My space in the world

Open source office suite needs some decent open and royalty-free cliparts. This tutorial presents valuable clipart repositories and an extension which enables direct downloading of graphics into the OpenOffice.org documents.

Direct downloading of cliparts is possible thanks to Clker.com Openoffice.org addon. You will find it here. The Clker.com addon provides integration with clker.com online clipart to openoffice.org. The cliparts you choose and save to your clipart basket, will appear in the extension window inside Openoffice.org. Almost all cliparts are available in ODG format, SVG and PNG files.

Clker.com Openoffice.org addon is available to download here. It has to be installed via the Openoffice.org extension manager.

You may also visit the Clker.com website. It contains a massive collection of royalty-free cliparts, available to download as ODG (Openoffice.org Draw), SVG and PNG formats.

If you prefer browsing cliparts via the internet browser, downloading them to disk, and then loading graphics inside the Openoffice.org applications, then you definitely should visit homepages of these clipart collections:

Open Clip Art Library
www.openclipart.org

This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons.

The Open Clip Art Library contains vast collections of cliparts (7,000 images), divided into categories, and submitted / uploaded / remixed by users. You may download all cliparts packed in a single ZIP file or gzipped tarball.

WP Clipart
www.wpclipart.com

WPClipart is a collection of high-quality public domain images specifically tailored for use in word processors and optimized for printing on home/small office inkjet printers. There are thousands of color graphic clips as well as illustrations, photographs and black and white line art.

Nearly all graphics are in lossless, PNG format. Currently WP Clipart archive offers about 25,000 images.

OpenOffice.org User/Gallery and Clipart
documentation.openoffice.org/Samples_Templates/User/gallery/

Small but valuable clipart repository. Some files are available in ODG (Openoffice.org Draw) format, others as SVG and GIF files.

The gallery also contains various original artwork submitted to the OOo Competition. It includes 3d Chinese Tea Set, 3d Vase with Flowers, and others.

And, if you wish to find more royalty-free cliparts, visit Clip-Art.com. The site contains more links to clipart libraries.

First of all start with some basic background explanation about how CPython works, an of overview how python programs run and the operation of the python virtual machine. Then I’ll touch on bytecode and disassembler and an overview of difficulties in the design decisions that were made for CPython. Afterwards, I’ll touch how other implementations different from CPython. I’ll start with Jython, IronPython, then JIT (Just In Time) compilation and the psyco module. I’ll briefly review Shed skin, which is a Python-to-C++ compiler and also touch on Parrot virtual machine. Finally, I’ll talk about stackless Python and after all that will be PyPy that incorporate all the best ideas from all another implementations of python’s VM’s.

As you probably already know, there is a growing number of Python distribution to choose from. Some major implementations includes not only original implementation called CPython which is wide spread in mature but also younger implementations like Jython and IronPyton and perhaps the newest implementation is PyPy. PyPy is specially interesting because incorporates many great ideas that have come up over the years in other Python implementations. PyPy version 1.1 just came out in September 2008 (1.0 in March 2007) and given this milestone, it seems like a good time to take look back at the history major Python implementations, to appreciate how they evaluate and build on each others ideas and also how they will continue.

CPython is a basic

So lets go over some basics about how python program runs. Don’t panic, I like to be clear. If you are already aware how Python runs code, than you can skip next few lines. Let’s start with CPython. As I said earlier, CPython is the reference implementation of Python language, you can get it from www.python.org. First release of it was in 1991 and current version is 2.6. It is named CPython because interpreter itself is written in pure C by Guido van Rossum. So when you running a python program, you are actually runs a C program which interprets your python program. Your python source code is first compiled into intermediate form called bytecode and then that code is then interpreted by what’s called Python virtual machine. If you are familiar with Java that you can see the similarity with Java byte code and Java virtual machine. Is not exactly the same byte code, but very similar. Why are bytecodes used? Well using bytecode speeds up execution, since bytecode is more compact and easier to interpret and manipulate than the original Python source code. But bytecode is not to be confused with machine code, like machine code for x86 processors. Bytecode is a higher level code that is specific to Python VM. So now we have a bytecode that is feeding the virtual machine. And basically a VM is a big loop. It gets the bytecode that has been sent to it and examines the bytecode to determine which C function has to be executed to implement the instruction for the bytecode. Each bytecode represents the operation on internal Python virtual machine data structures at the C code level. Pretty abstract isn’t it? You can watch what the VM is doing with python disassembler module dis.

