The project, which was announced on a Mozilla forum, aims to provide a direct competitor to Android on these devices now that Nokia and Intel’s tablet OS, Meego is being discontinued.

In some ways the platform will be a hybrid of two Google operating systems, Android and Chrome OS, in that Mozilla want to harness their Gecko rendering engine from their Firefox browser and Thunderbird email package, to run applications that are web-centered but that run independently of the need of a browser.

This isn’t a new concept, Adobe’s AIR platform has been doing this for some considerable time now, but Mozilla’s offering will aim to bring HTML and other web apps out of the browser.  While we can be certain they are not the only technology company headed this way, they’re certainly the first to announce it.

The project is currently in its “infancy”, but the core building blocks of the OS already exist.  Mozilla began publicising the existence of their new OS to try and get experts from within their user communities to help and contribute.  This will make it the first properly open-source mobile OS.

While Google’s Android is powering ahead in popularity it has been plagued by security and malware issues.  Mozilla’s Firefox browser has a tremendous reputation when it comes to security, and as such the goodwill carried with the Mozilla name will inevitably give any new product form the company a huge boost both from hardware vendors and the public at large.

The ultimate goal of the project is “breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world” and making an open source operating system “the way we think open source should be done.”

The tablet operating system market is already very crowded with products already available from Apple, Google, HP and RIM dominating the space and Microsoft releasing their Windows 8 OS next year.  Some people may say therefore that another OS may confuse matters and consumers even more or even dilute the market to the point where any new OS release becomes pointless.

Anybody who lived through the home computing revolution of the 1980′s will be familiar with how successful multiple consumer operating systems can be when made available side by side.  Back then, companies such as Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore and Texas Instruments were among literally dozens of companies all releasing products with their own proprietary operating systems.

The difference between then and what we have now is the the communications technologies that bind devices together have become standardised.  Therefore anything that you could ever want to do on one tablet is possible on all the others.

This means that the operating system itself is becoming less of an issue as it essentially disappears, to an extent anyway, into the background and the focus is placed on the content that users want to access and the web pages they visit.  This was what Microsoft said they want to achieve with Windows Phone, and many people will argue they were successful in bringing the content to the front and centre of the user experience.

How successful Mozilla are in this space though depends on a variety of factors.  These include the amount of time it will take to develop the OS and what their competitors do in the mean time.  Mozilla have a very fast development process, with a new version of Firefox out every three months.  This is aided by a strong user community of programmers and developers.  What they don’t have though is money and we can see from operating systems such as Google’s Chrome OS that development of a mobile OS can be a complicated and time-consuming process.

We’ll bring you all the latest updates on Mozilla’s entry into the tablet space here at gHacks.

It’s no big secret that Google has been preparing a streamlined, Chrome-esque operating system to challenge Microsoft’s double decade monopoly. They claim it will be faster, more powerful, and less expensive (read: free) than anything Microsoft has ever put out. Most interesting of all, it appears Google is prepared to fight a two front war: first, with its open source Chromium OS, downloadable by individuals for any use, and second, Chrome OS, to be shipped on-board select tablets and mobile devices.

Attacking the PC market is a serious undertaking, but Microsoft has been working very hard lately to become more competitive in the handheld realm. They are gaining ground on Apple and are holding back Android, so surely things are looking up for them, right?

That might have been true a few days ago, before HP announced its plans to expand usage of its lightweight operating system, webOS. In the past the company had limited the operating system’s applications to its own products. Soon things may be very different, in ways that don’t well suit Microsoft’s interests.

In an interview with Reuters, HP CEO Leo Apotheker let slip that “it’s not correct to believe that [webOS] should only be on HP devices.” And the company seems to believe him. Rumor has it that a fresh batch of PCs will roll off the HP assembly line with the operating system dual-booting alongside Windows.

Ok, so HP has plans to start pushing its OS against those of others, namely Microsoft. So what?

For starters, webOS is widely respected for combining the three golden words of contemporary tech: cloud, social, and mobile. While Windows may have been the gold standard of the past, it hasn’t made strong moves toward cloud computing (although we will see what happens when 8 actually comes out). The future of social media sits on the cloud, and many aspects of mobile usage rely on consumers’ love of social media.

Keep in mind that HP isn’t even the main challenger. Google owns mobile, is moving toward cloud and is getting pretty chummy with social giants like Facebook after failing to put up a challenger to face them. Apple is holding onto its piece of the pie, and tablet and netbook manufacturers are still interested in the prospects of linux-based operating systems.

So where does all this leave Microsoft and their upcoming Windows 8? Desperately trying to find its place in an evolving tech world. Things were so much more simple when they were just the great big bad guy…

Some of you where pretty interested in the topic and there where a few debates in the comments over which was the best, so I’ve decided I’ll share a list of every online OS that I have found up to now.

Enjoy.

Since last week I have discovered one Webtop which is worthy of a special mention- iCloud. You’ll need an invite to access the iCloud beta, but apply and it’s likely you’ll receive it within a couple hours.iCloud comes with a UI that is well designed and varies a little more then the other Windows clones. It also comes with some very handy applications, check it out.

G.ho.st
DesktopTwo
myGoya
Ulteo
GlideOS
Jooce
iCUBE
youOS
Starforce
Purefect Desktop
ZimDesk
Online Operating System
CosmoPOD
Webdesk.in
MyBooo
goPC
Psych Desktop
AstranOS
SSOE

If I have missed any let me know.

