I use my AIM instant-messaging account every day, but I can’t remember the last time I used the AIM software. Instead, I use iChat, Meebo, Imo.IM, and other third-party clients that work on AIM’s network. AIM’s app itself has long felt like software that goes all the way back to 1997 and has been getting more bloated ever since. Which it has.

Until now. AOL has launched a preview of an all-new AIM, and it has very little to do with the creaky old one except that it works on the same IM network. It’s so all-new that AOL even dumped its venerable “running man” stick-figure—who, let’s face it, screams “Old AOL that used to send us trial discs”—in favor of a hip little bot as its mascot.

Here are some of the major features of the Windows and Mac clients, most of which are new:

• The Windows and Mac versions sport a streamlined new paned interface that’s reminiscent of Twitter’s iPad version, with a vertical toolbar and panes that show your buddies and chats. It’s clean, straightforward, and nice.
• AIM now delivers IMs that people sent when you were offline and retains your entire IM history, giving it a real-time/non-real-time feel that’s vaguely reminiscent of Facebook messaging.
• It lets you do group chatting on the fly by IMing with multiple other people; they, too, will get the IMs whether or not they’re logged into AIM at the moment.
• It displays images and videos right inside a chat session’s word balloons.
• It has one-to-one video chat (but not group video chat like AOL’s AIM AV service.)
• It supports Facebook Chat and Google Talk as well as the AIM network.
• It’s dumped the Lifestream feature that tried to thread together all your status updates into one stream, but there are separate panes for Facebook and Twitter updates. For some reason the Twitter one isn’t working for at the moment, and these panes are only for incomingupdates, not your own ones.
• It’s got a (non-customizable) news section with content from AOL properties such as the Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch.

Besides the Windows and Mac clients—which are preview editions that haven’t replaced their predecessors yet—AOL is launching a new version of the browser-based AIM, plus new iPhone and Android apps. It doesn’t have any immediate plans to update the iPad app.

The single best thing about the new AIM isn’t any one feature: It’s that it finally feels like it was designed in the 21st century. I’m not sure whether I’ll stick with it, but I’m going to give it a try—and given AIM’s history in recent years, that’s an accomplishment in itself.

The Kindle was always an odd product name.Amazon used a verb to name a thing, raising the question: Kindle what? Now we have the answer: Kindle Fire.

The Kindle Fire is the first full-color, touch-screen Kindle. It’s available in the U.S. starting Monday for $199.

A price like that for what’s essentially a small iPad is bound to light the flames of desire this holiday season. I want to cool those down a bit, or some of you will buy the Fire and feel burned.

The Fire is the best Kindle yet, no doubt about it. It’s amazing that it costs half of what the first Kindle cost, just four years ago, yet does so much more than display books.

It’s more of an all-purpose computer than an e-reader. It shows movies, TV shows and Web pages. It does email and lets you play games. You’ll be lucky to get any reading done, with so many other things to do.

But it has to be weighed against the competition. When you do that, it becomes apparent just how spare Amazon had to keep the device to limbo under that $200 price level.

The Kindle’s design is even starker than the iPad’s. It’s a black monolith with only one button — the power switch — and two jacks, for headphones and power. All the controls are on the screen.

The screen measures 7 inches diagonally, a bit larger than the monochrome Kindles and a bit less than half the size of the iPad’s. The smaller size does make the Fire more portable than an iPad; it will fit nicely into a handbag, for instance.

The size of the screen wasn’t much of an issue on the monochrome Kindles because they were mainly good for showing text anyway. But the responsive color screen of the Fire opens up a lot of possibilities, such as showing magazine and comic-book pages.

Here, the small size of the screen gets in the way. It’s just too far from standard page sizes to do them justice. Magazine pages look tiny. Amazon has to jump through some hoops to make them readable, like including a mode that shows just the text. But flicking through a magazine is still a lot of work — and that’s one thing that should not be like work.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, launched last year, has the same problem — a nice color screen that’s too small. The iPad gets it right, for a few hundred dollars more.

While we’re on the subject of “too small,” let’s talk about the Fire’s memory. It has 8 gigabytes of storage. That’s enough for more books than you’ll ever read, but 10 movies will eat up the whole thing.

The cheapest iPad, which costs $499, has twice as much memory. The Nook Color, which costs $199, also has 8 gigabytes, but it comes with a slot for memory expansion with cheap cards. I don’t understand why the Fire doesn’t have a slot like that. The very first Kindle did. There’s no step-up model of the Fire with more memory.

