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Boston - Can’t anyone find anything nice to say about Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system? -----snip----- Funny thing though--go back to October 2001, when Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) released Windows XP, and you’ll find lots of griping then too. And some of it sounds eerily familiar. Pundits called XP a resource hog and “power mad” because it needed a 400-megahertz processor and 192 megs if you wanted fast performance. Shocking! Our own reviewer, Stephen Manes, sniped about XP: “The world's richest chief software architect continues a record for design elegance unmatched since the Yugo. …...

According to newly revealed information, Dell customers are wanting Linux pre-installed on their notebooks and desktop PCs. In fact, it is one of the most requested features from this leading PC manufacturer; having the ability to multi-boot into Windows XP or Windows Vista or no Microsoft partition at all are among the options. More information is available at Dell Idea Storm.

Steve Ballmer has reissued Microsoft's patent threat against Linux, warning open-source vendors that they must respect his company's intellectual property. In a no-nonsense presentation to New York financial analysts last Thursday, Microsoft's chief executive said the company's partnership with Novell, which it signed in November 2006, "demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property, even in the open-source world." Steve Ballmer Steve Ballmer The cross-selling partnership means that Microsoft will recommend Suse Linux for customers who want an environment mix of Microsoft and open-source software. It also involves a "patent cooperation agreement," under which Microsoft and Novell agreed not to sue...

Red Hat Inc's CEO has said the company is encouraging customers to adopt Microsoft Corp's offer of support vouchers for Novell's Inc's rival Linux operating system in order to get the issue over with. Microsoft announced in November 2006 that it would distribute 70,000 Linux support certificates a year for five years, at the cost of $240m as part of an interoperability and patent deal with Novell. Speaking at the Merrill Lynch internet, software and services conference, Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, dismissed the impact that deal has had on Raleigh North Carolina-based Red Hat's business. "I think that there...

For consumers looking to boost their computers' security, is Vista the way to go? Or can Linux provide greater protection from hacker attacks? In the face of viruses, worms or other breaches, the answer is obvious. "We don't need a survey or study to determine the answer. The answer is universal with those that actually manage these systems," said John Cherry of the OSDL Desktop Linux Working Group.

My excitement dissipated, however, when I learned the iMacs were built around the the turn of the century. 350mhz processors, 128MB or RAM, no firewire or USB 2. OS 9.2 — yuck. These computers couldn't even load cnn.com without flipping out. So I started thinking. How can I make these computers functional again?

Reaction to the Free Software Foundation's upcoming revision of the GNU Public License (GPLv3) has been mixed so far, with many participants taking a wait-and-see attitude while others (such as Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds) actively opposing certain provisions. Now Sun has apparently decided to put its weight squarely behind the FSF and GPLv3. The reasons may not be as pure as you think.

Apparently, lot of people are thrilled with the whole idea of Canonical and Linspire's technology partnership announced yesterday, citing source code consolidation, non-redundant development efforts, and just good karma about the whole deal. I, for one, am not one of those people. Initially, my big problem was worry for the Debian Project. Under the terms of the new partnership (which, for the purposes of this article I will deem "Linbutu" because I am getting lazy in my middle age), the Linspire and Freespire distributions will be based on Ubuntu, not Debian GNU/Linux. Ubuntu, in turn, gets supported access to Linspire's...

JBoss founder to pursue personal interests, says he’s ‘done what I can’ to promote open source.JBoss founder Marc Fleury will leave Red Hat, the company said Friday, a month before the launch of the latest version of Red Hat’s commercial-use Linux operating system. Mr. Fleury became part of Red Hat after the latter bought JBoss, the open source support startup based in Atlanta, last year for $420 million. Red Hat now bundles its Linux for the enterprise with JBoss’ open-source application server. The news is bittersweet for fanatics who believe strongly in open software for all and idolize those who...

This is a new feature in Beryl 0.2.0 and it simply looks wayyyy wicked! This is the stuff that makes OS X and Vista look dated.

The penguin’s come of age. What began as a battle between proprietary and open source Linux software, started by geeks around the world, isn’t plain tech rhetoric anymore. It’s now a mainstream commercial platform — a technology that enterprises are taking very seriously and looking at as a major cost-effective solution that has scalability and a great future roadmap. A free software that can be downloaded from the Web, Linux has a source code that’s open and therefore available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute freely. Proprietary Unix and Windows operating systems aren’t available for such tweaking. With the...

