Rumors Archive

"Two years ago, the number of developers writing applications for the Microsoft Windows platform fell, while the opposite was true for Linux - this has now become a trend. Instead of the Web stealing away Windows Users, as people have predicted for years, it's Linux and handheld devices. According to analysts at the Evans Data Corporation research house, 64.8 percent of North American developers are writing software for Windows, down from 74 percent only a year ago. The decline in popularity of the world's most prevalent operating systems appears to coincide with the rise of Linux, as the number of developers targeting the open-source environment has gone up by three percentage points from 8.8 percent to 11.8 percent in the same year."

"GNU/Linux is the most popular operating system built with free/open source software. However, it is not the only one: FreeBSD is also becoming popular for its stability, robustness and security. In this article, I’ll take a look at their similarities and differences."

"One reason that people might choose to miss out on OpenSolaris is because we're (in general) a conservative lot and a lot of people have had bad experiences with Solaris (and, dare we say it, also with Windows and Linux) in the past. No matter how much software and UI improves, it takes ages for the community to accept this. A reputation that took years to build can be lost with one bad release - but won't be quickly reinstated with one good one. So there will always be people who resist change - and why not, if what they have now works for them. However, various people pointed us at Ubuntu and 'an OpenSolaris-based distro focused specifically on developers'. So perhaps things have improved for Solaris lately and, as I said in the original article, it's now worth another look."

"A current mania is to exile yourself for a certain period of time into the rival desktop environment, to see how bad (or not) you would feel: a KDE fan would use GNOME, while a GNOME guy would use KDE. I have undertaken the challenge myself, and it wasn't bad at all." More here. Additionally, a Gnome panel apps review.

"A well-illustrated technical paper comparing RTLinux, RTAI, and VRTXsa has been published by two Italian computer science students. Emanuele Mattei and Andrea Ludiciani conclude that the RTOSes offer comparable predictability, while RTLinux is the least variable and RTAI the most efficient."

"When Steve Jobs took the stage this week to present one of the most important products in his company's history, he knew that the very name of the iPhone was in dispute and that U.S. communications officials had not even approved the device. Those facts might have concerned other business leaders in his position. But Mr. Jobs didn't miss a beat." More here.