Here is a short example, first I define a new simple function:

>>> def double(x):
...     return x*x

And this is the result:

>>> import dis
>>> dis.dis(double)
 2           0 LOAD_FAST                0 (x)
             3 LOAD_FAST                0 (x)
             6 BINARY_MULTIPLY
             7 RETURN_VALUE

So we can say that CPython is a stack based language. It looks very similar to CPU language for processors. Enough with bytecode. Let’s summarize bytecode:

1. Python bytecode is instructions that manipulates objects not values. No LOADs, PUTs, JUMPs etc.
2. Python is a dynamic language, so no C equivalent for some bytecode instructions like build class (class) or make function (def). These two instructions tell the interpreter make these objects on the fly while the program is running.

Next, although CPython supports all the flexibility of the Python language, the internal design is not as flexible as it could be. In the design phase, a few decisions had to be made that are fixed to all version of CPython code. For example, garbage collection (is not easy to implement new memory management algorithms), threading model (CPython use what is called Global Interpreter Lock – GIL, that makes internal data structures coherent when multiple threads were running simultaneously), etc.

Note: GIL is the reason why CPython can’t use the potential of todays multi-core processors for multi-threaded applications.

Rewriting this C code base is, well, impossible because the code is old, huge and tricky to maintain. Let’s ask ourselves a question: “Can we ever create a new distribution to address the weaknesses with CPython?”.

The others

Well the short answer is: “Yes”. We have tried and many have succeeded. We’ll talk about the distributions next.

Jython

Jython is a python implementation that allows you to run python programs within a Java environment. It was originally created by Jim Hugunin in late 1997. He explored that Java could be as fast as C for simple numerical benchmarks, and he also discovered that it was easy to translate Python to Java by hand.

What exactly is Jython? Jython is a set of Java classes that allows Python bytecode to run on a Java Virtual Machine. Using Java Virtual Machine for Python has many advantages.

1. Since Python and Java are using the same virtual machine, is very easy to import and use Java classes in Python.
2. Using the JVM allows Jython to utilize all the work that has gone into improving and tuning Java VM. For example, Jython can use java’s garbage collector, JVM has existing threading library, no GIL and multi-core processors restriction.
3. Is not necessary to reimplement processes like exception handling, libraries and other things that JVM provides.
4. You can also use HotSpot optimizations.

So, Jython is more natural for Python that CPython, because Java is a fully object oriented language, whereas C is not. But there are some disadvantages to using Jython. Jython runs slightly slower than CPython. At this time, it is recommended to use version 2.2.1 (even if 2.5a3 is available), 2.2.1 is approximately equal to CPython 2.2. Unfortunately, Java is not directly fully compatible with C based extension modules in CPython.

Most people argue that because Java was designed for non dynamic language, the dynamic language of P
ython does not work well in it. This is only slightly true, obviously Jython works, but Sun Microsystems also says that they are working to extend JVM to provide stronger support for dynamic languages. In fact, in the last approximately two years they have included the new JSR 292 (adding new bytecode invokedynamic), which deals with Dynamic Language Support to the JVM. For more information see this. One great example of Java’s dynamic language support is Groovy.

Lets take a short look to Java HotSpot VM options which speeds up Java execution. It is Java’s combination of JIT (Just In Time) compilation and adaptive optimization. These two techniques are very useful for dynamic languages like Python.

How it works: by interpreting the bytecode, the Java VM watches for “hotspots”; that is frequently executed sections of bytecode. These hot segments are compiled “just in time” by the compiler into machine code, where the program is running. This code is cached, so next time it isn’t requiered to recompile it. Could we used this technique also for Python (Jython)? Yes, we can with the module called Psyco.

