OStatic

Apple Safari 4 beta borrows from Chrome and Firefox. The tabs on top layout is straight out of Google's Chrome browser.

Amazon must open the Kindle. O'Reilly maintains: Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition.

37 Signals doubts the free model. Free is not the future.

Red Hat and Citrix ratchet up open source virtualization relevancy. Both are taking aim at VMware.

New rival for Microsoft's SharePoint. Ingres and Alfresco have a software appliance that bundles the Ingres database with Alfresco's content management.

KDE 4.2: 10 tips for getting started. This version is loaded with new design concepts and features.?

One of the goals put forth for Ubuntu's Jaunty Jackalope at the last Developer Summit, the development of a unified, hands-off notification display, has finally made an appearance in the testing release, according to Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth.

The new notification display is designed to behave similarly regardless of desktop environment, and deliver notifications in an non-intrusive manner. An overview of what Shuttleworth calls attention-management guidelines is outlined on the Ubuntu wiki, describing how to design notifications that get the user's attention, inform, and then effortlessly get out of the way.

The development team working in this area is aware of at least 35 applications that need extra attention to work well with the new system, and its current focus is to address these issues and identify other applications with similar quirks.

Via OSNews comes word that the developers bringing Chrome to Linux have opted to use GTK over Qt as the browser's framework.

The development team's decision wasn't an easy one. The questions they addressed about Chrome's appearance and behavior, what end-users need and expect, and how to make it work smoothly on the Linux desktop are highly subjective, and in some cases, emotionally charged. The FAQ on the Chromium developer's site states that while both toolkits are capable of doing the job (WebKit handles most rendering with the exception of some form controls and dialogs), the team opted for GTK due to their level of familiarity with it.

Google's Summer of Code (SoC) Program has united students interested in open source with projects and mentors for several years now. The intiative's goal is to foster interest in open source software while exposing students to real-world software development processes. It's easy to see, based on how enthusiastically some projects embrace the annual event, that the students aren't the only ones who benefit from the program.

This week, both KDE and GNOME announced that development teams under their respective umbrellas wishing to submit project ideas and mentor students this summer were able to do so.

This also means interested students can get a sneak peek at potential projects and mentors. The list of projects (and mentors) won't be finalized until mid-March, but seeing as students only have two weeks to submit their applications, an advance project screening might prove helpful.

Zemanta helps write rich e-mails in Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can take advantage of this browser plug-in.

Behind the scenes of Microsoft's ongoing patent war against Linux. Microsoft has become friendlier to open source, but it continues a subversive fight against Linux.

21 of the best free Linux games. Here are full descriptions, in-depth feature summaries, reviews and more.

Time for Kindle to go open source. Amid the buzz over the launch of the new Amazon Kindle, nobody is bringing up an open source future for it.

Is that Windows 7 or KDE 4? A group of testers couldn't tell the difference.