Camerafoto.com

There's nothing quite as frustrating. One moment you're working at your PC, the next your screen turns blue and your system reboots, destroying all unsaved work. Then, an hour or so later, it happens again. What's going on?

To diagnose and fix blue-screen crashes you need to know what is causing them. But don't expect Windows to help.

Head off to 'Problem Reports and Solutions' in Vista, for instance, and you'll typically see useless crash descriptions like 'Windows shut down suddenly'. Gee, thanks. Fortunately there's a free alternative: Microsoft's debugger, WinDbg.

Point this at the last crash dump and it can tell you the most likely file, DLL or driver behind the crash; list everything else that was running; warn you of potential memory leaks; and provide useful troubleshooting and diagnostic information.

If your PC is unstable then there's no better tool to find out the cause.

Configure WinDbg

Microsoft does its best to hide WinDbg. You'll have to download the Windows Driver Kit ISO image, a chunky 619MB, and then burn it to disc.

Launch KitSetup and you'll be presented with a list of various driver development options. Just check the box for 'Debugging Tools for Windows' and click 'OK'.

For WinDbg to work properly it must be able to download 'symbols': files that help the debugger convert raw binary information into the function and variable names used by Windows components. These can be saved locally – a good idea as it'll mean you only have to download them once. Create a folder for them – something like 'C:\Windows\ Symbols' will be ideal.

You'll then need to tell the program where its symbols can be found and saved. Click Start, type WinDbg and click the 'WinDbg.exe' link to launch the debugger.

Click 'File | Symbol File Path' to see the current path. Next, enter a path like SRV*c:\windows\ symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols in the box, where 'c:\windows\symbols' is replaced by the path to your own local symbol folder. Click OK, close the program and click 'Yes' when asked if you want to save information for workspace – this will save the path you've just entered.

It's important to check that Windows is configured to create memory dump files when your PC crashes, because WinDbg needs these to figure out what was happening at the time. To set this up, click Start, right-click 'Computer' and click 'Properties | Advanced system settings | Startup and Recovery Settings'. Ensure that the 'Write an event to the system log' box is checked to make sure that Windows collects information on your crashes.

DIAGNOSIS: Crash diagnostics starts with the blue-screen error itself – this will sometimes name the file that's most likely to have caused the crash

Next, clear the 'Automatically restart' box so that you'll have a chance to read any on-screen error messages, and select 'Kernel memory dump' in the 'Write debugging information' list to ensure Windows saves all its memory blocks if it crashes.

Make a note of the dump file name – it's probably 'Memory. dmp'. This is the crash dump file you'll need to locate later. Finally, click 'OK' to finish the job.

Create a report

Once WinDbg has been set up, it's surprisingly easy to use at a basic level, and absolutely anyone can use it to find out more about their system's last crash.

To give this a try for yourself, click Start, type WinDbg and click the WinDbg link. Click 'File | Open Crash Dump', then navigate to and select your last crash dump file. This will probably be at '\Windows\Memory.dmp', although you may have additional files in '\Windows\Minidump'. Click 'Open', then wait as the file is analysed.

DEBUG-IT: Just open your crash dump file to make the Windows Debugging Tools identify the file that it feels caused the crash

This can take a while – five minutes or more – depending on the complexity of the dump file and the speed of your PC, so be patient.

A '0 : kd>' prompt appears at the bottom of the screen when it's done, and you can then scan the rest of the report to see what's on offer. Typically, near the bottom of the report, you'll see a line like 'Probably caused by : driver.sys', where 'driver.sys' is replaced by the name of the file that WinDbg believes was responsible for the crash. Perfect!

If you don't recognise the name, Google it – maybe with additional keywords like blue screen – and you might immediately discover the app behind the instability, as well as some potential fixes.

Blue-screen crashes can be complicated, though, because the file that caused the crash isn't necessarily the one responsible for your problems. That sounds odd, but look at it this way: if a faulty driver gives Windows an incorrect memory location, then this may be passed on to several other Windows components. Eventually one may try to access the memory, triggering a crash in that file – but the real problem is in the driver.

If WinDbg names some core Windows component or another application that you're sure is working just fine, then it may be a problem like this. You'll need to do a little more research to figure out what's really going on.

Dig a bit deeper

Scan your WinDbg report again, looking for lines highlighted with '** ERROR', complaining that 'symbols could not be loaded' for a particular file.

If you've correctly configured WinDbg then it will be able to load symbols with Windows components with no problem, so you'll know that these must be third-party drivers that were active at the time of the crash. Anything named like this is a possible culprit: again, search the web for the filename and you may locate other crash reports.

If that turns up nothing then click in the command line at the bottom of the WinDbg window, type !analyze –v (the '-v' means 'verbose') and press [Enter] for a more detailed analysis of your crash file.

The verbose report will be very much in developer-speak, with lots of figures, pointers, and development-related jargon, but you don't have to understand all of it. Just pick out the parts that provide more information.

You'll probably see an error message that spells out the crash reason, for instance. In one of our tests, the first report simply said our crash was 'probably caused by nvlddmkm.sys'. The verbose report explained that the crash occurred when an 'attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed', which is much more specific and useful.

If something similar appeared for you then you might install the latest driver updates for your display driver, and maybe that would solve the problem.

The verbose report may also contain details of the stack, essentially a list of the functions being called by Windows and your software immediately before the crash. This looks complicated – and to be honest, it is – but again, you don't have to understand every word. All you're looking to do is figure out what your PC was trying to do when the crash occurred, and the stack can offer very useful clues.

Examine your system

If the standard and verbose reports can't explain your crashes, you should take a closer look at your PC's configuration at crash time. It's just a matter of choosing the right command. Typing !vm and pressing [Enter] will display comprehensive details on your system's memory use, for instance. Scroll down the report, looking for oddities.

For example, is there a warning of 'excessive usage' around the 'paged pool' or 'non-paged pool' details? This could mean that you have a resource leak somewhere, perhaps a driver that's allocating Windows resources but not releasing them. Is your paging file near its maximum size, maybe? If this is happening, it may also be caused by a resource leak, or perhaps you've manually set it to a size that's smaller than it needs to be.

Finally, below the general report is a list of Windows components and the RAM they were consuming at crash time. Does anything stand out?

CRYPTIC MESSAGES: Windows event viewer will sometimes include error messages that explain problems

The Process command can also be useful, as it shows you the system processes that were running at crash time. Type !process 0 0 (to clarify, those are zeroes) and press [Enter] to get the full list.

Look for the HandleCount number here – this shows you how many Windows objects a process has open. This is normally a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand in some cases, but if it's many thousands without an obvious good reason – it's not an antivirus tool scanning your entire system, for instance – then again this might indicate that there's a problem.

For the in-depth report on exactly which processes were in memory when your PC crashed, type lmv and press [Enter]. The command is an abbreviation for 'Loaded Modules Verbose', and the report gives you a very long list of programs, drivers and Windows components that were active at crash time. Have a scroll through the list, and you'll probably find many drivers that you never knew you had.

On our test PC, for instance, were drivers installed by HWiNFO32, VMware, VirtualBox, Paragon Partition Manager, assorted security tools and more. If you want to keep similar third-party drivers on your PC, that's fine.

If you spot any relating to applications that you no longer use, though, it's a good idea to uninstall them. There's no guarantee that it will stop your blue-screen crashes, but you'll free up a few system resources and simplify your system, and that's always a solid step forward.

Perhaps the most important point of all is not to give up. Crash dump analysis is tricky, and WinDbg won't always help with every crash, but you should keep digging anyway. It's likely that, before long, it will provide the clues you need to get your PC running smoothly again.

Those of you not familiar with Linux won't be familiar with the way it lets you install new software. After 12 years with Linux, neither am I.

And I think this highlights a serious problem with the way that open-source software has developed and how it can grow. The problem is choice – one of the most touted and noble reasons for using Linux in the first place.

For general use, there's too much of it. It's often overwhelming, needlessly complicated and an easy excuse for change. Choice goes hand-in-hand with redundancy and duplicated effort.

Recently, the Fedora distribution decided to dump its long-standing photo manager application, F-Spot, in favour of an upstart called Shotwell. Shotwell doesn't have anywhere near the features, stability or stature of its precursor. But it doesn't use Mono either – the .NET-inspired framework that many people love to hate thanks to its third-party association with Microsoft.

As a result, thousands of new Fedora users are going to think that the best photo management application on Linux has about as much functionality as Microsoft's image preview.

Loss of freedom

The problem is that if the wider community can't decide for itself what a solution should look like, the power to make those decisions will be taken out of its hands. And losing the ability to make those decisions is a loss of freedom.

If we could all agree on what should be the default photo manager for a certain distro, it wouldn't matter whether it was initially inferior to its competitors. Everyone would work hard to make it the best, and the same is true of music players, word processors, image editors, text editors, desktops and even package management – the latter being a microcosm of all that's bad about choice.

Package management is the art of getting software onto your Linux box, and there are as many ways of getting software onto your Linux box as there are boxes. The easiest method is to trust in your distribution's package manager, and hope it has the application you need with the version number you're after. If not, things are going to get messy.

You might want to use a third-party package, created by a helpful member of your distribution's community. But this runs the risk of becoming a security nightmare if you don't completely trust the source.

Finally, you're left with the hardcore option – compiling your own binary. But when doing this, you'd also need to make sure you'd compiled the development libraries for all the other shared components your original binary required. This is a pain.

Utterly confused

Most of us are utterly confused by the options, and we'd just like a decision to be made on which is the best. It's inexcusable for an operating system that's hoping to take on some of the largest technology companies in the world with nothing but some free beer rhetoric and a penguin.

If there wasn't such confusion over package management, there wouldn't be any need for Google, Palm/HP or even Canonical to come up with their own solutions. They would have followed the standard, just like the rest of the Linux ecosystem. And in not forcing those decisions, we've lost the ability to decide how packages are going to work across all versions of Linux. But this might be just the beginning.

Mobile phones are the biggest growth market for Linux. In mid-June, Google's Eric Schmidt claimed that Google was activating 160,000 phones per day. Each one of those phones is running a locked-down version of Linux.

Thanks to Apple's approach to its own platform, where third-party development and even the launch icons for third-party applications are controlled with an iron fist, other manufacturers may start to equate control with future profit, and then we really will be left without any other choice.

Many Linux users might baulk at the idea that their distribution is sharing geolocation data with the world, just so the world can send you local ads, as with the new iPhone OS. But a recent report by SMobile Systems suggests that up to a fifth of Android phone applications perform all kinds of nefarious, privacy infringing tricks.

If we'd had a global package manager, and a way that we could all share and install the same software, this might not be such an issue.

We might have given up a little choice when it comes to how things are installed, but we'll have gained a whole lot more choice where it's important: the freedom to run secure, safe and supported software on whatever platform we choose.

Windows 7 is a great operating system, but it's not yet fantastic. Like us, you'll probably have come up against some of its most irritating shortcomings in the time since you installed it on your PC.

Icons are missing, utilities have been dropped and functionality has been reduced in some areas. Certain tools are still as hopeless as they were in Vista, and other long-term Windows issues also remain, including inadequate security features and application-related slowdown.

If you were hoping that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 would solve all these problems, you should prepare to be disappointed. Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc told the world in March that:

"Service Pack 1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update."

That's really not good enough. We think Windows 7 needs many tweaks before it reaches the standard that we expect of it. As it doesn't look like Microsoft is going to provide them, we've set out to fill the gap and built our own unofficial service pack, which is absolutely packed with new features and essential upgrades.

We've included tools to plug long-standing security gaps, apps to boost productivity and utilities to keep your PC running at its peak performance. The PC Plus Service Pack will refresh the interface, simplify networking, add new entertainment options and fix many well-known Windows 7 annoyances.

So why wait for Microsoft? We've got all the service pack functionality that you need right here.

Windows 7 looks great, and its interface is a major step forward in many ways. There's no confusing mass of tiny buttons on the taskbar – just a single icon per app.

Hover the mouse cursor over the Firefox icon and thumbnails will appear for every Firefox window that you have open. Hover the mouse over a particular thumbnail and that window will be highlighted. You can then click it to switch to that app. It's an easy way to locate the window you need, no matter how cluttered your desktop.

Jumplists are another timesaver. Right-click the Windows Media Player icon and you can choose to replay a recent video. Notepad's jumplist similarly displays the last file you saved, while IE's includes your recent browsing history.

Then there's Aero Shake (shake a window by its title bar to minimise all other windows, or bring them back) and Aero Snap (drag and drop to align windows to the left or right half of your screen) as well as some appealing Windows themes and gorgeous backgrounds, along with better ways to use them (like the ability to have the desktop slowly cycle through your favourite images).

Let's be frank, though. There are problems, too. Explorer has never been the best of file managers, and in many ways the Windows 7 version has got worse. It no longer remembers folder sizes and positions, so you have to keep relocating windows manually. The status bar no longer shows the size of the files you've selected, or the free disk space.

There are other strange omissions. If you found it useful that the network icon flashed to indicate traffic, for instance, then you're out of luck – it's gone. Some of the new features aren't that useful, either. Jumplists only work with apps that support them, which right now isn't many. And pinning applications to the taskbar sounds good, but space quickly runs out.

Configuration options are notable by their absence. The Aero Peek taskbar thumbnails are a little small, for example, but Microsoft provides no obvious way to change their size.

For the answer to this and many other Windows 7 interface issues, you'll need to turn to a more capable source: the PC Plus Service Pack.

Desktop tweaks

Windows 7 has some great and exciting new wallpaper images, but there aren't enough of them. If you haven't found one that really takes your fancy – or if you prefer to have several on rotation – then you should try Microsoft's Bing's Best packs.

These include spectacular Bing photos, custom sounds and other items that you can use to customise your desktop.

