Operating Systems

Review: Peppermint Ice Linux

These days, if a desktop-focussed Linux distribution wants to stand out from the pack of Ubuntu-wannabes it either needs to be especially slick or offer something a little bit different to the norm. Peppermint Ice falls into the latter category: It's a Debian-derived (via Ubuntu), lightweight Linux distro that's designed for netbooks and has a strong focus on Web applications.

By Rohan Pearce | 09 February, 2011 10:36

Tags: laptops, Linux, netbook, netbooks, notebooks, open source

Hands on with the Dell Mini 3i smartphone

The first Dell Mini 3i smartphone to go on sale anywhere in the world will be available in China this December for 4800 Chinese yuan (US$704) without a mobile phone contract, China Mobile representatives said Thursday.

By Dan Nystedt | 20 November, 2009 08:05

Tags: Android, dell, Dell Mini 3i, smartphones

Review: Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager

On Tuesday, Microsoft released to manufacturing System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. The final code will be shipped on November 1. The company bills the software as one-stop organization, allowing administrators to set up and deploy new virtual machines and manage hosts and other virtual infrastructure elements from one console.

By Jonathan Hassell | 24 October, 2008 08:50

Tags: powershell, virtualisation

SBS 2008: Same old bundle with new Vista wrapper

With network-attached storage devices selling for just a few hundred bucks per terabyte, and online service providers offering e-mail and full productivity applications for a few dollars per user per month, Microsoft's Small Business Server 2008 is entering into a tougher market than its older siblings have had to endure.

Preview: Microsoft's "Katmai" filled to the brim

Katmai, the code name for Microsoft's imminent SQL Server 2008 release, comes from an Alaskan territory know for volcanoes, which may not be the best symbol for a database. So far, however, Katmai hasn't blown up on me. And the lower-profile Katmai seems like a good follow-on to Yukon, the code name for the gigantic SQL Server 2005 release.

SLED 10 SP2 makes wireless 3G a snap

For enterprises wanting to roll out SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on notebooks, the lack of 3G, or UMTS, wireless broadband card support was an annoying hole compared to the available Windows support.

Unix tip: Rescuing files from lost+found

The lost+found directory included in (Unix) file systems is usually empty. Only used when fsck doesn't know what to do with files that have lost their place in the file system, they stand as a temporary holding place for those rare instances in which fsck can't put everything back together after file systems have become corrupt in some way.