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Despite years of success Dell has fallen on hard times. The company who practically reinvented the way people buy computers has been under-performing and investors are worried. The company has been losing market share and no longer has the edge it once had over competitors like HP and Gateway. There has been much talk about Dell taking steps to make up lost ground by selling computers that use Linux for their operating system. This is something many people are interested in but unfortunately not something that will turn around the company. As a Linux user (on a few but not...

Dell Inc. began polling customers about their software preferences on Tuesday as part of an effort by the struggling PC vendor to meet a popular request for desktops and notebooks that run on Linux instead of Windows. Dell posted the survey on a company blog, asking PC users to choose between Linux flavors such as Fedora and Ubuntu, and to pick more general choices such as notebooks versus desktops, high-end models versus value models and telephone-based support versus community-based support.

When members of the French parliament and their assistants return from their summer break, they will conduct business on PCs running Ubuntu Linux. Starting in June 2007, 1,154 desks will feature Linux-based PCs. During the latest IT update for parliamentary assistants, the National Assembly decided to switch from Microsoft Windows to Linux, allowing the 577 parliament members to switch to nonproprietary software for the first time.

In last month’s column, I said “I’m more secure on a Mac than I was on Windows XP.” Some of you asked how Linux fares in that comparison. To that, I’ll say I’m marginally more secure on Linux than on a Mac, but I prefer a Mac anyway. I can almost see my inbox filling with flames from you penguin lovers everywhere, but let me explain my opinion. First, though, I’ll again caveat these opinions by saying that I’m not saying Linux is or isn’t more secure than Apple’s OS X. I’m saying that I’m marginally more secure on Linux...

Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs running Linux, which has the company assessing the possibility of offering factory-loaded Linux systems, an HP executive said. "We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we are really looking at it very hard," said Doug Small, worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. "We are in a massive deal right now for ... multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux. That's an indicator." He declined to...

Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 Linux distribution has reached another big milestone, racking up two million installed users barely two months after tallying 1 million installed users. With the new threshold crossing, it is unclear whether Fedora 6 is the No. 1 Linux distribution in use today, but internetnews.com has learned that preliminary discussions are underway that could see Novell's OpenSUSE Linux distribution partner with Red Hat's Fedora to drive open statistics about Linux use.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has banned Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 2007 from its offices, and is considering switching its operations to Macs and PCs running Novell's SuSe Linux. The DOT enacted the ban in mid-January, according to one blogger, because certain applications essential to the agency's function can't run on Windows Vista. Microsoft has attracted intense criticism over its new operating system since it began shipping earlier this year, lacking proper driver software for a wide array of devices and utilizing a new user interface that closely resembles Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger system....

How much is the Windows tax? How much is the Vista tax? Microsoft won't let people talk about it under pain of contract violations, but with a little sleuthing, you can find it out.

OK, sorry for vanity. I have been posting on a few threads about help with linux and have gotten great advice. Here is where I am, on my older laptop which was XP, I have run Ubuntu off of the CD. Looks cool, OK, I am ready to go forth and intall it on the hard drive. Of course, no matter how hard linux people claim to be consumer friendly, they all have crap web pages, etc. because they feel the need to prove how smart/superior they are. So, I could use some advice: I want to do the whole...

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew 5.2 percent year over year to $15.2 billion (U.S.) in the fourth quarter of 2006 (4Q06), marking the third consecutive quarter of positive growth. Worldwide server unit shipment growth was flat in 4Q06 when compared with the year-ago period. For the full year 2006, worldwide server revenue grew two per cent to $52.3 billion, while worldwide unit shipments grew 5.9 per cent to 7.5 million units. This represents the highest annual server revenue since the market peaked in 2000, IDC said. -----snip----- Linux servers now...

Pre-Installed Linux Options It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems. As this community knows, there is...

Computer users wanting to run Vista on Mac OS or Linux will have to buy an expensive version of Vista if they want to legally install it on their systems using virtualization technology.* The end-user license agreement for the cheaper versions of Vista (Home Basic and Home Premium) explicitly forbids the use of those versions on virtual machines (eg a Mac pretending to be PCs): “You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system,” the end user license agreement states. However, the more expensive Vista Enterprise and Ultimate Editions, can...

Eric Raymond, influential developer and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has delivered a public rebuke to Red Hat's Fedora project. In a message distributed to several high-profile Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond said he is switching to the Ubuntu distribution after 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, citing numerous technical and governance problems around Fedora. Fedora is Red Hat's freely distributed Linux distribution, and is closely linked to the company's commercial versions, serving as a testing ground for technologies that will eventually go into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is also intended to form...

Commentary -- At a recent news conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sought to impugn the character of the free/open source world by implying that it had no respect for the intellectual property rights of others. It's not just the enormous ignorance embodied by this duplicitous braggadocio that caught my eye, it's the fact that the claim is coming from a man associated with Microsoft, which is far and away the most notorious IP thief of all time. One thing should be obvious. It's difficult for an open source project to steal code. After all, access to the code is offered...

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?