and some of the limitations of this featherweight operating system.

"Free/Open Source software has grown considerably from its roots in the UNIX tradition of the command line interface and early X Windows-based graphical environments. As desktop use has increased concurrently with advances in desktop development, serious user interface and experience issues have arisen. Celeste Lyn Paul of User Centered Design, Inc. and the KDE Project presented, 'A Quick and Dirty Intro to User Centered Design in Open Source Development', Saturday at SCaLE 6X. Her talk emphasized the importance of including designers in the development process."

Gizmodo has a video of Nokia's prototype touchscreen-based Symbian S60 interface. The first devices might be ready as soon as end of 2008. In the meantime, Nokia announced their highest-end S60 smartphone, the N96. It's pretty similar to the N95 that we reviewed last year, but with the addition of a DVB-H receiver for digital TV signals in Europe and Asia, 16 GB of flash storage, and the N-Gage gaming platform built-in.

Comic: "Bleeding".

Ars has published part VI in their series of articles on the history of the Amiga. "When a corporation is bleeding money, often the only way to save it is to drastically lower fixed expenses by firing staff. Commodore had lost over USD 300 million between September 1985 and March 1986, and over USD 21 million in March alone. Commodore's new CEO, Thomas Rattigan, was determined to stop the bleeding."

Ken Hinckley from Microsoft Research has unofficially put together a prototype Tablet PC note-taking application designed and built from ground up around the pen. InkSeine (rhymes with 'insane'), which gives you the ability to easily search the web or your local computer directly from your ink. Although it's scheduled for a public release on February 15, 2008, Microsoft insists that it is not intended for public consumption: "InkSeine is a research demonstration only, and is not a Microsoft product, nor is it intended to become a product. It is just something we built as a pure research project to explore novel pen and ink functionality."

"Xfce is just as customizable as KDE or GNOME, so I set myself a goal: make Xubuntu look like Windows Vista. Though you won’t be told how to achieve the exact same end result, this guide provides comprehensive instructions helping you make Xubuntu look the way you want it to. In any case, I would certainly not recommend such a setup for someone new to Xubuntu. Xubuntu is different than Windows; making it look similar is only confusing."

"It just might be possible for Linux desktop users to get one of OS/2's best features: SOM (System Object Model). Of course, many of you are asking, 'SOM, What's the heck is SOM?' I'll tell you. It's a CORBA object-oriented shared library. Those of you who aren't programmers are doubtlessly staring cross-eyed at the screen right about now. For you: SOM is an easy-to-use universal programming library that both KDE and GNOME developers could use to create programs that would work in any Linux desktop environment."

"The Asus Eee PC has been out for a few months now and while people are still buying them in droves, much of the luster has worn off of the device. During the first few weeks of ownership, it is hard for most people to get over how cheap and portable it is, but, as with anything else, you get used to it. After some time, once you see it as a tool and not an innovation, you can start to fine tune your opinion of the Eee PC and notice which parts of it really bother you and which you have learned to live with."

"Because the traditional System V init daemon (SysVinit) does not deal well with modern hardware, including hotplug devices, USB hard and flash drives, and network-mounted filesystems, Ubuntu replaced it with the Upstart init daemon. Several other replacements for SysVinit are also available. One of the most prominent, initng, is available for Debian and runs on Ubuntu. Solaris uses SMF and Mac OS uses launchd. Over time, Ubuntu will likely come to incorporate features of each of these systems into Upstart."

Yahoo Inc's board believes Microsoft Corp's unsolicited bid of USD 44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo 'massively undervalues' the company and directors are set to reject the offer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed source. Microsoft's USD 31 per share offer fails to take account of the risks that a merger between the world's largest software maker and Yahoo would be rejected by regulators, the paper reported, citing 'a person familiar with the situation'. A spokeswoman for Yahoo, a diversified Internet media company, declined to comment on the proceedings of the company's board of directors.