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Fedora's Schrödinger's Cat Linux gives coders claws for thought
Review The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, devised by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, pits the theory of quantum superposition against what we observe to be true.
In the world of Linux distros, in theory the beta version of Fedora 18 was slated for release in early October 2012 with the aim of producing a final build in November that …
Ubuntu's Shuttleworth: Microsoft no longer dominates PC biz
Ubuntu headman and part-time astronaut Mark Shuttleworth has declared victory over Microsoft's domination of the PC industry, noting that the competitive landscape today is far different from what it was when Ubuntu launched in 2004.
During the project's early days, Shuttleworth filed Bug #1 in the Ubuntu bugbase with a …
Microsoft's Windows 8.1 secrets REVEALED ... sort of
After weeks of teasing us with vague promises, Microsoft has at last revealed some concrete details of what will be included in Windows 8.1, the update formerly known as "Blue."
Describing the response to Windows 8 as "substantial," (You can say that again – Ed) Windows corporate VP Antoine Leblond wrote in a blog post on …
Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild
Leaked screenshots of a prerelease build of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8.1 update reveal that the rumors are true and the Start button really is coming back – though perhaps not in the way users of previous versions of Windows might like.
Screenshot of Windows 8.1 showing new Start button Thar she blows! That little icon …
Fedora 19 lands in beta with updates for devs, cloud
The Fedora Project has announced the beta release of Fedora 19, codenamed "Schrödinger's Cat", almost exactly six months since the previous version entered beta.
The release brings the Fedora project back on track after the much-delayed Fedora 18, which shipped two months later than expected due to lingering bugs.
Among its …
Fedora cooks up new Linux for Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi users have another operation system option, after the folks behind Fedora Linux changed their recipe and issued a “remix” of the OS for the tiny computer.
Pidora 18, as the release is known, is not the very first of its kind, as two previous versions are available but weren't optimised for the ARMv6 architecture. …
Samsung, carriers tout first Tizen mobes for late 2013
TDC2013 You could be forgiven for thinking there's not much going on with Tizen, the Linux Foundation's open source mobile OS. It's been two years since the project was launched and there still are no Tizen devices on the market. But that's about to change – and there has been a lot happening behind the scenes, as well.
"Tizen-based …
Happy 23rd birthday, Windows 3.0
This week marks the 23rd birthday of Windows 3.0, which came into this world on May 22nd, 1990, and gave the world improved colour graphics and the infamous File Manager.
Windows 3.0 was all about getting closer to Apple’s Macintosh after Windows 1.0 and 2.0 fell a long way short of Jobs and Co's WIMPy UI.
The MSDOS Executive …
More than half of Windows 8 users just treat it like Windows 7
For all Microsoft's hype about The Interface Formerly Known As Metro (TIFKAM), more than half of all Windows 8 users ignore the new Start Screen and treat the OS as if it were Windows 7, according to a study by PC management firm Soluto.
Soluto chart tracking Windows Store app use How many Windows 8 users launch a Windows Store …
Biz bods: Tile-tastic Windows 8? NOOO. We lust after 'mature' Win 7
Windows 8 won't become an enterprise IT standard as customers dump Microsoft's legacy PC operating system XP. Instead, corporate IT departments will stick to what they know and install Windows 7.
That’s according to technology analyst Forrester, which reckoned Windows 7 is fast becoming the de-facto PC operating system for big …
Microsoft: Next WinPhone 8 update to arrive this summer
We still don't know for sure what changes will arrive in Windows 8.1, the big OS update that's expected to ship as a preview in late June, but Microsoft has begun teasing a few details of the next update to Windows Phone 8.
Windows group chief marketing and finance officer Tami Reller confirmed that the major desktop update …
Microsoft: YES! You can have your desktop back again for FREE!
Microsoft has confirmed that it will issue its Blue update to Windows 8 without charge, with first code scheduled at the company’s Build conference starting on June 26.
This is in line with Redmond's previous policy in which users have been charged only for an entirely new iteration of the Windows OS, not for service packs and …
Android is a mess and needs sprucing up, admits chief
Comment Android looks unstoppable, and it's a mess. The first fact tends to eclipse the second observation, but Android's new supremo diplomatically acknowledges as much in an interview.
"Here’s the challenge: without changing the open nature of Android, how do we help improve the whole world’s end-user experience?" Chrome chief Sundar …
Windows 8 'sales' barely half as good as Microsoft claims
Microsoft claimed last week that it's made '100 million' Windows 8 sales and the claim has been widely repeated. But channel feedback and the experience on the ground point to a very different picture.