The Windows 7 screensavers are disappointing – they're just a subset of those bundled with Vista last time round. So we think you should add a little variety with SE-Screensavers. There's a configurable Matrix-style screensaver, an animated kaleidoscope, a spectacular 3D slideshow and several others all designed to give your vacant screen a little bit of oomph.

Jumplist Extender

Jumplists normally only work if a program supports them – but Jumplist Extender changes the rules. In just a few clicks you can create custom jumplists for any application. These can launch a program with a command-line switch or automatically perform any of its commands. Built-in AutoHotKey scripting lets you automate more complex tasks. If that's too complicated, import someone else's extensions and use those.

ShellFolderFix

No one knows why, but Windows 7 saw Explorer lose its option to remember the position and size of particular Explorer folder windows. Now you must rearrange them manually – unless you install the simple tool ShellFolderFix.

Install the program, configure it with the settings you need – the number of folders it must be able to remember, for instance – and then it just works. (And unlike Vista, it doesn't forget your settings.)

Classic Shell

Are you missing old Explorer and Start menu features? Classic Shell is a collection of tools to bring them back. There's a fully customisable clone of the old Start menu (it doesn't completely replace the Windows 7 menu so you can use both), an Explorer toolbar adds useful shortcut buttons and it makes the status bar show the free space and size of your selected files, just as it used to do. There are many other tweaks, too.

7plus

7plus delivers a host of productivity-boosting interface tweaks to Windows 7. You're able to add favourite folder buttons to Explorer toolbars, for instance – just click one to jump there. Mouse shortcuts include right-clicking a window title bar to set it as 'always on top', or middle-clicking to close a window. There are also keyboard shortcuts to create folders, upload files to FTP sites, paste previous clipboard entries and more.

Network Activity Indicator

Windows 7 saw the unfortunate end of the useful network activity indicator, the icon that would flash to indicate incoming or outgoing network packets. But don't worry – this tiny program brings it back, better than ever before. Right-click the icon and you'll find you can now configure everything from the icon blink rate to the network interface and even the packet type (TCP, UDP or ICMP) that will make it flash.

Jumplist Launcher

Pinning shortcuts to the taskbar sounds like a good idea, but you will run out of space very quickly. Jumplist Launcher amalgamates shortcuts for many diff erent applications and tasks – up to 60, in fact – into a single, well organised jumplist. To reduce clutter, add lesser-used shortcuts here (and your desktop shortcuts, maybe) and leave the rest of the taskbar for more important applications.

AutoSizer

Windows often forgets the size of a window you'd like to use for an application, but AutoSizer will quickly rectify this problem. Leave it running in the background and it'll keep particular windows at a specific size, or keep them maximised (perfect if you're tired of forever maximising new IE windows yourself). It can even maximise apps to the display you specify on a multi-monitor system.

Windows 7 was supposed to greatly simplify networking with its HomeGroups, which Microsoft claimed would take the headache out of sharing files and printers. In reality the technology can fail for a number of reasons, and setting up your own HomeGroups can be a frustrating experience.

We don't have a direct fix for this – the issues are just too fundamental – but if some of your HomeGroup PCs can't communicate then we may be able to point you in the right direction.

The technology requires that network discovery is enabled. To check this, go to the Control Panel, click 'Network and Internet | Network and Sharing Centre' and choose 'Change Advanced Sharing Settings'. Strangely, your PC clocks should be synchronised.

Right-click the system tray clock, click 'Adjust Date/Time | Internet Time | Change Settings' and make sure that both systems are set up to synchronise clocks manually. IPv6 must be enabled on all your systems. Enter ncpa.cpl at the Start menu, right-click the Network Connection icon and click 'Properties' to make sure it's turned on. IPv6 must also be supported on your router if you have one, and allowed by your security software.

If you've disabled certain services then HomeGroups will also fail. Enter services.msc at the Start menu and make sure the 'Function Discovery Provider Host' and 'Function Discovery Resource Publication' services are both started.

Most fundamentally, HomeGroups are in theory only for other Windows 7 PCs. With a little work, though, it is possible to give XP and Vista systems some access to shared HomeGroup content.

Greg Shultz has written an informative blog post to explain the basics.

Bandwidth control

Windows 7 does provide a sprinkling of other network features beyond HomeGroups, but they don't solve the day-to-day problems that many users face. That's where our Service Pack could make a real difference.

Windows 7 now provides a list of local networks that makes it easier to locate and log in to the one you need. But if you need to change other settings – IP addresses, gateways or DNS servers – then you'll have to manually tweak them every time you log in. You should let our service pack do this for you in a couple of clicks.

The Performance Monitor has had a visual overhaul, but it's still too complicated to use as a bandwidth monitor. We've provided something that's both more capable and easier to understand. And if you're running multiple internet applications, then Windows 7 still has no way to control how that bandwidth gets allocated. Our Service Pack does, though, and it's the perfect way to bring order to a busy PC packed with internet tools.

NetBalancer

Windows 7 provides little in the way of internet traffic management, so a single resource-hungry application can easily hog all your bandwidth. There's an easy way to regain control – install NetBalancer.

This app lets you assign download and upload priorities to particular applications, so if you set your browser to 'High' then it will always get a better share of the available bandwidth, regardless of what else is running.

NetSetMan

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate select the correct default printer for each network you use, but your other settings still have to be filled in manually. NetSetMan creates up to six profiles with all your network settings, including default printer, PC name workgroup, network drive mappings and more.

When you connect to a network, choose the right profile and NetSetMan will adjust all your settings immediately.

NetWorx

The Windows 7 Performance Monitor can monitor your bandwidth, but it's a complex utility. NetWorx is easier to use and delivers more information. It's able to monitor the speed of any network connection, display real-time graphs of bandwidth use, produce daily, weekly and monthly totals and export your data to Excel or other apps for further analysis. It even includes network-testing tools like netstat and traceroute.

Keeping your PC running at its peak performance has always been hard work. This isn't entirely Microsoft's fault: much of the problem lies in the way that third-party applications mistreat your system. Still, it's important that the operating system provides robust tools to maintain and repair your computer in order to keep it running as fast as possible.

Windows 7 does make one notable step forward in this area with the introduction of its Troubleshooting platform. Click 'Control Panel | System and Security | Troubleshoot Common Computer Problems' and you'll find a few built-in tools to help resolve issues with Windows Update or get audio playback working again. They're all simple wizards and can be used by anyone to detect and clear up many common PC problems.

Elsewhere, though, Windows 7 offers very little extra in the way of new maintenance functionality. The backup tool is now slightly better, there are some defrag tweaks (though the utility still won't optimise your file layout) and System Restore is a little more configurable. But apart from this, maintaining a Windows 7 PC will take just as much effort as it did on Vista or XP.

Safety first

Microsoft would argue that its first priority has to be user safety. The company is never going to give Windows an aggressive disk cleaner, for instance, because of the risk that it will delete an important file. And Registry cleaning is even more risky, while offering few practical benefits.

There is some truth in this idea. We've come across several disk cleaners that delete files based on extension alone. That's a risky business, and those utilities do occasionally delete important files.

There are safer improvements that can be made, though. If applications are uninstalled properly then much Registry and hard drive clutter will disappear. The PC Plus Service Pack features an uninstaller to do just that.

Buggy drivers remain a major cause of crashes and system instabilities. Windows 7 does a better job of locating new drivers for you, but it's still not good enough. We've included a tool that will identify any driver updates that you might have available.

Our third addition is a defrag tool that not only defragments files and consolidates free space, but also reorganises your files so that the most commonly used are placed in the fastest part of your hard drive. This often delivers a very significant performance boost.

Windows 7 does little to help optimise your services, so if you're a knowledgeable PC user, SMART may be interesting. The app automates the process of disabling unwanted services by allowing you to choose one of three profiles for your PC. Beware, though – disabling a service can have unexpected side effects, so test any new configuration thoroughly before you accept it.

IObit Uninstaller

Windows 7 does nothing to manage application clutter, and poorly programmed uninstallers can leave your hard drive still packed with junk files. Fortunately IObit Uninstaller can quickly clean up. After removing an unwanted app, the program's 'Powerful' scan checks your PC for leftover files and Registry entries. These are displayed, and if they're surplus to requirements then you can delete them all with a single click.

Puran Defrag Free Edition

Windows' own defrag tool has never done a good job of optimising your hard drive, and the latest version is no exception. Puran Defrag Free Edition moves frequently used files to the fastest part of your hard drive. You can defragment files or folders by selecting the 'Puran' option from their right-click context menu. A scheduler lets you run full defrags at a specific time, when the PC is idle or when the screensaver starts.

DriverEasy

Windows 7 is better than Vista at locating drivers for your hardware, but once they're installed, you'll rarely hear of any possible upgrades. DriverEasy will quickly detect all your devices, installed drivers and their version numbers, then look for and alert you to any drivers that have updates available. It's all very straightforward, and unlike most of the competition, DriverEasy is free for personal use.

Security was one of Windows Vista's rare success stories (relatively speaking), with the OS adding a host of useful features. So it's no surprise that Microsoft took a more relaxed approach with Windows 7, fine-tuning existing security options rather than adding new ones.

User Account Control has been tweaked so that it presents fewer pop-ups, and parental controls are a little more effective. IE8 also adds its own small improvements, with the SmartScreen filter doing a better job of blocking dubious downloads than IE7, for example.

What you still won't get, though is adequate antivirus protection. You can get online with a new PC right away, but you won't be safe. That's unacceptable. Other irritations include the dropping of Windows Defender Software Explorer, which makes it more difficult to monitor and control your start-up programs. We've addressed these problems.

Windows 7 also sees encryption restricted to high-end editions. Everyone can benefit from quality encryption software, so we've included the powerful tool AxCrypt in the PC Plus Service Pack.

Avira AntiVir

The web is a dangerous place, and Windows Defender can't keep you safe. AntiVir is an excellent antivirus engine that is rated very highly by independent testers such as Anti-Virus Comparative. It's fast, accurate and generally raises few false alarms, so for the most part you can simply install the program and leave it to keep malware locked firmly out of your PC.

AxCrypt

If you don't have Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise, you'll appreciate our inclusion of AxCrypt. To encrypt a file, right-click it, choose the AxCrypt menu, select the appropriate Encrypt option and enter your passphrase. And that's it – snoopers can no longer view the file. You can still access it easily, though. Double-click the file and enter your password to open it. It will automatically be re-encrypted after modification.

Autoruns

Windows 7's version of Windows Defender doesn't include Software Explorer, which displayed exactly which programs would launch at startup. We're replacing it with the excellent Autoruns. Not only does this display regular start-up programs, it also lists your shell extensions, IE add-ons, scheduled tasks, drivers, Windows services and more, making the app an excellent security and boot optimisation tool.

Media Center provides an easy way to view and manage your media files. The new media streaming capabilities help you to share music, video and photos across your network, and there are some great new games. But despite this, there's plenty of room for improvement.

Windows Media Player can't by default play all the file types you need, so we're enhancing it with the Windows 7 Codec Pack: it can handle formats such as MKV, DivX, FLV and more. We've also included the Lagarith codec, which uses a lossless algorithm to compress video files. It's perfect if you're editing videos, as you can work on and save clips multiple times with no loss of quality (and without gobbling up the gigabytes of hard drive space you would need to save uncompressed video).

Of course ideally you'd avoid Windows Media Player where possible, as it's slow to launch and uses more than its fair share of your system resources. That's why we've included the media player VLC in the PC Plus Service Pack. It plays considerably more file types and is packed with bonus features, yet remains a fast and lightweight tool.

If you still play classic old DOS games then you'll know that it's more difficult than ever to get them working on modern PCs. DOSBox can often help by emulating DOS and all the ancient hardware these games might need: 80286/386 CPUs, archaic screen resolutions like Hercules or VGA, SoundBlaster soundcards and more.

And while Windows 7's new games are great, we still miss Internet Reversi. Unofficial Service Pack brings it back in the shape of Magic Reversi, which lets you play challenging games against the computer, a local player or even a remote player over the internet.

The default Windows installation has never been a good place to get any work done, and Windows 7 does little to change that. A few core applets such as Paint and Wordpad have received a facelift, but this doesn't disguise the lack of functionality underneath. Windows Live applications are better, but these aren't Windows 7 tools – you can install them just as easily on an XP system.

Explorer remains the real obstacle, slowing down your day-today work in many different ways. It can't view essential file formats like PDF; it can't rename a folder full of files other than, tediously, one at a time; it's poor at vital tasks like synchronising folders; and even its search option requires intrusive indexing and still isn't that quick.

That's why we've focused on it in the PC Plus Service Pack, including tools designed to bypass the problems and speed up a host of tasks.

Foxit Reader 4.1

It's one of the most common formats for exchanging documents online, yet a fresh Windows 7 installation still can't view PDF files. We've fixed that here by including a copy of compact PDF viewer Foxit Reader 3. It's packed with extras, allowing you to add graphics and notes to a PDF file as well as highlight text. The new Secure Trust Manager adds extra protection to keep you safe from malicious content.

Bulk Rename Utility

Windows 7's Explorer is useless if you want to quickly rename a group of files as one. Bulk Rename Utility more than fills the gap, though mastering it could take a while. It can add, replace or insert text, add numbers and change cases or file extensions. Metadata support means you're able to rename photos using EXIF data and MP3 files with ID3 tags. You can even change file creation and modification times.

Everything

The Windows 7 search indexer causes excessive disk thrashing, so the PC Plus Service Pack contains powerful alternative Everything. This app works by reading the central list of files on every NTFS drive, so regular indexing isn't required and resource use is kept to a minimum. You can't search the contents of files, but it locates file and folder names incredibly quickly. Just type it in and matches will appear almost instantly.

Paint.NET

Windows 7's Paint is still inadequate for all but the most basic of image-editing tasks. Paint.NET is a much better choice. It includes drawing and paint tools, lets you make easy adjustments to colours, brightness and contrast, and contains many useful special effects. Selection tools and layer support ensure you're working on only the areas you need, and the tabbed interface makes it easy to work on several images at once.

