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Excerpt - Martin Taylor, a key adviser to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, has left the software maker. Taylor, a 13-year company veteran who led Microsoft's "Get the Facts" anti-Linux crusade for several years, was named in March as a corporate vice president overseeing the marketing push for Windows Live services. ~ snip ~ "We've made the difficult decision to part ways with Martin, but we don't comment on personnel matters," Microsoft said in a statement. "We appreciate Martin's contributions at Microsoft over the past 13 years." ~ snip ~

as I stood in the Apple store last weekend and drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software, and hide all the commercial tie-ins so I could pretend I was in control of my own computer.

A group of top mobile phone makers and operators are launching a foundation to create an open Linux-based software platform for mobile devices, they said on Thursday. The companies, including Motorola, Vodafone Group, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung Electronics, NEC and Panasonic Mobile Communications, plan to focus on the development and marketing of an application program interface (API) specification, architecture and source reference. The group hopes to create a collaborative environment to build a mobile Linux development ecosystem and work to minimize fragmentation in the market. Initially, the founders plan to be responsible for the reference implementation of the mobile operating platform...

Beginning today, you can download a brand new version, Google Earth 4. Running on OS X? Feel the love. Prefer Linux? Ditto. Yes, we're releasing simultaneously for PC, Mac (universal binary for full performance on both Intel and PowerPC based Macs) and for the first time ever, native support for popular Linux distributions.

OSvids.com, a new site launched last week, is a twist on the traditional Linux screenshot gallery. It provides video views of dozens of distributions, giving potential Linux users a glimpse of open source desktops in action. Jonathan Buys started Osvids.com as an "offshoot" of his technology blog. He's been testing Linux distributions since 2000, beginning with Mandrake. "I've seen Linux advance by leaps and bounds over the years," he says. "I've lost count of how many distros I've tested. I figured that since I was loading the distros anyway, I might as well share my experiences on my site." OSvids.com...

This is not a gripe against windows. I use windows on a daily basis and I know how to get the most out of the experience. With a little work, it’s a highly polished and reliable OS. But how much “a little work” can we expect of an inexperienced new computer user. I have also recently installed the latest release of Ubuntu Linux and have found that its ease of use is second to no other OS I’ve used as of yet. What this is, is a gripe against the mainstream OS and computer manufacturing business. Mainly, new computer users...

Unix's Slow Death Still Gives Life To IBM Chris Kraeuter It's hard to get attention for something as dull as Unix computers when Web companies snag all the headlines for advancements in digital media. But an important development is happening at IBM that bears watching. The company, which will announce its third-quarter results Oct. 17, has been the prime beneficiary of a consolidation in the Unix market that has vexed rivals Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ). IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) captured the top...

Linux now forms a quarter of Dell's server business and is growing fast, the company says. Should Microsoft be worried? Long hailed as the provider of choice for companies looking for PC solutions based on Intel hardware and Microsoft software, Dell says that Linux now makes up 25 percent of its enterprise market. The company also claims to have made inroads in the Linux services market and to have reached a comfort level with Linux systems where it can now solve over 90 percent of Red Hat Linux service calls without need to involve Red Hat. The figures were revealed...

Yet more stupid lawyer tricks from our good friends at SCO: Long after the deadline for disclosing its allegations, SCO seeks by indirection to change them. In three of its eight expert reports, SCO alleges the misuse of material nowhere identified in the Final Disclosures, the very purpose of which was to fix the parties' allegations once and for all last year. Indeed, with respect to its allegation that Linux infringes SCO's alleged UNIX copyrights, SCO proffers expert testimony that has no support in the Final Disclosures and, if allowed, would reinvent the case at the eleventh hour. SCO's attempt...

Windows 2003 Server is a more reliable server operating system than Linux, a research firm said Monday. According to the Yankee Group's annual server reliability survey, only Unix-based operating systems such as HP-UX and Sun Solaris 10 beat Windows on uptime. Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual uptime.

Linux is insecure. Open source is insecure. Windows is insecure. All software is insecure. Deal with it. People keep having this delusion that security is a product. That, if you just buy some magic box, you'll have a program or an operating system that's as secure as Fort Knox. It doesn't work that way. Security is a process, not a product. Some systems are more secure than others. Linux, as anyone who pays any attention to security news knows, is a lot more secure than Windows. If we were talking cars, Linux would be a Volvo S80 and Windows would...