The Guardian's Charles Arthur has made a stab at estimating the true figure, and suggests it's much less, at between 57 million …
Torvalds unveils first Linux 3.10 release candidate
The first release candidate for version 3.10 of the Linux Kernel is upon us.
Linus Torvalds released RC1 of the new kernel on the eve of Mother's Day (in North America and Australia), together with some advice on how to treat Mum/Mom right on the occasion.
“So this is the biggest -rc1 in the last several years (perhaps ever) at …
Microsoft honcho pleads with media: 'Stop picking on us!'
Updated Microsoft has taken quite a pounding in the press over Windows 8, and it has only intensified the rumors that the planned update to the OS might roll back some of its more controversial features. But Redmond has had quite enough now, and it wants it all to stop.
On Friday, Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president of …
Good news: Debian 7 is rock solid. Bad news: It's called Wheezy
Review Debian, the daddy to many a Linux distro including Ubuntu and Mint, has been updated for the first time in more than two years.
Codenamed Wheezy, Debian 7 actually brings the GPL operating system up to speed with some of its more famous offspring, though, true to its roots, Debian's stable release continues to focus on just that …
Windows Blue preview to land at end of June
Start-button refugees wandering through the wasteland of Windows 8 trying to find a way to open an application can circle June 24th in their calendars, after Microsoft let it be known that a “public preview” of Windows Blue will emerge at the end of June.
Microsoft's leaking hints that Blue will bring back the Start button, but …
Microsoft: All RIGHT, you can have your Start button back
Big changes to "key" parts of Windows 8 are coming after Microsoft admitted it “could and should have done more” on its big answer to Apple’s iOS for tablets.
“Key aspects” of Windows 8 will be changed, head of marketing and finance for Microsoft’s Windows group Tami Reller has told the Financial Times (log-in needed).
Reller …
Debian 7 debuts
Debian 7, which glories in the code name “Wheezy”, is officially upon us.
The latest iteration of Ian Murdock's brainchild emerged on Saturday, which given it is created by volunteers seems a very apt time at which to appear. Wheezy is the first update to the OS in two years.
Debian's developers are talking up two features in …
Japan's XP migration solution: Remove network cable
A Japanese local government has come up with a rather unusual solution to the problem of Windows XP migration – keep the venerable OS but disconnect the remaining PCs running it from the internet.
In around a year’s time, April 8 2014 to be precise, Microsoft will end free support for the operating system which is still …
Linux kernel 3.9 lands
Linus Torvalds has unleashed version 3.9 of the Linux kernel.
Key features in the release include caching for SSD storage, new processor architectures, power management improvements targeting tablets and phones, Chromebook support, and a nod towards Android.
The caching change, present as the dm-cache target and currently …
Apple's next OS X said to be targeted at 'power users'
Apple's next version of OS X may provide welcome relief to users dismayed by the company's seemingly inexorable evolution from computer manufacturer to consumer-electronics company, if unnamed sources speaking to 9to5Mac are to believed.
According to those sources, OS X 10.9 – oddly codenamed "Cabernet"* in the closely guarded …
Ubuntu without the 'U': Booting the Big Four remixes
Review It's the end of April, so that means that there's a new release of Ubuntu. Well, actually, no - it means that there are eight of them. Don't like standard Ubuntu's Mac-OS-X-like Unity desktop? Here's where to look.
There are umpteen "remixes" alongside the eponymous distro. These mostly differ by having a different desktop - and …
Ubuntu 13.04: No privacy controls as promised, but hey - photo search!
First the bad news: most of the big new features planned for Ubuntu 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, haven’t made it – they’ve been pushed back to 13.10, due in October. Despite this, the Ringtail is actually rather good.
Assuming you're a fan of the Unity interface and got past the privacy fiasco of last year - either because you’ve …
Microsoft hoists ZTE onto the Android patent bandwagon
China's ZTE has become the latest firm to sign a licensing deal with Microsoft for its Android and Chrome patent portfolio.
The firm, which is one of the world's biggest smartphone makers, has agreed to stump up royalties to MS for Android and Chrome stuff just a week after Hon Hai's Foxconn signed a similar deal.
"The ZTE and …
Google's Page drops the A-bomb: Google Glass runs Android
Google chief exec Larry Page has confirmed his company's techno-spectacles Google Glass will run some form of Android.
During an earnings call yesterday for Google's first-quarter 2013 financial numbers, Page revealed the choice of operating system when asked about the new product and how it would fit in the existing Google …
Linux in 2013: 'Freakishly awesome' – and who needs a fork?
LCS2013 If there was a theme for Day One of the Linux Foundation's seventh annual Linux Collaboration Summit, taking place this week in San Francisco, it was that the Linux community has moved way, way past wondering whether the open source OS will be successful and competitive.
