Jared Smith: It’s here! It’s here! It’s really here! Fedora 14 has been officially released! Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release approximately every six months. Fedora 14, codename Laughlin, is now available for download. Join us and share the joy of free software and the community with friends and family. ...
Many Ubuntu users will undoubtedly have strong opinions on Canonical’s recent proposal to replace the GNOME desktop with Unity in the Ubuntu 11.04 release. But for the programmers behind GNOME, one of the open-source community’s most important projects, the announcement might prove to be even more upsetting. Jon McCann, lead designer for GNOME Shell, recently shared his thoughts on this topic with us–and he was none too charitable in his comments on Canonical. Read on for details. ...
The Russian government is no longer comfortable being dependent on the Windows operating system, and has thus decided to create its own flavor of Linux for internal use. 150 million rubles (€3.55 million or nearly $4.89 million) has been put aside for the project. That’s a huge amount of money to invest into something that isn’t certain (what if Russia gives up and goes back to using Windows 7?). “We will become independent of Windows … but it risks becoming an unthinking implantation of Linux [that was probably supposed to be translated as “implementation”],” Russian deputy and computer expert Ilia Ponomarev told the AFP. Nevertheless, he admitted that it will be difficult to create and implement an operating system secure enough for government use, conceding that “the devil is in the details.” Those details will be hashed out during a December meeting headed by Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. ...
The author of this article seems to think Linux in the desktop is dead, with so many missed opportunities, especially during the failure of Windows Vista, they will never break into the market now that Win 7 is so successful. In some ways I agree, but personally, I never thought Linux even had a chance with the average user on a home system. Being in IT, like most peeps in my field, I have become the “help desk” for family and friends; I really do not think the average user is ready for it. Add in the lack of applications and games that are available, it really did not stand a chance. I design and write software, the development costs these days are huge, and the money peeps want a good ROI to out weigh the risks, developing from scratch or even porting an existing app is just too risky. ...