Monthly Archive:: August 2008

Last week we reported on the Engineering 7 weblog, a weblog headed by Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky on which they promised to chronicle the development process of Windows 7, while allowing us normal folk to give feedback. They are keeping their promise, as the latest post by Sinofsky offers some interesting insights into the various development teams working on Windows 7.

"Me and Bobby Powers have spent a few hours smoothing out the process of getting fully-featured Linux desktops to boot on the XO laptop. On the whole, OLPC developers have been pretty good at getting code upstream, so only a few fixups are needed to get things operational on the XO." On a slightly (stretching it here) related note, here is a detailed guide on installing and optimising Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire One that we reviewed last week. I replaced the default Linpus installation with Ubuntu using this guide, and I must say that I am quite pleased.

GoboLinux is a distribution which sports a different file system structure than 'ordinary' Linux distributions. In order to remain compatible with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, symbolic links are used to map the GoboLinux tree to standard UNIX directories. A post in the GoboLinux forums suggested that it might be better to turn the concept around: retain the FHS, and then use symbolic links to map the GoboLinux tree on top of it. This sparked some interesting discussion. Read on for more details.

Linux project lead Linus Torvalds has said it is not easy to become a major contributor to the Linux kernel. In an email interview with ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet.co.uk last week, Torvalds said that, while it was relatively easy for coders and organisations to contribute small patches, the contribution of large patches, developed in isolation, could lead to both new and established contributors becoming frustrated. "The kernel is about pretty harsh technical issues, and mistakes are really frowned upon," wrote Torvalds. "In an OS kernel, there are simply more security and stability requirements, and the bar is really higher in some respects. That will inevitably also reflect in the response to patches."

With the SIGGRAPH OpenGL BOF now past, Nick Haemel from AMD has written a blog post about OpenGL 3 and the reasoning behind the choices made. "After testing an approach that would have a drastic effect on the API, requiring complete OpenGL application rewrites and not introducing any of the long awaited features modern GPUs are capable of GL 3.0 takes two important steps to moving open standard graphics forward in a major way. The first is to provide core and ARB extension access to the new capabilities of hardware. The second is to create a roadmap that allows developers to see what parts of core specifications will be going away in the future, also providing the OpenGL ARB with a way to introduce new features faster."

This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms . On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.

InformationWeek is speculating on how Linux will change in the next four years. "By 2012 the OS will have matured into three basic usage models. Web-based apps rule, virtualization is a breeze, and command-line hacking for basic system configuration is a thing of the past."

The traditional market share numbers would say that Linux is currently at less than 1%, but some more recent numbers suggest that it might, in fact, be almost even with the Mac. This all brings the question of how many Linux users are there really? Unfortunately, we may never know. Certainly, there is no way of knowing currently, but it should be possible to at least get a rough estimate.

A federal appeals court has overruled a lower court ruling that, if sustained, would have severely hampered the enforceability of free software licenses. The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

An interesting article has been making its way around the internet the past few days, titled "Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS". Mac OS X indeed does some things very, very right, just like many other operating systems and graphical environments do some things very, very right. The issue with the list of the article in question is that many of the items on the list are not exactly examples of "Usability Highs" at all.

"Often it is difficult to make the transition from procedural scripting to object-oriented programming. This article explores how to reuse knowledge from PHP, Bash, or Python scripting to transition to object-oriented programming in Python. The article also briefly touches on the appropriate use of functional programming."

As we all know by now, netbooks are the latest craze in the computing world. Small notebooks, perfect for on the go, and relatively cheap. The interesting thing is that these netbooks are often offered with Linux pre-installed instead of Windows, and this prompts many to believe that it is the netbook niche where Linux will gain its first solid foothold among the general populace. "It does a lot to level the playing field. In fact, Linux looks to be quick out of the gate," said Jay Lyman, analyst with the 451 Group. However - is that really happening?

The dot reports on the new version of Qt, as discussed by Qt developers Simon Hausmann and Andreas Aardal Hanssen. Much optimizations have already gone in the 4.5 development tree, and more is to come. You can also expect many functional improvements to the WebKit webbrowser engine, graphical effects and a new animations API.

It's been a couple of days since Akademy 2008 started, and a steady stream of news is coming through the KDE.news site. The general day 1 article described the atmosphere and two Keynotes. The first keynote was about increasing community involvement, and the refreshing ideas in there really set the tone for Akademy: innovation and integration. The second keynote was about Nokia, who discussed their long-term commitment to Qt and KDE. Tuesday, Nokia gave away 100 N810 internet devices to KDE developers to prove their point, and there is also an article about Nokia and Mozilla doing a Firefox port to Qt. Finally, there is the Embedded and Mobile day going on right now, with very interesting talks. Separate news articles started to appear, covering the many improvements in Qt 4.5, work by the KDE-PIM hackers, JOLIE bringing service-oriented computing to the Free Desktop, and an overview of what was discussed and decided upon during the meeting of the legal organizaton behind KDE, the e.V. During that meeting, the e.V. quarterly report was released, and it was decided to endorse the new Community Working Group, and a Code of Conduct.