On the other side of the river, the GNOME team did not just sit back and watch how KDE stole all the thunder. In their ever continuing mission of simplifying the computer's user interface, the GNOME team finally took steps to improve upon the mount error dialog. They already removed any useful information from the dialog in the early 2.x days (as it confused the user too much), but in GNOME 2.24 in 2008 they replaced it entirely by a PC speaker beep (GNOME 2.24 and up will therefore not install on computers without PC speakers). GNOME 3, slated for release somewhere in 2020, will have the PC speaker beep replaced by a giant mallet falling from the sky on top of the user's head. This is considered to be more HIG-friendly.
Microsoft
2012 was the most important year for Microsoft. Not only did Bill Gates disappear off of the face of the earth after being seen talking to Richard Stallman about stones and iron chisels, but Microsoft also released the 37th Technology Preview of its much anticipated Windows Vista operating system. This would turn out to be the last CTP before Vista went final, at the end of that year.
The launch of Vista was a marvelous success all throughout the world. The 45 versions one could buy literally flew off of the shelves in the first months after the release. As an attempt at self-mockery, free white-lined castles were given away to buyers, as a reminder of the 'Your Potential, Our Passion' campaign. However, as with everything Microsoft does, this backfired on them. A group of users sued Microsoft because they expected the stick castles to really protect them from malware and viruses. The European Commission chimed in on this and forced Microsoft to sell versions of its Vista operating system without the stick castle.
In 2018, Microsoft announced the Xbox 6, the successor to the successful Xbos V. The Xbox 6 is rumoured to have 8 Rock III Sun SPARC processors, each with 128 cores, and 34 floating-point units per core. Gamers can expect the most realistic version of Project Gotham Racing to date. Related to this, Sony announced they will finally begin shipping the PS3 in 2021. The PS3 will run OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 567-- which got released yesterday, again without any release notes.
OSNews in the news
In 2014, Thom Holwerda of OSNews finally admitted to having a huge anti-Apple bias in an interview with Dutch Apple podcast Kmac Radio. "Argh, I admit it alright. I burn iPods wearing nothing but black, I dance around in the woods at night smashing iLife '14 DVDs, I burn down Apple stores everywhere in the world while watching 'Your Potential, Our Passion' commercials on my Origami 4 mini-PC. There, now you know." In that same interview, Thom also admitted to having an obsession with posting Ubuntu news: "It helps me get to sleep at night. I cannot sleep without having posted about the latest fart from Shuttleworth."
Eugenia Loli-Queru angered the Haiku community by writing an article about Haiku in 2019, stating: "Haiku is taking too long. The progress is way too slow and it will never reach maturity. People should use Vista or MacOS." Haiku celebrated the release of Haiku R6 in 2018, and market research has shown that Haiku now has a market share of about 10%.
OSNews itself also reached new heights when in 2016 it sparked its official 10000th flamewar. History fails to tell us which story sparked the flamewar, but then again, this is ONews, so who really cares?
Various newsbits
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That about sums it all up. It have been an interesting 13 years-- I'm really looking forward to the next 13 years!
--Thom Holwerda
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- "Iron Chisels, Invisible iPods, Stick Castles, 1/2"
- "Iron Chisels, Invisible iPods, Stick Castles, 2/2"