Psyco

In 2001, two years after Java HotSpot technology came about, a team lead by Armin Rigo started the project called Psyco. It is an open-source project with a goal to add JIT into CPython. What it does is emit machine code on the fly instead of interpreting the Python program step-by-step. Once the machine code is generated, the code is cached and run dynamically rather than as interpreted bytecode. The benefit here is that the program runs faster – between 2x and 100x depends on what you doing. The typical acceleration is 4x. The 100x increase is seen more in algorithmic applications, like tiny loops. The only disadvantag is large memory usage and that Psyco runs only on i386 compatible processors.

If you are interested look at the Psyco homepage.

If you are interested in Jython please visit the homepage.

IronPython

Jim Hugunin, yes the same person who created Jython, then moved on to Microsoft. There, he is using his experiences with Jython to create another Python distribution called IronPython. IronPython allows Python code to run on Microsoft VM, which is a CLR (Common Language Runtime). It is similar to JVM, but not exactly the same. It provides common services for all languages that it hosts. For example memory management, exception handling, threading support, security etc.

Also, Microsoft decided to add special features for dynamic languages called dynamic method class.

If you are interested for IronPython you can check the homepage.

Shed Skin

As I mentioned above, Shed Shed is a Python-to-C++ compiler. But, it’s hard to deal with the dynamic runtime information after the program is compiled. For example, Python doesn’t declare variables, C++ does. So Shed Skin uses a type inferencing algorithm to guess variables types. Other disadvantages are that Python can’t retype variables after compilation, and not all Python features are supported.

Although it is an experimental project, it shows that it is possible to run Python programs more than 2x – 40x faster over Psycho and more than 2x – 220x over CPython. Its also interesting know how much “just in time” optimization is possible.

If you are interested go to the homepage.

Parrot

This project started out in the Perl community as a joke – Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum would merge Perl and Python together. The merge language would be called Parrot. Of course since it was a joke, the merge was never happend. This virtual machine is currently a Perl6 Virtual Machine written in C. This VM can host more then Perl6 with support for Tcl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript and Scheme, among others. So what this means is that many languages can be interpreted by same VM. This means that like in Jython, the languages can cooperate.

Homepage is located here.

Stackless Python

This python distribution is adjusted to handle massive concurrency; it can run thousands of threads simultaneously. This is very useful for simulations and games as an example. Stackless is used extensively in the implementation of the EVE Online multiplayer game to provide for concurrency, Civilization IV, as well as in IronPort’s mail platform. Second Life is also beginning to use it.

If you are interested check homepage.

PyPy

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a single distribution that can provide everything of all the mentioned distributions above, and more? Well, we need an interpreter which can run on every mentioned interpreter and is easier to maintain than interpreters written in C. You can probably guess that I’m hinting towards what PyPy does today.

PyPy is an open-source project which was started back in 2003 by Armin Rigo (creator of Psyco) and Christian Tismer (creator of stackless Python). PyPy is constructed from various components:

• Python interpreter – written in Python.
• Set of tools also written in Python. This set allows using different VM’s

One of goals of PyPy if very fast execution, JIT is also included. It also fairly compatible with CPython, up to version 2.4.1. It still isn’t mature enough yet for daily use, even thought it passes around 98% of CPythons core language regression tests.

In my opinion, it is a very interesting fact that interpreter is written in same language that interprets. This sounds pretty weird, doesn’t it? You can run Python interpreter on Python interpreter But it is an approved technique for large projects. PyPy can be run on all python interpreters, that I mentioned, but its very slooow.

I have to mention a few other interesting features that PyPy have. Except JIT and stackless features (core routines, see stackless homepage for more info), PyPy provides sandboxing. Sandboxing features are very useful to increase security of applications. The application can run fully virtualized. Or you can define proxy objects, and create something like an internal application firewall. You can also use the PyPy translators, that can translate bytecode to C, Java or Prolog for example:)

If you are inter
esting in PyPy, head over to the homepage for more information. They have great documentation I must say.

