OStatic

Samsung asks if the i7500 is the Android you have been looking for. The company's Android phone has a touch screen, built-in GPS, WiFi support, a 5-megapixel camera, and 8GB of internal memory.

Report: First Android Netbook to cost $250. The Alpha 680, designed by Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies, is going through final testing now.

Ubuntu-Studio 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope screenshot tour. It's a multimedia-geared derivative of Ubuntu.

Desktop Linux: Why it may have lost its chance. After 18 years, Linux is still struggling to gain a foothold on the business desktop.

The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems. Here's a slideshow on nearly 30 years of Sun history.

I was never one for cryptozoological taxidermic creations -- you won't find mermonkeys or crocoducks on display in my home. I have, however, for the last few weeks, been hiding a jackalope in my laptop bag. He was an experimental little guy, but the folks at Canonical and the vast community behind Ubuntu have completed the necessary gene splicing and DNA alterations and soon -- very soon -- the final, stable release of Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope) will be let loose into the wild.

What's new this time around? How does it all work? And for the wilder types, where locally can you attend a Jaunty Jackalope release party?

Over at ComputerWorld, Seth Weintraub waxes poetic about Microsoft's decision to offer a Windows 7 Starter edition to keep its presence strong in the netbook arena, and why this is a huge advantage for Google's Linux-based Android.

Windows 7 Starter edition is designed to run no more than three applications simultaneously -- purchasing an upgrade allows users to run, presumably, as many apps as their netbooks can handle at one time. Now, three concurrent applications at a shot might be sufficient for a number of users; it might be all that some netbooks can handle, depending on the applications and system resources running in the background. Microsoft isn't hiding the fact it is experimenting with a limited Starter, and hopefully netbook manufacturers will also make buyers aware of this. But awareness and being almost sufficient in even most cases is irrelevant. It's the concept that there is a limit, and purchasing an upgrade for functionality that most won't need every day (but when it's needed, it's really needed) that will make netbooks running alternative operating systems increasingly attractive. It's an advantage not only for Android, but any Linux distribution netbook builders optimize for their hardware.

Google Chrome update offers tab micromanagement options. The 2.0.174.0 update released Thursday adds features such as the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page.

The five best, new things in Ubuntu Linux 9.04. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols cites his favorite additions.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth: Oracle is a litmus test for Linux, Ubuntu. Here's what he has to say about the lack of Oracle certification for 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Common public license (CPL) merged into Eclipse. The two licenses were already similar, so a merger made sense.

Zamzar now converts text to speech. This free application was already useful for file conversions, and now you can take advantage of text-to-speech features for documents, PDFs and more.

Late yesterday afternoon, Canonical let loose the release candidate disk images for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Canonical warns that while a release candidate is about as stable as one can get with a testing release, it is still a testing release, and users should hold off installing Jaunty on essential systems.

The good news, of course, is that those clamoring to install Jaunty on their essential systems haven't long to wait. The finalized, stable Jaunty release will appear on mirrors worldwide April 23rd.

ITPro is reporting that System76, a company specializing in building Linux desktop, server and notebook systems saw a 61% revenue increase over the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008.

The revenue breakdowns aren't readily available (System76 is privately held, so public earnings reports aren't required), but the figure's significance stretches beyond the bottom line. It obviously suggests impressive growth for the company, and it isn't an unreasonable leap to imagine that other OEMS focusing on Linux-powered machines are seeing some degree of growth as well. The recession undoubtedly plays a role in this growth. But how much does it factor in really?

A short piece on Xbit Labs directed me to an interesting post by Chris Kenyon, Canonical's Director of Business Development. In this piece, Kenyon tackles another absolutely critical factor in marketing Linux netbooks (I discussed a few of the others on Tuesday) -- offering quality engineered hardware and carefully configured software that's ready to go, right out of the box.

Kenyon's post offers advice and points to consider to OEMs, consumers, and yes, even Microsoft. It's sound, it's reasoned -- perhaps to the point one wonders why it needed to be said -- and it paints an encouraging picture of the future for Linux netbooks.