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Whenever a new major distribution comes out, I am always curious to see how they handled the release announcement. These sorts of announcements are almost always followed by some form of feature list. In some cases, this consists of something like this:

• Linux Kernel updated from 2.34.23.23 to 2.3.43.4.3
• OpenOffice.org updated from 43.43 to 343.2
• Bug #4344059450 fixed
• Blah, blah, blah

Obviously, I am exaggerating some, but, unfortunately, not very much.

In other cases, however, the “feature list” is a straight forward explanation of what is cool or interesting about the new version. This later case, of course, is what I far prefer. Instead of pushing away new users, it pulls them in and tells them why <insert name of distro> is the OS they should be using.

I am very happy to say that OpenSuse did a great job with their anouncement. The technical details are still there, just down a couple of pages. At the beginning is an explanation of the cool new end-user features like Compiz Fusion, complete with screenshots.

It is true that there are some references in the beginning to GNOME, KDE, and Xfce, but they are fairly well explained and OpenSuse has never really seemed to target the “average joe” Windows user anyway.

Overall, I am very happy to see another distro doing their release announcement the right way. Good job OpenSuse!!!

Remember, live review of OpenSuse 11 this Friday at 3:30 PM EDT.

Almost every open-source project, no matter if it currently has ten or a million users or even more, would like to grow and have more users. Few projects, though, are good at promoting their software. Strangely, the same ideas are talked about over and over again, while there is an incredible example of an open-source project that has volunteers spreading it very successfully in all sorts of creative ways. This project, as you may have guessed, is Firefox.

You have probably already heard that Firefox far surpassed their goal and reached over 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 in just 24 hours! This is not, by far, though, the only promotional project Firefox has succeeded with. Everything from crop circles to newspaper ads to volunteer “Firefox Campus Reps,” Firefox has tried it. Firefox is easily the most widely recognized open-source project that I can think of. The point is, Firefox is really, really good at promoting itself. Because of this, other open-source projects should look to them as an example of how to spread their software and name. Granted, Firefox has an advantage in that it can be used by anyone, no matter what OS they use, and in that almost everyone uses a web browser, but still, more open-source projects should look to Firefox as a model for good promotion. I don’t mean everyone should copy exactly what Firefox has done, just be inspired by it. If every open-source project followed the example of Firefox and other widely-known open-source projects, my guess is that the number of projects that are common-place names would skyrocket.

We have all heard the stories about how badly Windows Vista has been received by users and how slow they are to adopt it, but I was surprised, and I suspect many people will be, when I read that only 8% of developers are “coding with Vista in mind,” according to Electronista.

The truth is, I am not just surprised, I am wondering if the number could even be real. 92% of developers are just ignoring the latest version of the largest OS more than a year after its release? It just does not sound plausible, and it makes me wonder if there is some sort of misunderstanding.

Assuming, however, that the numbers are correct and there is no misunderstanding, Microsoft seems to have a huge problem. If the vast majority of developers are ignoring Vista, as more and more people start to use it, there are going to be tons of application compatibility issues. This means that, rather than everything calming down and people moving to Vista, as Microsoft would like, the issues with Vista are going to continue for an unknown amount of time. If Microsoft can’t even get the developers to move to Vista, they are going to have an incredibly hard time trying to get users to calmly accept Vista.

When people make the argument that open source software lets you make your software do exactly what you want and nothing else, I am sure lots of people think “oh great, now if I knew how to code C++ I could spend hours putting in and taking out features I do or don’t want. Recently, however, a clear example of why choice in your software is important came up.

As you know, Microsoft already has Windows Genuine Advantage, which attempts to verify that your copy of Windows is legitimate when you install and every time you update your PC. Now, Apple has filed a patent that appears to be something similar, according to OSWeekly. This does not mean that Apple will implement what is in their patent, it just means they are thinking about it.

The point is, if you rely on closed-source software, you have the threat of some form of DRM (digital rights management) that, as we have seen with Windows Genuine Advantage, has a high potential to mess up users trying to do completely legal things. If you don’t believe me, anyone that tried to update or activate Windows for several days a while ago was marked as non-genuine, because Microsoft’s servers went down. This was a while ago, but it could happen again at any time. In other words, whenever you update your legal Windows installation, you are taking a risk of losing functionality if Windows’s servers fail again. This is unlikely, but it could, and has, happened.