Undoubtedly you’ve heard the old cliché that Windows is easier to maintain because it has GUI tools for everything while Linux requires commands lines and a terminal. Any experienced Windows administrator knows the point-and-click GUI tools don’t cover everything. Likewise any experienced Linux administrator knows there are many GUI tools for Linux configuration but terminal shells are available on ANY system regardless of how big or small and the ability to script any action in a platform-neutral way is too useful to give up. I just again encountered a situation on XP that required a command-line fix and it highlights the ignorance of many fanboys about the reality of Windows system administration.

I recently installed Windows XP Pro from scratch on a dual-boot system. I normally install Windows first as it doesn’t play well with other OSes when it comes to the boot loader. I was using an original XP OEM CD with SP1 integrated. After installation I copied over SP3 and installed that as well. Doing it this way reduces the number of update/reboot/update cycles I have to go through with Windows Update and reduces the risk of an exploit before the process is complete. After rebooting, I run Windows Update and go through the usual Windows Update update, Installer update, activation, and WGA check. I then install all of the critical updates. There are a surprisingly large number of them considering I already have SP3. Reboot again and run WU again and install NET Framework runtimes, IE7, Media Player 11, and more updates for the updates. Reboot again and go back to WU again. Install more updates for the updates and everything else I just added. Or at least I tried as they refused to install, reporting “failed” for all of them. I went through the typical diagnostics Windows admins have learned over the years of deleting out temp files, clearing the browser settings, and attempting to install each update individually to no avail. Some Google searching turned up a blog posting about Wups2.dll not being registered properly if the system is updated through WU and not rebooted before SP3 is installed (KB943144). Of course this doesn’t explain my situation as WU hadn’t been used before service pack was installed. The workaround requires stopping the WU service, manually registering the dll from a command window, and restarting the service. This fixed my problem.

This isn’t an unusual repair process for a Windows system. Even for Vista there are plenty of examples of command window (cmd.exe) and regedit repair instructions in Microsoft’s support pages. You can ignore all the myths floating around the Internet about never having to use Unixy command lines when administering Windows systems because of the wonderful graphical tools. On Windows there are many tasks that are impossible to perform with graphical tools or are just a lot easier from a command window. The only way to avoid command line tools or regedit entirely is to write a custom graphical tool that handles those specific situations (similar to “compiling a kernel” comments from Microsoft fanboys). The fanboys will point out that regedit is a graphical tool but the reality is that it isn’t much more of a “tool” than Notepad (which was used in the pre-registry days with win.ini and system.ini). An IT manager that hires an admin that doesn’t know how to use regedit or command-line tools should themselves be replaced. When screening job applicants I’ve encountered many “certified” admins that didn’t know anything about maintenance outside of the graphical tools (or even basic hardware troubleshooting for that matter). Surprisingly, I’ve also worked with software engineers that had a paranoid fear of even regedit. It’s like they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the only “proper” way to work with the registry is to use an API and approved function calls. Apparently they haven’t experienced the “fun” of trying to remove auto-starting malware entries from it.

Because of the emphasis on graphical tools the skill of working at a low level with the Windows OS is a dying art. While the graphical tools lower the barrier for entry into system administration it also invites fools (with only superficial skill) to enter (and get certified) without low-level skills valuable for troubleshooting. Graphical tools provide them a flower-strewn path to anywhere they want to go but when a situation calls for them to go off the path they are lost – much to the pleasure of seasoned consultants who will guide them back to safety for a hefty fee. System administrators are not the types of users that recovery disks were intended for but unfortunately a lot of amateur admins rely on them.

The fundamental limitation of graphical tools is that trying design an interface for every conceivable configuration option, troubleshooting situation, and maintenance function ends up making the tool more complex and time-consuming to use than the task itself. There are occasions when GUIs are easier than command lines but it’s usually a situation involving an over-complicated design of the underlying system than a practical improvement in efficiency. The hierarchical structure and relationship of keys and values in the Windows registry is relatively simple but the file format makes regedit a necessity. Typing in a registry key path to a command line application like reg.exe, especially one that includes a GUID, is painful. On Linux you can experience a similar difficulty when trying to work with an XML configuration file like the one pam_mount now uses.

