KaOS 2018.08 is August 2018's ISO snapshot for the independently developed GNU/Linux distribution inspired by Arch Linux and built around the latest KDE technologies. It ships with the most recent KDE Applications 18.08.0 open-source software suite, as well aas the KDE Plasma 5.13.4 desktop environment and KDE Frameworks 5.49.0, all built on the Qt 5.11.1 framework.

"It is with great pleasure to present to you the August release of a new stable ISO. With almost 70 % percent of the packages updated since the last ISO and the last release being over two months old, a new ISO is more than due. No major changes this time to announce, as was with last ISO, just the usual large package movement," said the developers in the release announcement.

A few years back there were a lot mobile OS systems, we had Symbian, Blackberry OS and IOS among many others. Google entered the market with Android, although it wasn’t an instant hit, they gained huge momentum overtime.

Part of Android’s success was definitely due to its open source nature and the massive customisation it offered. Android somewhat bridged the gap between budget and premium smartphones at that time, because it enabled so many functions on budget devices, it was truly something back then.

With time Android became a behemoth in mobile OS, but along with that Google was also benefitted. The OS used Google Maps, Gmail, Chrome, Google Play, YouTube and a lot of other customary Google software. This meant huge AD revenues but also privacy concerns as it’s well known that Google can pull out a lot of usage data from Android devices.

Also: iPhone to Android: The ultimate switching guide

• Sailfish OS Nurmonjoki is now available

  After a very warm summer here in Northern Europe, many well deserved holidays are taken and many sailors are now rested after a year of full-on work. Sailors that were on duty during the summer have however worked on the latest iteration of Sailfish OS updates for our beloved community! After much developing and testing, we are now ready to release Sailfish OS 2.2.1. Sailfish OS 2.2.1 is named after the river Nurmonjoki which is located 300km north of Helsinki, on south western part of Finland.

• Sailfish OS "Nurmonjoki" Released For GDPR Compliance, App Updates

  While Jolla's Linux-based Sailfish OS mobile operating system hasn't turned out to be as great as many anticipated, today the Finnish company released Sailfish OS 2.2.1 under the Nurmonjoki codename.

• /e/ first beta soon to be released

  Next week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, we will release the first beta of /e/ mobile OS.

  I will then describe choices that have been done, what’s in, what’s not in, what remains to do, what to test and how. And probably a challenge for testers.

  [...]

  Of course we cannot support the 17K+ known Android devices. As the /e/ ROM itself is forked from LineageOS we can build for all LOS 14.1 (Android Nougat) supported devices, and not yet for LOS 15 (Android Oreo) supported devices (work in progress).

The Unix operating system has been around for decades, and it and its lookalikes (mainly Linux) are a critical part of the computing world. Apple’s operating system, macOS, is Unix-based, as are Solaris and BSD. Even if you’ve never directly used one of these operating systems, at least two-thirds of all websites are served by Unix or Unix-like software. And, if you’ve ever picked up a smart phone, chances are it was running either a Unix variant or the Linux-driven Android. The core reason that Unix has been so ubiquitous isn’t its accessibility, or cost, or user interface design, although these things helped. The root cause of its success is its design philosophy.

Good design is crucial for success. Whether that’s good design of a piece of software, infrastructure like a railroad or power grid, or even something relatively simple like a flag, without good design your project is essentially doomed. Although you might be able to build a workable one-off electronics project that’s a rat’s nest of wires, or a prototype of something that gets the job done but isn’t user-friendly or scalable, for a large-scale project a set of good design principles from the start is key.