Linus torvalds in an interview has told that Linux is increasingly becoming bloated.

“We’re getting bloated, yes it’s a problem,” Torvalds said. “I’d love to say we have a plan. I mean, sometimes it’s a bit sad and we’re definitely not the streamlined hyper-efficient kernel that I had envisioned 15 years ago. The kernel is huge and bloated.”

more here

It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We’re excited for what’s to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

[Sourced from Google]

Firefox 3.5 the much awaited release to counter IE 8 was released today. Fasten your seatbelt: Firefox 3.5 includes the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which gives the browser dramatically better performance than ever before. Firefox has always been fast, but this is the fastest Firefox ever (more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times as fast as Firefox 2), meaning Web applications like email, photo sites, online word processors and more will feel snappier and more responsive.

Performance

Firefox 3.5 is the fastest Firefox ever – check out this video of Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner running through the new features. Please note, you can view the video without plug-ins using Firefox 3.5 and get a first-hand look at native audio/video support in the browser. You can download the Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate here.

In other Mozilla video news, later today we’ll be releasing the latest in our series of Fastest Firefox videos. Check out the already-posted World’s Fastest clapper and World’s Fastest sport stacker videos.
 Video
Firefox 3.5  download

Read more on Mozilla.com

Smartphone maker HTC is on a roll with the Android operating system. The company introduced its third Android-based device, called the HTC Hero, on Wednesday. It’s a touchscreen phone that will come with a newly designed user interface.

The phone has a 3.2-inch display, GPS, digital compass, a 5-megapixel auto focus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. The HTC Hero also features an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen for smudge resistance and a Teflon coating on the exterior.

HTC’s latest release adds momentum to Google’s Android operating system, which was introduced last year. The first Android phone to hit the market was the HTC-produced T-Mobile G1 phone in North America in October. Since then, HTC has also launched Magic, a touchscreen phone that eliminates the physical keyboard of the G1.

[Read more on wired]

Starting today, there is a simpler way to use the Java^TM language to develop and deploy world-scalable web applications. We are very happy to announce today:

• Google Web Toolkit 1.6,
• An early look at Google App Engine for Java, and the brand-new
• Google Plugin for Eclipse that supports a productive integration of the two.

What does this mean for you? It is easier than ever to create sophisticated web applications entirely in the Java language with Google Web Toolkit while working productively in Eclipse. And the moment you’re finished, with only a few button clicks you can upload and publish your application to the world on App Engine.

In GWT 1.6, we’ve tried to make common tasks simpler while making it possible to do even more advanced things. If you’re brand new to GWT, some of this is going to sound like gibberish, so you’ll also want to take a look at the Product Overview as a gentler introduction.

Direct support for war output and related tools

• GWT 1.6 changes the conventions for project organization to center on the standard Java web archive deployment structure. This new war support makes it easier to introduce GWT modules into existing web applications. It also makes GWT development more flexible by allowing hosted mode to work easily with any standard servlet container. 
• In conjunction, there is a new webAppCreator tool which replaces the older projectCreator and applicationCreator tools. It is a unified, war-aware tool that can quickly create a working GWT module, configuration files, source files, and an ant build file that you can use as a starting point for your own code.
• And, of course, it’s pretty easy to create a war directory layout that you can upload to App Engine.

Hosted mode and compiler enhancements

• Hosted mode has been enhanced to take advantage of the new war-centric project structure to provide additional conveniences. For example, the new “Restart Server” button reloads server-side code without you having to restart your debugger, which can save you time when you’re developing RPC services. Also, for you GWT experts out there using hosted mode with your own custom servers — if you know what “-noserver” is, I’m talking to you — you’ll be glad to know that hosted mode integration “just works” now; generated resources such as bundled image files are automatically recreated when you refresh the hosted browser. This, too, can help speed up your development cycle.
• Hosted mode has also been modified to work smoothly with EMMA‘s on-the-fly instrumentation, so that you can easily generate code coverage reports. If you’re an Eclipse user, in addition to using the new Google Plugin for Eclipse, you should also look at EclEmma, which makes it easy to enable code coverage for any launch configuration. 
• Finally, the GWT compiler has gone parallel. It can compile multiple output permutations in parallel using the new -localWorkers flag, which can speed up web mode compiles noticeably on multi-core machines. In more elaborate build systems, it is also possible now to do parallel distributed compiles using the new compiler lifecycle classes Precompile, CompilePerms, and Link.

New widgets and a shiny new approach to event handling

• A big change that you will surely notice is GWT’s overhauled event handling. The new Handler pattern for managing widget events is easier to understand and more succinct than in previous releases. Widget writers can also easily create their own custom events.
• The customizable and internationalized DatePicker is now a standard widget, and the new LazyPanel helps you speed up your code by delaying the creation of widgets until they’re actually needed.
• There’s also a new API for triggering browser native events programmatically, which is a real boon for unit testing. 

As usual, there are many more improvements than we can list above. The issue tracker has the full list of changes. We hope that these new features in GWT 1.6 will seem like only the beginning, though, as you start to using GWT alongside the new Google Plugin for Eclipse and deploying your code on App Engine. There’s lots more to come on how these technologies work together to help you do cool new stuff faster.

Last but not least, the GWT team will be at Google I/O on May 27-28, giving in-depth sessions on GWT and eager to hear your feedback on these new features. We hope you’ll join us.

Download Google Web Toolkit 1.6

Sourced via Google