Amazon says the Fire doesn’t need more memory because the company provides an online storage locker, where you can stuff all your music and other content. That works when you have Wi-Fi coverage, but not otherwise — the Fire doesn’t have the ability to use cellular networks, as some of the monochrome models do.

The Fire also lacks a camera and a microphone. Those aren’t things you’d expect in an e-reader (the Nook also lacks them). But they are standard features on tablets and are quite useful, particularly for videoconferencing. Their absence is forgivable at $199.

The color screen means, inevitably, that battery life suffers compared with e-readers that use power-sipping monochrome screens. Amazon puts the reading time at eight hours, compared with about 30 hours for the new $99 Kindle Touch, which has a monochrome, touch-sensitive screen and is designed just for reading.

The Fire’s software is based on Google Inc.’s Android software, used in smartphones and a bevy of tablets that compete with the iPad. None has really caught on, except to some extent the Nook Color. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says this because the other tablets lack an ecosystem of the kind Apple provides in iTunes: an integrated market for books, movies, music and applications.

Amazon has done a good job of setting up its own store. Buying and downloading books and movies is a quick process — as long as you’re buying them from Amazon.

People complain about how Apple dictates the terms of access to the iPhone and iPad, but Amazon’s Kindles have always been more restrictive, and the Fire is only a slight departure from that strategy.

You can’t buy copy-protected books from anyone but Amazon and expect to read them on the Fire, as you can on the iPad. Even the Nooks allow third-party books. Amazon achieves this control by operating its own app store, separate from the Android Market run by Google. Clever people will figure out a way to bypass this and install any app they want, but most people won’t want to bother.

To Amazon’s credit, it’s allowing the excellent Comixology comics app onto the Fire. That means you don’t have to buy your comics from Amazon, and you aren’t restricted to the Fire’s built-in (and inferior) comics browser. It’s also letting the apps for the Netflix and Hulu streaming services onto the device, in competition with Amazon’s own streaming service.

So the Fire does justice to fiction and movies, but the iPad does better in almost every way, particularly in the selection of apps, which is about 50 times greater than the Fire’s.

If the step up to $499 is too much, you might want to consider the Nook Tablet, which comes out Friday. At $249, it will be the same size as the Fire, but with twice the memory, plus a memory expansion slot. It won’t access all of Amazon’s goodies and apps, but it will have Netflix and Hulu. Take a look at it before jumping to the Fire.

Releasing less than two months after launch, EA and DICE are bringing new content to Battlefield 3, their heavy-hitting FPS designed to take on Modern Warfare 3. If the vanilla game just isn’t enough, get ready for some brand new content based on some returning favorite maps from Battlefield 2. Back to Karkand is going to be an exciting expansion for those who are beginning to tire of the vehicle-heavy combat of BF3.

For those who don’t know, Back to Karkand is a DLC pack that functions much like an expansion to the core game, with upcoming versions of Battlefield 3 including the new content in the marketing materials. Available this December, Back to Karkand is free to those who preordered the Limited Edition of Battlefield 3, and can be purchased by everyone else. It’s substantial, with four of the most popular maps from Battlefield 2 recreated with the Frostbite 2 Engine, ten new weapons, three new vehicles, one new mode, and five new achievements/trophies. That’s a solid amount of content to the entire multiplayer experience.

While the stages themselves should be familiar to those who played Battlefield 2, there is plenty new to the arenas, including more realistic and detailed destruction. Looking at the comparison shots between the original levels in Battlefield 2 and their remade versions in Battlefield 3, it’s impressive to see just how much better these stages really are.

Of the four levels – Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Wake Island, and Sharqi Peninsula – we were given time with just Strike of Karkand and Gulf of Oman. Strike of Karkand retains Battlefield 2’s urban environment with control points based linearly at a hotel, a city square, and a bazaar. Compared to many other multiplayer maps, this one felt a little smaller, taking less time to get from point to point. Compared to its original look, it’s much brighter and urban feeling than previous games.

Gulf of Oman, on the other hand, is a very open city space in the process of being developed. A freeway runs through the city, providing a solid division between the Russian and US forces. Surprisingly, there are some substantial vertical elements to this stage, from tall, five story buildings only partially completed to a massive crane sitting on top of a construction site control point. It takes a while to climb this crane, but it offers the best sniping I have seen, as well as a good chance to use the parachutes.

