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Dell Computer is seeking alliances with mom-and-pop shops to further its growth in the PC market. Dell will begin offering on Friday an unbranded, low-priced desktop PC to distributors that cater to small businesses--typically companies with fewer than 100 employees, the computer maker confirmed Tuesday. The Round Rock, Texas-based company is embarking on the new plan as a way to enter the "white box" market, which it estimates to be worth $3 billion annually. White-box PC sales have grown quietly over the last five years to represent roughly 30 percent of the market, according to a recent report from...

Dell has devised a cute trick to accommodate its big corporate customers without crossing its Lord and Master, Microsoft, which has decreed that all OEM computers shall be shipped with operating systems, according to a recent Cnet article. To make life easier for big shops using Linux, which can be installed on any number of machines without drawing a 'dynamic entry' from the BSA paramilitary squads, Dell is going to ship naked desktops and workstations and simply chuck a copy of FreeDOS into the shipping carton to satisfy the Microsoft licensing Taliban. Thus it will not be necessary for...

<p>After providing software for a $299 Wal-Mart PC, Lindows.com said it is on the verge of striking a deal which would push the price point down to $199. In a letter to customers posted on the Lindows.com web site, Lindows.com chief executive Michael Robertson said the company would be announcing a $199 PC "very soon". Robertson was unavailable for comment. While the deal has not been signed, an agreement with a major retailer and hardware manufacturer will be signed "in about a week, give or take a few days," according to a spokeswoman for Lindows, based in San Diego, Calif. She declined further comment.</p>

The Linux world is growing up fast. Just look at who are the keynote speakers for LinuxWorld: executives from Sun, Oracle, IBM and Google. What happened to the real penguins who started this revolution? Are they not worthy of the main stage? Has the penguin gotten too cozy with the establishment for its own good? Or is it simply learning to live in a world in which revenue and customer lists are critical factors for success? We are entering a new phase in the evolution of Linux and open source, in which the stakes are higher, capitalism rules, and holding...

Linux users march on city hall A small but enthusiastic crowd of Linux lovers hit the streets of San Francisco on Thursday, hoping to trumpet the virtues of open source to lawmakers and voters. Led by Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer of Linux seller Red Hat, the group marched the mile-long stretch from the LinuxWorld conference to San Francisco City Hall. There Tiemann unveiled the Digital Software Security Act, a proposal that would prohibit the state from buying software that doesn't open its code. Tiemann, wearing a red fedora and clutching a map so he could find his destination, said...

What do you get when you cross Sun Microsystems and the open source community centered on Linux? I thought the answer was lower-cost servers that run Linux, which is what Sun announced this week. But Sun CEO Scott McNealy has far grander ambitions that he hopes the open source community will help him achieve: breaking Microsoft's grip on the desktop and expanding Sun's hardware offerings. I don't think anyone can break Microsoft's desktop grip at this point, but Sun has the right idea in formulating an alternative that is more coherent than the pieces you can cobble together to create...

A serious flaw in SSL certificate handling reported by Mike Benham, affecting IE and Konqueror, has already been fixed by KDE's Waldo Bastian, we're pleased to mention. The fix is available only in the CVS (Concurrent Versions System) tree at the moment, but KDE reckons it will have patched binaries available for its 3.0.3 version, available early next week. A patch for KDE 2.2.x is currently in the works. As for Microsoft? According to Benham they haven't even replied to him yet. Apparently, real Trustworthy Computing takes an enormous amount of time. Conversely, the speed with which the open source...

Fantastic news for the Linux desktop. This great office suite, gobeProductive, will be releasing all its source code under the GPL in less than 3 months, according to its new owners, FreeRadicalSoftware. They purchased the source code and rights from Gobe Software recently, and their business plan requires them to GPL the code!

CERT: Flaw could allow root access in some Unix, Linux systems A buffer overflow in the ToolTalk RPC database server used in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) on systems from vendors such as Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM could allow an attacker to run code with root privileges, according to a security alert released today by the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC). CDE is a graphical interface used on Unix and some Linux systems. The ToolTalk component of the software allows applications to communicate with each other across different platforms and hosts via remote procedure calls (RPC). The RPC database server...

Microsoft 'hoovers millions' from UK schools - update By Drew Cullen Posted: 08/09/2002 at 06:44 EST Bob Blizzard, the Waveney, Suffolk MP who is campaigning against "unfair" Microsoft licence terms for schools, has published an email from the software giant, replying to his complaints. David Burrows, education head at Microsoft UK, says the firm has no plans at present to alter licence terms, which see schools pay much more than colleges for their software. "In response to your specific request, we have discussed this extensively with colleagues in Microsoft Corporation and conclude that we are not able, at this point,...

