Monthly Archive:: November 2008

I collect manuals. I have so many of them, that I'm starting to wonder where on earth I'm supposed to put them all. Somewhere in the back of a closet, I keep all my manuals in three huge boxes, with manuals dating from the early '80s to just a few days ago when I bought a new mouse. However, none of them are as dear to my as my extensive, fully illustrated Dutch manuals for Windows 3.0, which accompanied my parents' first PC in 1990. An enormously detailed manual covering every aspect of Windows 3.0 - with special sleeves for the various floppy disks that held the Windows 3.0 operating system. I still have those original floppies, and they're still fully functional. Last week, the era of Windows 3.x finally came to an end when Microsoft ceased to give out licenses for the operating system.

Last week we had some contradicting reports regarding Opera Software and its Opera Mini web browser. The New York Times' Bits weblog and Daring Fireball's John Gruber contradicted one another concerning a possible iPhone version of Opera Mini - or more specifically, about whether or not Opera had actually submitted Opera Mini to Apple. The Bits weblog has now settled the issue.

Despite warnings to businesses about the dangers of skipping Windows Vista, many IT managers and CIOs are standing firm that the risks of migrating to Vista outweigh the benefits.

Seems that both Motorola and Google have interest in seeing the Linux mobile footprint evolve. With a combined contribution of $20,000, they are focusing on major changes for GNOME 3. "It will be more than a tweak," Stormy Peters stated. "It will be the whole user experience, from the look and feel, to how files are managed to how it syncs with your mobile phone -- really the whole package. It will be very much a change for users and how they use their computers."

Developers have proposed an out-of-the-world browsing experience for Mozilla Firefox 4. Here is a user who peeks into those features and gives us insight. Taragana.com looks at Mozilla initiatives that might make it into Firefox 4.

Kristian Hogsberg, Red Hat Xorg developer and the key person behind successful projects such as AIGLX, has now started working on a new project called Wayland, a tiny display server and compositing manager.

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference might be over, but that doesn't mean news about Windows 7 suddenly stops coming in. We have news for you on the elusive MinWin kernel, which created a sort of crazy hype a year ago, and Rafael Rivera found a way to enable the new taskbar on the pre-beta build handed out to PDC attendees. This build, carrying number 6801, didn't have the latest taskbar revamp - you needed a newer build for that, build 6933, which hasn't been released to the public.

APCMag has tested Intel's latest Core i7 processor architecture that does away with the Front Side Bus and replaces it with the company's QuickPath Interconnect and has (back from the dead) hyperthreading. "This month, Intel moves on from the Core microarchitecture to the next generation of processors for mobile, desktop and servers, codenamed Nehalem and officially named the Core i7 family. We've spent a few weeks with Intel's test kit for the new desktop part, codenamed Bloomfield, as well as the new compatible motherboard chipset the X58 Express, codenamed Tylersburg."

Greg Kroah-Hartman is a longtime developer of the Linux kernel, known for his work maintaining USB drivers. O'Reilly Media recently interviewed Greg about his claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, as well as why binary-only drivers are illegal, and how the kernel development process works."I went and asked every single hardware manufacturer, the big guys that ship the boxes, Dell, IBM, HP--what do you ship that isn't supported by Linux? They came back with nothing. Everything is supported by Linux. If you have a device that isn't supported by Linux that's being shipped today, let me know.".If you would like to take up Greg KH on his claim, his email address is greg AT kroah.com

Earlier, we reported that Apple had rejected Opera Mini from the App Store. A New York Times blog entry claimed that Opera's CEO and co-founder Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner said that Apple wouldn't let them release Opera Mini for the iPhone because it competed with Mobile Safari. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, did some researching of his own, and found out via anonymous sources who do not wish to be identified, that the situation is a little bit different.