I found the new mode – Conquest Assault – to be a slight variation of traditional control point modes. A fusion between the Rush and Assault modes, the game starts with one team controlling each of the control points, and the other team must rush forward to steal those control points away. Each team has a different number of “tickets” spread out to keep the matches fair, with the tickets depleting only when all three control points are held. I found this mode to be a fun, slightly chaotic version of traditional Conquest that feels very similar to the other mode. People looking for a radically different change of pace might be disappointed.

All in all, I have to say that Back to Karkand is a substantial and fun addition to Battlefield 3. Sure, some might complain that it’s not truly new content, but having played it for myself, I can confirm that fans of Battlefield 3 are going to be pleased wit this new addition. Look out for it to release in December, with the PlayStation 3 getting a week of exclusivity.

The Internet is the largest copying machine ever invented, and if we take a look at the massive amounts of traffic file-sharing sites get, millions of people are using it to its full extent.

4shared, the largest English language file-sharing site, is serving 2.5 billion pageviews alone every month, and this number is increasing rapidly.

Below we have compiled a list of the top 10 largest (general purpose) file-sharing sites on the Internet, based on measurements by Google. What stands out immediately is that 8 of the 10 sites are related to cyberlockers, and only 2 are BitTorrent sites.

This picture is quite different from the landscape 5 years ago when BitTorrent sites dominated the file-sharing space. Early 2007 Mininova was the first BitTorrent site to earn a place among the top 100 most-visited sites on the Internet, and soon thereafter they were joined by The Pirate Bay.

In the years that followed BitTorrent sites continued to dominate, but in the background cyberlockers were catching up, and catching up fast. Where most BitTorrent sites were seeing moderate growth, several new cyberlockers saw their traffic surge. In the last year many cyberlocker sites have outgrown The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and other popular torrent sites.

Below is the full list of sites based on Google’s ranking. We have to note though that several site owners in this list told TorrentFreak that the monthly pageviews and unique visitors are hugely underestimated. The Pirate Bay for example claims 1,500,000,000 pageviews, which is more than double the Google estimate. Other sites report similar ‘downgrades,’ so overall the ranking would still hold.

There’s a lot of talk—and a lot of action—about data usage and data caps lately. Sorting through it all to get to the necessary information is becoming more and more difficult. Wireless carriers are changing their policies rapidly, and they’re doing so in ways that consumers often find frustrating and confusing.

The essential issue at hand is that while bandwidth costs are decreasing, network infrastructure is strained. Even a casual observer can surmise that smartphone use has escalated dramatically. Nielsen has quantified just how much, surveying over 65,000 cell phone lines to discover that smartphone users are consuming 89 percent more data every 30 days than they were last year.

Wireless carriers claim that they’re scrambling to compensate for this and are trying to control and recoup costs in ways large and small. AT&T is in the midst of a $39 billion bid to take over T-Mobile, in part, because it says that it’s in need of the spectrum that it would gain through the deal and could use to provide 4G service. The already obscure small print on cell phone plans is becoming harder and harder to decipher, yet it affects users even more. AT&T and Verizon offer paragraphs but no hard data on their plans to forcibly shrink data use amongst the top five percent of the heaviest data users on its networks.

Confused yet? It’s alright. We’re cutting through the noise to tell you exactly what you need to know, how to avoid getting charged overages, and ways to bring down your data use before your wireless carrier cuts your speed.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released on July 19 a report on consumer satisfaction with the internet, including social media. The report found that Facebook was the lowest ranked site of its kind.

The 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business report, the 12th of its kind, was produced in collaboration with analytics firm ForeSee Results. The report uses data from over 70,000 customers and measures satisfaction on a scale on 1-100.

This year in the category Internet Social Media the report scored three websites — Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube (Google) — plus “All Others”; MySpace was not included in this year’s report.

Of the sites measured, Wikipedia scored highest with 78, YouTube (Google) came in second place with 74, followed by social media websites under the category of All Others with a score of 67; social networking giant Facebook, meanwhile, came last with a score of 66.

An outline of the report is available on the website of the ACSI.

Whether customer dissatisfaction with Facebook will lead customers to switch to Google’s new social network Google+ remains to be seen; however, it does appear that customers are moving away from Facebook. This trend away from Facebook was indicated in a separate report released June 12 by Facebook monitoring site Inside Facebook, which found the amount of active monthly users on the social networking site to be declining throughout the North America and parts of Northern Europe.