FileMenuTools

customises the right-click Explorer menu with an array of useful options. You're able to synchronise selected folders, delete locked files, run files with command-line switches, copy the content of a selected file to the clipboard, change a file's creation or last access time, register or unregister DLLs and securely wipe a file so it can't be undeleted – among many other options. Phew!

LinkedNotes

Like Notepad, LinkedNotes provides a simple way to take text notes. Unlike Notepad, it makes it very easy to organise them. You can create new pages and subpages, there's support for rich text formatting, web links you enter are automatically made clickable and the program creates links from one page to another whenever you enter a page name. It's like building your own personal Wikipedia.

Windows 95 is fifteen today. It's hard to imagine it now, but the launch was greeted with the sort of hype that only Apple generates today: the Empire State Building lit in Windows colours, midnight queues outside PC shops, wall-to-wall news coverage and that Rolling Stones riff.

To some, the arrival of Windows 95 heralded a brave new world of personal computing; to others, it was the beginning of a long period of stagnation for the PC platform.

There's no doubt that if you were running Windows 3.1 or 3.11, Windows 95 was like a visitor from the planet Groovy. No, really. It looked great, and provided you treated the system requirements - a 386 with 4MB of RAM and 120MB of disk space - with the contempt they deserved then it ran great too.

• Windows retrospective: boot screens through the ages

Heavily targeted towards home users as well as the more traditional corporate users, it was the first stand-alone Windows (MS-DOS was part of it rather than a separate OS). It had an exciting new interface that's still visible in Windows 7, and it even had Microsoft's first go at a Web browser - albeit one that was initially tucked away on the optional-extra Plus pack.

The beginning of the big boots

Critics, however, would argue that Windows 95 was when Microsoft started throwing its weight around.

They argue that by bundling MS-DOS inside Windows, Microsoft killed the market for MS-DOS rivals; the arrival of Internet Explorer would become the Netscape-crushing browser war; and the US Department of Justice found that it used the "Windows Tax" - that is, offering manufacturers discounted prices if they promised to limit the number of non-Windows PCs they sold - to stifle competition.

In 1998 consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote a devastating critique that accused Microsoft of "suffocating" the PC industry and argued that "the victims of Microsoft's monopolistic activities aren't just the companies that go belly-up; they are the consumers who pay high prices to use mediocre and unreliable products."

It's bleakly amusing to note that when the (then) Microsoft-owned Slate magazine responded to Nader, it argued that "in the browser wars, Microsoft faces a formidable array of opponents--Sun and Oracle, to name just two--and, after two years, it still lags behind Netscape even though IE generally gets better reviews than Navigator."

A force for good

Let's concentrate on the product itself, though, because when you do that Windows 95 was clearly a force for good too. It was a vast improvement over its predecessors. It revolutionised PC gaming. It made using computers - computers that we could actually afford to build or buy - much easier than before.

You may mock its primitive graphics, its press-Start-to-stop interface, its increasingly demented product names - Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, anyone? - and its postie-crippling pile of installation floppies, but fifteen years ago Windows 95 was as cool as computing got.

So Google's been sued by Oracle for (mis) using Java in its popular Android operating system.

Big deal. If you've been following software patent cases, this isn't news. It's just business as usual.

Despite the weekend following Oracle's post-LinuxCon "announcement", there have been lots of discussions on the technical viability of the lawsuit. Laymen have claimed "Oracle is just dumb", while Java experts have discredited and dismissed the claims as technically baseless.

And before you say it, let me tell you, open source and patents can co-exist. A software license, like the GPL, covers the source code, while a patent can cover its implementation. It's messy as it is, and it gets messier when implemented.

Which is why, at LinuxCon, Eben Moglen, the founder of the Software Freedom Law Centre, asked the free software community to use the patent system to solve its patent problems.

Oracle accuses Google of developing Android using portions of Sun's open-source and patented Java. On top of that it developed its own Java Virtual Machine. Together these two developments are the basis of the patent violation lawsuit.

See what you want

Technicalities aside, people only see evidence of what they believe to be true. Which is why the lawsuit has got the "told you so" crowd so excited. Headlines are already screaming the death of OpenSolaris. "OMG! it's OpenOffice next". Can we please stop the exaggeration?

It's convenient to ignore the fact that Oracle supports btrfs, which as per Theodore Ts'o is the "way forward" for the Linux kernel. It's also used as the default filesystem by the Intel and Nokia joint effort, Meego.

So what will be the outcome of the case? Baseless or not, Google hasn't really (yet) clarified its stance and has only released a rather meek statement, expressing its disappointment at Oracle for attacking the open source Java community.

There's also talk of this lawsuit killing Android. That's just plain rubbish. If anything, Oracle wants Android to flourish. It would just heart it more if Android uses Java under Sun's commercial license. And that's what this lawsuit is about. License fees.

Leave the technical details for the engineers of the companies to fight over, in court. That is if this case ever escalates to that level.

It's important to remember that Oracle is the third largest software company in the world. You don't ascend to that podium position, without stepping on a few toes.

Linux doesn't have a CEO. Consequently, there's no annual keynote hosted by a charismatic alpha male. But if it did, and if there were a conference covering the first half of this year, the first speech would start with three words: "Linux is winning".

Firstly, a market research firm in the US called The NPD Group revealed that sales of Google's Android platform overtook those of Apple's iPhone in the first quarter of 2010, propelling itself into second place behind the waning RIM.

Android is becoming increasingly competitive, spanning both the smartphone and the emerging tablet markets, with devices from Dell and Archos already available. This might be why Apple started a patent infringement lawsuit against HTC, using many of its Android-based phones as physical exhibits in its litigation.

Secondly, Google announced its intention to open source the VP8 video codec. This was acquired when it bought On2 earlier in the year and it will be used alongside Vorbis and the MKV container to create Google's WebM video format. This is vitally important for Linux.

The nascent H.264 format, as used by Apple and many HTML5 video streams, is encumbered by patents, and current open-source implementations live under the shadow of legislation. VP8 and WebM have the potential to match it for quality, and while WebM will undoubtedly attract similar litigious trouble, having an umbrella the size of Google should satisfy many Linux distributions, especially when Mozilla, Opera and Adobe have already pledged their support.

Programme for Government

Finally, the UK's new coalition government has published its Programme for Government. There are two points in the section on Transparency that are great news for free software. One states, "We will create a level playing field for open-source software," while the other adds, "We will ensure that all data published by public bodies is published in an open and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third parties."

If these promises come true, it will transform attitudes to open-source software and Linux, and hopefully open the door for its use within government and schools, two areas where it's ideal.

Many of us used to think that for Linux to be judged a success, it had to be installed and running on more desktop computers than Microsoft Windows. And there are great swathes of Linux users who still feel the same way. But the world of computing has changed.

There's more than one way of judging the success of something that started as just a good idea. Windows, Linux and OS X are survivors. They've lasted this long because they exist within their own ecosystems.

Linux, for example, is fed by a curious mixture of enterprise investment, embedded hardware vendors and a community brimming full of zealous commitment. There's a low-cost threshold to entry and a subsystem that maintains itself with very little investment. It's these factors that have shaped how it looks, how it feels and how it's operated.

The ecosystems inhabited by both Microsoft and Apple are equally well-adapted to their environments. The former is the domain of the utilitarians, offering straight functionality for an up-front price. The latter is an increasingly important fusion of fashion and function. But things have changed.

The borders between the ecosystems have become indistinct. Apple has surpassed Microsoft in market value, winning thousands of new fans through it's no-fuss interfaces and lower prices. There's a shift in the balance of power.

Less free and open

And thanks to Google, Linux is becoming less free and less open, proving that in the new markets where it's having the most commercial success, it's becoming more like Apple. ROMs are encrypted and need to be rooted for user-hacking, third-party applications have to be sold through a single vendor and personal information is held in the cloud by a sole provider.

If Linux wants a taste of similar success, it might find it if it makes similar concessions to a user's freedom.

But then we'd have failed. The Linux ecosystem would have become too polluted, bogged down by sponsored kernel additions, paid-for support and short life cycles. It may be a commercial success, but no longer an active one.

Our hypothetical CEO might make further compromises, and make judgements against the interest of Linux users. Which is exactly why we don't have a CEO, and exactly why the success of open-source software is so difficult to judge using the same language as its competitors.

Ubuntu's ambitions don't stop with moving some window buttons and making everything purple – the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Belgium saw the announcement of Unity, a completely new desktop interface aimed at instant-on computing.

What's got us really excited is that fact that the creator of the fantastic Gnome Do, David Siegel, is working with the design team. Naturally, we wanted to find out some more…

Linux Format: How did you get into open source?

David Siegel: I had to build a Unix shell and Unix-like kernel for a university course on operating system design. After running into incompatibilities between system calls on Mac OS X and the Linux-powered lab computers, I installed Ubuntu on my Mac to align my development environment with that of the lab computers.

At the end of the project, I remember thinking: "This Ubuntu thing has everything I need, maybe I should stick with it." The following summer I worked at Google with Sean Egan, who was the maintainer of Pidgin at the time. Sean told me what it was like to run an open source project, and the responsibilities involved sounded really exciting.

The one application that was preventing me from making the switch from Mac OS X to Ubuntu was Quicksilver, a keyboard launcher application by Nicholas Jitkoff. For my senior thesis in computer science I formed an open source software project to explore desktop search with the goal of ultimately producing an equivalent application for Linux, and the result was Gnome Do.

LXF: How did you join Canonical?

DS: I met Mark Shuttleworth in Boston at Gnome Summit 2008, where I spoke with him about my ideas for user experience and free software. He suggested that I stop by Canonical's London office for an interview and to see if I'd be interested in moving to London to join Canonical's nascent design team, and by coincidence I had plans to visit London the very next week, so that's what I did.

I decided not to join Canonical initially, but eight months later Mark asked me to attend a design sprint in Cape Town and I was too excited to say no!

LXF: Where do you fit into the design team and design vision of Ubuntu?

DS: My role on the design team is "Desktop Interaction Architect." I write narratives and create wireframes to describe experiences for people using Ubuntu. Other members of the design team turn these descriptions into interactive prototypes and visual renderings that can be tested with users and eventually implemented.

LXF: Do you work with the wider Ubuntu community?

DS: When I'm not "architecting desktop interaction," I'm trying to engender interest in user experience throughout the free software community. To this end, I've led the One Hundred Paper Cuts project and the recently announced UX Advocate project while at Canonical.

I'm not sure how I fit into the "design vision" of Ubuntu, but I try to encourage technical stakeholders in Ubuntu to see software not only as an opportunity to write beautiful source code, but also as an opportunity to create beautiful experiences for people.

LXF: So is that what you're going to do with Unity?

DS: Unity is a lightweight interface for your Ubuntu netbook. Considered more generally, it's a shell tailored for devices with small screens.

Unity comprises a launcher, which makes opening and switching between applications delightful; a panel where indicators behave uniformly; a view of your installed applications, with Ubuntu Software Centre integration; a view of your files with quick access to favourite folders, recent files, downloads and simple browsing; and a search interface, enabling pervasive use of find-as-you-type search, so you can find apps, files and settings with a few keystrokes.

LXF: What is the vision for Unity? What do you seek to achieve with it?

DS: Canonical recently announced Ubuntu Light, a version of Ubuntu with an interface honed to create a fast, simple, and secure web experience. There's a lot of overlap between Ubuntu Light and Ubuntu Netbook Edition, mostly because they're both optimised for small screens and web browsing.

Unity serves as the foundation of both products so that they can share common elements like indicators and the launcher. My short term goal for Unity is to build a fantastic experience for Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 by extending Ubuntu Light to support basic application and file management use cases that are appropriate for general purpose devices like netbooks.

ANATAYA: The Unity interface is part of a raft of design improvements grouped into Canonical's Anataya project

I'd also like to explore search further, and incorporate touch. I'm interested in using search to tame complex user journeys (but I don't treat search as a panacea), and everyone is interested in touch devices these days.

LXF: When will Unity hit the netbook edition?

DS: I hope it will be released in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10! We have a lot of work to do before October, but with Neil Patel as the Unity engineering lead, I am at ease.

LXF: How do you feel Unity improves on the current crop of netbook interfaces?

DS: I've already described Unity's launcher as delightful, and I meant it. The first version of the launcher simply scrolled off screen when it was full.

The second version, due to land in time for Ubuntu 10.10, behaves completely differently. Words cannot describe it – it's breathtaking. If someone sees you using Unity, they will ask: "Hey, what is that?". It's not only an improvement over the current crop of netbook interfaces, it's an improvement over personal computer interfaces in general.

LXF: There has been some discussion of the Applications and Files places. What are they?

DS: The Applications Place is Unity's view of your installed applications. It lets you browse your installed applications and provides find-as-you-type search of both your installed applications and applications available in the Ubuntu Software Centre. It's slick.

The Files Place, Unity's view of the files on your netbook, eschews traditional, hierarchical filesystem navigation and instead promotes search and time-based browsing. This will make Ubuntu Netbook Edition the first netbook interface with a file browsing experience powered by Zeitgeist [the new file manager in Gnome 3].

There is still much to be designed, but it's already a bold and exciting experiment that challenges many long-standing assumptions about how people think about their files.

LXF: Some people have accused Ubuntu of mimicking Mac OS X – what's your take on that?

DS: I don't take a position on every silly little thing that people say, but if forced to take a position on the matter, I would say "haters gonna hate."

LXF: What do you see as the ultimate goal and opportunity for Ubuntu on the desktop?

DS: The ultimate opportunity for Ubuntu is to make people happy, and its goal is to do so ethically by not treating its users as means to an end; Ubuntu users will be made happy by great user experience, and they will be treated as ends in themselves by not requiring them to sacrifice freedom in order to use software.

LXF: How can people participate in Unity?

