USPS goes open-source with tracking system, Jul 10, 2009

If you’ve gone to USPS.com to track and confirm delivery of a letter or package, you’ve used the U.S. Postal Service’s Product Tracking System (PTS) and probably not known it. And you might not have noticed either when USPS moved the system to open source.

The company said it's targeting Chrome OS at netbooks. Interestingly, it's a market that it's set to enter, thanks to its Android mobile OS: Acer is already preparing an Android netbook and analysts are predicting the OS could do well in the low end of the netbook market.

Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" is the latest Linux Mint release based off of Ubuntu 9.04, and since I already briefly used Ubuntu 9.04 on this very same netbook, I expected it to perform at least the same, if not better. After all, the boot screen displays the phrase "from freedom came elegace" with the Linux Mint logo above it.

As a developer-driven phenomenon, much of the best open-source software ends up being written for other developers. For example, it's not surprising that Linux wins on the server (technical audience) but largely loses on the desktop (non-technical audience). Companies like Canonical and MindTouch can mitigate this by paying for usability design. But as an overall movement, it remains a weakness.

Ubuntu Release Manager Steve Langasek has announced that Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (code named Dapper Drake) Desktop Edition will reach its end-of-life on Tuesday the 14th of July, 2009.

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