Inside Facebook - http://www.insidefacebook.com/
ACSI - http://www.theacsi.org

T-Mobile just announced it will offer a new set of tiered unlimited plans, called Value plans, alongside their current offerings, which have been newly rebranded Classic plans. As silly as ‘tiered unlimited’ sounds, T-Mobile is aiming to eliminate overage charges through data throttling. So while customers will technically be able to use as much data as they want, they’ll only be able to download 2, 5 or 10GB per month at 4G and 3G speeds, depending on their plan. All data that exceeds that soft limit will only flow at 2G speeds, but won’t cost anything extra.

The new service is slated to roll out July 24, and it’s an interesting counterpoint to the limited data plans of AT&T and Verizon. In any of the carrier’s offerings, customers still decide how much baseline data they’ll need each month to set their standard monthly fee. However, its when you run out of data that the competition kicks in. AT&T and Verizon both charge $10 per GB, while T-Mobile (and now Virgin Mobile USA) just slow your downloads down.

For the user who occasionally goes over their plan’s limit, and will definitely need speed when they do, AT&T and Verizon’s tiered pricing models seems to make sense. In that case, having the carrier slam on the data brakes once you hit your limit would be a real pain. It’s unclear how T-Mobile might free up your data for the rest of the month, but it most likely involves changing the base monthly plan, rather than paying a flat fee for some extra data.

However, for the value conscious (and that’s what the plans are named for, after all), T-Mobile’s throttling system does guarantee zero overage charges. If data speed isn’t crucial towards the end of a particularly data-heavy month, the plans save users the hassle of trying to see how close to their sometimes-fickle data caps they’re coming.

Picking a Linux distribution isn’t always easy. It’s one of the most common hurdles for new and aspiring Linux users, deciding which distribution is going to be right for them. With so many to choose from, how do you pick the right one? Let’s start with an overview of the major Linux distros, and you’ll be ready to jump in right away.

You can find hundreds of Linux distributions, depending on what your needs are. For this scorecard, we’re focusing on desktop distributions that are fairly popular, well-supported, and have a reliable release history, and strong community. In last year’s scorecard, we started with seven distros — this year, we’ve narrowed the field to six distributions:

• Debian
• Fedora
• Linux Mint
• openSUSE
• Slackware
• Ubuntu

This isn’t to say that a distribution isn’t the bee’s knees if it’s not on the list — but we want to start with a manageable selection for new users. If you want to start at the easy end of the spectrum, we’ve got good choices for you — and if you want to get your hands dirty and learn all about Linux, we’ve got a few distros that meet those needs as well.

Which distribution is the best? None of them, or all of them. It’s really about what meets your needs. Some people want a distribution that’s really easy to use, and don’t care much about licensing. Some people choose a distribution because of the licensing, and ease of use isn’t really that important. You might only want to look at distributions that have KDE or GNOME as a desktop. It’s sort of like picking a restaurant, what makes one person happy is going to be a really bad experience for another person. I like spicy food, other folks can’t handle it or just don’t like it. What we’re doing here is letting you have a peek at what’s on the menu so you can decide where you’d like to start.

As with last year’s scorecard, the criteria for choosing distributions were the major Linux desktop distributions that have demonstrated longevity, a strong community, and stability. Naturally, that means the majority of Linux distributions aren’t listed here, so if your favorite didn’t make the cut — don’t take it personally. Do feel free to talk about your favorites in the comments, and offer other helpful suggestions for new Linux users.

Debian

To start with, let’s look at Debian. Debian is an entirely community developed Linux distribution with no single commercial backer. Many companies contribute to Debian in one way or another, but it’s a purely independent project. Debian has a large developer community, and is used as the base for Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and a number of other distributions. The distribution started in 1993, founded by Ian Murdock — but out of humble beginnings, it’s grown enormously.

Debian has a very developer-centric community, though the project has recently welcomed non-packaging contributors to explicitly acknowledge contributors who write documentation, create artwork, perform translations, and so on. Debian has a Social Contract that requires the project remain free, give back to the larger community, be open with problems, and to be guided by the needs of its users and the free software community.

Debian has an intense focus on technical excellence and shipping free software. With the most recent release, the Debian project rid its Linux kernel of all non-free firmware (“binary blobs”), though the project does continue to offer kernels with the firmware in the non-free repos. Debian does allow some non-free repositories, but they’re not “officially” part of Debian.

Debian’s release schedule is “when it’s ready,” and not before. The distribution ships at irregular intervals, though users don’t have to wait for stable releases to use the latest and greatest. Many Debian tend to run the testing or unstable branches. Testing (which will be the next stable release) and unstable have more current, sometimes bleeding-edge software — but are also for more experienced and adventurous users. You probably shouldn’t run Sid (unstable) unless you have a thirst for adventure and want to get some experience troubleshooting. This isn’t to say it breaks a lot, but when it does, it could be spectacular.