DS: Unity is available immediately from a the ppa:canonical-dx-team/une PPA. After you've added this PPA to your Ubuntu system (you need to be running Lucid for now), install the unity package, then change your session from Gnome to Unity at the login screen.

Once you have Unity installed, please play with it and report bugs. You can find me on the IRC channel #ayatana on irc.freenode.net, where my nickname is 'djsiegel'. Please come talk to me about Unity; I am eager to hear your feedback and suggestions!

The day has arrived when Windows 7 is finally being used on more computers that Microsoft' Vista operating system, a mere ten months after Windows 7 was released to the public last October.

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system currently has 14.46 per cent of global market share, overtaking Microsoft's previous operating system Vista, which currently has 14.34 per cent according to the latest figures from Net Applications.

XP leads by country mile

However, Windows XP still leads the way, by a country mile, with over 61.97 per cent of the global market share of PC operating systems.

Microsoft's nine-year-old operating system has dominated the PC experience for most over the last decade, with Vista never managing to top more than 20 per cent of the global market for PC operating systems.

XP has proven to be persistently acceptable to the vast majority of users over the last decade, with many clearly choosing to pass Vista by.

In other OS news, Apple's Mac OS X holds around five per cent of the global market, while Linux holds around one per cent of the market and Apple's iOS for iPhone and iPad has grown over the last month to hold 0.7 per cent of the global market.

Apple's Magic Trackpad confirms what many of us already suspected: iOS, or something very like it, is coming to the Mac.

It's not just the Mac, either. I'm willing to bet that it's coming to the Apple TV, too.

Apps would make Steve Jobs' hobby much more appealing, and it would mean that all of Apple's consumer products - iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad and Apple TV - would share the same interface, the same apps and the same data.

That data will be stored centrally, either via the cloud or on a shared network storage device such as a Time Capsule. Remember Apple's enormous, billion-dollar data centre? That's for the cloud bit.

Don't believe me? Ask the developers. When Ars Technica put together a panel of Apple devs, they were unanimous: Mac OS X will eventually be subsumed by iOS. "Developers are seeing iOS influencing Mac OS X instead of the other way around", Chris Foresman reports.

Cabel Sasser from Panic's prediction rings true: "I could see a gradual, slow merger between iOS and Mac OS X styles and approaches," he says. "It doesn't make sense for them to be developing two of everything, one good, one not as good - two calendars, two address books. It's got to merge somehow."

This isn't going to happen overnight, but it's going to happen. The reason it's going to happen is that for very many things, iOS is better than OS X, let alone Windows or desktop Linux.

Unlike traditional operating systems, iOS is immediate. Every iPhone or iPad owner with young children has watched their kids pick up the device, launch a few apps, delete all of Daddy's data and run up enormous credit card bills: there's no learning curve whatsoever, no time spent learning the operating system before you can actually do something. It's an operating system that gets out of the way.

You might call it "computing for the rest of us".

The vision is this: iPods, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV for everyday stuff; iMacs for editing and other tasks that need proper horsepower; Mac Pros for content creation.

Steve Jobs recently spoke about cars and trucks. In the near future, i-devices and Apple TV are the cars, and Mac Pros are the trucks.

By bringing out the Magic Trackpad, Apple has given the mouse its marching orders: don't be entirely surprised if there's a Magic Trackpad Pro to offer pen-based input for artists and anyone else who'll miss the precision of mouse input.

But for the rest of us, Apple clearly thinks fat-fingered fun is the future. I think it's right.

Corporate backing and a large supportive community – almost all Linux distributions can boast of at least one half of that.

Fedora, since its inception in late 2003 as Red Hat's community distribution, has nurtured around itself a devoted community. It has achieved this after providing, release after release, an innovative and complete distribution that demands attention and respect.

Being a rather large distribution (the number of DVD distributions now pales in comparison to single CD variants), Fedora 13 has something for just about every variety of Linux user.

With Fedora 13 fresh out of the oven let's see what it has to offer.

Revelations

According to Paul W Frields, Fedora Project Leader, Fedora's feature process and diverse community of developers and contributors enables it to include a wide range of features in each release.

"Fedora 13 sports an array of desktop features that will help any computer user make better use of their hardware – from 3D support for their graphics card, to colour management for their input and output devices, to automatic installation of printer drivers.

"But this release also brings advanced functionality for developers, such as better monitoring tools that allow a Python developer to measure activity on his system to find bottlenecks in Python code he's developing. And system administrators will be excited about the redesigned authentication tool in Fedora 13 using the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) to allow managed domain logins, even for laptop users who are away from the network".

Virtualisation leader

Fedora has provided a stable home for virtualisation technologies for some time now, and Fedora 13 continues the trend. In fact, on offer are leading-edge virtualisation improvements, according to Frields.

"As always, Fedora continues to lead the pack in virtualisation features, since our community developers are actually heavily involved in upstream areas like the kernel and the KVM hypervisor".

VIRTUAL MACHINES: Carefully select the OS type and the Version when creating a new virtual machine

Although Fedora persisted with Xen for a few years, the amount of time and energy needed to get it to work with the Linux kernel was a drawback. Support for KVM stable PCI addressing and Virt Shared Network Interface are two major KVM offerings in Fedora 13. The shared network interface technology enables virtual machines to use the same physical network interface cards (NICs) as the host OS.

All virtual machines under your Fedora 13 installation are managed by the Virtual Machine Manager tool under Applications > System Tools. You can create or restore existing virtual machines in a matter of minutes, as the interface is very easy to use.

Many recent distribution releases require at least 1 GB RAM, so if you don't allocate that much when creating your virtual machine, you will probably not be able to run a graphical installation in the newly created virtual machine.

Polished installation

Fedora has never been an overtly difficult distribution to install. Still, Fedora 13 comes with a smarter version of the Anaconda installer that makes installation even simpler, thanks to improvements in how it handles storage media and partitioning.

Also available now is the option to install Fedora over the internet. The boot images are available for a variety of media including USB and CD from boot.fedoraproject.org. These boot images allow the system to connect to a remote server to launch the installer, doing away the need for 700MB disks or 4GB DVDs as the installation media of choice.

LIVE USB: The LiveUSB Creator makes it even simpler to create installations on flash drives

Hardware support

A long standing argument against Linux adoption has been that Linux doesn't have the same level of hardware support as proprietary operating systems. To that end, Fedora 13 offers the Nouveau drivers with experimental 3D support for Nvidia cards, so users don't have to rely on untrustworthy proprietary drivers that can't be debugged or improved upon.

The real prize, however, is the Automatic Printer Driver Installation feature. All printers, whether they connect via USB, parallel ports or over the network, identify themselves using a Device ID string containing information such as manufacturer, model name, supported command sets and suchlike.

Historically, configuring a printer has been bothersome for most users – more often than not because they don't know the correct driver for their printer. Imagine, however, if printer drivers contained tags associating them with certain manufacturers and model numbers, such that when Fedora detects your attached printer, it immediately looks up the drivers that carry matching manufacturer and model tags and automatically installs the driver. This is now possible in Fedora 13, hence the very suggestive feature name.

Programmer's playmate

By providing parallel-installable Python 3, which means that Python 3.1.2 can now be installed in parallel with Python 2.6.4, Fedora 13 is marketing itself as the ideal platform of choice for developers. Python 3 solves many of the long-standing issues in Python 2, but in doing so it has mutated into an almost entirely new language.

The 2to3 tool provided by Python can be used to automatically convert much of Python 2 code to Python 3, but there's a catch. When we say Python, there are three intertwined components at play: the core runtime, the standard library, and a host of other third-party modules on top. The trouble is that not all modules (which number in the hundreds) have been completely ported to Python 3.

Fedora 13 thus provides both Python 2 and Python 3 stacks to provide developers the means to continue their work and also prepare to make the transition to Python 3.

The second Python-related feature enables developers to measure activity on their system to find bottlenecks in Python code they're developing. SystemTap is a tracing/probing/monitoring tool which enables users and developers to observe their system beyond the kernel. In effect, you can see what's happening inside your application and language runtimes like Python, etc.

AUTOMATIC BUG REPORTING TOOL: Even non-power users are now able to file bug reports. You can access it from the Applications > System Tools menu

Since Python code is easy to mix with code written in other languages (for example, C), the third Python-related feature, an extended GDB (GNU debugger), reports mixed C and Python-level information on what such processes are doing. You don't need to be an expert GDB user to debug code wrapped in Python, as the improved GDB makes it convenient for even Python newbies to take advantage of this feature.

Btrfs filesystem snapshot

Have you ever feared doing something adventurous on your system only to end up with an unusable machine? Btrfs can create lightweight bootable filesystem snapshots. System rollback using btrfs enables administrators and users to revert to a previous snapshot should the system become unusable.

Since btrfs creates entire filesystem snapshots that can be created automatically or manually at the user's demand, the entire filesystem will revert to its previous state when you revert to a snapshot.

For example, if you make a snapshot each time you delete or install new packages, reverting to an older snapshot wouldn't just affect the state of those packages – it would also affect your home directory if it too is on the btrfs partition. ext4 is the default filesystem on Fedora 13 but you can easily choose btrfs during the installation process.

A history of innovation

An important aspect of the Fedora release cycle is the continuing development of key features across releases. We've seen this with the faster startup times: Fedora 10 had a 30-second startup and it was down to 20 seconds in Fedora 11. This is one of those features that will continued to be worked upon into and beyond Fedora 14.

Similarly, Archer, a GDB development branch with better C++ support and Python scripting capabilities, made its debut with Fedora 11 and now in Fedora 13 we have a smarter GDB that every Python programmer should celebrate.

"Over many releases we build on a solid base of engineering expertise and work to extend the functionality of a completely free and open source software platform", Paul Frields explains.

"Take free video drivers for instance. In Fedora 10 we introduced kernel modesetting to speed up the boot process on a few ATI video cards. In Fedora 11 we extended this function to lots of video cards, and began a process of extending support for 3D acceleration in totally free video drivers with Intel graphics cards. In Fedora 12 we built on that platform with experimental 3D support for ATI cards using the 'radeon' driver, and Fedora 13 included not only stabilising the ATI support, but extending 3D to Nvidia cards using the 'nouveau' driver".

Network Manager

An example of a far longer-term project is the Network Manager, which was introduced way back in 2007 as part of Fedora 7. By the time Fedora 12 came, it had become the de facto network configuration solution for just about all distributions.

NETWORK MANAGEMENT: nmclie, the CLI tool for controlling Network Manager, is still not quite comparable with its graphical sibling

With Fedora 12, Network Manager introduced mobile broadband support and finally in Fedora 13 we get support for dial-up modems for older Bluetooth-equipped phones. It also provides a command line interface, enabling users who run a text-only system to still take advantage of this brilliant tool.

Another new feature courtesy of Fedora 13 is the colour management. This enables users to create unique colour profiles for different hardware devices such as printers, scanners and monitors, enabling artists, photographers, designers, produce better work using free software.

According to Frields, the advances in free video were created in large part by engineers employed by Red Hat to extend the possibility of free software on the desktop. "The free video driver story is just one example of how the Fedora Project and Red Hat have worked together not just to integrate but to improve the state of free and open source software."

Virtualisation tools

KVM now also finds its way into the upcoming RHEL 6 and, as Frields explains, this is how the two distributions often team up.

"Fedora is a free distribution, community project and upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux… [it] serves as the community R&D lab. Fedora is a general-purpose system that gives Red Hat and the rest of its contributor community the chance to innovate rapidly with new technologies".

People will clearly see a reflection of the very recent and past Fedora releases in RHEL 6. In a sense, looking at Fedora releases, you can make a fairly accurate prediction of some of the technologies and features that the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release will offer.

Tim Burke, vice president of Linux engineering at Red Hat, further clarifies that individuals and businesses are often willing to participate in Fedora to see some features make their way into RHEL. "We are increasingly seeing customers who have specific use case needs who are willing to contribute with us in Fedora in the interest of having the feature productised in Red Hat Enterprise Linux".

And since everybody from home makers to hardware manufacturers are interested in energy efficient systems, Burke continues with this example: "Many people, ranging from end users, to hardware vendors, to government customers have an interest in energy efficiency. Users from these diverse points of view worked with us in Fedora 12 and Fedora 13 to audit and improve many of the default system services to be much more power efficient. This type of work will be directly applicable on a supported basis in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6".

Hardware compatibility, ease of use, the size of a software repository. These three attributes are unique to each Linux distribution. But at the same time, each Linux distribution is at liberty to take and mix whatever it wants from any other.

This creates a rather unique situation, where good ideas quickly spread, and bad ones fail. And as a result, there are dozens of distribution updates each month, hundreds each year, in a race to leap-frog the each other in the race to the top of the DistroWatch.com charts.

This is why the answer to the question, of which distribution is best for you, changes with the tides, and why we're keen to keep on top of distribution developments. What follows is our recommendations for this year, split by typical users. Try them yourself. They're all free.

1. The best distro for beginners: Ubuntu 10.04

There can be few people who haven't heard of Ubuntu. It's a word that's become synonymous with Linux, raising both praise and chagrin from the Linux community in equal measure. But outside the community squabbling, there's no doubt that this is a distribution to be reckoned with. Especially if you're a beginner.

Ubuntu is the antidote to a world of uncertainty. For the vast majority of installations, it will just work. You won't have to worry about hardware incompatibility, software installation and configuration. Stick the disc in the drive, answer a few easy questions, and you'll find yourself looking at the beautiful new design of version 10.04, the so-called Lucid Lynx.

Unlike most other distributions, Ubuntu developers know how to make a desktop look good. The aurora-like swathes of purple, orange and black may have taken their inspiration from Cupertino, but they easily beat the tedious dull-brown of previous versions.

What's not so great, for seasoned users, is that the window control buttons, such as close, minimise and maximise, are now on the top-left border. But new users, especially those used to OS X, won't find this a problem, and neither did we after a couple of days to acclimatise.

