Here's a whitty comment on Programmers vs. Devlelopers that contains more than a little truth.

As announced by Ubuntu and Dell. The Dell post includes a video of Mark Shuttleworth discussing the collaboration and using Linux on the Desktop.

So far it's in the States only but we can look forward a UK version of the Dell Linux website.

[Update 8 May 07] Mark's blog post on the deal.

Print, cut 'n' paste your very own own Tux model (need to scale to A4). 

Mozilla's CEO talks about Firefox's community, suitability competition with IE and Mozilla's commerical operations. There are 3 videos.

And APCMag.com have a full length interview with Mitchell about the history, funding and future of Firefox. Fascinating.

A keyboard article describes the features and applications that make Linux a usable platform for music creation.

You might think there’s no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.

and

Linux is quickly becoming the OS you’d set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses.

Naturally Ardour gets a good workout.

Dell supporting Novell-Microsoft now? Here's Dana Blankenhorn on this possible blunder.

This entertaining video from a Vermont librarian who decided to install Ubuntu Linux on 3 donated PCs. It's a great bit of viral marketing which shows how easy it is to get going and just how much software you get out of the box.

As the XULRunner debate goes Super Nova this is just a wonderfully grumpy post from Mike Shaver commenting on this vlog. OK so I don't understand some of it but it but it make great reading. House would be proud.

I think Mitchell's post on Mozilla's strategic position on XULRunner was reasonably clear about their priorities (and quite understandable) but there seems to have been a lot of confusion about what was being said about the future of XULRunner. In particular a panic reaction that XULRunner is dead appeared, triggered, it seems by focussing too much on Mozilla's position that a shared runtime requires to much investment to happen now. Posts from Ben Smedburg and Mark Finkle (who 'maintain' the platform) help clarify the position. Ben is particularly clear. Mike Shaver adds something too.

The reality is that Mozilla rely on XULRunner for Firefox etc. and also want to work with all interested communities in order to develop XULRunner in other directions. That includes the pyXPCOM community.

Oh, XULRunner binaries are available too; 1.8.1.3 as community builds, according to the update to XULRunner MDC pages that Ben just did. 

[Update 17 May] Here is a snazzy layer diagram of the mozilla platform architecture so we can all sing from the same hymn sheet.

OK I think it's time for me to move on to Jambu and LSR... 

http://playogg.org. has been launched by the FSF to promote the OGG Vorbis lossy encoding format ala MP3. Its advantages include; it's an open standard with open source code, royalty free and technically superior. By becoming the default format it releases anyone who distributes a recording or creates a player from the need to get a licence or pay royalties to the patent holders. You do don't you?

It seems like ages since it first arrived but there are now a lot of Windows programs and plugins (yes Media Player too) that handle it. Linux naturally does and some embedded player devices can too.

No it's not April 1st again and there really is a working draft.  Here's a summary from Rich Rich Schwerdtfeger of IBM. In particular see the Quick Reference and Techniques for use for a overview of this hefty specification.

Interesting article in the New York Times.

Video analysis of Roberto Carlos' Improbable Goal. Nice one Cyril.

A case study review of Open Source Sustainability Models for the JISC distributed e-learning programme.  It looks a 7 examples.

Leon Cych's latest interview is with Ian Lynch on the now QCA approved INGOTs contempory ICT certificates that happen to be Open Source and community friendly.

Here's a summary of the key features.

3 Dell machines with Ubuntu Linux pre installed are now available. 

Well at least if you live on the States side of the pond.

Mozpad is a community of XULRunner developers and after it's inaugural meeting on irc looks set to address issues using Mozilla platform such as those I hit when exploring it for Jambu. Thanks to Matthew Gertner of AllPeers for driving this, the rewards should be plenty.

A mozpad moon to the Mozilla Planet blog aggregator has also been set up.

 

2 videos on YouTube: Meet the people and meet the concepts.

Programming Firefox , Kenneth C. Feldt, O'Reilly, is now available.

This is your guide to building Internet applications and user interfaces with the Mozilla component framework, which is best known for the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client. Programming Firefox demonstrates how to use the XML User Interface Language (XUL) with open source tools in the framework's Cross-Platform Component (XPCOM) library to develop a variety of projects, such as commercial web applications and Firefox extensions.

This great picture expands on the stereotypes in those oh so wonderful Apple ads that I mentioned before.

 

Click for ful size.

The Linux Guy is Jay Maynard in his homemade Tron costume (full details on how to make yours on his website).

Thanks to Robert Helmer of Mozilla.

Oh, Apple have added some more ads to celebrate the launch of Vista.