Debian stays close to upstream with its packages, and offers a minimum of customization and polishing. Compared to distributions like Ubuntu or openSUSE, Debian makes very few changes. This isn’t to sayno changes, but there’s minimal rebranding and such for Debian compared to some of the major distros that are trying to appeal to a less experienced audience.

You’ll get very little hand-holding with Debian. The installer is fairly complex when compared to other distros, and you will have to do much more configuration manually. Users need to make more decisions about which packages to install initially, will find fewer management tools, etc.

Debian is a distro of choice for users who want to install Linux on an older non-Intel machine. You can run the most recent stable release on x86, AMD64, ARM, PowerPC, Itanium, MIPS, SPARC, and IBM’s S/390. Note that Debian dropped support for PA-RISC and Alpha chips with the Debian 6.0 (“squeeze”) release.

Debian is also unique in our list because the project now offers a FreeBSD-based release as well, so if you want the Debian userland software with a BSD kernel, you can give it a shot. Not only does Debian support an enormous range of hardware, it also has an extremely large package selection. The packages in the stable release are likely to be a bit behind the upstream’s most recent release, but if you want to track new software you might want to run Debian testing or unstable.

Debian is an open project, but it doesn’t have as many resources to induct new contributors as Fedora, openSUSE, or Ubuntu. Overall, Debian is best-suited for more experienced Linux users or those who want to learn more about their systems. It’s also an ideal distribution for those who are dedicated to the ideals of free software. If you want a distribution that “just works,” you probably won’t enjoy Debian as much. But without Debian, many of the “just works” distros would not exist.

Fedora

The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat, but has a fairly diverse set of contributors outside the company as well. The project has its focus on innovation, freedom, and community contributions.

Fedora has a six-month release cycle, but releases often slip if they’re not up to quality standards — almost every release cycle has a few slips. But the release dates tend to be close enough to the schedule that users have a fairly good idea when the next release is going to be out. Tracking release dates can be important — the releases are only supported for about 13 months. Users who don’t want to upgrade frequently should choose another distribution. But if you want to ride the “cutting edge,” of software, Fedora is going to be an excellent choice. Fedora ships the latest software that’s stable, or (in some cases) almost stable. New technologies often debut in Fedora.

Fedora is fairly user friendly, but can have a few rough edges. It’s not always as polished, and sometimes Fedora ships software that’s brand-new — like with the Fedora 15 release that ships with GNOME 3.0, a new init system, and more. The next release is expected to default to the Btrfs filesystem, another technology that’s not been widely deployed. Part of shipping “cutting edge” software means that you may encounter some packages that are less than 100% stable, or may not be feature complete. It is worth noting that the quality of the distribution has improved greatly since the early days of Fedora. If you’re comfortable with computers and not afraid of the command line, Fedora is a good distro to consider.

If software licensing is important to you, Fedora is one of the top distributions to look at. The project only ships free software, and won’t ship media codecs or much else that’s not open source or might be legally encumbered. You may have to do some extra work to get MP3 or DVD support, but that’s part of the price of freedom.

Fedora takes software freedom very seriously, and makes its tools and infrastructure free as well. If you want to set up a Fedora derivative, it’s not hard to do. The project supports a number of spins (Fedora-based distros that differ from the default set of software), and has the tools for users to create their own. Whether you like GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, or another desktop, you’re good to go.

The management tools and installer are fairly good, though they assume some understanding of Linux. The management tools aren’t quite as comprehensive as openSUSE’s YaST, but you’ll be able to do most system administration using GUI tools if you choose to. You’ll also find a fair assortment of third-party packages and support for Fedora, including hosting providers that offer Fedora as an option if you want to extend your Fedora use to a hosted server.

The hardware support is more limited than Debian, though — so no Itanium or MIPS for you. If you have x86 or AMD64 based systems, though, you’re good.

Generally, Fedora is OK for new users, but might not be the best introductory Linux distribution. It’s great for experimenting with new technologies, and to see what’s coming in the future for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). If you’re a developer, Fedora is also a great choice. You can get involved in the Fedora community very easily, no matter what your skill set. The community is friendly and works hard on recruitment for new contributors.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint has undergone a lot of change in the last year. Historically, Mint has been based on Ubuntu (which is in turn based on Debian, of course). In September, the Mint folks introduced a Debian-based release in addition to the Ubuntu-based main release. What does that mean? Users who want to get the most polished and stable release should choose the main Mint release, which is based on Ubuntu. Users who want to use a “rolling release” distribution should look at the Debian version.