Graphical configuration tools like regedit are not unique to Windows. Gconf-editor provides a similar interface to the Gnome GConf settings database. But the terminal isn’t going away anytime soon as it’s too powerful and even on Windows the DOS-derived command window is still present. Windows admins have learned to live with its limitations, switched to higher-level programming languages, or extended it with third-party utilities like KiXtart (which I’ve used). The Windows PowerShell is Microsoft’s attempt to replace this last remnant of the DOS era and it’s legacy syntax. This may be their admission of the limitations of a GUI or just be a response to the popularity of headless systems in data centers and the need for a replacement to a 20 year old shell. I haven’t tried PowerShell myself as I moved away from the Windows platform before it was released. With the availability of virtualization I now just use Windows as a bloated runtime for legacy applications and I don’t need to do scripting anymore (although I’ll admit to playing with batch files in FreeDOS once in a while).

“Google’s actions in this case appear to fly in the face of what Android is all about. Android is open source. It is available to anyone who chooses to download it. Doesn’t that mean tinkering with the code is welcome, nay, expected? It turns out, it isn’t.”

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Wibrain UMPC – The B1L runs on Ubuntu. It has a 1.2GHz VIA C7M ULV processor, 60GB HDD, 1GB DDR2 RAM and a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution with a 4.8-inch LCD display. Plus, not to mention the qwerty keyboard and direction keys for gaming.

Today, Puppy has reached version 4.1 – and it’s mind blowing!

If you’re thinking this tiny, 93MB distro is going to leave you with a spartan, minimalistic desktop experience, think again. Wireless support, MP3 support, Flash built-in, integrated browser player, personal blogging software, HTML editor, backup software, GParted, Samba sharing out of the box, this is just a tiny list of what Puppy 4.1 offers you.

Boot Puppy

The boot procedure did not change much:

Enjoy Puppy

After a few simple prompts for your keyboard and the graphics driver, the choice between the more modern Xorg and the older Xvesa, you’ll reach a new, fresh, aesthetically pleasing desktop.

You will notice the desktop is more refined than in version 2.1. The best part is that everything runs quickly and smoothly – even faster than some installed distros. You don’t feel the fact Puppy is running as a live CD.

Puppy gave me the choice to switch between a large number of resolution and color depth options. Having tested several, I found them all to work well, without any glitches. The mouse integration is great, too. You get all those shiny buttons and scroll thingies working right out of the box.

Prepare to be stunned …

What can a distro that takes less than 100MB of memory in RAM offer, o ye of little faith may be pondering.

Wireless

Let’s start with wireless support. To this end, I booted Puppy on a ThinkPad T43 laptop.

One way of trying to configure the wireless network is by using the Network Wizard.

But there’s an even simpler way: the Pwireless wizard!

As you can see, there are still people who use the default SSID and no encryption whatsoever. Apparently, they did not bother to read my Router security article. Later on, additional three networks popped up, one with WEP and two more with no encryption. Sad, really.

So I clicked Connect to get onto my network, provided the password – and that’s it!

Furthermore, please note that the Windows partition (sda1) is not mounted by default, for safety reasons, although if you do click on the icon, it will be mounted – and writable. We will talk about this a little more later.

Likewise, notice the USB thumb drive icon. To save the screenshots from this session, I used a FAT32-formatted USB drive, which Puppy happily recognized and mounted.

Now, how about Flash?

Flash

You know those big shiny distros that seem to point you to Adobe website for a download? Well, Puppy is not among them. Enter Flash right out of the box. And it does not stutter. It works smoothly, even running on an Xvesa desktop.

MP3 playback support

Oh, you got some songs in a proprietary format? Not to worry. Puppy handles those without blinking.

Integrated browser media player

gxine is a beauty. Here’s SeaMonkey, playing my Ubuntu Compiz video, inside one of the tabs.

Apps, apps and more apps

One of the mind-boggling facts about Puppy is that uses some sort of a black hole filesystem to store all those applications, because it seems almost surreal that such a tiny distro could contain so many goodies.

