Bruce Byfield

Desktop developers are starting to understand that netbooks need different interfaces than workstations — or even notebooks. The smaller screens on netbooks are a usability challenge, comparable to designing a business card when you’re used to creating full-page ads. A case in point is KDE’s Plasma Netbook interface, now available in a preview in Kubuntu […]

The first time I saw Linux was in the back of a computer shop while a tech was fixing my computer. An enthusiast had brought his machine in, and was boasting about how much more complete its applications were than anything on Windows. “Look at this,” he said, turning on a screensaver that showed a […]

As a devoted free software user, I’m almost as likely to stick my hand down a running garbarator as buy a copy of Windows 7. In fact, so far, I haven’t tried Windows 7. But if its features list is any indication, I’m missing little that I don’t already have with the latest version of […]

Imagine being able to search for help online without leaving your desktop application. An About dialog you could use to contact the developer. A site where you could post works in progress directly from your desktop for criticism. These are a few of the entries in KDE’s recent social desktop contest. They are also some […]

When Mark Shuttleworth talks, the free and open source software (FOSS) world listens. As founder of Ubuntu and its commercial arm Canonical, he heads the most popular Linux distribution in the world. Even more importantly, he is an articulate and innovative thinker. For these reasons, he was a logical choice for the closing keynote at […]

GNOME 2.28 was supposed to preview GNOME 3.0. But it hasn’t quite turned out that way, and whether what is visible will leave users eagerly anticipating or uneasy and rebellious is still anybody’s guess. The GNOME developers did their part, bringing the GNOME Shell, the basis of the GNOME 3.0 desktop, into presentable shape. Unfortunately, […]

Once, the CEO of the company for which I worked had a bright idea. He would sponsor a young open source software coder for the summer, and, in return, the coder would assign the copyright of his application to the company. Fortunately, the young coder consulted some lawyers in his family, and refused. His application […]

On September 19th, the GNOME Foundation and the Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on how to increase women’s participation in the free and open source software (FOSS) communities. The summit is probably an effort to repair relationships between the two foundations after Richard Stallman was pilloried for sexism after his keynote in Gran […]

Is the GNU/Linux desktop headed in the right direction? Recently, I have started to wonder. Despite the emphasis that major distributions place upon usability, nobody seems to ask the question about what definition of usability is being assumed, or what kind of users that definition produces. Or, whether those users will be capable of reaching […]

Ever since the mid-1990s, pundits have predicted that the Internet and the desktop would merge. However, exactly what that means has taken time to emerge. Today, the most common vision is that the desktop will be reduced to the launchpad for online applications, which is the premise for Google’s Chrome Operating System. But, unperceived by […]