OS

Still haven’t made up your mind about Internet Explorer 7? No problem, you can always uninstall it and revert to the Internet Explorer 6 web browser that came with your operating system. Unless you’ve upgraded to Windows XP SP3, that is. Because Microsoft is telling computer users that if they install IE7 before XP SP3, there’s no going back.

Basically, when you install IE7, your IE6 files are saved in an uninstall directory that includes the original IE6 installation files and any security updates you’ve added over the years. But SP3 includes a different set of security updates. So if IE7 is already installed when you load SP3, the uninstall directory that was created when you were using SP2 is no longer valid.

If that’s all a bit confusing, here’s what you should take away: If you don’t plan to use IE7, don’t install it. Period. If you do plan to install it, but want to be able to uninstall it, then you should load Windows XP SP3 before upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If you upgraded Internet Explorer before installing XP SP3, the only way to uninstall it would be to uninstall the entire service pack, which is really far more trouble than its worth.

[via Computer World]

If you’ve got Windows XP SP2, you might want to check the good ole Windows Update page today. A week after delaying the launch of Windows XP SP3, Microsoft today released the update through Windows Update. That means even if you don’t go out of your way to download it, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up downloading the service pack in the next few days if your computer is configured to install automatic updates.

The reason Microsoft pushed back the launch for a week was because the company found an incompatibility with its Dynamics Retail Management System. If you’re a business owner using that software, Microsoft has added a filter that will keep your system from automatically downloading SP3.

Most of the changes in SP3 are under the hood, meaning you may or may not really notice any changes once SP3 is installed. But along with a few new features like Network Access Protection and Black Hole router detection, the service pack includes pretty much every important security update and hotfix since SP2, so we’d highly recommend installing it. If you want all the gritty details, you can check out Microsoft’s overview of all the major updates included in SP3.

Puppy Linux is one of the most popular thumb drive Linux distributions. What that means is the entire operating system weighs in at less than 100MB, and can be run on any computer just by plugging in a USB flash drive. But unlike some thumb drive distros, Puppy Linux provides such a robust desktop experience that you could seriously make a case for running Puppy as your primary operating system, at least on older machines with slow processors and small hard drives.

Puppy Linux 4.0 Dingo is the latest version of Puppy, and it packs all the usual goodies like the SeaMonkey internet suite (which is a Mozilla product with a Firefox-like web browser), AbiWord word processor, and Gnumeric spreadsheet application. But there are also a bunch of improvements over Puppy 3, including:

• Support for scanners and digital cameras

• Audio recording, editing, and conversion software

• New GTK2 applications including ePDFView, Pschedule, Pcdripper, Pburn, and Pnethood

• Automatic selection of native screen resolutions for LCD monitors

• A new theme and background

Puppy 4.0 uses the same 2.6.21.7 kernel as Puppy 3, which was released 6 months ago. But there’s an optional version of Puppy 4.0 that uses the 2.6.25 kernel for bleeding edge types. Some Puppy features have been reported not to work as well with the newer kernel.

[via eeextra]

For the last week or two we’ve been telling you that Microsoft planned to release Windows XP Service Pack 3 through Windows Update today, meaning most Windows XP users would download and install it automatically. But then Microsoft decided to go and make liars of us, by holding off on the release.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft discovered a compatibility problem that the company wants to solve before pushing out the update to all users. The problem is with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System, and affects Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1. And we can’t for the life of us figure out why Microsoft would delay pushing out SP3 to all of its retail customers for a compatibility issue that will only affect customers who use a niche business oriented application from Microsoft.

If you’re tired of waiting, you could always just download Windows XP SP3 the old fashioned way, by finding a link someone dug up and posted on a web site. If it makes you feel any better, the download link points to a Microsoft server.

Microsoft is set to release Windows XP SP3 through Windows Update tomorrow. But if you just can’t wait to get your hands on the latest and greatest OS update from Microsoft (not that Vista isn’t great…), it looks like a number of folks have found the download links that will let you grab the update from Microsoft’s servers.

Microsoft released SP3 to manufacturers last week, and shortly after that, you could find the service pack on a variety of BitTorrent sites. But we’ve always been a bit wary of downloading something as important as an operating system update from BitTorrent. There’s always a chance you’re really downloading a trojan packed up to look like a service pack installer.