Here’s a brief overview of just a fraction of programs you may want to use:

Let’s begin modestly. You have the mtPaint for image editing, AbiWord for word processing, and OSMO, a personal organizer.

You also have Gnumeric spreadsheet software and Expense Tracker, which allows you to monitor your budget spending. P.S. There is another couple of finance-related programs included, just in case you need an alternative.

If you have not noticed in the screenshot above, we had the F-Prot anti-virus installed. It comes with a nice GUI too, so no need to muck about with the command line for the unknowing. It’s extremely useful for scanning Windows machines or shares for possible malicious files.

Gadmin-Rsync allows you to backup your machine. It will even create scheduled jobs for you. The bubbly stuff in the background on the right bottom side is the visual representation of the disk usage. Neat, isn’t it.

Bloggers rejoice, here’s software for you:

Puppy also comes with GParted, the superb partitioning software:

gxine is quite sexy, too. Did I say that already?

Instant Messaging (IRC)

You may want to use IRC channels, for fun or information. The setup is as easy as it gets.

File sharing

Puppy is also great in file sharing. It allows you to setup your machine for sharing or browse the network neighborhood for available Samba shares. In both cases, the tasks are done using a very friendly GUI.

Here’s a snipper of (some of the) available Windows shares in the hood:

On top of all that …

Mounting of partitions

Puppy will do many other things for you. For example, it allows you to mount and unmount partitions using a simple switch-style GUI (Pmount Drive Mounter). It is also smart and careful and will not mount root partitions of existing installations automatically.

Notice the green LED near the partition icon, indicating it is mounted:

Games

The live CD also has a small collection of simple, DOS-like games available:

Easy setup

When you boot the first time, Puppy will offer help. Additional setup is very easy and wizard-driven.

Remaster live CD

Puppy also lets you create your own custom, bootable CD version of the distro. This is specially useful after you have installed Puppy – or spent some time configuring applications.

Not to worry, you can also always save the session and reload it later.

More!

This hardly scratches the awesome ability of this tremendous distribution. It also comes with an installer, should you choose to permanently commit it to the hard disk.

If you’re ready, get Puppy.

If you don’t fancy the official version, you may want to try one of the many Puplets, custom-created sub-versions of Puppy with cool stuff like additional applications (OpenOffice, Compiz, Firefox, Opera, VLC, Audacity etc), MAC-like looks if you like, and tons of other great stuff.

Puppy can be used as a live CD, but it can also be installed to a hard disk, a solid-state device, a USB device, and other portable media.

The Puppy Linux Discussion Forum is a great place to learn more about this phenomenal distro.

Conclusion

Puppy is a lean, mean menace. It’s simple, light, fast, stable, and beautiful. It offers the users a complete experience out of the box. Configurations are driven by simple menus, without any need for advanced Linux knowledge.

Even if you’re just a curious Windows user, Puppy is definitely for you. You’ll get multimedia support for all sorts of audio and video files, without any worry about installing strange things. And you even have an anti-virus should a need arise. Sharing network resources has never been simpler.

The live CD also allows you to perform rescue, backup and auditing of installed systems, be they Linux or Windows, offering you leverage in case of a disaster.

On top of all that, Puppy is productive, with a broad range of excellent, useful programs for just about anyone.

4.1 is truly an amazing distro.

Really worth trying

“32. Track down large unused files Large and scattered files can start to slow your desktop down, as well as any applications that rely on reading the contents of a directory. The best tool we’ve found for consolidating and deleting unused files is called Filelight. It uses a pie chart to show where the largest files are located, and you can easily delete directories of junk from the right click menu.

“33. Enable vertical sync in Compiz
Compiz, the 3D whizzy desktop effects application, can be either a resource hog or even an acceleration tool. It depends on the power of your graphics hardware. But we’ve nearly always had better more responsive results on the desktop by enabling the vertical sync option in the general option page of the Compiz settings manager.”

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Microsoft is frightened. Even Ballmer is telling users that they can skip Vista, which tells you everything you need to know about Vista’s failure. In the past, Microsoft wouldn’t have sweated this kind of flop. “What can users do?” they’d say. “Move to Linux or Macs? Ha!” That was then. This is now.