Whether you go with LMDE (the Debian version) or the usual Mint release, you’ll get an easy to use installer, slick package management tools, and out of the box support for MP3s, Flash, DVDs, etc.

Many of Mint’s packages come from Ubuntu, but the project does customize or provide its own packages for some software. You’ll also note that the latest Mint release (Mint 11) does not share Ubuntu’s default desktop — instead, Mint 11 sticks with GNOME 2.32 and is taking a more conservative approach to its desktop. Because of its Ubuntu heritage, Mint has decent third-party support. You’ll be able to install packages for Ubuntu on Mint most of the time with no problem.

The Ubuntu-based release also follows Ubuntu’s development cycle, but trails by a few months. So when Ubuntu 11.10 is released in October, for instance, you’ll see a final release of Mint 12 a few weeks afterwards. Support, likewise, follows Ubuntu’s schedule. You get 18 months of support for regular releases, and three years on the desktop for Long Term Support (LTS) releases. The LTS schedule is determined by Ubuntu, of course &mash; but there tends to be an LTS release about every two years. These are strongly recommended for folks who want to install Linux for friends and want to have a hassle-free support scenario.

The Debian-based release is a rolling release, which means that there are fewer releases but you should be able to track LMDE by installing just once. If you’re unsure which release to choose, go with the the standard release. Note that you can also grab a release that doesn’t include the multimedia support, if you’re worried about running afoul of the law with patent-encumbered codecs and such.

Mint has a friendly community, though contributing to Mint is not as easy as other distributions. The core team is small, and there’s not a major focus on contributing. However, the Mint folks say they’re willing to take contributions and dedicated contributors have launched Mint flavors based on KDE and LXDE.

Mint is x86 and AMD64 only — no support is forthcoming for PowerPC, SPARC, etc.

The bottom line on Mint? It’s a great distro to start with if you want a replacement for Windows and want a distribution that “just works” right after the install.

The openSUSE project is sponsored by Attachmate’s SUSE business unit, formerly part of Novell. (And formerly a standalone company based in Germany, but let’s not digress too much.) The sale of Novell last year seems to have left openSUSE unscathed as a project, but seems to have rallied the community a bit more around contributing to the distribution.

openSUSE is the foundation for SUSE Linux Enterprise. The tools used to develop openSUSE, such as the Open Build Service, are entirely open source and all development is done in the open. Note that the Open Build Service can be used to create packages for not just openSUSE, but other major distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu as well.

The project has decided to use KDE as the default desktop, though GNOME is also supposed to be equally supported. Both desktops receive a lot of attention, but the developers try to stick close to the upstream releases of GNOME and KDE in terms of features. If a feature is being developed by openSUSE folks for a project like GNOME or KDE, they’re most likely doing the development upstream rather than keeping the feature distribution-specific. (This is something that was learned after a few mistakes in developing GNOME features that weren’t upstreamed.)

openSUSE is limited to AMD64 and x86, though the Open Build Service can support other architectures. So far, though, there’s not been enough momentum to support an ARM distribution or keep PowerPC alive.

YaST, the system-wide management tool, is very comprehensive — but also a matter of taste. Some folks really don’t like YaST and find it too intrusive, others love it. openSUSE uses Zypper as its front-end for RPM management, rather than Yum. The package selection in the “official” repositories is not as extensive as Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora. However, the community repositories in the openSUSE Build Service are well stocked, and you can find quite a bit of software through PackMan.

The project ships only open source software by default, though you can find some firmware in the openSUSE kernels that you won’t find in Debian. It’s easy enough to get the restricted drivers for openSUSE, though, and instructions can be found easily to enable things like the Nvidia or ATI proprietary drivers.

Since last year’s scorecard, openSUSE has introduced the “Tumbleweed” distribution and a community effort called “Evergreen” has emerged to provide long-term support for openSUSE releases. Tumbleweed is a rolling release distribution that was kicked off by Greg Kroah-Hartman.

The idea for Tumbleweed is that it tracks stable software as it’s packaged, rather than unstable software. As an example, consider KDE. Historically you’d wait for a new release of openSUSE to get the latest version of KDE, or you’d run openSUSE Factory (the development branch) to get the latest KDE — which would include betas, release candidates, etc. Another way to get it would be to add a Build Service repository that tracks KDE development, but that can get confusing if you’re adding a repo for KDE, a repo for Firefox, etc. So the idea is that running Tumbleweed will get you the latest stable releases of KDE (or LibreOffice, or GNOME, etc.) as updates when they’re ready.

