Can a new PC be purchased without MS Windows installed on it?

The answer is currently No here in the U.S. But this article shows how one can obtain a refund.

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By Aaron Seigo | October 7, 2009

KDE has gone through an impressive evolution of organizational, procedural and community related changes over its lifespan. What started out as a "in-our-spare-time" project became a critical component in many F/OSS operating systems. As the various KDE projects grew, matured and in some cases retired the number of distinct teams and sub-communities grew in both number and diversity. An ever growing number of companies from small to large grew out of or joined the KDE community along the way. Our non-profit, KDE e.V., has gone through a similar evolution in complexity, transparency and professionalism.

What I've always found intriguing and impressive with KDE's evolution is that as a community we have managed to find a good blend between openness, decentralization, oversight, corporate involvement, entrepreneurship, community, fun and seriousness. We have a fine balance between the community and the corporate, the adventurism and the professionalism. This has been achieved by keeping a shared alignment of our incentives and goals, regardless of who we are and why we are individually here. Such a balancing act of unity is not common in communities of our size.

Of course, success is often rewarded with challenges that spring up along the way, and the growth and rise of economic interests within and around KDE has brought with it new challenges for us to deal with. I have noticed three potential rift creators becoming more common and it would probably be good to discuss them openly as a community. By paying attention to these issues we can smooth off the rough edges and keep our unity intact for many more years to come.

What are these three fault line producers? In no particular order:

• Time line mismatches


• Differentiation pressures


• Confidentiality requirements

I don't want to discuss possible solutions in this blog entry, but rather just outline what these challenges often look like.

Time Line Mismatches

When a large number of diverse interests come together, each with their own release requirements, market goals and deadlines it becomes inevitable that time lines will not match up across every single participant in the community.

While perfect cadence would be lovely, reality is that different kinds of software and different business interests will have different requirements when it comes to time lines. We have a terrific melange of upstream projects, contract software developers who are beholden to client time lines, device manufacturers tracking the cycles of their target markets, operating systems vendors and deployment specialists that all have time lines that follow unique demands. It is natural that they all want, or even need, to see features land, stabilization goals met, etc according to their time lines.

Sometimes development is rushed forward or held back due to time lines being at odds with other. The question here is how best to accommodate differing time lines as best we can.

It's either that or figure out how to magically fix the world so everyone's deadlines fall on the same day. ;)

Differentiation Pressures

When it comes to monetizing and commercializing a F/OSS product, there is often the desire to offer differentiation through features or behavior in the software. This can lead to forking the software to various degrees or reinventing / replacing components or entire stacks.

There is no singular root cause for this, however, which makes it a really interesting issue. Sometimes the differentiation pressure comes from operating in an overly competitive space, sometimes from being in a market that has unique pressures or requirements and other times it comes from the desire to build brand identity. This leads to a situation where sometimes the differentiation is rather frivolous and other times more substantial and the result of a hard requirement.

The worst thing that can happen in all of this is that efforts get lost. Open source as a methodology has some inefficiencies baked into it compared to other methods, but it is made up for due to many people working together (lowering costs and increasing utility) and various results that come from freedom (such as consumer confidence in longevity or availability). When efforts become divided due to unreconciled efforts motivated by differentiation, some of that advantage is lost.

Finding ways to avoid unnecessary and gracefully accommodate necessary differentiation efforts is important to keep our efforts efficient and our community bound together as a whole rather than splinters.

Confidentiality Requirements

Right now I'm working on a couple of projects for which I've signed NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) with partner companies. In other cases, I've simply given my gentleman's word of honor to keep information under wraps. At the same time, I'm as open as possible about what I'm working on particularly when it touches projects I share with others, such as the Plasma Netbook initiative. Such confidentiality is very common, both amongst open source projects in incubation and (even more so) in corporate projects.

Privacy in projects isn't always an evil thing: sometimes a business deal isn't complete and nothing can be said until such time as it is. Sometimes confidentiality is actually not needed or not worth it given the impact on the health of the community.

