The Google Chrome team has released beta versions of its browser for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms. You can download the latest versions from the Chrome website.
In addition, there are now over 300 extensions that are available for the Windows and Linux platforms for extending the browser’s functionality.
Fedora 11, codenamed Leonidas, was released by Red Hat on Tues. Fedora 11, which is free from Red Hat, unlike its Enterprise cousin has a number of new features such as a piece of middleware called OpenChange that gives universal access to MS Exchange from any client.
But perhaps the most significant change is the inclusion of the ext4 file system as default. There are also improved virtualization features and fingerprint reader support.
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Apple is working on a new device that will fall somewhere between a notebook computer and an iPhone/iPod sized device in size. Its aim – a mobile non-phone computer sans keyboard with a bigger screen than an iPod for video-watching; a media pad. Proposed name? i… Pad!
UMPCs and tablet PCs have not taken off the way that manufacturers have hoped, as laptops and smartphones continue to dominate the mobile computing market. Will Apple have better success? Given their recent successes with MacBooks, iPods and iPhones, they certainly have a good track record.
I still think that UMPCs can gain more traction if more of those vendors were willing to make the switch to Linux, as they could be made to run leaner, and thus cheaper.
We first featured Bug Labs and their ‘open source’ hardware platform which features a Linux heart back in late 2007. Bug Labs is still around and announced 5 new modules at CES: BUGprojector, BUGsound, BUGbee, BUGwifi, and BUG3g GSM.
All these new BUGmodules will be available by the end of this quarter, with pricing and shipping details to be announced soon.
More info to come on the BugCommunity as well as the Bug Labs site.#CES09
In another hardware conquest for the Linux platform, it has been successfully ported to the iPhone. While the current version is not much more than a working, beta version, it does prove that a Linux iPhone is a viable proposition.
As Gizmodo points out in the headline of their article, this may be the start of an Android iPhone. Oh, the irony is fantastic.
For much more geeky details, take a look at the blog, and/or the video.
Taiwanese company, Carapelli Ltd., is selling what is currently being billed as the world’s cheapest laptop. The Impulse NPX-9000 laptop is a tiny guy in more than 1 respect – 7″ screen, 500Mhz CPU (brand?), 128MB RAM, 1GB flash storage. It naturally comes with Linux and a bunch of (probably open source) productivity software. Just one caveat – you need to buy at least 100 to get it at the $130 price.
Despite the fact that Linux can run pretty nicely (without a window manager) on 128MB of memory, running a GUI and a modern browser will probably result in a slow crawler of a machine. We recommend you look to spend north of $400 to get a decent machine that you wouldn’t want to toss out the window on day 2.
In a somewhat surprising, yet not so surprising move, Nokia bought up the rest of Symbian that it didn’t already own and will open-source the cell phone OS platform. Why? This is the strategy du jour in this age of Linux vs Microsoft, and now Android (Linux basically) vs iPhone/Win Mobile/Blackberry.
It’s a $410 million gamble for Nokia, but not a bad risk. Open-sourcing products many times results in amazing contributions and improvements to the products which in turn fuel sales of hardware, software and services surrounding that product.
Time will tell how Nokia fares. This writer thinks this will certainly help to keep Nokia firmly in the top tiers of the cell phone handset industry.
Finally, the US gets it! Geeks are moving from the high end performance (and heavy) laptops to the ultra-portables in droves. While this market has been hot in other countries throughout Europe as well as the Asian markets including Japan, it took the Asus Eee PC to ignite the passion for ultra-portables here.
While the Asus Eee PC is definitely a rocking ultra-portable, the resolution of the monitor and the small solid state hard drive were an inhibitor for me and others. HP has answered with a tiny laptop called the HP Mini-Note Laptop which comes with a high-res 8.9″ 1280 x 768 display, a 120GB hard drive and a 92% of full-sized keyboard in cased in an all-aluminum case.
This particular setup includes the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 version of the Mini-Note. If you’re into Windows you have to go to Vista though because HP hasn’t released XP drivers.
The dimensions of this ultra-portable is 1.05″ thick x 10.04″ x 6.5″ and weighs in at only 2.6 pounds.
Suggested Price: $549.99