This is a fairly new project for openSUSE, but seems to be working out well so far — so openSUSE is a prime candidate for the stability conscious folks who can’t stand waiting the eight months between openSUSE releases to get the latest and greatest. You may still see a lag between the upstream release and a package update in Tumbleweed, but it won’t be as great as waiting for stable openSUSE releases.

Speaking of stable openSUSE releases, they come along every eight months. The current schedule calls for openSUSE 12.1 in November 2011, 12.2 in July 2012, and 12.3 in March 2013. The most recent release of openSUSE came out in March of this year, and was 11.4. If that doesn’t add up, version-wise, then take a gander at the rationale for the new naming scheme. Seems a bit more complicated to me, but then what’s really in a name anyway?

Bottom line, openSUSE is a good middle-of-the-road distribution that is well-polished, friendly to new users but also not off-putting to experienced Linux users. These days it’s very unusual to see sweeping changes from release to release in openSUSE — so if you value stability over novelty, openSUSE is a great choice.

Slackware

Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution and is still going strong. The project just released 13.37 (“leet”) earlier this year with lots of software updates, but very few changes in terms of the installer or management tools.

Slackware’s advantage? It stays true to its roots, and provides the most UNIX-like experience for a distribution. If you want to see what using Linux was like 10 years ago, without using a 10-year-old distro, then Slack should be at the very top of your list. Slackware is consistent and doesn’t adopt the newest technology just to do so — Slackware may stick with older software longer than other distros in the name of stability. It was the last major distro to adopt the 2.6 Linux kernel series, and though it’s a KDE-centric distro, it didn’t adopt KDE 4 as default until late 2009. And Slackware doesn’t ship GNOME at all, though some community projects have offered GNOME packages for Slackware.

Slackware development is sort of open, if you know where to look. Patrick Volkerding has been the driving force behind the distro since its inception in 1993, and does a lot of the work keeping up the distro. There’s a core team of contributors aside from Volkerding, but for the most part it’s his show. You can get involved building extra packages through Slackbuilds.org. For the most part, it’s not a big contributor distro. If you want to support the distribution, one of the best ways to do so is to buy a CD/DVD sets and/or Slackware attire. (Even though Slackware is not my full-time distro these days, I still purchase the CD sets and the occasional Slackware t-shirt.)

Slackware has had some limited support for non-x86 platforms in the past, but the official distribution is strictly x86 and AMD64. You might find offshoots that provide support for other hardware architectures, though — but they’re not part of the official project.

One thing that users should be aware of when looking at Slackware, it’s a little more challenging to get third-party support for Slackware. Proprietary software for Linux (like, say, Dropbox or VMware Workstation) may be a bit more difficult to get running on Slackware. You won’t find much support for third party hosting, either.

If you’re not comfortable working at the command line — and don’t want to be — Slackware isn’t the distro for you. Conversely, if you find Linux appealing because you can learn more about the operating system and how things work at a lower level, and want to customize the system to your heart’s content you should consider Slackware for sure.

Ubuntu

We went in alphabetical order, so if you were worried that we overlooked Ubuntu don’t fret. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop distribution around, has a strong community, and is very easy to install and use. The project is sponsored by Canonical, which offers the same distribution to its customers as you can download.

Prior to 11.04, the default desktop was the stock GNOME desktop. With the 11.04 release, Ubuntu has gone its own direction with the Unity shell that’s being developed by Canonical. The Ubuntu Project also offers alternative distros with KDE, Xfce, and LXDE desktops. The core package sets are the same, but the desktop and default software differ. The commercial focus, however, is strictly on GNOME and Unity.

Ubuntu draws heavily from Debian, but has a predictable release cycle. The project releases Ubuntu every April and October, with 18 months of support for the desktop release. Every two years (so far) the project has offered an LTS release that has three years of support on the desktop (and five years on the server).

For the most part, Ubuntu tends to be more conservative about including “cutting edge” software than Fedora. However, the Unity switchover was a fairly big change and there were still some rough edges on Unity with the 11.04 release. However, the 11.10 release is expected to be much more calm, and Unity should have matured quite a bit by then.

Ubuntu’s installer is really easy to use, and its software center is as friendly as anything you’ll find on Linux or other OSes. The project takes a moderate approach to software licensing, shipping some non-free firmware as part of the default distribution but not non-free codecs or whatnot. Users can add non-free repositories, however, and Canonical offers non-free commercial software through the Software Center.