Ubuntu is still ahead of the game, and for new users it's unbeatable. It offers the best looking default desktop, an unparalleled software repository, easy installation of proprietary software like Flash and Nvidia drivers, and incorporates one of the largest and most accessible communities on the internet. It's still a winner.

UBUNTU: Easy installation, a massive package repository and a dedicated user community help keep Ubuntu a great choice for newcomers

Also consider: Mandriva 2010.1

2. The best distro for experts: Fedora 13

The Fedora distribution takes a trail-blazing, no compromise, approach to free software. It offers many of the same advantages of Ubuntu like excellent hardware support, a refined desktop and great package choice, with some of the core-philosophy ideals that have helped make Linux such as a success.

As a result, it's not an ideal distribution if you're looking for proprietary and closed software. MP3 codecs, Adobe Flash and Nvidia drivers are not easy to install, and get even less easier with each new release. Instead, you'll want to stick with the open source alternatives provided by Fedora.

Which isn't such a bad thing. The new version includes the fantastic, hardware accelerated, and open source, Nouveau Nvidia driver, while the new photo manager, Shotwell, is an interesting alternative to the potentially patent crippled F-Spot.

Version 13 is the latest Fedora release to tackle the growing popularity of Ubuntu, and as a result, it's one of best looking and usable distributions around, regardless of your politics. But it's also a distribution you can easily make your own.

Creating a development environment is easy, for example, and the locations used by shared libraries, configuration files and kernel headers strictly adhere to long established standards. This means that with Fedora 13 you get the best of both worlds. A good looking, usable desktop straight from installation CD, and a completely customisable, standard and stable environment from which you can build your perfect distribution.

FEDORA: The result of a fusion between a noble cause and an uncompromisingly corporate business plan

Also consider: Slackware

3. The best distro for Windows Migrants: PCLinuxOS

This is the first distribution we've looked at to use the KDE desktop environment by default. Although you can grab versions for all the other major desktop environments, we consider KDE to be the best match for Windows power-users. This is because it's an environment who's slate grey and blue surface belies an underworld of configuration options, complexity and customisation on the interior.

The 4th generation of KDE has experienced stability problems, but the current 4.4 cycle has finally been able to throw off the puppy-fat pain of earlier versions.

And thanks to the quarterly ISO update cycle of PCLinuxOS, it has become an excellent choice for users who want to stay ahead in the KDE features and stability game. The latest, for example, includes significant updates to the K3b Blu-Ray, CD and DVD burner, the Digikam photo management tool, the Choqok social networking tool and the Amarok media player, all wrapped around the very latest KDE release.

Combine this with the bundled Flash player, proprietary drivers and a visually stunning desktop, and you have a great choice for users who have spent the last couple of years getting the most from the Windows File Manager, the Registry Editor and the Aero effects of the Windows 7 desktop.

PCLINUXOS: One of the few distributions to dramatically change the look of the default KDE desktop

Also consider: Mepis 8.5

4. The best distro for older Hardware: Puppy Linux 5.0

Linux's great strength is its flexibility. It runs on everything from mobile phones to space ships. As a result, it's extremely good at scaling, and makes a good choice for older hardware. Unlike some other operating systems, you won't have to resort to running older versions either. There are plenty of distributions that will take the latest software, the latest kernel and the latest drivers, and build them into a distribution tailored for older bits of kit.

The best we've found is Puppy. It's a diminutive, yet fully functional, operating system that runs from your system's memory for extra speed. Just burn the 128MB ISO to a CD and boot. What's most impressive about Puppy is that while it may be only be running from RAM, it still writes your changes back to the spare space on your CD or DVD boot media, getting the most from both possible worlds.

But the best thing about version 5 is that it now uses the same package repository as Ubuntu. This gives you immediate access to thousands of the most popular packages and means that, while your installation may start small, it's likely to grow into the perfect fit for whatever hardware combination you're using.

PUPPY: Pull out that old machine from the loft, Puppy Linux will turn it into a fully fledged 2010 Linux powehouse

Also consider: Slitaz

5. The best distro for your desktop: Linux Mint 9

Linux Mint, with its beautiful imagery, simple aesthetic, and 'go-do' attitude, gets our vote in a competitive field for the best Linux distribution for everyday desktop use. It may be based on Ubuntu, but it isn't afraid of challenging people expectations by combining the best pre-built tools and desktop environments with its own unique take on how a desktop should feel.

The default Gnome version is the perfect example. Gnome's top-bar is gone, leaving the lower status window as the only screen ornamentation. The launch menu gets the same treatment, replacing Gnome's trio of 'Applications', 'Places' and 'Administration' with the singular Mint Menu.

The new version is a solid upgrade, adding right-click support and transparency. If you use a lot of applications, this is a massive improvement over Gnome's default, and is easier to configure and modify. Alongside Ubuntu's prodigious packages, Mint includes quite a few of it own.

These are available through a new software manager that's better than Ubuntu's, thanks to the sporadic reviews and screenshots. You can also enable desktop effects, Compiz, and other bits of eye candy easily through a new desktop setting panel embedded within a custom Control Center application that's growing with each release. The end result is a distribution that stands on the shoulders of giants to become one the best contenders for your desktop.

MINT: Blows a breath of fresh air across a world dominated by brown, blue and purple

Also consider: Crunchbang

6. The best distro for netbooks: Ubuntu UNR 10.04

Great hardware compatibility, a refined GUI and a redesigned launch menu help make UNR our number one choice for netbooks

While Apple is slowly pulling the carpet out from underneath the netbook market, there's still great demand, and some great bargains to be had, for these diminutive PCs.

And despite a terrible start with distributions like Linpus and Xandros, Canonical's UNR really does hit the mark. It's quick, boots in around 20 seconds, and provided your hardware is listed as compatible, you get great battery life with suspend/resume and faultless wireless for the vast majority of Atom-based netbooks.

Canonical has also spent a great deal of effort redesigning the desktop. The borderless window managers lets you switch between Ubuntu applications that can make maximum use of the available screen resolution, and the Clutter-based launch menu gives you painless access to whatever you've got installed.

The new Epiphany messenger system also makes good sense on a netbook, rolling email, instant messaging, status updates and social networking into a single, invisible application.

It's also the platform that makes best use of Ubuntu's new on-scren notification system, informing you of low battery levels, new Tweets and incoming email in a pop-up, configurable window. All of which helps to make UNR feel far more functional and together than its closest competitor.

Also consider: MeeGo 1.0

7. The best distro for sys admins: Debian 5.0

Debian has become the paternal grandfather of the Linux new wave. Ubuntu, originally based on Debian, has inherited many of its strengths, including its package format, its breadth of packages, configuration files and locations.

And as a result, so has Ubuntu's own derivatives, including Mint, Crunchbang and gOS. This gives Debian a great advantage. It's already going to feel familiar to millions of people who have never used it. And for that reason, it's the perfect choice for system administrators who have used one of its derivatives.

But there's another, more important, reason. Major version Debian releases are generally years apart, and the software that makes the final cut has been tested to the point of destruction. The current version, Debian 5, is due for replacement later this summer, when version 6.0 should arrive.

It will build on what is already the perfect platform for your own tools, utilities and solutions, and enable you to install almost anything you need through the package manager. A task that Fedora can't quite compete with. Debian might not have the commercial backing of Fedora, but it's still enviably secure, bundling SELinux, the latest X server and desktops, and a new found ability to run as a Live CD, which is perfect for ad-hoc troubleshooting.

DEBIAN: Despite being part-named after the founder's girlfriend, Debian has matured into a stable, sensible and sober distribution for discerning Linux users

Also consider: Arch Linux

8. The best distro for the office: OpenSUSE 11.3

This is only the second distribution in our list to use the KDE desktop by default. The other is PCLinuxOS, which we've recommended for Windows migrants, and OpenSuse is chosen for a similar reason: the desktop is likely to feel most familiar in an office environment.

But where PCLinuxOS is a relatively small project with very little support, OpenSuse is the last great hope of Novell, the once dominant network-layer provider. As such, not only is it well supported at the desktop level, but also in the world of enterprise computing, where Novell competes with Red Hat Linux for server space.

This means that if your office systems are critical to your success, OpenSuse has both the pedigree and the functionality you'll need. It also helps that Novell makes a significant contribution to the OpenOffice.org suite of applications, which is likely to be the main application suite running in an office, alongside its own (paid-for) Microsoft Exchange interface and a close affiliation with Microsoft itself.

OpenSUSE 11.3 bundles the latest version of KDE, as well as Mono. This is the Microsoft .Net compatibility library that has recently been removed from both Fedora and Ubuntu, and its inclusion might be important if you're working in a cross-platform environment, and you need greater compatibility with Microsoft's products. Which is exactly what Novell wants you to think.

OPENSUSE: Thanks to strong links with Microsoft, OpenSUSE is a great option if your office needs to work with Office

Also consider: gOS

9. The best distro for Servers: CentOS 5.5

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is almost untouchable in the business market. It's one of the most profitable and well supported areas of the Linux ecosystem, and as you might expect, it's expensive. It's only available if you're willing to pay for the service, support and upgrades, at prices that put it out of reach of cash-strapped upstarts.

But RHEL is still open source, and while the binary packages might not be available, the source code for those packages has to be. Which is where CentOS comes in. It takes the source code and rebuilds RHEL in its own image, feature for feature, for each release. It gets close enough to be almost 100% compatible with third-party RHEL packages, and is the best choice for many online projects that can't stretch to a supported RHEL contract.

Version 5.5 was released in May, less than two months after the equivalent RHEL release. You get the same packages, the same fixes, the same Gnome desktop and applications. The only thing missing is support, but the CentOS community is very active, and always more than happy to help, making CentOS the only option for real-world critical performance at almost no cost.

GOS: The only real difference between CentOS and RHEL is the logo and desktop themes

Also consider: PC-BSD (we know this isn't strictly Linux, but it's a brilliant BSD distribution)

10. The best distro for multimedia: Ubuntu Studio

Linux has thousands of creative software titles, but the average distribution isn't always the best platform to use them. This is especially true of music software, which needs a specially configured kernel and a specific configuration of audio drivers to work at its best. Adjusting your everyday distribution to accommodate those changes isn't easy, which is why there are plenty of distributions that attempt to do the job for you.

The best is Ubuntu Studio. It's designed for music and audio, but you can install anything from the standard Ubuntu repositories. Thanks to the realtime kernel, audio latency is low, and you shouldn't have any problems running resource heavy applications like The Gimp loading a large image.

You won't have to hunt around for the best software either, as the developers have chosen the cream of creative applications to install by default, including audio, video and graphics editors and a customised desktop.

The latest version, for example, is a 1.7GB DVD image, rather than the CD size of Ubuntu, and installation from this can save you a lot of time. But the best thing about this distribution is that it includes a working 'Jack' configuration, a low-latency audio layer that can transform your Linux desktop into a virtual recording studio. A task that isn't very straightforward without a little help.

UBUNTU STUDIO: Forget the complexity of building a working music studio yourself. Just run Ubuntu Studio and start recording

Also consider: PureDyne

According to a report from Germany the Asus Eee Pad will run a tablet version of Android after switching to the mobile OS from Windows.

Netbooknews.de has suggested that the formerly Windows CE 7 Asus Eee EP101TC tablet is now sporting Android 'Froyo' 2.2 instead.

Details on the tablet are still thin on the ground, although the devices were announced at Computex in Taiwan.

2011 timeframe

The suggestion is that the 10 inch Eee EP101TC will be available, along with its 12 inch bigger brother, in early 2011.

The decision to move to Android is an interesting one on several levels.

One of the major plus points of the Eee Pad was that it would be a Windows machine, but moving to Google's Android would, of course, bring it closer in many ways to the Apple iPad.

The iPad runs on iOS4, very much a mobile operating system and used on the iPhone, while Android is most commonly used on smartphones.

Taking a closer look at the translation reveals the Asus Eee Pad will run on an Android Froyo 'variant' - likely Android 3.0, or Gingerbread.

This new version is designed for tablet screens like this, with a very high resolution, and a more powerful innards - and will be released at the end of the year, which tallies with the timescale suspected.

Android has an extensive app store too and the Google connection would make it attractive, but it does beg the question as to why Asus did not consider Google Chrome OS - which is scheduled to drop early 2011.

Microsoft has officially announced the public beta availability of service pack 1 for Windows 7.

Speaking at the Worldwide Partner conference, Microsoft's Tammi Reller confirmed that the beta of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was available to the public from today.

The service pack will bring only minor updates to Windows 7 consumer PCs, with Microsoft hoping that people have got the message about using Windows update.

But for businesses who have to roll software out over hundreds of machines and for manufacturers of the PCs, the arrival of a service pack is a key point in an operating system's life.

Windows Server 2008R2's service pack was also announced.

Pegged

Microsoft pegged Windows 7 SP1 for July a month ago, and it always seemed likely that the update would be announced during the Partner conference.

"I am quite pleased today to announce the public beta availability of service pack 1 both for Windows Server 2008R2 as well as Windows 7," said Reller.

"[For Windows 7 ] mostly it is minor updates that are available through Windows update."

The future of technology will be a smart cloud talking to smart devices, according to Microsoft's Steve Ballmer – who insists that people want powerful devices.

The debate over a simple access device with low-cost hardware – a so-called thin client – versus a more powerful device is still a huge topic of conversation as we move into a cloud computing era.

But Ballmer, speaking at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, says that with people seeking increasingly smartphones and things like TVs getting more connected and more 'computer like', the writing is on the wall.

Cloud smarts

"The cloud wants smarter devices," said Ballmer, "Many people say 'once I move to cloud I'm only going to use thin clients.

"I don't believe that at all. I don't believe that the cloud is a place where thin clients will take over, time and time again we have seen the advantage of the rich client.

"We see it today with PCs, with smartphones – and not only Microsoft smartphones but the people we compete with.

"We see it today in the television market, people are trying to bring devices with more intelligence down to the rich client.

