Last month I posted about a FSF article which detailed some reasons why to avoid the iPhone 3G.  Now Apple has been kind enough to give us one more reason to distrust the single point of distribution model that is used for iPhone applications.

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Following Rod Kovel's article "Commentary: The Penguin Doesn't Fly, Avoid Linux" on Law.com's Legal Technology Blog Groklaw dug in a bit deeper and found that there was more FUD to the FUD then previously thought.  Read his assertion that he couldn't get support from the Mandriva forums:

And, Linux proponents claim that if there is any kind of problem, or a viral threat or other OS disaster, there is an army of Linux programmers standing by to remedy the situation. But these claims do not reflect my experience. I tried to install Puppy Linux without success -- and my e-mails to the developers were ignored. Ark Linux developers could not explain why my computer’s Wi-Fi card didn’t work. The Ubuntu forum could not explain why a DVD player would not eject. The Mandriva support site did not respond to queries at all. And it took a tech support person from Wine, a program supposed to allow Windows applications to run on Linux computers, 6 days to finally respond to my requests for help; which he was unable to resolve.

Turns out that he could, with just a little Googling Groklaw found "two pages of responses to a request for help from someone with his name." Read more at Groklaw

The author of Ryan's Tech Blog has written a pretty good post on how Vista compares to Ubuntu. The article covers eleven sections ranging from "How to obtain Vista" to "Mojave is still the worst ad campaign ever conceived." Ryan's Tech Blog

You can now access a mobile version of this page by going to proliferationoflinux.org/wap or by clicking on the 'Mobile version' link in the right sidebar.

ASUS have lauched Eee Storage, which gives you 20GB of space online for your files, pictures and documents. Apparently Eee Storage provides the user with "a drag and drop interface to transfer files between the Eee PC and web storage location." No word yet on what this interface looks like, or how it's been implemented. Another new Eee feature/product is Eee Download which currently has "around 3,000 free software and game titles available for Eee PC users to download." ASUS plans to expand the service with music and "other content." The Eee Download service is only available to Chinese language users at the moment. DigiTimes [via Engadget]

I hate having to deal with spam comments as much as anyone, so luckily enough I've found a way to filter out nearly all spam from this blog.  It's a three pronged approach that uses three separate plugins: WP-reCAPTCHA, Yawasp and Akismet.  I'll go through these one by one.

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OpenMoko have promised to publish schematics for their latest phone, the Neo FreeRunner. The free availability of the schematics should ease the development of alternative firmware for the phone.

Schematic diagrams are representations of electrical circuits. Publishing them does not allow others to duplicate a circuit board design -- Gerber files would be needed for that -- at least not without considerable time and effort. Instead, having access to schematics will enable firmware developers to adapt other bootloaders to the platform.

Earlier OpenMoko published CAD files of the Neo FreeRunner. LinuxDevices.com

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios.

Mozilla Labs & PC Pro [via Slashdot]

According to a report on MarketWatch, IBM is teaming up with Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu), Novell and Red Hat to deliver Microsoft-free desktops worldwide.

"The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux," said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president for IBM Lotus Software. "We'll work to unlock the desktop to save our customers money and give freedom of choice by offering this industry-leading solution."

Canonical, which sells subscription support for Ubuntu, a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and "the cool factor," will re-distribute Lotus Symphony via their repositories. Symphony 1.1 will be available through the Ubuntu repositories by the end of August. General availability will coincide with the Lotus Symphony 1.2 release expected to be available by the end of October 2008.

MarketWatch [via Slashdot]

Lenovo has announced it's entry into the Netbook, or sub-notebook market.  The Linux-based IdeaPad S9 and Windows-XP-based S10 will feature 8.9- and 10-inch displays, respectively. Both are powered by the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and feature webcams and up to 160GB of storage. The Linux version features the same distribution as the Acer Aspire One, Linpus.

According to Lenovo, the IdeaPad S10 will be available in early October. U.S pricing is $400 for a 512MB/80GB configuration, and $500 for a 1GB/160GB configuration. Availability and pricing of the Linux-based S9, which will be targeted at overseas markets, was not available.

It seems that it is still unclear which markets will get access to the IdeaPad S9. LinuxDevices.com