If you use open-source software, on the other hand, and the maker tries to put in some sort of DRM like this, you can expect that someone will simply fork (i.e. create an offshoot version of) the project and remove the DRM. That is why the choice of open source is important, no matter what your skills.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

This week I started using the bookmarking system built in to Brainstorm instead of opening each idea in a tab and it seems to work quite well. I submitted an idea to include tags for bookmarks, to which I received a response from a Brainstorm admin that they are working on tags already!

There are already tons of great user-created videos promoting Ubuntu. With a contest, even more people would be inspired to create great videos that promote Ubuntu.

Although the implementation would have to be carefully figured out, the basic idea, improving copy and paste with lists or stacks, is great.

As long as most of the desktop is already animated, why not make more stuff look cool? Seriously, especially if there are a lot of icons on your desktops, making the new ones glow could be very useful.

Add/Remove is arguably one of the things that differentiates Ubuntu from other distros and other OSs, so making it better should be a top priority.

For those of us who want to know what each update does, but don’t want to have to sort through highly technical gibberish, it would be nice to have, possibly in addition, a short one or two sentence description of what an update does.

Imagine clicking on your Applications menu and dragging Firefox to the top as all the other apps glide down to make room for it. If that sounds cool, you should support this idea.

Windows and Mac OS X are names from the history of early computing, from back when computers used big, bulky slow OSs. Technically, of course, computers still use OSs, but they are simple, small, fast windows to the cloud, rather than full OSs. What people used to call “web browsers” and now just “computers.” WiMax and other similar technologies blanket the globe, providing high-speed data access everywhere. “Desktops” are no longer used, just tiny pocket or bag-size UMPCs as well as the occasional laptop. Instead of using desktop applications, everyone uses web applications.

All of this could come to be reality in the future, perhaps even the not-so-distant future. Think about it. Web 2.0 applications are already competing with almost every desktop applications you can think of. UMPCs are taking off fast. After all, can you think of a major computer company without a UMPC? Apple, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, and tons more all have them. And, finally, many of these companies are adopting an instant on Splashtop or Splashtop-like system. The technology is all here. And it runs Linux.

With a device like a UMPC, it is difficult to know what interface to put on it. On one hand, it is really mostly meant for just surfing the internet so a simple interface would seem like a good move. On the other hand, it is also basically just a small laptop, so why not put a standard interface on it? A Washington Post article, however, argues that both of these options are bad options. I agree with this, but if a standard interface is bad and a simple interface is bad, what is good? The answer: Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The reason Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix is a better option that most is because it blends simplicity with the full Ubuntu. Rather than being stripped down, limited, and un-extendable, Ubuntu Netbook Remix has almost the full Ubuntu underneath it, but has a simple enough interface on top of that. Because of this, when Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix comes out later this year, we may see it really take off and potentially propel non-Eee PC UMPCs to success. Based on this and all the other news that keeps flowing in about Ubuntu Netbook Remix, it looks like the end of this year could be an exciting time for Linux and UMPCs.

In a recent Datamation article, Matt Hartley put forward two suggestions for making future Linux PCs a success in stores like Wal-Mart. As many of you may know, Wal-Mart’s experiment with selling the gPC, a cheap Linux-based PC, was essentially a failure. I certainly agree with Hartely’s second suggestion for making future “Linux in Wal-Mart” experiments more of a success, which is to give consumers enough information to be sure that everything they use will work with Linux. Unfortunately, I am not as sure I agree with his first suggestion.

Hartely’s first suggestion is that Linux PCs sold should not use such low-end hardware. At first this makes sense, but if you add higher end hardware, the PC gets more expensive. The problem with this is that the $50-ish price saving you get from Linux is much less relavent if the PC costs $1000 than if it costs $200. That might be fine if someone was looking for Linux, but most Wal-Mart shoppers are probably just looking for a good deal. Perhaps a better solution than adding more expensive hardware is to use a less resource-intensive Linux distro such as Xubuntu or DSL. It would certainly be interesting to see a stripped down Linux compete with Windows Vista.

When OOXML was first approved, it looked like Microsoft had succeeded in securing ISO approval for their new standard, despite reports of cheating. Soon, though, it became clear that Microsoft was not going to get ISO approval easily when several countries appealed the approval, saying that ISO rules had been broken.

Now Microsoft has lost a little more ground as the OOXML approval was put on hold. The question now, once again, is what will Microsoft do next?

Microsoft may yet manage to pull out of this situation and get OOXML approved. But today’s news makes it seem just a little more likely that OOXML will fall by the wayside and Microsoft actually will adopt ODF as I discussed in an earlier post.  That would be the better outcome.  Of course, the future is hard to predict and something completely different might ultimately come out of this. It looks like we will just have to wait and see.