"Today I wanted to talk about the state of Linux," Jim …
Windows 7 'security' patch knocks out PCs, knackers antivirus tools
Windows 7 users should uninstall a security patch Microsoft issued on Tuesday because some PCs failed to restart after applying the update.
The software giant advised users of Win 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2* to roll-back a patch within MS13-036, a security update that closed two vulnerabilities in the Windows file system …
Tick-tock! 40% of PCs start Windows XP malware meltdown countdown
With one year to go until Microsoft kills free support for Windows XP, if you haven’t got a migration plan in place it’s time to start doing something about it... but don't panic, say the migration experts.
One year from today, on 8 April 2014, Microsoft will stop fixing broken code and no longer release security patches for …
Windows XP support ends a year from … now!
Windows XP, we hardly knew ye! Yet by this time next year, the adolescent operating system will be headed for the big Recycle Bin in the sky, thanks to Microsoft's planned obsolescence policy and the inevitable march of progress.
Introduced in 2001, XP was a big hit. But Microsoft will end support for XP on April 7th, 2014. That …
Microsoft to slap 9 patches on Windows junkies on Tuesday
Microsoft is lining up nine patches - two critical - as part of the April edition of its regular Patch Tuesday update cycle.
The nine bulletins due on 9 April affect all versions of Windows, some Office and Server components as well as Windows Defender on Windows 8 and RT.
The first of the two critical updates covers all …
Got a BlackBerry? It may be telling your friends when you watch pr0n
Using a Blackberry Z10 for a little one-handed surfing might be more public than desired, as the social-sharing baked into the OS likes to share, um, everything.
Blackberry OS10, used on the Z10 handset, integrates social sharing deep into the OS and many users opt in to alerting Blackberry Messenger contacts about their musical …
Microsoft gives away Windows 8 to Mac devs
Microsoft has decided the best way to get Mac-using developers to use Windows 8 for web compatibility testing is to give it away.
Redmond today launched an offer to developers whereby they'd get Windows 8, Parallels desktop virtualisation software and a USB containing both if they make a $US25 donation to a charity through a …
Microsoft's summer update will be called Windows 8.1
Microsoft has thought long and hard about what to officially call the forthcoming Windows 8 upgrade package codenamed "Windows Blue", and the verdict is ... Windows 8.1.
So sayeth veteran Redmond-watcher Mary Jo Foley, who cites an anonymous tipster.
Lending credence to the rumor, Foley directs us to a Twitter post made by one …
Patent shark‘s copyright claim could bite all Unix
April Fool A company registered in minor league tax haven the Cook Islands, but with a subsidiary in Delaware, lawyers in the patent-troll heaven of East Texas and an office in Sydney, Australia, has asserted intellectual property rights over all versions of Unix and “Unix-like derivatives” and plans to seek royalties from every company …
Spanish Linux group files antitrust complaint against Microsoft
A Spanish open source software users' association has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission, claiming that the company's implementation of UEFI Secure Boot stifles competition.
Hispalinux, an 8,000-member organization that advocates for and facilitates Linux use in Spain, filed the complaint …
Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate
Vid Windows Blue - the supposedly leaked sequel to Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system - will apparently look a lot more like Windows Phone 8 and allow users to further personalise their computers.
Copies of what appears to be build 9364 of Windows Blue are circulating on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks; once the alpha-grade …
Ubuntu support periods slashed
Ubuntu's Technical Board has decided nine months is long enough to support some new releases of its operating system.
In an online meeting noticed by Phoronix (and available for all-text IRC replay here), the Board decided that “regular” Ubuntu releases will only receive food, water, warm lodgings and security updates for nine …
How to survive a UEFI BOOT-OF-DEATH on Samsung laptops
Former Red Hatter Matthew Garrett, who cleared Linux's name when the open-source kernel appeared to cause shiny new Samsung laptops to destroy themselves, has offered a survival guide to avoid similar catastrophes.
Nebula programmer Garrett this week warned that Samsung laptops may brick themselves if the computer's UEFI …
Ubuntu tapped by China for national operating system
Ubuntu is going to become the reference architecture for a Linux distribution, backed and developed by the Chinese government.
The news means Ubuntu-stewards Canonical will work with China's National University of Defense Technology, and The China Software and Integrated Chip Promotions Center, to develop a Chinese-flavored …
Microsoft starts to roll out Windows 8 in embedded flavors
Microsoft has announced the general availability of two flavors of Windows 8 for embedded systems; the Standard and Pro editions.
"Edge devices connected and working in unison with an enterprise's broader IT infrastructure unleash the potential of the Internet of Things by yielding the actionable data and operational …