The biggest risk in confidentiality is that it creates schisms between people in the same project or community and can easily lead to retrograde patterns such as different groups working at odds to each other without even knowing they are. Being able to identify when and where confidentiality is sensible or not and how to encourage and preserve an "openness first" mentality will remain a vital endeavor in keeping our communities well-formed and the process efficiency high.

Lions, Tigers and Bears!

Fortunately the three issues of time line conflicts, differentiation pressures and confidentiality requirements don't come up often in our community with negative results. However, as KDE continues towards greater scope and sophistication, an increasing incidence of these three patterns can be expected.

It is therefore a good time to discuss and determine our shared expectations openly together. So while I don't want to cause people to run around fearing the sky is falling in (it's not even close to doing so :), we may want to pause and share our thoughts on these things.

Over the next few weeks I'll be putting together some of my thoughts on possible approaches for each of the three issues, and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on them as well. :)

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By Jack Wallen | October 4, 2009

If you've been following the Ubuntu release cycle you know that the .10 release is forth coming. Slated to hit the bandwidth October 29th, 2009, 9.10 promises to have quite a number of new features that should please even the most discerning of Linux users.

But what can you expect and how should it run? In this preview of Ubuntu 9.10 I will fill you in on the upcoming features and give you a few screen shots as well as my opinion on how the release will fare.

Features

Of course, the first thing you want to know is the feature list. You will be surprised to see the number of features that have been added to 9.10. There are a few cases where some of the features are major changes to the distribution as a whole. Let's take a look and see.

Upstart: Upstart replaces the /sbin/init daemon which handles the starting of services during the boot process.

Boot process: A brand new boot process has been worked in to make the boot of Ubuntu even faster than it was in 9.04. It is. The boot process for Linux is getting scary fast. Figure 1 shows the new Ubuntu boot screen. The goal of the 10 second start up is growing ever within reach.

Software Center: This is very new and replaces the old Add/Remove Software utility. The ultimate purpose of the Software Center is to replace Synaptic and Gdebi and will, eventually, also offer commercial software.  You can see how different the Software Center is to the

old tool in Figure 2. It is my belief the Software Center is Ubuntu's attempt to catch on in the Enterprise space. And why shouldn't they?

After taking a peek around the Software Center, I have to say I am really impressed.

GNOME: GNOME reaches the 2.28 release in the Ubuntu release cycle. The only major change is that GDM has been completely rewritten.

Kubuntu: With this release comes the very first Kubuntu Netbook release.

Enterprise Cloud Images: With the release of 9.10 you will images for use with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud that is deployed with Amazon EC2.

Ubuntu One: This is Ubuntu's version of Dropbox. With Ubuntu One you can keep all of files on your Ubuntu machines in sync with one another. You will have to sign up for an account in order to take advantage of this. You also have to subscribe to Ubuntu One. There are two types of accounts:

• Free: 2 Gigs of storage.
• Paid: 50 Gigs of storage for $10.00 USD per month.

Once you have subscribed you can then install the client software.

Hal depreciation: Our old buddy HAL is being stripped of many of its duties. Gone from HAL will be much of the suspend and hibernate subsystem as well as the handling of storage devices. In its place will be "DeviceKit-power", "DeviceKit-disks" and "udev".

New Intel video drivers: The Intel video drivers are moving away from EXA to UXA which will solve major performance issues seen in 9.04 for Intel graphics.

ext4: The ext4 filesystem will now be the default. I have used it on many installations and have found it to be reliable and fast.

Non-eXecutable Emulation: If you have a system that lacks NX hardware, this new system will provide an approximation of the NX hardware.

There have also been a number of security improvements such as:

• Blocking Module Loading: Blocks modules from loading after boot.
• Position Independent Executables: Helps to prevent from unknown threats.
• AppArmor Improvements: Associate more profiles to executable applications.