"The world of tomorrow is a world of smart clouds talking to smart devices."

HTML5

Ballmer believes that HTML5, which can take advantage of a device's hardware, is an example of how the rich cloud will work.

"We and the people we compete with may disagree with whose smart client [you'll use]. You'll get a different answer from everybody but HTML5, in fact, which we very much embrace is a form of smart client technology.

"The whole notion is software comes down from the cloud and is executed locally.

"It may execute to a standards based infrastructure it may take more advantage of intelligence and capability of the client device but rich is the number one path forward."

There's a delightful story that does the rounds regarding one of the founding fathers of Linux.

It's said that during the early days of the opensource operating system's development, this fellow took to attending conferences in complete silence.

All attempts to communicate via means other than hand gestures were refused. Instead, he pointed at things.

Apocryphal or not, the tale remains highly relevant today. Our hero's beef was with the windows-based graphical interface metaphor and its knack for turning us into mouse-pointing morons.

Fast-forward a decade or two and astonishingly little has changed. The windows GUI has, you might say, proven to be extremely gluey.

The classic case study is Microsoft's eponymous Windows OS. Admittedly, early versions of Windows would seem pretty alien to today's users – but that's an illusion. Look past the clunky graphics and Windows 95 is largely identical even to Windows 7, Redmond's latest and greatest OS.

Icons, taskbar, the folder metaphor – all are essentially the same as they were 15 years ago. That's a long time in any industry, but it's an absolute eternity in information technology.

Along the way, Microsoft has flirted with a few interesting new features. Early betas of Vista included widespread use of virtual folders and the promise of a fully vectorised and hence scalable graphical interface, for instance. But in the end, the retail build of Vista was yet another reskin of Windows NT, just a bit prettier.

Linux and Apple's Macintosh operating systems have scarcely been any more innovative. More user-friendly and configurable? Perhaps. More polished? Certainly. But both remain firmly rooted in the window-juggling keyboard-and-mouse camp. Compared to the enormous advances made in computer hardware, it's all a bit bizarre.

Back in 1995, a single-core Pentium processor running at 100MHz or so was your lot. That's an in-order 3.1 million transistor chip with 8kB of cache memory, for goodness sake. Today, we're up to six cores, multiple GHz, over a billion transistors and cache pools nigh on double-digits in MB. If you think that's merely a matter of scale rather than a new paradigm per se, what about features such as virtualisation or hardware-accelerated 3D graphics?

That's to say nothing of the rapid rise of LCD monitors and more recently solid-state drives. By any sane metric, computer hardware has been in a constant state of revolution. It's utterly relentless. So, not to put too fine a point on it, what gives with GUIs?

The answer, frankly, is that I don't know. Over the years, I've visited several labs dedicated to advanced interface research, including those of Microsoft and Intel. I've even interviewed luminaries from the heyday of interface research, including some who worked at the fabled Xerox PARC lab in Palo Alto. The very people who invented the GUI, in other words.

In fact, I reckon I've spoken to all the right people. I've played with all the latest table-top, touchscreen human-machine interfaces. But I remain essentially clueless. Nothing I've seen or heard of is obviously the next big thing.

At this point, Apple's iPad inevitably hovers into view. A remarkable device in many ways, it's no good for data input or content creation and therefore doesn't offer a plausible alternative for desktop computing. However, what it does is underline just how painful the Windows interface is.

Once you've danced around a few of your favourite websites courtesy of the iPad's delightfully responsive screen, the scrolly-scrolly, pointy-clicky PC experience seems pretty laughable.

Even a good smartphone can make the PC feel clumsy; I often prefer reading emails on mine. Replying to them is out of the question, but as a viewing device it's very pleasant and provides temporary relief from what is becoming an overly familiar and oppressive desktop computing experience.

You could say the differences are largely arbitrary, but trawling emails on my phone feels like a break from work. That's got to say something about the tiredness of the windows metaphor.

Microsoft's mooted Courier device looks interesting, too. It might just combine some of the better aspects of mobile touch interfaces with something extra by way of casual content creation – at least it did until it was cancelled. If you haven't seen it in action already, I reckon the demo videos are still worth a Google.

I'm still not convinced touchscreens in any form are suitable for heavy-duty desktop computing. But then I don't claim to have the answers. All I know is that something new is long overdue. I'm tired of pointing at things.

What we know about Windows 8 is still incomplete and unofficial - garnered from job postings, rumours and the slides allegedly leaked by a software engineer at HP responsible for OEM relations (available through the Italian Windows Ette site).

The slides include plenty of marketing ideas rather than technical details, they show that Microsoft has its eye on what Apple is doing to make its operating systems so popular and they declare themselves a work in progress.

Not only is every page marked 'this is not a plan of record' but the opening discussion includes the line "reality: there are currently more ideas than there is time to implement them". That's especially true if Windows 8 release date is as soon as we think it might be.

Windows 8 release date

Windows 8, say the slides, will be available "for the holiday" - but not which one.

There's a timeline that doesn't have many dates; the one suggesting that the coding would begin in June is suspect when some sources say the M1 (milestone 1 build) is already done and there's what we assume is a typo that we'd correct to say the third Forum (rather than the second) would be in July (there are several points where the slides are incomplete or confusing; for instance a pointed reference to "creating great Dell + Windows Experiences" in a deck that otherwise tips the hat - and appears to have been intended for - HP).

It puts the first beta of IE9 in August, along with the shipping date for Windows Live wave 4 which fits other rumours and positions them just after the third Forum.

That makes the forums three-to five months apart; assuming an average of four months - and assuming the chart is to scale and that the dates don't slip - that puts Windows 8 beta release date a little before March 2011 and Windows 8 RTM shortly after July 2011 (a date suggested on the blog of a now-ex Microsoft employee which you can find preserved, with the boxed version following in the autumn - for the holiday).

We've said before that we expect Windows 8 in late 2011 or early 2012 and we don't expect Microsoft to talk about a date until the Milestone 3 build, which would be around November 2010 by these calculations.

The fact that Microsoft hasn't announced whether the Professional Developers conference (usually held in November and used to preview new versions of the OS) will happen this year makes this a little less likely and it could all be some months later.

There are several statistics (typical RAM, network connected TVs, mobile broadband penetration and 4G deployment) that talk about the specs that will be common - in 2012.

Interestingly, the timeline shows Windows Live Wave 5 with a short development cycle that finishes before Windows 8; that matches suggestions that Live will offer more cloud services for Windows 8.

Windows 8 tablets are coming

The leaked slides are aimed at PC manufacturers who are interested in new form factors - and in getting a share of the iPad market - so it's no surprise one of the key PC form factors is a 9" slate (which Microsoft, having obviously got the point of all those iPad ads, is calling a Lap PC), optimised for web and media, casual gaming, reading and sorting email, IM and social networking.

LAP PC: Is that the HP slate? Using the Lap PC to read a magazine and play a driving game

Microsoft promises big improvements to the on-screen keyboard: it will be "easily launched, text prediction is more accurate, the UI is more usable, and throughput is increased for everyone".

There's also the workhorse PC (which is also referred to as a laptop, because Microsoft is only talking about consumers and not business users) and the family hub (an all-in-one touchscreen system that can go in the kitchen or the living room as a media centre) which is for casual gaming, web and media as well as more demanding apps like organising and manipulating media.

Key to making a successful Windows tablet is apps with user interfaces that change depending on the form factor (touch and gestures instead of keyboard and mouse), but Microsoft is also looking at stereoscopic 3D and high colour displays and natural input that uses touch, voice, 3D gestures ("on the horizon"), and facial recognition.

3D SUPPORT: Windows 8 will play 3D movies and games, but don't ask Microsoft to pick its favourite format yet

Optimising "for smaller screens" will help netbook users as well; Windows 7 gets key dialog boxes to fit on a small screen but not all apps do.

Another app store

More than 30 app stores have launched in the last year and Microsoft isn't the only company copying Apple here; Intel has its own app store for Atom PCs. PC makers like the idea - apparently at the first forum they commented that it "can't happen soon enough".

With an app store, Microsoft hopes to attract more of the type of developers who are currently building smartphone apps and it wants them to create apps that make Windows the best place to use web apps (a job advert last October claimed "we will blend the best of the web and the rich client by creating a new model for modern web applications to rock on Windows".)

According to the slides, "Currently the indication is that app development will move to the Web. There is significant opportunity for Microsoft if hardware capabilities, and OS services and Web could be integrated into a hobbyist developer toolset."

The 'tailored experiences' Microsoft talks about for Windows 8 sound like smartphone apps; the checklist includes fast installation and updates for engaging, social, extensible, ad-supported or 'freemium' apps.

If smartphone-style apps sound too simple to be worthwhile on Windows, Microsoft wants apps to be extensible so you can share information between them - perhaps using a mix of simple apps together. It sounds like the 'mashups' that we were all going to be making online until it turned out you'd have to learn to program.

The Windows Store will be branded and optimised for each PC manufacturer. Your settings will follow you from PC to PC, as will your apps (although some slides refer to this as a possibility rather than a definite plan) - but you'd need an HP ID to log into the 'HP Store powered by Windows' and get your HP-specific apps. Microsoft doesn't plan to make money from the store; the slides call it "revenue neutral".

Windows 8 multimedia

Windows 8 will have better media playback and recording, but it will balance using hardware acceleration to save battery life and using the CPU when it gives a better result.

Audio will use hardware acceleration more because that does improve battery life. There will be post-processing to take out blur, noise and shakey video filmed on a phone or webcam, and support for more codecs including AVC and as-yet-undetermined 3D video codecs (stereoscopic3D support is coming, for games and for 3D movies in Media Center, but there are format issues).

Microsoft talks about sharing 'with nearby devices'; one way that will work is adding the Play To option currently in Windows Media Player to the browser for HTML 5 audio and video content, so you can play it on any device that supports DLNA, another is APIs to let other software do the same.

That will work with DRM content, if it's protected with DTCP-IP (digital transmission content protection over IP) or Microsoft's own PlayReady and hardware acceleration will speed up DRM decoding.

There's also a new 'remote display' option that will let you send your screen from a laptop to a large monitor (which will use DirectX hardware acceleration and the same multimonitor interface that's already in Windows 7, but for wireless displays as well, which could be an Internet-connected TV - Microsoft refers to 35% of TVs having network connectivity by 2012 and wonders whether to prioritise Internet TV over further improvements to broadcast TV).

The 'fundamentals' Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 8 include "a fast on/off experience, responsiveness, and a great level of reliability from the start".

The 'big three' are boot time, shutdown time and battery life ("Windows 8 PCs turn on fast, nearly instantly in some cases, and are ready to work without any long or unexpected delays") but Microsoft is also thinking about how long it takes to get things done - how long until you read your first email, see the home page in your browser or start playing media. PCs should feel like an appliance that's ready to use as soon as you turn on the power.

FASTER STARTUP: Windows 8 will show you what slows down startup and if removing an app you don't use improves it

Mobile PCs should resume 'instantly' from sleep (in under a second from S3 sleep), and booting up will be faster because of caching, with a boot layout prefetcher and the ReadyBoost cache persisting even when you reboot.

As only 9% of people currently use hibernate (which will work more quickly in Windows 8 because system information will be saved and compressed in parallel), Windows 8 will have a new Logoff and Hibernate combination that closes your apps like shutting the PC down does and refreshes your desktop like restarting does, but actually caches drivers, system services, devices and much of the core system the way hibernation does.

Turning the PC back on will take about half the time a cold boot needs (and the slides point out that on many PCs the power-on tests take longer than the Windows startup, so BIOS makers need to shape up).

It will be the default option but it won't be called Logoff and Hibernate; Microsoft is debating terms like Shutdown, Turn Off, Power Down and thinking through how the other options for turning the PC off will show up in the interface.

You'll be able to use an encrypting hard drive to boot Windows 8 and they'll integrate with BitLocker and third-party security apps.

Improving battery life will be based on some deep changes to the kernel; removing an interrupt in the kernel scheduler completely and removing more of the timers that interrupt Windows when it's trying to save power.

Windows 8 might get the same option for powering down unused areas of memory to save power that's on the cards for Windows Server, it will block disk reads and writes and some CPU access when you're not doing anything on your PC and PCI devices can turn off completely when they're not in use (assuming the drivers for specific devices support it).

Windows 7 stopped laptops waking up automatically when they're not plugged in; Windows 8 will get a new 'intelligent alarm' that can wake them up for things like virus scans, but only if they're plugged in.

OEMs will get new test tools that check the performance, reliability, security and Windows Logo compatibility of the PC, as well as measuring performance in Outlook and IE. And depending on whether partners have "concerns" about it, Microsoft might give the same tools to journalists, IT pros and users.

Help and support is back

In Windows XP the Help and Support centre was a branded hub of tools and links; in Windows 7 it's far more minimal. Windows 8 will go back to the branded experience, with integrated search for support forums run by your PC manufacturer but add the Windows 7 troubleshooters.

It will also link better with the Action Center, with tools that show more clearly what's happening on your PC; what apps are running, what resources are being used (like Task Manager showing which apps are using the most network bandwidth), how and when things have changed and what they can do about it. It will also include an Application Management tool that will let you find what apps are causing performance problems and adjust or remove them.

IMPROVED TASK MANAGER: Task manager will make it easier to see why an app might not be performing; here the Zune software is using all the network bandwidth to download podcasts, so video in the browser keeps pausing. We hope the white on black isn't the final design!

The Windows pre-boot recovery environment will be simpler, combining the safe mode and 'last known good' options into one interface. It will use what Microsoft calls 'superboot' to remove malware and rootkits

If you have to reset your PC, Windows 8 will restore "all the files settings and even the applications" although you'll have to go to the Windows Store to download apps and get a list of apps that didn't come from the store, so it's not clear how automatic this will actually be.