Canonical also offers a service called Ubuntu One, which includes MP3s for sale and synchronization of files through a service similar to Dropbox, as well as synchronization of Tomboy notes and contacts. Some folks love the convenience of Canonical’s add-on services, others really don’t care for non-free services — so it’s up to you how you view this sort of thing.

The community is very friendly and the project makes a strong effort to recruit new contributors. If you want to contribute, they’ll put you to work. Ubuntu’s support and documentation are fairly good, though it can sometimes be difficult to find solutions to problems and it certainly doesn’t have the same level of documentation as enterprise releases like RHEL. Google searches often turn up common questions that have no answers or responses on the forums. (That does happen with other distros as well.) You’ll find plenty of third-party support for Ubuntu as well, and odds are if something is packaged for Linux, it’s packaged for Ubuntu first and foremost.

The bottom line for Ubuntu: It’s a solid distribution that has earned a reputation for being user-friendly. Experienced Linux users sometimes find Ubuntu a bit too confining, but if you’re new to Linux Ubuntu is a great place to start.

Scorecard and Final Verdicts

Remember, you can’t make a wrong choice. Start with the distro that looks most appealing, and then try out a different one if that one isn’t to your tastes. Have suggestions for other users? Let us know what you think in the comments! There’s a lot of Linux to choose from, and new users are looking for guidance every day. Let them know what’s great about your favorite distro and how friendly the Linux community is.

Samuel L. Jackson is taking on something even scarier than snakes on a motherf**king plane: Bedtime.

In a stroke of casting genius, publisher Audible landed the movie star — famed for his poetic dexterity with profanity — as its narrator for the audiobook version of “Go the F**k to Sleep,” the brash pseudo-children’s book that’s burning up the bestseller charts.

Audible Inc. released the 6-minute recording Tuesday as a free download. In its first 48 hours, the audiobook racked up 160,000 downloads.

“We’ve also had a huge spike in downloads of our Audible iPhone and Android apps — 140% rise in demand for Audible iPhone app and 160% rise for our Android app — in the same 48 hour period,” said Audible senior editor Matthew Thornton.

“Go the F**k to Sleep” publisher Akashic describes the book as “a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest.”

Frustrated parents embraced the humor in a big way — even before Jackson lent his voice to the book,“Go the F**k to Sleep” was a hit.

The book, written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortés, originally was slated for a fall release. Then the PDF version of the book was leaked and went viral. It became so popular that Akashic moved the release dates for the print book and e-book up to June 14.

As of midday Friday, the print book was the bestselling title on Amazon, which owns Audible. The film rights already have been sold to Fox 2000.

Jackson’s recording brought “Go the F**k to Sleep” even more buzz. On Thursday night, he appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman” to read an excerpt.

His dramatic interpretation drew lavish praise from reviewers.

“This is the best thing I have ever heard in my life,” one commenter wrote. “War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserables have nothing on Go The F-ck to Sleep. The book is made only a million times better by the narrative by Samuel L. Jackson. I laughed, I cried, mostly at the same time.”

A reader named Catherine wrote: “I love how Samuel L. Jackson starts off like as loving father and then goes all ‘Pulp Fiction’ on the child! He is the perfect narrator for this perfect book – I ordered 2 copies!”

Amid the mostly four- and five-star reviews, however, a few one-star raters were less amused: “Disgusting. How many times can you hear F…K in 6 minutes? This so called humorous book has absolutely no saving grace and was a total waste of time. Just forget this one, it is coarse and rude.”

Apparently, cord-cutting may be real after all, according to a new study released by The Diffusion Group.

Despite countless real-world examples showing that television doesn’t seem to be negatively affected by online VoD services, Diffusion’s new study apparently finds 32% of Netflix users plan to cut down on – or cut out entirely – their cable plans as a result of the availability of streaming content, up from 16% last year.

Diffusion even feels that it can explain away the discrepancy between its findings and evidence to the contrary by saying that cutting back on cable packages isn’t cord-cutting, exactly, but cord-shaving, and therefore wouldn’t be reflected in subscription figures by cable companies.

Off-the-record, some cable execs will admit to customers switching to cheaper, less expansive packages, so perhaps this is the future of television: Smaller, reliant on DVD aftersales, but never quite going away entirely.

Well, until someone works out how to make Hulu work properly and with all of the broadcast networks’ shows appearing on a timely basis, of course.

(via All Things D)