The results

After using 9.10 for a day I have to say I am impressed. I have been using 9.04 on nearly all of my machines and was wondering how Ubuntu could be improved upon. Well, it seems the developement team has, in fact, improved upon 9.04. It's not a giant leap forward, but the speed improvements and the new software promises to make the Ubuntu experience one that anyone can enjoy. If you are interested in downloading the pre-release of Ubuntu, you can find it on the Karmic Koala download page.

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What's that awful noise? The sound of Microsoft's hype machine, grinding away to tout Win 7. Will this be the time Redmond finally gets it right?

September 30, 2009

Listen closely. Can you can hear it? It's the kapocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the Microsoft hype machine, as the Windows 7 launch bears down upon us.

Though it's never worked quite as well as it did back in the halcyon days preceding Windows 95, Microsoft still drags the thing out of the basement every few years, fills the tank with diesel, cranks it up, and hopes it doesn't spew oil on the carpet or overwhelm us with fumes.

[ Get InfoWorld's 21-page hands-on look at the next version of Windows, plus deployment tips on security, Windows Server 2008 integration, and Windows XP migration, all from InfoWorld's editors and contributors. ]

As always, the hype starts with Steve Ballmer. In a letter sent to customers and developers (but that mysteriously made its way to several reporters), Ballmer boasts...

Windows 7 simplifies tasks and lets people get more done in less time with fewer clicks. Ready to deploy now, it enhances corporate data protection and security, and increases control to improve compliance and reduce risk.... making it easier to reduce costs, improve performance, and enable end users to work anywhere. These and other enhancements are the result of close collaboration with millions of customers and thousands of IT professionals... Thanks in large part to their help, Windows 7 is the best PC operating system we have ever built.

Of course, this time Ballmer really means it. He also really meant it when he said the same things about Vista, XP, NT, Windows 98, Win 95, and every other Windows OS going back to DOS 2.1, with the possible exception of Windows ME. More disturbing is that he truly believes it.

Meanwhile, the braniacs in the Microsoft marketing department have come up with a truly wacky idea. They're encouraging Microsoft fanboys and girls to throw Windows 7 launch parties on the big day -- kind of like Tupperware parties, only with more burping and less sealing. There's even a Web site and a vague-yet-perky video describing what's supposed to happen at these fetes.

Next

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Source

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by Alexandra Kleijn

Version 2.28 sees the team behind the GNOME desktop environment for Linux and Unix warming up for version 3.0, scheduled for a March 2010 release. The current release continues the tradition of dotting lots of i's and crossing plenty of t's, but also brings a new broom to a few nooks and crannies.

GNOME 2.28 is complete. The new release of the Linux and Unix desktop, probably the last in the 2.x series, includes the usual bug fixes and enhancements to the various components, but also offers a foretaste of Gnome 3.0 (ETA March 2010), albeit mostly in the form of behind the scenes changes. A range of now redundant libraries have also been marked as obsolete, though not yet discarded.

GNOME 2.28 includes a preview version of one of the more conspicuous changes in Gnome 3.0, the GNOME Shell. GNOME will consequently, from next spring, have a new look - the first fundamental change to the desktop for several years. The task-oriented mode of operation is intended to make it organic and intuitive to work with.

The standard Metacity window manager can be replaced with Gnome Shell using the desktop effects screen or by running gnome-shell --replace from a terminal window. The preview version, which is already highly useable, gives a good feel for the possibilities offered by GNOME Shell.

Revamped applications

GNOME 2.28 includes minor enhancements which improve usability, including a re-jigged contact list in IM client Empathy. It is also now possible to allow Empathy contacts to access your desktop via remote desktop viewer Vino - very practical when you need some remote support. A new geolocation feature based on Geoclue now lets you display the location of XMPP contacts (Jabber and GoogleTalk).