Note that the full installer weighs in at just over 300MB. If you wait to get SP3 through Windows update, there’s a good chance your download will be significantly smaller since you probably already have some of the updates included in SP3 on your PC. The service pack includes a number of features and hotfixes that Microsoft has already released to SP2 customers.

The link above provides a download link for the English version of SP3. If you’re looking for Chinese, German, French, Russian, or Japanese download links, GHacks has you covered.

In related news, Microsoft says it absolutely, positively has no plans to keep selling Windows XP after June 30th, despite recent comments from Steve Ballmer that seemed to indicate the company might reconsider. Meanwhile, Dell plans to continue offering Windows XP for a few more years by selling customers Windows Vista licenses and then giving them the option to downgrade to XP.

Hey, did you hear that there’s a new version of Ubuntu out today? Yeah, we know, we’re shocked too. But seriously, Canonical comes out with a new version of its popular Linux distribution every six months, so we’re starting to feel like the product launch isn’t particularly big news. And of course, we’ve been installing and trying test builds for the last few months. The truth is, we imagine that many Download Squad readers have been running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron for at least a few weeks if not months already.

That said, Hardy Heron is a pretty significant release, because it’s considered an LTS or Long Term Support release. That means Canonical will offer 5 years of support instead of its usual 18 months, making Hardy Heron a good choice for enterprise users.

Here are a handful of things that set Hardy Heron apart from Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, which is so last week:

• Firefox 3 beta is the default web browser
• Install Ubuntu from within Windows using Wubi
• Updated Linux kernel and new versions of Gnome and KDE desktops, with the option of using KDE 3.5 or KDE 4 as the default desktop for Kubuntu
• New BitTorrent Client
• New VNC client
• Virtualization software built into the kernel

f you’ve never tried Linux before, Ubuntu comes as a LiveCD. That means you can check out the operating system without harming your current OS and file system by burning the disc image to a DVD and booting your computer from the disc. It’s a perfect try before you buy sales pitch, except there’s nothing to buy. If you like what you see you can install it for free.

Are you running Hardy Heron yet? What do you think so far? What did Canonical get right, and what still needs some work?

Microsoft has released two new Windows Vista Ultimate Extras. Windows Vista has been out for over a year, and so far Microsoft has released remarkably few Extras. The company initially promised that Extras would be special applications available to Vista Ultimate users that would help set the premium version of the operating system apart from cheaper versions. But Microsoft has been rather slow to deliver.

Today, users can download a new content pack for DreamScene, an animated desktop background application. There are also two new sound schemes called Glass and Pearl. Reading their descriptions is a bit like reading the description of a fine wine, so if you want to know what they sound like, you’ll probably just have to download the packs yourself. Or you can listen to an audio demo created by Long Zheng of istartedsomething.

In other news, Microsoft has also released 18 updated language packs for Windows Vista, which should show up via Windows Update.

Microsoft has released Windows XP SP3 to manufacturers, which means it should start making its way to OEM and enterprise customers. What that means for you the consumer is that pretty soon you’ll be able to purchase computers running Windows XP SP3 instead of SP2. That is, if Microsoft lets companies continue selling machines running Windows XP after the original June cutoff date.

As expected, the final version of Windows XP SP3 will also be available to existing customers through Windows Update on April 29th. The company will also update all of its Windows XP online documentation at that point.

If you can’t wait that long, you can go ahead and download the latest release candidate of SP3, which has been available for almost a month now. We’ve been running it for a while now and it seems pretty stable.

[via ZDNet]

Once upon a time when you mentioned Linux to non-Linux users, the first thing they thought of was Red Hat. That’s because the company was one of the first and most successful to get its desktop Linux onto retail shelves. But in a blog post today, the Red Hat team notes that they will not be working on a consumer version of their Linux product in the foreseeable future, instead focusing on enterprise software.

In a nutshell, the company has concluded that while Linux has come to be popular as an operating system for servers, it’s hard to build a business model around Linux desktop software. If you look at the desktop OS field, Linux is starting to make mild gains on Windows and OS X, but desktop Linux users are still few and far between when compared with users of the two more dominant platforms. And most of the popular Linux desktop operating systems are not just open source, they’re free as in beer.

The Fedora desktop Linux operating system is based on Red Hat and will continue to be developed. But all of Red Hat’s commercial software will now be designed to compliment the company’s server and middleware software.