Posted on 02/10/2009 11:29:23 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, has agreed to re-distribute IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity suite with its public Linux repositories. More details are expected later today.
The news follows IBM's decision earlier this year to offer a version of its Open Collaboration Client Solution (OCCS) for Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is, according to the suits at IBM, "a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor.'"
The deal is expected to be announced by IBM at the same time it announces agreements with Ubuntu, Red Hat and SuSE to work with local hardware partners to build and distribute "Microsoft-free" PCs. Systems will feature the Linux distros running IBM's OCCS and other open-source applications.
IBM said products would be tailored to vertical sectors and be branded by the local IT partners.
IBM added that shifting market forces, slow adoption of Windows Vista, and growing demand for alternatives to "costly" Windows and Office-based machines: "Offer a glimpse of the ripe market opportunity for Linux-based desktops to proliferate."
The company will also announce Novell's Linux Enterprise Server 10 as the first Linux distro to be shipped with a new line of self-managing server appliances targeting small businesses. The appliances, Linux Foundations, are designed to promote uptake of IBM's Domino email and collaboration software in SMBs.
Accompanying the news, IBM announced the Lotus Foundations ISV Developer Toolkit, which it said would simplify packaging of Domino applications for appliances.®
IBM also had another complete disaster with attempted Office replacements recently with their Workplace product. They don't even sell PC's anymore either, they sold that wing off to the Chinese government a few years ago, IBM is the absolute last place I'd look for desktop productivity.
One of the mysteries of life. You would think that a scheduler that just assigned the next available core to the next process would do something good, but the designs of the OSes were apparently blind-sided by multi-cores.Multithreading also needs some real attention before multiple processor chips is going to mean much to average users. Now they just seem to idle along.Windows could help with this. I'm running XP Pro on a Phenom Quad, and while you can associate a given app to prefer a given core, by default XP seems to throw everything on Core 1 . . . Why doesn't XP default to using an unused core if one is available??
I thought it fascinating that OS X.6, "Snow Leopard," is slated to have "Open GL" technology to make it easier for application writers to more fully exploit multiple cores and even to tap the number crunch capabilities of graphics processors. It seems likely that speech processing will become efficient - and possibly go mainstream - with that sort of technology . . .
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