Just over a year ago, I wrote an article, “Why GNOME's Got it Right,” which outlined why I thought the GNOME Project was clearly the Free Software desktop project with the best vision of the future. KDE's Appeal Project, which has been brewing for some time now, looks to a different set of issues that need solving and has some very smart minds at work on solving those problems. In a few words, KDE's got some of “that vision thing” too.
Trusted Computing is generally associated with Microsoft, and, as of a short time ago, now Apple as well. On the other hand, little time is spent on the idea of integrating Trusted Platform Module support deep into GNU/Linux and other Free Software desktops. Maybe it is time for that to change.
In a series of articles (part I, part II) during the month of July, OfB's Timothy R. Butler explained why he felt that KDE needed to move beyond the Qt toolkit it uses as a foundation. In that series, he asserted that the licensing of Qt is becoming a stumbling block to the desktop's adoption. Eric Laffoon, the project lead for KDE's Kdewebdev module, takes exception to Butler's arguments and makes the case for his view on the issue of Qt, below.
EXCLUSIVE. Earlier reports circulating around the Internet concerning Apple's inclusion of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip in Intel-based Macs were incorrect, OfB was informed. News of the inclusion of the chip, based on the technology formerly known as Palladium, had spread across the Internet as wildfire in recent days and many news outlets, including Open for Business, had published commentary on the dramatic revelation of the technology's inclusion.
Word came out earlier this week that Apple's Mac OS X on Intel developer kits depend on TCPA, still often known by its old name, Palladium. While Odysseus is long since dead, it is easy to see why Apple may be fearful of piracy as it moves to the x86 platform. The question is: exactly how does this impact the end user? That is not exactly clear just yet.
Atmel Corp. and Bionopoly LLC's FingerGear division on Monday introduced the Bio USB Flash Drive. The Flash-based thumbdrive storage device uses fingerprint recognition technology to secure data. It connects to the computer using USB 2.0. The Bio USB Flash Drive is available initially in 256MB capacities for US$149.
Intuit has released Quicken 2006, which includes such new features as a Smart Payee feature, scheduled transactions and .Mac backup.
GNOME 2.12 will be released to the world on September 7th, 2005, culminating 6 months of very exciting work by members of the project. A number of exciting technologies come together in GNOME 2.12 that will set the standard for free software desktops to come. Here is a sample (by no means an exhaustive list) of some of the outstanding work that has gone into GNOME thanks to its many contributors.
Firefox, the popular open-source Web browser, is continuing to gain users even as its management structure evolves and it resets its plans for its next update.
What can you, the individual or small business Internet user, do? Plenty! The first and most obvious step is to choose carefully your hardware and OS. Since there are tons of articles already addressing that, and new ones every day, I won't say much more than this: when you can, avoid Windows as severware. It is on the workstation and desktop where you are more likely to have required applications that only run on Windows. Too often each piece of the software matrix has a separate price tag. If there is an Open Source application or combination that does the same job, spam fighting tools for example are built in at no extra cost. When properly configured, they are more resistant to attacks. My own local ISP has joined many others in making the switch to Open Source, with Linux servers now replacing most of their Windows servers simply for reasons of cost and service.