Web browser Epiphany has finally made the switch from using Gecko as its rendering engine to using WebKit, a change that has been on the to-do list since GNOME 2.22. Users of Bluetooth devices will welcome the new Bluetooth module. Two nice features are the ability to use a mobile phone as a web modem via Bluetooth and PulseAudio integration for headsets and headphones.

The Time Tracker applet, first introduced in GNOME 2.24, is now able to colour-code tasks, resulting in a better overview. The GNOME team also make mention of minor enhancements to Media Player and PDF viewer Evince. Webcam application Cheese now supports burst mode, in which bursts of images are captured in (rapid) succession. There is a new Wide display option, specially designed for netbooks. The GNOME Power Manager now supports laptops with more than one battery.

The development team have now implemented a feature which has caused some concern within the community. The menus and buttons in GNOME 2.28 in some cases now display text only, rather than displaying icons. The idea behind this is to create a uniform, clean interface. However, since there are a host of exceptions (including for applications, devices and files, and bookmarks), in practice the change is not immediately obvious.

There has also been progress in the field of usability, an issue which has always been a key concern in GNOME. Screen reader Orca offers a number of new functions, including support for mouse-over interactions and notification of spelling mistakes when editing text. The developers have completely revamped the speech and Braille generators for this release, and the speech generator can now also play sounds.

Tidying up under the bonnet

In preparation for GNOME 2.30, which will, if all goes according to plan, be released as GNOME 3.0 in March 2010, the development team have now started to mark up obsolete components for deletion. This affects various libraries, including libart_lgpl, libbonobo, libbonoboui, libglade, libgnome, libgnomecanvas, libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, libgnomeui and libgnomevfs. The release team is recommending developers of Gnome applications which are not official components of the desktop environment to avoid using these legacy components. The "What's New for Developers" section in the GNOME 2.28 release notes explains precisely which components are affected.

The innards of GNOME 2.28 include version 2.18 of GUI toolkit GTK+, from which developers may discern the first faint whiff of GTK+ 3.0, although its release remains some way off. Network library GNIO has been merged into the GIO API.

GNOME 2.28 will be included in the next releases of Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva and many other smaller Linux distributions. If you don't want to wait that long, either use JHBuild to compile the new GNOME release from the SVN source or - the easy option - take a look at GNOME 2.28 by using the range of live images (including some for virtual machines) the project is aiming to make available within the next few days.

(akl)

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I've often wondered why most major Linux distributions choose GNOME as their default desktop.

From Fedora to Ubuntu to Debian, GNOME is the go-to desktop environment. In the case of SUSE we see a distribution which, for years was centred on KDE. That was until SUSE was acquired by Novell. Soon after the acquisition SUSE defaulted to GNOME even though most SUSE users prefer and run KDE to this day. In the case of SUSE at least in part this was due to the fact that Miguel de Icaza (creator of GNOME) is a Novell VP. (openSUSE has recently changed their default to KDE)

Now, there are a few major distributions which default to KDE and do a very good job of it. Mandrake immediately comes to mind. They have been doing KDE well for a very long time.

This is not to say that distros such as Fedora and SUSE don't do KDE well. They do. In fact SUSE in particular has always done a great job with respect to KDE. On the other hand...Kubuntu? Clearly a second class citizen.

How about Debian? The "universal operating system".

Unfortunately with Debian, there is no KDE love. This is based on my experience with Lenny.
The Debian installer offers the option to install "alternative" desktops. Among those choices is KDE. In 6 different attempts on 6 different machines I installed Debian choosing the "alternative" KDE desktop. Every attempt failed. Now, when installing the default (GNOME) it just seems to work. I started to wonder if the "alternative" KDE install was ever even tested at all. KDE 4 on Debian....Good luck!

I must use this opportunity to congratulate the Linux Mint folks. A Debian based distro which does KDE very well.

So the question is, why do so many of the major distros default to GNOME?
I've heard the various theories. I understand that GNOME was created as a reaction to a non-free KDE a long long time ago. (you can let it go now...really.) I've talked to many people who prefer GNOME simply because it's less like Windows than KDE. (an irrational argument) Most polls I've seen demonstrate that most people prefer KDE.

