Free Republic

If you want a desktop or laptop and you want to move to Linux then you're cooked. You have very few options and retailers have used low-cost Linux systems to bait and switch users. So, why don't the major Intel vendors offer Linux? Short answer: Microsoft. The old monopolist still commands and makes demands on its OEM vendors. What's worse? Unsuspecting PC buyers will be faced with the need to upgrade to Vista in the near future. So, that bargain PC from Dell will probably keep on costing you money. Do alternatives exist? We like to think so. Diggable Linux...

This month, SAP's Shai Agassi referred to open-source software as "intellectual property socialism." In January, Bill Gates suggested that free-software developers are communists. A few years earlier, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the open-source operating system Linux "a cancer."

 Opinion: New Linux study suggests fundamental Microsoft credibility problems Nov. 17, 2005 Another day, another lame attempt by Microsoft to show that Windows is better than Linux. This time around, Microsoft commissioned a study to show that Windows does a better job of serving e-commerce applications than Linux. Of course, in the study, they didn't use the same e-commerce or back-engine DBMSs. OK, right there, without saying another word, anyone who really knows anything about benchmarking knows that the study is fundamentally flawed. You're not comparing apples to apples; you're comparing apples and oranges. It would be a different story,...

TUNIS (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a leading US IT expert Nicholas Negroponte unveiled the bright green and yellow working prototype of a 100 dollar laptop aimed at millions of schoolchildren in poor countries. The robust wind-up laptop with low power consumption is meant to be the backbone of an educational project to distribute the Internet-connected computers at no cost to their future owners. "It holds the promise of major advances in economic and social development, but perhaps most important is the true meaning of one laptop per child," Annan told reporters at the World Summit...

Let me address the inevitable "Ubuntu vs. OS X" comparison. The thing that surprised me most about using the PowerMac was not that OS X's UI was better than Ubuntu's, which I have known for quite some time having used both regularly, but how small that difference really was. As I said, OS X's UI is a step up from GNOME's. However, I wouldn't say it is in a completely different league. In terms of the fundamental UI elements, GNOME is extremely competitive.

The open standards of Mac OS X have been trounced by open source software in a project to develop a $100 computer to help bridge the digital divide. An organisation, One Laptop Per Child, is developing the machines to bridge the gap between the developed and the developing world. (The link goes to the MIT website, the organisation that got the project off the ground). The project team want to develop a low-cost computer to distribute to millions of school-age children. OS X spurned for Linux The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered to furnish the...

Computers running the Linux OS are continuing to advance into the consumer retail market, with the announcement this week that Micro Center will sell desktops and laptops running Linspire Inc.'s Linux OS. "This is very big for Linux," Linspire Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kevin Carmony said in an interview. "People want the value and the security. It is a viable alternative. For half the people out there, Linux would work for them." Micro Center, which is owned by Micro Electronics Inc. of Hilliard, Ohio, began considering selling hardware systems with Linux preinstalled after competitor Fry's Electronics offered Linux computer systems,...

The major difference between an open source device driver module on Linux and a proprietary one in Windows is transparency in the way it works, the way it's created. This generally doesn't matter while the system is running as expected but can make a huge difference when something unexpected breaks down.

I am a little acquainted with some of the xNIX (UNIX-like) O/S's out there, having used Corel Linux, Fedora Core, Mandrake, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and HP-UX to some degree. I am not afraid of command-line work, but I have a major gripe about all the xNIX's when it comes to non-X work: vi sucks. ed blows. Have any xNIX gurus out there ever used the MS-DOS text editor (edit.com)? For a long-time PC user, that is the standard by which all others are judged. The text editors in Gnome and KDE work very much like Edit.com, but I can't seem to...

For big companies that want to use the Linux operating system and get business-level support, there are only two main options: Red Hat Inc. and Novell. And one of those looked shaky last week. After two years of refocusing, reinvention, and restructuring, Novell is reducing its staff by 10% to save money and suggesting that a change in CEO may be on the horizon. It's all part of trying to deliver on the growth promised when the company staked its future on open-source software in 2003. Novell's profits were up substantially between fiscal 2003 and 2004. But profits have slipped...

