I guess we all remember Jurassic Park, and especially one feature of this movie: The "Unix-system" with that cool 3D file-browser. Well that file-browser was SGI's 3D File System Navigator, which also helps us to know what that "Unix-system" really was, Irix.

We all know that CDs don't live forever. Often loss of data is predictable when the disc is starts to take longer to read, but these changes in speed are often enough too small to be noticed or something else (like the overall system load) is taken responsible for it.

Right after the launch of MobiLiberty.com we have asked the community whether it would be a good idea to open a support forum for open mobile devices. The question was posted over at Nuxified.org and on the OpenMoko mailing list. After holding the poll up for a while the results were positive.

In my four years of using Linux, getting USB drives, memory cards, CD-ROMs, and Windows shares in a state where I could actually use them has been one of my most frustrating problems. Printing, by comparison, has been far easier. I was frustrated even that I had to use the "mount" command, not to mention all the issues with getting it to work the way I wanted it to. In my four years of using Linux, it has gotten a lot better about automatically detecting and mounting devices; in particular, I almost never have to mount hard drives or CD-ROMs manually any more. Other devices, however, remain problematic. You may never have to use the mount command in Linux. You may also win the lottery jackpot; I wouldn't bet on either. This article is intended to help new users save a lot of the time and trouble that I have gone through.

The second most popular web browser in the world, Firefox, is a beautiful, but heavy machine. Its biggest attraction are tabs, flexible bookmarks and RSS management, and extensions. However for people who are still using systems with no abundance of main memory it can be a pain intensively using Firefox throughout a day or longer. It is just that memory hungry. So some people have been looking at alternatives such as Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, or even the lightest but arguably ugliest and least featureful among them, Dillo. But as it usually happens, out of nowhere comes another alternative, one which may be hitting the right balance that many people are looking for. It is NGLayout (Gecko)-based Kazehakase (made by Japanese developers).

Its aim is to be lightweight (small memory footprint) and yet modern, user friendly, fully functional and innovative at that. And in its early releases it seems to be accomplishing just that.