Today, major PC vendors are selling netbooks like hotcakes on a cold Vermont morning and three out of ten of those are running Linux. As my comrade in arms, Preston Gralla observes, “Microsoft isn’t just worried about ceding 30 percent of the netbook market to Linux. It’s also worried that if people get used to Linux on netbooks, they’ll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs. Here’s what Dickie Chang, an analyst at research firm IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg about that: ‘It’s a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative.’”

Exactly, and that’s why Microsoft is rushing out Windows 7, which is a stripped down Vista SP2, as fast as they can and jerking out features so it will run on netbooks with minimal hardware. Gralla thinks Windows 7 will kill Linux on the netbook, I don’t see that.

For all the mistaken excitement about Windows 7, the earliest anyone is going to see Windows 7 is the 2009 holiday season. That’s eternity in Linux terms. Linux is already better than Vista and the equal to Microsoft’s best desktop operating system, Windows XP SP 3. By the time Windows 7 appears, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu will have all gone through at least two more generations of upgrades.

Windows is a slow dinosaur competing with the fast-moving Linux mammals. It’s not a race I expect Windows to win.

Linux is already more stable, more secure, vastly faster boot times, and it’s far less expensive than Windows. With efforts afoot to make desktop Linux even more new user friendly and its much faster evolution, I’m not worried about Windows 7 sweeping Linux off the desktop. But, I can certainly see why Microsoft would worry about Linux gaining a substantial, say 30%, of the desktop market or even more if Windows 7 isn’t a rip-roaring success.

The days when Microsoft ruled the desktop are numbered and Windows 7 is Microsoft’s frantic attempt to forestall the inevitable.

“As a practitioner of the software arts, my lack of electronics knowledge has always bothered me. Ive browsed a few books and tinkered a bit, but aside from that could I find a useful project to bring on some learning fun? I pondered that question one night while gazing at the moon. It was bright enough to see raccoons high in a tree next door, which sent me briefly into a panic trying to remember if I had shut the door on the chicken coop. Four small spring chickens have little to protect them at night – aside from someone or something remembering to close the coop door. Perhaps something could remember better than someone to close the door? Would a silicon “Chicken Sitter” be a feasible project?”

Complete Story

Yesterday, on WebWorkerDaily, I noted in a post that the first extension has been created for Mozilla’s Fennec mobile browser (Fennec means small fox). Mozilla quietly reported this news in a blog post. With this in mind, and for several other reasons, I think many people are underestimating the impact Fennec will have as a mobile browser. Here is why.

Back in April, when Mozilla provided encouraging news about its progress in developing a mobile browser, there were still many naysayers. A lot of people felt that Mozilla’s code base was bloated, and that it would have trouble delivering a sleek, innovative mobile application. Since then, though, the company has put increasing emphasis on its plans for Fennec.

While Fennec is available for use on some Nokia devices in an early alpha version, and there is a PC emulation version available for very early tests, it has not been released in a final, open source version for widespread use on various mobile platforms. As Mozilla confirmed this week, Chris Finke has added Fennec compatibility to his URL Fixer extension. At first glance, that may not seem like earth-shaking news, but the important thing to note is that URL Fixer was a Firefox extension. Henke forked it so that it works with Fennec.

As Fennec progresses and becomes available for use on mobile open source platforms, and potentially other platforms, I expect that Mozilla will fully leverage one of the biggest advantages that the Firefox browser has: the availability of incredibly useful extensions. They will encourage and maybe even subsidize the delivery of useful extensions for Fennec, making it easy to port existing Firefox extensions over.

Does the browser in the iPhone have this advantage available? No. If Google delivers a mobile version of Chrome, does Chrome have the extension advantage? No. I’m not surprised that Mozilla continues to talk Fennec up, including its efforts to get the TraceMonkey engine working with ARM processors (found in many mobile devices). The company has worked doggedly to make it a browser that performs well, has been working on touchscreen interfaces, and as Fennec is finalized, I expect extensions for it to be what really puts the wind at its back, relative to the competition.