Practical Technology

Clement Lefebvre, lead developer of Linux Mint, has announced the first “fully stable” version of its new GNOME 2.x-like “Cinnamon 1.2? fork of the GNOME 3.x desktop environment is now available for not only Mint, but for Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16, OpenSUSE 12.1, Arch Linux, and Gentoo. The Cinnamon interface looks and works a lot [...]

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Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, has announced that Ubuntu will be adopting a radical new change to the interface that will do away with the “menu” in the Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer (WIMP) interface, which has defined the desktop for the last thirty years. Shuttleworth states, “The menu has been a [...]

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I use a Linux desktop. According to Google Analytics, 12% of the visitors to my various technology Web sites use Linux. Nevertheless, I know that on the traditional desktop, the vast majority of ordinary users are running Windows, and don’t even get me started on “The Year of the Linux Desktop.” It’s not going to [...]

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In 1912, three of the ten biggest companies in the world were J&P Coats, Pullman, and U.S. Steel. They were giants in their day. Today, they’re either business history footnotes or shadows of their former selves. Why in the world should we think Microsoft will be any different? I wrote recently about Microsoft trying to [...]

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Microsoft and its vendor friends said that there’s no Windows 8 plot to lock other operating systems from Windows 8 devices, but now we know Microsoft was lying. Journalist Glyn Moody dug around Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Certification Requirements for Windows 8 client and server systems and found on page 116 that will Windows 8 Secure [...]

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