Devices matter (almost) as much as PCs

One of the reasons that Windows took off in the first place was working more easily with devices - in those days, printers. Support for a wide range of devices is one of the reasons it's hard to other OSes to challenge Windows but Microsoft would like to get hardware manufacturers to do more with the sensor platform and DeviceStage interface it introduced in Windows 7.

With Windows 8, Microsoft wants to see "PCs use location and sensors to enhance a rich array of premium experiences. Users are not burdened with cumbersome tasks that Windows can accomplish on its own. Users are neither annoyed or disturbed by the actions the PC takes. Instead, the PC's behaviour becomes integrated into users' routine workflows. Devices connect faster and work better on Windows 8 than on any other operating system."

The 'current thinking' is for Windows 8 to include Microsoft's own Wi-Fi location service Orion (which has 50-100m accuracy in North America and Western Europe but falls back to using the location associated with IP addresses elsewhere, which can be as bad as 25km).

Orion will be used in Windows Phone 7 (as well as Hawaii, a Microsoft Research project to build cloud-enabled mobile apps which refers to Orion as a 'prototype service'). Microsoft partnered with Navizon in March to use their Wi-Fi and mobile network location database but the slides claim that Orion is buying a bigger database than Navizon's 15 million access points, giving it 40 million compared to Google's 48 million (neither matches the 120 million Skyhook gives the iPhone).

Location will be available to the browser as well as to any app that's written to use it (music players as well as mapping tools), and web apps will get access to webcams.

Microsoft is emphasising the privacy aspect of location and webcam use, with mockups of how apps can ask for location and users can choose to deny it or only allow it once. And it's also asking PC manufacturers how many devices they plan to put GPS in and offering a Device Stage interface for using a PND like a Garmin nuvi as a GPS source for your PC.

LOCATION PRIVACY: Web apps can see your location and use your webcam – but you get to control that to protect your privacy

As we've said before, Device Stage will become the standard way you work with devices; Microsoft previewed the options you'll get with a featurephone and a webcam as well as GPS.

Along with GPS, Microsoft is expecting PCs to include infrared sensors as well as the ambient light sensors that are becoming common, and the accelerometers that are in tablets with rotating screens.

Put that together and the PC could know which way up it is, whether there's anyone in front of it - or near it and what the lighting is like in the room. So when you walk into the room your PC notices and wakes itself up so by the time you sit down the webcam is ready to recognise you - and no waiting or having to line your face up with a box on screen.

If this works, the camera will pick your face out of the room, like Photo Gallery finding a face in a picture (hopefully without thinking the face in a picture on the wall is you). When you walk away it goes back to sleep again.

We like the idea of rotation lock buttons on 'Lap PCs' so you can move them around to control a game without flipping he screen repeatedly; again, if you look away from the game, Microsoft envisages it pausing automatically and if you pass a slate to someone it will switch to their account automatically.

What's in: USB 3, Bluetooth hands free and headset profiles (mono and stereo audio).

What's out: Microsoft has no plans to support Bluetooth 3.0 + High Speed, 1394 might be deprecated and Microsoft seems to expect USB 2 ports to be phased out in favour of USB 3 within the lifetime of Windows 8.

What's under consideration: Bluetooth Low Energy (from Bluetooth 4.0). What's not mentioned: Intel LightPeak, although Microsoft does ask if it's missing anything on its list of connectivity.

Windows 8 will know who you are

With better ways to log in to your PC, like your face, Microsoft is considering giving Windows 8 a way to "securely store usernames and passwords, simplifying the online experience".

Your Windows account might connect more directly to the cloud than just having a Windows Live ID, logging into web sites on your behalf; there's very little detail on this but it could revive the CardSpace technology introduced in Vista but not widely adopted.

FACE LOGIN: Forget passwords; Windows 8 will use the webcam to find and recognise your face (probably)

Put it all together and you get some welcome improvements. It's impossible to say if Microsoft can come up with a simple enough programming system to appeal to the developers it wants to create Windows apps to rival Apple's App Store.

Until we see some code in action it's also hard to say if the 'instant on' and better battery life will transform the PC experience to compete with lightweight systems based on Android (or if Microsoft can deliver them) and make the PC scale from the tablet to the heavyweight systems we have today – which Windows has to do if it's going to stay the dominant PC OS.

Everything else here is incremental – as it would have to be if Microsoft really expects to release Windows 8 by 2011, but it's potentially disappointing if it comes in 2012 and there's nothing else exciting in Windows 8.

Many of us like to run more than one operating system on a single machine. It's a great way of experimenting with how the other half live, testing new distributions and even playing a few Windows-based games.

But dual and triple booting has always been considered something of a dark art. This is because it involves the double jeopardy of messing around with your disk partition tables and playing with a pre-installed operating system. If things go wrong, it can be a disaster. Or at least, that's the popular perception.

The reality is that dual booting needn't be a risk, and installation can be effortless. With the latest distributions, you might not even notice the process. All this means that if you've been put off by older installations and those old horror stories of things going wrong, it's time to try dual booting again, and our our aim is to demystify exactly what is happening and give you the confidence to delve into the world of dual boot.

But before we push off into the world of running Linux alongside Windows, and Linux alongside Linux, there are a couple of important considerations.

First, dual-booting still involves a lot of data shuffling, and while we've not seen the process go wrong for years, if your data is valuable, it's not worth the risk. If you've got anything on your system that you couldn't live without, make a copy of it now before it's too late.

Secondly, with multiple-boot systems, planning is everything. If you've got a blank system that you know you're going to install more than one operating system on to, you can save yourself a lot of time by working out how those systems are going to be arranged, how much space you'll need for each OS, and how you'd like them to be installed.

Partitioning your drive before you install the first operating system can save you tons of number crunching and the risk of repartitioning. If you do this, follow our partitioning guide, then install Windows first followed by your favourite Linux distribution.

Finally, as with all things Linux, the main thing is to enjoy the freedom of being able to dual boot, because Linux is the only mainstream operating system that actively encourages you to do so.

Install Ubuntu 10.04 alongside Windows with these three easy steps

1. First boot

There are two ways to dual boot with a Windows system preinstalled. The first is to add a new or spare hard drive to your system and use this for version of Linux you want to install. The second solution is to use the installer to automatically resize your Windows partition to make room for the new Linux one.

This works well, and it's the method we've used, but there is a slight risk that if anything goes wrong during the resizing process, you may lose all your date. Back up now! Insert the Ubuntu disc into your optical drive and reboot your machine.

If your system ignores the disc and jumps back to Windows, you'll need to either look for a BIOS boot menu key as soon as your computer starts, or enter the BIOS and change the boot order manually.

If the drive is successfully read Ubuntu presents the welcome screen, from where you can choose between running the CD in live mode, or proceeding directly to the installation. We chose the latter.

2. Get the balance right

You now need to answer a couple of standard pre-installation questions, including which time zone you're located in and the layout of your keyboard. After these you'll see the 'Prepare Disk Space' page. If your Windows installation has been detected properly, the first line on the page will explain that 'This computer has Windows on it', and the default option of 'Install them side by side' will be selected.

Keeping the options at their default value will create a dual-boot system. Use the divider in the horizontal bar at the bottom of the window to adjust the sizes of the Windows and the new Linux partition. The Ubuntu installer knows how much space is currently filled within the Windows partition, and it won't let you reduce the size of its partition to less that this.

Which partition you give the most space to depends on which you're going to use most, but we'd recommend at least 10GB for the Ubuntu installation, and much more than 10GB if you intend to make the Linux environment your main operating system.

3. Resize and migration

When you're happy with the division in space between the two operating systems, click on Forward. Resizing the Windows partition and creating new ones for Linux can take some time. In the background, Windows data is being moved into adjacent blocks of your hard drive before the partition table is rewritten to include the new Linux partitions and the resized Windows partition.

When the resize processed has finished, you'll see the user account settings page. Enter a username, password and a name for your computer and choose whether to log in manually. The next page is Ubuntu's Migration Assistant. This will attempt to import data from the Windows partition and move it to your new user account.

You can choose to import your bookmarks, wallpaper, avatar, music, images and documents, all of which will be placed in their corresponding home folders. Finally, click on Forward, read the overview and click on Install to create a new Ubuntu installation.

Don't be scared of carving up your hard disk – we know what we're doing

The biggest hurdle that most dual-booters have to overcome is their fear of partitioning. This is the process of splitting up your hard drive into chunks so that you can install more than one OS.

It's not so daunting if you're working with a new hard drive, as even if something goes wrong, you're not going to lose any data. But many people want to re-adjust an existing configuration to make space for a new one, and this is where things can go wrong.

This is why you should make a backup. It's also wiser to do all your partitioning before you get to the installation stage. You can then make a better judgment about how much space you need, and ensure that the drive is configured correctly before you reboot with the install disc.

Most distributions and installers use the same tool for partitioning: GParted. If you boot into the Ubuntu desktop from the CD by selecting the 'Try' option, you'll find GParted in the System > Administration menu.

You first need to select the drive you want to edit from the drop-down menu in the top-right. This will fill the graphical display with the layout of that drive and a list of partitions in the lower panel.

Each partition looks like a horizontal block, with the space used within that partition indicated by a block of colour. To resize a Windows partition, look for a block formatted as either NTFS or FAT32 and select it. Right-click on the partition and select 'Resize', and in the window that appears, use the arrow on the right to reduce the size of the Windows partition and free up space for new installation. Click on Apply to make the changes permanent.

Create a new partition

You should now have a large block of unallocated space. Right-click in this space and select 'New' to create a fresh partition. You should select ext4 as the filesystem and click on 'Add' to make the change permanent. You can do this as many times as you like, depending on how you want to configure your new system and the limitations of your hardware.

A SATA drive will only let you have a maximum of four partitions for example, and you will also need to create a small swap partition. When you come to install a Linux distro, make sure you select the manual partitioning option.

From there you will need to select one of your spare partitions and assign a mount point of /, as well selecting and assigning the swap partition. Your distribution will then be able to install the files to the correct place and add the appropriate boot menu entry for when it's time to reboot.

Make space for new partitions

1. Launch GParted

Boot into live CD mode from the Ubuntu disc and launch GParted from the Administration menu. Select the drive, right-click on the existing partition and select Resize. Use the small window to reduce the main partition.

2. Create partitions

In the newly released space, right-click and select New. Create one or two new large partitions alongside a smaller partition, which will be used as Linux swap space, then click on the 'tick' mark.

3. Use the partitions

After the partitions have been created, you can install a new distro. When you choose the 'Custom' partition option, you'll be able to use your new partitions by assigning them to the / mount point and swap space.

You can get the best of both worlds by running the two side by side

With Windows and Linux together, you'll be able to choose between them from the boot menu that appears when your machine restarts, and the next step is to help them both live together in harmony.

Despite Windows and Linux being two completely distinct operating system, where almost everything that can be different is different, there's a lot you can do to help the two work together.

The first problem that most users encounter with a dual boot system is file sharing. When you first boot into Linux from the dual-boot menu, it's likely that you'll need to access files within your Windows installation, and when you switch back to Windows, you'll probably want to be able to read the files that you were working with.

The reason why this is a problem is because both operating systems use different filesystems. This is the indexing system used to save and retrieve files to your storage medium, and without a bit of outside assistance, neither Linux nor Windows can read the other's formatting.

Sharing data

Fortunately, the people who build Linux distributions mostly provide this help for you, and this should mean that you'll be able to read Windows partitions from your new Linux installation without too much difficulty.

The easiest way to check is to launch the file manager and see if your Windows storage device is listed in the device panel list on the left. It's unlikely to be labelled clearly, and it might just be named after its size, but if you click on it you'll be able to see the files of a standard Windows installation.

Personal files can be found by clicking on Documents And Settings, followed by the username of the folder you want to access.

Linux can load and save many of the most common files in exactly the same way that Windows does. JPG images from digital cameras, for example, can be viewed with a simple double-click, and you'll find the same level of integrated support for text files, many music files and most open document formats.

Mounting your Linux partition from within Windows isn't quite so easy and not as convenient as the in-built ability you'll find in most Linux distributions. The best solution we can find is to download and install a Windows tool called Explore2fs.

Explore2fs

This is a Windows application that enables you to choose your Linux partitions from a drop-down list in the top-left of the window, and display their contents using an old-style Windows explorer view in the main window. This means you can drag and drop files to and from this window just as you would with any other directory on your Windows operating system.

You can find your personal files within a Linux installation by clicking on the Home directory followed by the folder named after your account name. Distributions will normally place files within either the Download directory, or the Desktop directory.

It's worth noting that Explore2fs is also quite capable of reading Linux-formatted USB, floppy and external drives.

Maximise efficiency by using the same software on both operating systems

If you want to ensure that the files you create within the Windows and Linux environments are equally compatible, you'll ideally need to use the same cross-platform applications on both.

If you use an office suite, for instance, using the free and open source OpenOffice.org suite instead of Microsoft Office will guarantee that files you save in Windows will look identical on Linux.

If you need to stick with Microsoft's tools on the Windows platform, OpenOffice.org will still do a good job at opening them and converting them within Linux, but you may run into problems with more complex documents, especially spreadsheets.

You can also mitigate any internet browsing pain by using either Firefox or Chrome. Both are cross-platform and share almost exactly the same features, enhancements and plugins. You should be able to recreate exactly the same web browsing environment from both.

Bookmarks can be synchronised across platforms using the XMarks add-on in Firefox, or through Chrome's ability to sync browsers through your Google account. The manual option is to use the bookmark browser in either application to export your lists of bookmarks and import into the other.

Email

It's the same strategy for email. Most people who have been using Windows for a while will be using a variant of Microsoft's Outlook email client, and downloading their email using the POP3 protocol.

While Linux-based applications like Evolution and Thunderbird claim to import email archives from Microsoft's widely used Outlook series of applications, we've had little success using them to import our email.

There are third-party tools, most notably the commandline tools you can find hidden within the readpst package, but your best option is usually to run Thunderbird from Windows at the same time as Outlook and use its import function to grab a copy of your email database while both applications are running. You could then use Thunderbird on your Linux installation to move the mail database from Windows to your home directory.