Love it, hate it, heard lots about it, but still don't have enough of a handle to form a firm opinion? Then we must be talking about Linux, the open-source operating system that's alluring because it's heavy duty and it's free. Simultaneously, it's intimidating to newbies because it's typically more difficult to install and configure than Windows. However, now is an opportune time to get past those concerns. Interest in Linux is expected to spike throughout the year, thanks to Microsoft's delay of its consumer version of Windows Vista. The hang-up could cast a pall on the year-end PC sales...

Computer maker Lenovo will not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs, including ThinkPads and a series of new notebooks, the company said this week. The Raleigh, N.C.-based company is clearly positioning itself as an exclusive partner of Microsoft, several weeks after the companies announced they were "reaffirming" global market development and cooperation agreements. "We will not have models available for Linux, and we do not have custom order, either," said Frank Kardonski, Lenovo's worldwide product manager for Lenovo 3000 offerings. "What you see is what you get. And at this point, it's Windows." A...

The opening of Beta 2 testing at WinHEC for Windows Vista has once again raised serious questions about Microsoft's ability to keep its promises. We have witnessed up until now the inexhaustible reservoir of excuses coming from MS's officials, who have continuously fed us with plenty of reasons for Vista's delay: they're working on security, they're trying to make it more reliable for business, etc. Although it was initially destined to make its public debut way back in 2002, following years haven't shown us more than small bits of what was to become Microsoft's best product in more than 10...

Picasa is a photo organizing and editing tool from Google that does most of what most people need to do with their digital pictures. Now Picasa, previously a Windows-only program, has binaries available for most popular GNU/Linux distributions. The Linux version of Picasa is still a beta release, but it's ready to handle photo storage, organizing, and light photo editing on your Linux computer. Even if you don't want to use Picasa, Google's creation of the Linux version may help make your Linux computer more versatile. The Picasa Linux port is being made with Wine, and in the process more...

And so I'm falling a little bit in love with Linux. This is very much a grounded affair and I wouldn't describe myself as giddy with it, but I've changed my opinions about that whole murky side of computing life. A lot of people ask me about my opinion of that operating system with the penguin logo. It happens with such regularity that I've come up with a stock phrase I immediately fire back: life's too short for Linux. This is a bit flippant, but it's also a distillation of what I've believed, which is that Linux is great and...

TORONTO — The recent LinuxWorld trade show in Toronto was dull, but exhibitors liked it that way. Excitable younger Linux evangelists had given way to the more sober executives and IT managers. That plays into the hands of Andreas Typaldos, chief executive officer of Xandros Inc., just fine. For him, it's an opportunity. IDC forecasts that the market for new and redeployed PCs running Linux will grow to $10-billion (U.S.) and 17 million units by 2008, with an installed base of more than 42.6 million units. Mr. Typaldos is hoping to carve a niche in this growing market, offering Xandros's...

L-3 Communications Display Systems has chosen the LynxOS-178 real-time operating system (RTOS) to power a portion of the panoramic cockpit display (PCD) subsystem for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft. This display system delivers information for all the major functions of the F-35, including flight and sensor displays, communication, radio and navigation systems as well as an identification system which gives the pilot total situational awareness. The key factors in L-3 Display System's choice of LynuxWorks' RTOS, which is DO-178B certifiable, were its adherence to open standards, its Linux compatibility, the interoperability benefits of a Posix API...

Apple tells hacks to stay out of its kernel Since before its release, Apple's OS X for the Intel platform had been circulating the Internet in many places, and many had been running the operating system for months ahead of Apple's own release schedules. Thanks to cunning hackery by famed OS X hacker Maxxuss, many were able to install the protected operating system on generic machines. Apple had implemented a check for a trusted platform module (TPM) chip that was integrated on specific Intel motherboards, which when detected, allowed the installation of OS X. When Apple had finally released a...

Sun Microsystems plans to offer support for the Ubuntu server Linux distribution on its T1 server line, the company said at the JavaOne industry conference in San Francisco. "We will be aggressively supporting the fork that Ubuntu has been doing," Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz said at the conference. "The ideals of that community are relatively familiar to us." The Ubuntu Linux distribution is based on Debian. The operating system currently provides only a desktop version that has a strong following among software developers. A first server system is scheduled for release on 1 June. The distribution is sponsored by...