So why GNOME?

I think it boils down to support. The bread and butter of commercial distros is support. GNOME with it's limited choice and limited configuration options is perceived to be easier and less expensive to support.

Whatever the reason, I think Linux distributors do themselves a disservice when they don't support both major desktop environments equally
 

Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?

These innovations are likely to continue for at least another couple of release cycles, with upcoming versions of KDE scheduled to put social networking into applications and remote windows on to the desktops of passing computers.

Yet in the middle of all these experiments, nobody seems to be asking a basic question: Does the average user want any of these things?

Personally, I love these innovations, every one of them. I'm a tinkerer who likes to play with new things and write about them. Some of these experiments may succeed more than others, and some I consider outright failures, but I don't tire of any of them.

Their number suggests that the free desktop is in a healthy state and has surpassed proprietary ones, and I'm proud of that.

However, people who share my enthusiasm for innovation seem to be the minority. Whenever KDE 4 is mentioned in an article online, the comments are sure to include complaints that KDE 3.5 was better.

Similarly, an article I recently published on GNOME Shell, the basis for the new GNOME desktop, inspired only condemnations of the program, even though its final form at this stage is anybody's guess.

Admittedly, commenters may not represent general attitudes. We have no way of knowing whether they do. Yet the fact that most of the praises for these innovations come from people who participate in the projects involved seems suggestive.

Under these circumstances, the free software community needs to consider the pros and cons of these innovations -- not one at a time, but as a whole.

Is there a compelling argument for innovation? Or has the free desktop reached a point where it satisfies most users and any attempt to change its current state is going to be regarded as an unwarranted intrusion on the average person's activities?

And, if so, what can be done to improve the situation?

The case for change

On an abstract level, few free software users are likely to find much that is objectionable in the arguments in favor of innovation.

For example, a year ago, Shuttleworth is reported as saying, "The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, into something that is art . . . . I see this [need] for free software - beautiful, elegant software. We have to invest in making this desktop beautiful and useful."

More recently, KDE developer Aaron Seigo defended KDE's upcoming social desktop with similar rhetoric.

Many online services, Seigo points out, are not free software, and cannot ensure protection of data or privacy -- the implication being that, in contrast, KDE's social desktop suffers from none of these problems.

He notes, too, that "The innovation essentially stopped at 'things I used to do on paper'. I want to do more than just have an easy place to dump my embarrassing photos of others from last night, keep up a public journal, read an annotated map or exchange small blocks of text with others. I want the network to make my computing life more interesting, more immersive and more useful. The innovation has all but dried up in social networking, however, and what we have is an electronic version of the library and post office. A really freaking cool library and post-office, but that's about it. We can do better than that, can't we?"

Seigo goes on to say that free software is uniquely positioned to improve on the current standard. As a community, it already understands the concepts of community behind social networking. Nor is it constrained by financial considerations in its quest for innovation.

Then Seigo paints a utopian vision of the possible future: "I see our computers becoming helpers rather than mildly frustrating tools; I see services becoming a true web of interacting greatness rather than silos with the occasional rickety handmade (and often one-way) rope bridge between them; I see 'social networking' and 'personal rights and freedoms' being mutually supporting at every level."

Like Shuttleworth, Seigo is invoking the motherhood issues of the community. Both are talking about concerns close to every free software advocate's heart. Reading their rhetoric, you can easily be swept away by its visionary scope, and find yourself nodding excitedly.

Not only are they talking about realizing your dreams, but they are talking about doing so in the very near future.

Who could resist?

The desktop is not a destination

The trouble with the rhetoric of innovators is that it exists on an abstract plane, not a practical one. Many of the same people whose hearts beat faster at the rhetoric's promises are likely to behave very differently when they turn from reading to focusing on what they have to.

Next Page: Do users need or want anything more?

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