But the best option for email is to switch from using POP3, where email is downloaded and saved locally, to IMAP, where email is usually kept on a mail server and synchronised with your email client. In this way, both Outlook and Thunderbird can access the same server and the state of your email is preserved.

There's no reason to limit yourself to just one flavour of Linux

Running Linux alongside Windows isn't the only reason for dual booting. Many of us also like to run Linux alongside Linux, enabling us to try new distributions and keep old ones running without having to resort to a complete system overhaul.

You should also encounter far fewer problems with running Linux alongside Linux, as most distributions know how to recognise one of their own and will adapt accordingly. They should be able to sidestep any currently used partitions and neatly add themselves to any existing Grub menu configuration.

As with Windows, the biggest consideration is always going to be the arrangement of partitions on your hard drives, and where you're going to find the space for a new Linux installation. If you can allocate space for a new Linux partition before installing a new one, the process is going to be easier than wrestling with your new distribution's partition manager, if it has one.

You can also make sure that any data you need is backed up at the same time, because resizing partitions always has a degree of risk. But even if you've got the space organised before you install the new system, it still might be worth taking a look at the custom partition configuration.

Unlike most versions of Windows, Linux doesn't require a 'Primary' partition to be able to boot. This isn't going to be an issue if you only intend to run Linux, but if you ever do want to add Windows to your partition table, you should try to make sure that the partitions used by your Linux distributions are configured as 'Extended' rather than primary, as this will leave space should you wish to add Windows later on.

Swap and share

Normally, a standard Linux installation will require a minimum of two partitions – one for the root partition that holds all your files, and another smaller one that's used as a swap partition.

A swap partition is basically an overflow area that's used to cache larger items from your RAM, as and when your system needs to. As a result, it's not used when the distribution isn't running and you can safely share the same swap partition among several Linux installations.

But there's one important exception to this rule, and that's hibernation. This is the power-saving ability that some configurations have where you can put your machine into a save-state, where the contents of memory are written to the swap partition and restored when the machine is turned back on. This can be quicker than a fresh start, and your machine will be in exactly the same state you left it.

If you share the swap partition with another Linux installation, that copy of what's running will be lost in exactly the same way it would be if there were a power outage. With many distributions, this won't be an issue.

If you install Ubuntu 10.04 alongside the 9.10 release, for instance, the installer will inform you that it has detected the previous installation in the 'Prepare Disk Space' screen. This is very similar to the Windows dual-boot view. Use the horizontal slider in the partition strip at the bottom of the window to alter the space allocation on your drive between the two distros in just the same way as Windows resizing.

You might also notice that the two distributions will be sharing a single swap space, just as we created manually. After you click on Forward, the existing partition will then be resized accordingly, hopefully keeping your data intact.

Don't worry if you lose your boot menu or partition name – we can help…

All this messing around with partitions and boot blocks can cause problems. So it's worth remembering that even if things look bad, there is usually something you can do to recover lost data.

If you realise you've made a mistake in re-partitioning a drive before you get to the point where those partitions are formatted, for instance, there may be a way to save your data. When a new partition table is written to your drive, none of the data is affected; only the part of the disk that indicates which partitions are where. There are a few tools than be used to trawl through this data and can recognise and log the changes between your files and the previous partitions boundaries.

We've found the best tool for the job is called TestDisk, which can usually be installed through your distribution's package manager, and on the command line with apt-get install testdisk on Debian and Ubuntu systems. Typing sudo testdisk on the command line will launch the menu-driven utility, and you'll need to select the log option you need followed by Proceed on the partition you're interested in.

The tool will run its magic. Then select Write and give a few confirmations that you're happy with the potential hazards that the tools could reap upon your data. But with a bit of luck, a single reboot later should see your partition table restored, along with your dual-boot abilities.

Come back Grub!

Similarly, losing your Grub menu can feel equally catastrophic, but you should be able to restore your system to full working order. For pre-Grub 2 installation of around a year old, boot the machine off an older live CD, open a command line and type sudo grub.

This will drop you into the command line mode of the Grub boot loader, and from there you need to type find /boot/grub/stage1.

The returned output will show you the location of your boot partition, and you'll need to replace hd0 with your own drive in the following commands – root(hd0,0) and setup (hd). Finally, type quit and reboot your system. You should find Grub re-installed.

For Grub 2-based systems, you should be able to just boot off a live CD and type sudo update-grub to restore the boot loader and get your system running again. This should leave you with all bases covered.

You can create partitions with confidence, install Linux alongside Windows and other Linux installations, and troubleshoot all the most common problems if anything untoward should happen. You can now sit back and enjoy the benefits of your new multi-booting system.

When it comes to Mac OS X, the Services menu is where tumbleweed gathers. Since the early days of the operating system, the Services menu has been avoided by the majority of Mac users.

This is largely because of what used to be found there: a bewildering, ever-growing mess of options, sub-menus and shortcuts.

But with Snow Leopard, it got a major revamp, making it contextual and configurable. This guide provides you with insight into how you can make the most of Mac OS X services, which should enable you to save time and effort in various scenarios.

To be fair to Apple, the Services menu was always a pretty good idea. It houses a bunch of small actions, primarily for manipulating selected text and documents. For example, there are services for searching for a word in Dictionary and creating a new email or note from a selection, and these commands can have userdefinable keyboard shortcuts to provide you with even faster access.

With Snow Leopard, however, the system finally became usable. As noted, two things now make the Services menu useful.

First, the menu is now context-sensitive, so it only displays relevant options. In (increasingly rare) applications that don't support services, you see no options. If you've selected some text, you'll see quite a few choices in apps that support services; select an item in Finder and you'll see different choices.

Pre-Snow Leopard, you had a sea of grey options punctuated by the odd black (and therefore selectable) one, and so clearly the revamp is welcome.

The other major plus in Snow Leopard is that services can now be disabled and have userdefined shortcuts easily applied. This happens via the Keyboard pane in System Preferences, and we briefly show how this works in the tutorial.

How to make good use of the Services menu

1. Using the menu

The best way to find out about the Services menu is to use it. Open a website in Safari, select some text, and select Services from the Safari menu. You'll see options for what you can do.

Note: these might vary from Mac to Mac, depending on your installed apps.

2. Text-based services

Assuming you haven't amended default services settings, select New Email With Selection. Mail will open with your text in a new message, without you involving the clipboard.

The New Note With Selection option works the same way, but creates a new note.

3. Services shortcuts

In the previous step you might have noticed Make New Sticky Note has a keyboard shortcut: Shift+Command+Y.

Switch back to Safari. With your text still selected, press the keyboard shortcut. Stickies will open with a new note, containing the selected content.

4. Manage your services

Launch System Preferences and select Keyboard. Click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and select Services from the list of options in the left-hand pane.

In the scrolling pane to the right you'll now see all available services. Use checkboxes to turn services on and off.

5. Define a service shortcut

Keyboard shortcuts are easy to define. Scroll down to Look Up in Dictionary. Doubleclick to the right, near the scroll bar, and hold Ctrl+Command+D.

Select a word in TextEdit and use your shortcut – you'll see a pop-up definition. (Some apps launch Dictionary; others don't.)

6. Import a screen grab

The Services menu enables you to import a screenshot into Mac word processors such as Pages and TextEdit. Select Capture Selection from Screen and drag an outline.

The selection will be sent to your text editor. Other options can be selected in System Preferences.

7. Searching for content

In the Searching section of the pane mentioned in Steps 4 and 5, ensure Search With Google and Spotlight are active. You can then use Shift+Command+l and Shift+Command+F to search for a selected term in Google (via Safari) or Spotlight, respectively.

8. Use the contextual menu

Services should be available (when relevant) via the contextual menu (Ctrl- or rightclick to see it). If you don't see options, such as those mentioned in Steps 2 and 3, that's down to a Mac OS X bug.

Turn these services off and on again in System Preferences to fix it.

The grep command is a hugely powerful way to search through files. Like many command line utilities, once you're comfortable using it, you will discover that it is surprisingly fast and accurate.

However, many Linux users only bother to learn one or two grep options and then use them as a kind of one-size-fits-all approach to searching. A little time spent learning what grep can do will pay dividends – and there's nothing more satisfying than knowing exactly how to use a command to find something in a jiffy.

We'll start out with the basics and build up a repertoire of ways to use grep, before finishing with some things to check out if you're still hungry for more.

The examples that follow use the OpenBSD calendar files. These are already installed by default on Ubuntu, Mint, and even the Mac, along with many other distros.

However if you are a Fedora user, and you want to follow along, you can add them manually by selecting the System > Administration > Add/Remove Software option from your desktop. Search for calendar, check the box next to Reminder Utility and click Apply. Or, just run yum install calendar on the command line. Now for the important stuff.

Basic searches

The grep command looks for the following things:

1. Any options you might use to tailor your search.
2. The string (or pattern) you are looking for.
3. A location in which to search – either a file or a directory.

As a quick example, try:

grep first /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history

Let's examine exactly what's happening here. We've asked grep to find all instances of the string 'first' in the file calendar.history.

Bear in mind that grep is case sensitive – compare the different set of results you get if you run:

grep First /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history

If you want your search to return everything, regardless of capitalisation, use the -i option to ignore case.

grep -i first /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history

All good so far.

Now, what if you want to search in more than one file? There are many calendar files we might want to look in, so change the file path to a directory and then use the -r option so that grep searches recursively through all the files and subdirectories it finds under the specified directory:

grep -ir first /usr/share/calendar

Each line of output is now prefixed with the name of the file. Note that the order in which you add options after the '-' character does not matter.

Sometimes the examples above are exactly what you need; if you're looking for a letter you wrote to someone called Don Jenkins, and you know that it's somewhere in your home directory, you can probably find your file with:

grep -r Jenkins /home/faye

However, what if you run your grep command, but you don't get the results you expect, or you get so many matches that you can't tell one line from another?

Customise your output

Let's make it a bit easier to see what we're doing by turning on grep's highlighting option. This time we'll search for 'war'.

grep -ri --color=auto war /usr/share/calendar/

That's better, now you can see the actual string you are searching for (if you are running Linux Mint, highlighting is turned on by default).

BRIGHTEN YOUR SEARCH: Highlighting your grep output brightens your terminal and allows you to see the wood for the trees

Next, let's make sure we aren't picking up any substrings, since grep will list all matches even if they are part of another word. For example, our search for war is also picking up a line about Rod Stewart.

You can prevent this by requesting whole word matches only, with the -w option. This reduces the number of matches by two thirds. We know this because you can use grep to tally up instances, rather than report them directly, by adding the -c option:

grep -riwc war /usr/share/calendar

You can see that grep outputs the number of matches for each file it searches. If you were searching a single file, it would simply return a single number.

One last thing before we move on: if you want to search for more than one word, you need to use single quotes to retain the whitespace:

grep -ri 'civil war' /usr/share/calendar

That's all well and good, but when I search for something like "$20", it all goes horribly wrong. What's happening? OK, there's something else about grep that you need to know, and that's the fact that it's designed to match patterns with regular expressions.

SEARCH EXPRESSIONS: The $ sign is being interpreted here as part of a regular expression. One small adjustment and I can easily find the transactions we're looking for

This is a huge topic all of its own, but here's a heads-up. Characters like $*.?+ have their own special meaning, and enable you to search for complex and precise patterns in files. If you are searching for something that contains one of these special characters, you need to 'escape' it using a backslash directly before the character:

grep -ri \$20 /home/faye/statement.txt

If you don't do this, grep will interpret the character as more than just a literal, and the output you get may, or may not, return the results you were hoping for.

Finally, if you want to save a search, you can redirect your grep output into a file as follows:

grep -riw first /usr/share/calendar > /home/faye/search.txt

Beware that if you are saving the file in the same directory, or subdirectory, as the one in which you are recursively searching, you can end up stuck in a loop with grep returning output from the file it is creating. If you do this by accident, just Ctrl+C out of the loop, and make sure that you delete the output file, as it will be massive.

You'll find grep indispensable as you become a seasoned Linux user, but if you really want to master this command there are a couple of further steps you need to take.

Firstly, make use of the man page (press Q to exit once you've finished reading):

man grep

This will give you a detailed reference to all grep's options. You should also try using the help command:

grep --help

which is perfect for a quick reminder.

They can tell you how to show line numbers (brilliant for source files), display filenames only, print contextual lines above and below matches, and even return everything that doesn't match what you're searching for.

Second, if you can invest some time learning how to use regular expressions, you will reap the benefits tenfold – and then the grep world really will be your oyster.

Details of what to expect from Microsoft's Windows 8 have apparently been leaked by a blogger, with next generation connectivity, Kinect like webcam use and 'instant on' functionality headlining.

A blogger called Francisco Martin Garcia revealed the confidential details on his blog, with ever-reliable Neowin running the story and adding credibility to the contents.

So what can we expect from Windows 8? Some interesting functionality.

That includes USB 3.0, and Bluetooth 3.0 support, video recognition and 'instant on' booting – which will obviously be seen as a response to Google's Chrome OS.

One of Chrome OS' big selling points is the speed of boot-up, and Microsoft is keen to bring the functionality to Windows.

"Windows 8 PC's turn on fast, nearly instantly in some cases, and are ready to work without any long or unexpected delays," said the document

"When customers want to check e-mail, sports scores, or play media they love to reach for their PCs because they can get to what they want quickly."

Kinect

Another key addition will be a feature that apes Kinect – the next generation motion sensor video technology that is being brought to the Xbox 360 in the near future.

"Windows 8 could detect my presence and log me automatically," adds the document.

This latter nugget of information is intriguing – with person recognition one of the well-appreciated functions of Kinect.

Microsoft has long talked up the fact that Kinect tech could be brought to Windows – and there will now be hope that it will be arriving as soon as the next generation of the operating system.