A security hole in the XDR Library provided to a number of vendors by Sun Microsystems Inc. could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on an affected system or cause a denial of service, according to an advisory from the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC). The flaw also affects the widely used Kerberos authentication software that allows users to securely log on to remote systems. The vulnerability exists in XDR (External Data Representation) libraries derived from SunRPC (remote procedure call) used in products from Sun, as well as from Apple Computer Inc., IBM and a number of Linux and Unix...

Frustration with Microsoft is prompting more companies to consider "un-Windows" alternatives, according to a study released Tuesday. "Corporate user resentment and dissatisfaction with Microsoft and some of its practices is at an all-time high," says Laura DiDio, senior analyst with the Yankee Group and the report's author. That frustration is pushing more companies to consider Linux-based operating systems as well as Apple's OS X, she says. Licensing Hostility The survey, conducted last April and May by the Yankee Group and Sunbelt Software, asked 1500 corporations about their satisfaction with Microsoft. Bottom line: Many customers aren't happy. At the heart of...

Security researchers have warned of a flaw in communications software that could allow attackers to take over computers running Windows, Unix-based operating systems and Mac OS X, as well as Kerberos authentication systems. The problem is widespread because it affects some implementations of XDR (external data representation) libraries, used by many applications as a way of sending data from one system process to another, regardless of the system's architecture. The affected libraries are derived from Sun Microsystems' SunRPC remote procedure call technology, which has been taken up by many vendors. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), a security network...

Study: Linux sales down, but not out Linux sales lost some ground to Windows last year, but are expected to climb in coming years as distributors of the alternative operating system create new revenue streams. According to market research firm IDC, Linux sales declined nearly 5 percent in 2001 to $80 million, but are expected to grow to a $280 million market in 2006. Meanwhile, Windows sales climbed 11 percent to more than $10 billion last year, according to IDC analyst Al Gillen. "The Linux operating system market, from a revenue perspective, accounts for one half of 1 percent of...

SEATTLE — When investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein began making the switch to the Linux computer operating system in 1999, it did so to save money. The Germany-based bank sought a less-costly way to calculate risks associated with its portfolio of investments. So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop. Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper — but also faster. The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash...

<p>SEATTLE -- When investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein began making the switch to the Linux computer operating system in 1999, it did so to save money.</p> <p>The Germany-based bank sought a less-costly way to calculate risks associated with its portfolio of investments. So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.</p>

Microsoft: breaking with licensing tradition By ComputerWire Posted: 08/02/2002 at 04:40 EST These are critical times for Microsoft Corp. The company deliberately broke its software licensing model with Thursday's introduction of the unpopular Licensing 6.0. Until now customers paid Microsoft's licensing charges, shelling-out hard-won IT budget while complaining of expense and confused details. For Microsoft, this was a reliable - if imperfect - revenue model. After all, what alternatives were there to Microsoft's products? As Microsoft ushered in Licensing 6.0, though, alternatives were - for the first time - emerging. Unfortunately for Microsoft, those alternatives compete in the company's lucrative...

AMD confirms IBM DB2 Hammer support Corporate migration easier, says IBM By Mike Magee: Tuesday 30 July 2002, 20:58 IBM'S DB2 DATABASE for Linux will be supported on AMD's Opteron (Hammer) processors, confirming benchmarks posted on c't magazine a few weeks back. AMD confirmed the story in a release which said a DB2 database using SuSE Linux was successfully ported to X86-64 technology in just a few days. The news is good for AMD and indicates positiive application software support for its Opteron servers, due to be launched next year. The chip firm said that using X86-64 architecture will mean...

Linus Torvalds prays Intel will adopt Yamhill And so adopt AMD's X86-64 By INQUIRER staff: Monday 29 July 2002, 11:26 A POSTING BY Linus Torvalds on the LINUX KERNEL newsgroup yesterday has him praying that Intel will adopt its secret "Yamhill" project and turn to the ways of X86-64 righteousness. Torvalds, who had a key part to play in Transmeta's fortunes at startup, says in the post that Linux developers are "generally praying that AMD's X86-64 succeeds in the market." That, he says, would force Intel to make Yamhill its standard 64-bit platform and allow for improvements in the Linux...

IBM and Linux our biggest threats - Microsoft By ComputerWire Posted: 07/26/2002 at 06:47 EST IBM and Linux combined represent a threat and inspiration as Microsoft Corp drives into enterprise computing, top company executives said yesterday. Computing giant IBM wages war against Microsoft in lucrative corporate accounts while Linux, the low-coast threat to Windows, wins supporters in fertile developer communities. Speaking at Microsoft's 2002 Financial Analysts Day yesterday, executives heading-up Microsoft's developer and enterprise server divisions spoke with frankness. They also revealed product and strategic initiatives to combat the double-headed threat. Eric Rudder, senior vice president developer and platform evangelism,...