New worm targets Linux systems By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: November 7, 2005, 5:12 PM PST A new worm that propagates by exploiting security vulnerabilities in Web server software is attacking Linux systems, warned antivirus companies on Monday. The worm spreads by exploiting Web servers that host susceptible scripts at specific locations, according to antivirus software maker McAfee, which has named the worm "Lupper." Lupper blindly attacks Web servers, installing and executing a copy of the worm when a vulnerable server is found, McAfee said in its description of the worm. A backdoor is installed on infected...

The next time Bill Gates sends an e-mail through Microsoft's shiny new Wireless LAN it will be passed through a behind-the-scenes Linux-based network appliance. Earlier this year Microsoft and Aruba Networks jointly announced the two companies will work to replace Microsoft's existing Cisco wireless network with Aruba's centrally-managed infrastructure, which eliminates the need for individual changes on the access points. Aruba Networks was selected to provide the networking equipment for what is considered to be one of the world's largest next-generation wireless LANs, serving more than 25,000 simultaneous users a day in some 60 countries. According to an Aruba press...

Nokia has begun shipping its Linux-based Nokia 770, the so-called "Internet tablet", according to the Finnish giant's direct-sales website. The device lacks the usual Nokia mobile phone technology, relying instead on Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth to connect it to a broadband connectivity host. The 770 is pitched at consumers who want to access the Internet for emailing and web browsing anywhere in their home.

It took more than two and a half years, but the SCO Group finally has disclosed a list of areas in which it believes IBM violated its Unix contract, allegedly by moving proprietary Unix technology into open-source Linux. In a five-page document filed Friday, SCO attorneys say they have identified 217 areas in which the company believes IBM or Sequent, a Unix server company IBM acquired, violated contracts under which SCO and its predecessors licensed the Unix operating system. However, the curious won't be able to see for themselves the details of SCO's claims: The full list of alleged abuses...

I just inherited a Dell Inspiron 2500 notebook (Pentium 3, 700mhz, 192megs of RAM). It's currently running WinXP Home, but it's dog-slow. I'm thinking of throwing some type of Linux on it, rather than reinstalling XP, just so I have a Linux machine to learn on and play with. My question is about wireless networks. I just threw a Linksys wireless card in the slot thingy (PCMCIA?) and it found my home network just fine. Will I have any problems with this hardware if I switch to Linux? Thanks a lot! Bir

During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Could the pundits have it all wrong? Is it possible that Linux stands on its own merits? Most Linux users would yes. Use of Linux does not represent a rebellion against Microsoft and Linux stands on its own as a user preference.

I've had mostly positive things to say about the free OpenOffice.org suite, so in the interest of equal time, here's a link to an interesting ZDNet blog item (via Scobleizer) which looks at the speed and resource requirements of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. It's far from exhaustive--the numbers reported relate only to launching the applications and opening a spreadsheet--but it shows OpenOffice.org as being far more memory- and CPU-hungry than the Microsoft suite.

The Free Standards Group and its Linux Standard Base work group Tuesday announced the formation of the Linux Standard Base Desktop Project (), with the support of Adobe Systems Inc., Intel Corp., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., Linspire Inc., Mandriva SA, Novell Inc., RealNetworks Inc., Red Hat Inc., Trolltech, Xandros Inc. and others. The LSB (Linux Standard Base) Desktop Project's goal is to standardize common libraries and application behavior so as to make it easier for independent software vendors (ISVs) to write Linux () desktop programs. The long-term goal is to help the Linux desktop achieve wide-spread adoption. In the past, Linux...

Here's the other thing: it worked. It said, "Choose a user name and a password." It logged me in. And there was an entire computer, ready to go. It connected to the Internet. Firefox went places. Email downloaded. OpenOffice…officed. I mean, call that open source? Where's the anguish and pain? Where's the six weeks of downloading drivers and learning how to compile source code? A shocking lapse of standards, I call it. If Linux can be run by people as dumb as the people who can run Windows, it's the end of civilization as we know it. Don't these people...

Both Gartner and IDC, in recent reports, have said that a majority of software vendors will shift from upfront license revenue to long-term subscription revenue models by 2008. Currently, subscription revenue is estimated to account for less than 10 percent of the industry's revenues. Microsoft, the world's largest product company, has, however, refused to play ball.