According to an e-mail message, dated November 1, 2002, that has been entered as evidence in the Iowa consumer antitrust case against Microsoft, some Microsoft executives favored hiding the fact that Microsoft paid International Data Corp. (IDC) for one of the total-cost-of-ownership studies comparing Windows and Linux that the firm conducted at Microsoft's request. (It looks like fear of being outed triumphed, and Microsoft ultimately decided to admit its role in commissioning the IDC TCO and subsequent anti-Linux studies.)

Hello my fellow freepers, I'm thinking of migrating from Windows XP (don't like the new Windows Vista), to a Linux OS, however, before that I make that move, I would like to know what is the best Linux that I can run on a CD.. Thanks!

Barely a week after a U.S. judge approved a landmark antitrust agreement with Microsoft, company executives were swapping e-mails suggesting Dell deserved a beating for its growing interest in Linux, according to documents filed with a state court. But Redmond representatives said Friday that the 2002 exchange, made public this week as part of an antitrust suit unfolding in Iowa state court, only tells part of the story. They said it omits evidence that Microsoft executives were simultaneously seeking legal advice on how to ensure they were responding to such competitive threats without shirking their antitrust responsibilities. The e-mail thread...

IBM did not destroy crucial evidence in its long-running dispute with The SCO Group, a judge has ruled. SCO claimed IBM had destroyed materials last year, but the US judge has ruled that the evidence was actually provided to SCO some time ago. The decision is the latest in a long line of setbacks for SCO, which is claiming that IBM put some material from the Unix operating system into the open source Linux system. SCO owns some intellectual property rights in Unix and is suing for copyright infringement. SCO is claiming damages that it has said could reach $5bn...

San Francisco (dpa) - A week before the launch of Microsoft's new Vista operating system, its open-source competitor Linux received a giant boost Monday as prominent high-tech companies announced they were forming a consortium to promote the free challenger. The Linux Foundation, formed from two separate support groups, will have the backing of companies like IBM, HP, Intel, Oracle and Novell who aim to boost the free programme by providing promotion, standardisation and legal protection, according to James Zemlin, executive director of the foundation. "It's really a two-horse race now, with computing dominated by two operating-system platforms, Linux and Windows,"...

FreeNAS is a small, powerful, full-featured implementation of FreeBSD as a network-attached storage device. (It also happens to be January's Project of the Month at SourceForge.net.) If you're a Linux user like me, the BSD-speak used for devices and such might give you pause, but other than that small caveat, installation and usage shouldn't be a problem. It's powerful enough to be used in the enterprise, but it's friendly enough so that even a typical home office user can take advantage of it. Here's how I created an easy-to-use NAS device for rsync backups and FTP server on my LAN.

The Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group will merge to form the Linux Foundation in an effort to build strength and increase their influence. Formed in 2000, the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds. The move to combine forces could strengthen the hand of the open-source operating system against Windows. Red Hat and Novell distribute Linux for free but charge for tech support. Oracle and SAP have championed Linux as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Both groups already have a large list of members. Combined, the Linux Foundation will have 70 sponsors, such...

The Linux Foundation is Born - Updated Monday, January 22 2007 @ 05:35 AM EST OSDL and the Free Standards Group have merged to form The Linux Foundation. If you go to osdl.org now, you arrive at The Linux Foundation. Here's the operative paragraph from the press release:For Linux to remain open and attain the greatest ubiquity possible, important services must be provided, including legal protection, standardization, promotion and collaboration. Successful proprietary software companies, for instance, do several important things well: backwards compatibility, promotion, interoperability, developer support, and more. In the voluntary and distributed world of Linux development, the...

SCO CEO Darl McBride adamantly stated on the company's fourth quarter conference call that the company is not going bankrupt. He did admit, however, that SCO's recent earnings are not very impressive, though he is encouraged by his company's prospects for 2007. SCO (Quote) reported results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended October 31, 2006 on Wednesday, and the numbers are none too pretty. SCO reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of 2006 of $3.7 million, or $0.18 per diluted common share. The quarterly loss is nine percent greater that the comparable quarter for the prior year...