Miguel de Icaza moves to Mac

This is a fresh news: Miguel de Icaza, founder of Gnome and Mono projects, declares in this post he moved from GNU/Linux to Mac OS X.

Meanwhile, in Microsoft Russia...

In USSR, Windows installs you

Nikolai Pryanishnikov, Microsoft Locale Director in Russia, says that

«We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS and, moreover, is at the end of its life cycle»

I am a bit disappointed by this statement: I always belived that Microsoft managers were smart enough to avoid some hazardous declarations. Says that «Linux is dieing» is a manifestation of ignorance.
Actually, GNU/Linux is a player to face in important environments such as

• Embeded devices
• Servers
• Mobile phones with Android

I suppose mr. Pryanishnikov was talking about the desktop market, but he must understand that HIS statement is offensive for HIS company.
As president of Microsoft in Russia, Nikolai Pryanishnikov hasn't capacity to say everything he wants: he have to think well what he can he says and what he can't. A misunderstanding in business world can move billions of dollars. A good CEO will take the situation in his hands, to correct this clumsy sentence.
Mr. Pryanishnikov misses to report citations and, more important, to say something about the Google OS. It's right that it's not yet released and that its base (Google Chrome) is just at 8% of broswer market shares (source: Wikipedia). But wait: Android is at 25%, while Windows Phone is at 3% (source: Wikipedia) and mobile market is becoming more important than ever. If Mr. Pryanishnikov was a smart president, then he would know that HIS Chief Software Architect (Ray Ozzie) sent a memo less than a month ago where he talked about the new marked trends (mobile, cloud computing, ecc.). Ignore what says your Chief Software Architect is clearly self-defeating.
If GNU/Linux's zealots are annoying, then Microsoft's supporters aren't better. But a fanboy's rant is forgettable; a manager's rant in public is not.
Mr. Pryanishnikov must think very well where, when and what he says, giving some attention to the same market shares I found googling some minutes. If I can do, then he can too.

This is my Way (land)

This is "MY" way: AC/DC, no Sinatra!

 In these days, the FOSS world seems shaked by a earthquake called "Ubuntu". Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the most widespread GNU/Linux distribution, in a post on his blog, talks about the possibility to replace X.org and the whole X-Server architecture with the modern and clean Wayland display. Mr. Shuttleworth admits X.org is a living project, more active now than ever and he admits and it's die hard. But, also, he said

«[..] we don’t believe X is setup to deliver the user experience we want, with super-smooth graphics and effects.
[..] We’re choosing to prioritize the quality of experience over those original values, like network transparency.»

Yeah mr. Shuttleworth! This is the first time I heard statements like this since the Waldo Bastian's analysis about KDE^[1]. Statements about the importance of user experience over technical decisions

Now, let's see differences between X.org and Wayland

X architecture (curtesy of Wayland's site)

As you can see in this graph, rendering a frame is a very long path of APIs. And this is because (from Wayland's site):

«In general, the X server is now just a middle man that introduces an extra step between applications and the compositor and an extra step between the compositor and the hardware.»

Now, let's look Wayland's architecture:

Wayland's architecture (curtesy of Wayland's site)

In this graph, you see that Wayland embeds the compositor. This reduces passages to render a frame and then, accelerate displaying speed. But, most important, Wayland embeds the detection of window whom recive an I/O message (such as a click). This task, in X, is done by the compositor: in Wayland is part of the display manager.

Wayland, also, it's smaller than X.org and less resources-hungry. These features makes it perfect also for small computers, such as netbooks and tablets. Furthermore, X can works as a Wayland client and this can help the passage to the new display manager.
It's true Wayland doesn't work on old hardware. But this means we'll never use it on a Pentinum I 233. About this, mr. Shuttleworth said

«The requirement of EGL is new but consistent with industry standards from Khronos»

And he's right. Now the bad news: NVidia (AaronP's words) say

«We have no plans to support Wayland.»

Does this means the end of Wayland project? Who knows? Actually NVidia just said ACTUALLY they have no plans, so in future this decision could change. Anyway, a passage to Wayland is a big step for FOSS world, at least as the begining of KDE project.

[1] I read this analysis on a italian magazine (Linux &C.), when KDE 3.0 was released. I can't find Waldo Bastian's post anymore, because all forums are now dead-links. Can you help me to find it?