Industry sources however claim that Windows 7, the successor of Windows Vista, will make its debut in the second half of 2009 which is only 18-24 months away from now. The Milestone 1 of Windows 7 has already been send out to key partners for validation purposes and a revised road map suggests a release in 2009.

I’m a bit confused by this move because I do not think that the world needs yet another Microsoft operating system. Most users are perfectly happy with Windows XP and do not want to change that operating system unless they have to. Microsoft’s plan to lure customers into using Windows Vista by making certain features Vista only, like DirectX10, was not that successful either. Mainly because DirectX 10 games are not produced on such a large scale yet.

There are not many information publicly available detailing new features that would make the new operating system a must have purchase, TG Daily puts it this way:

There are very few pieces of information about Windows 7 and the features it will bring available at this time. So far, we have heard only about new touchscreen features as well as – and probably most interesting – MinWin, a much smaller kernel of the operating system that takes up only 40 MB of memory.

Why would I change to yet another MS operating system ? I would only do so if it would offer something that would make a huge difference. This could be performance or security related for instance. When was support for Windows XP going to end ? In 2014 ?

What do you expect of a new operating system and what would make you change to the new one ?

I started with the installation of Windows Vista because other users told me that this would be the best way to install both systems. Grub, the Linux bootloader would be installed last this way and pick up all three operating systems, exactly the way I wanted it to be. During the installation of Windows Vista I realized that Vista is still not able to read my SATA drives without additonal drivers. I had this problem back when I was installing Windows XP and hoped that it would be solved in Vista.

I had to go back to Windows XP and download the SATA drivers from my motherboard manufacturer Asus and put them on a CD. I found out later that it would have been possible to add them to a hard drive or usb device as well. I had to load the drivers and was able to continue with the installation which took very long, and I mean long. Seemed like an hour before Vista was installed. Had not much time to play around because I still needed to install Kubuntu as well on the same drive.

I was prepared and created a Kubuntu CD before the Vista installation. A nice feature is that it functions as a live cd and installation cd at once. It booted fast into the gui and I had the chance to play around a little bit. I was looking for gparted, the partitioner that I intended to use but it was not there. Kubuntu had QTParted installed, I guess it does not make much of a difference.

I created a EXT3 partition of 30 gigabytes and a Linux Swap partition of 1 gigabyte. Kubuntu has a installation shortcut on its desktop, I double-clicked it and the installation started. Unfortunately the manual selection of the partitions failed and I had to choose that the partition would be automatically resized.

I’m still waiting that the resizing of the partition finds an end and the installation of Kubuntu can begin. Would say it took almost an hour until now and there is no end in sight because I do not see a progress bar or a clock that is running down.

If everything works out fine I will begin tomorrow to play around with Vista and Kubuntu and write about my first day experience with both systems. If you know of a solution for the problem that I can’t install Kubuntu manually let me know please.

Imagine you want to buy a new computer and you have the choice between a cheaper one with Vista Home Basic and a more expensive one with Vista Home Premium. Which one would you take ? Let me walk you through the different Windows Vista editions and explain how they compare in functionality and pricing.

Windows Vista Differences:

It all starts with Windows Vista Starter which will not be sold in North America and the European Union but in countries like Russia and Brazil. This one could also be named Vista light because it has a physical memory limit of 256 megabytes and support for older cpu’s only. If you travel much and see a cheap Windows Vista Starter don’t buy it, it is useless for high-end computers.

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic and Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium are the editions that will most likely be added if you buy a new computer. Home Basic is mostly for users who do not need advanced media capabilities such as HDTV support or DVD authoring. Home Pro does support this which makes up the biggest difference.

Home Basic has a limit of 8 GB of physical memory, Home Pro of 16 GB.

The next two in line are Microsoft Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise. Vista Business replaces Windows Xp Professional and includes all features of Vista Home Premium with the exception of Windows Media Center and related features such as Parental Controls. Adds features as fax support and IIS-web server.

Vista Enterprise will not be available on the free market, it has the same features as Microsoft Windows Vista Business and adds a multilingual user interface, drive encryption and Unix support.

Last but not least there is Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate which combines Windows Vista Home Premium with Windows Vista Enterprise and ships with additional extras like a game performance tweaker.

You may purchase Vista Home Basic N and Business N in the European Union which is basically the same as the normal Vista editons but ships without the media player because of anti-trust laws.

The difference in pricing is 200$ between Vista Home Basic and Vista Ultimate. I personally think that this many editions will be confusing for the customers. I sometimes work tech support and they have troubles naming the current operating system they use – how on earth will they know the differences between all those Vista editions ?

The biggest advantage of Windows compared to Linux was in my opinion the ease of choosing the operating system. If you wanted Windows you went to a store and bought it. (XP Pro and Home changed this a bit already). With Linux you have millions of different distributions and beginners simply do not know which to choose. The exactly same problem will arise with Windows Vista.

The most common questions in the coming months on the internet will probably be ” does Vista Edition X support Y, will I be able to use Z on Edition A ?”

The site bellevuelinux lists 25 reasons to convert to Linux and they are doing a good job. What they are saying is basically that its free and more secure. I agree with most of their reasons but some do not make lots of sense to me.

For example, 12) the number of distributions is not a positive factor, at least not for someone who wants to change and does not know about them. It´s hard to make a selection.