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The carefully crafted ecosystem of tech companies built around Microsoft's Windows operating system is showing signs of strain. Hewlett-Packard, a longtime Microsoft ally, has quietly assembled a group of engineers to develop software that would make Windows Vista easier to use, or bypass some of its more onerous features. A Skunk Works of engineers at the company is even angling to replace Windows with an HP-assembled operating system, sources say.

My colleague Eric Lai discovered recently that while top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it's on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, "In the film industry, Linux has won. It's running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects." Rowe's not just being a Linux booster. It's the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull;...

From the "who needs a pre-load when you're embedded" files: Dude - if you're getting a Dell then you're getting Linux. No you don't have to order one of those fancy Ubuntu pre-load deals. This is an embedded Linux that will be available on a whole bunch of new Dell Latitude laptops in a feature called Latitude ON. This is a feature that uses an embedded Linux to allow for instant on access to email, calendar and Internet.

Some of the coolest OS features are nowhere to be found in Windows XP or Vista. Here are 18 brilliant features that Microsoft should beg for, borrow, or steal--plus tips on how you can add many of them to your PC now. Love it or hate it, Microsoft Windows is the world's most dominant operating system. But when you look at some of the hot features found in competitors such as Linux and Mac OS X, both XP and Vista can seem a little incomplete. From intuitive interface features like Apple's application dock and Cover Flow to basic media capabilities...

July 24th, 2016.Josef Konsumer, a home-based employee and portfolio manager for ICBC/CiticorpChase, a Chinese-owned multinational investment bank, wakes up to hear his alarm clock go off at 8am, and gets out of bed, his 47-year old body aching from an aggressive personal trainer session from the day before. His morning double espresso with frothed skim milk and mocha is already waiting for him, thanks to his new Korean-made LG RoboCafe, which brews and extracts a perfect crema every time using pre-portioned, mess-free nitrogen-sealed pods imported from Brazil. He considers nudging his wife, Mindy, to get up and make him breakfast,...

When you buy a new PC today, unless you hunt down a Linux system or you buy a Mac, you're pretty much stuck with Vista. Sad, but true. So, when I had to get a new PC in a hurry, after one of my PCs went to the big bit-ranch in the sky with a fried motherboard, the one I bought, a Dell Inspiron 530S from my local Best Buy came pre-infected with Vista Home Premium. Big deal. It took me less than an hour to install Linux Mint 5 Elyssa R1 on it. As expected, everything on this 2.4GHz...

Mac OS X support has been added to magicJack. Could Linux compatibility be coming down the pipe? DB: Yes, and because the of the similarities between the Mac and Linux OSes, we should be able to support Linux fairly soon.

Chinese impose blackout over new Tibetan monk deaths Jane Macartney in Beijing Two monks at a monastery in western China were killed in a clash with paramilitary police last weekend, three Tibetan sources have told The Times. The monks, at a monastery in western Sichuan province, which borders Tibet, were killed in a clash on July 12. For monks of what are popularly known as the “red hat” sects, the date marks one of the most auspicious festivals of the year. It is the first report of the lethal use of gunfire against Tibetan protesters demanding the return of the...

The decision is in, and SCO has gone down in defeat. The U.S. District Court in Utah has ruled in favor of Novell in SCO vs. Novell, the keystone case in SCO’s long, and ultimately unsuccessful war against Linux. The foundation of Judge Dale Kimball’s decision, that Novell, and not SCO owns the IP (intellectual property) rights to Unix, remains as solid as ever. Instead of showing that Linux violated SCO IP rights to Unix, SCO’s actions has lead to the revelation that it never owned the IP rights to Unix in the first place.This, within the narrow confines of...

Michael Robertson, chairman of Linspire, said the assets of his company were sold to Xandros after "years of frustration in trying to achieve the goal of desktop Linux." < >"Trying to compete with Microsoft on the desktop has been a futile effort. What the last 20 years has shown is that the Microsoft ecosystem goes far beyond Windows" into thousands of drivers for PC devices and applications to run on end-user machines. For Linux to match that may be impossible, he said.

I have an older computer that I have cleaned out of W2000 Pro. I tried loading a version of XP Pro that I have on this machine. MS wants $269 for an additional key. I am not willing to pay that. I am currently downloading Ubuntu and would like to put Linux on this box. It has an Athlon XP with a gig of memory and no video card. I don't plan on any gaming or high end computing. Just photo editing, video editing and web surfing. Do I need Ubuntu or is there something else smaller and simpler I...

Three strategic virtualization initiatives were the stars of the show as Linux powerhouse Red Hat opened its Red Hat Summit today in Boston. What do the Red Hat moves mean to you? More options in open source virtualization tools and a new open source effort around virtualization security, for starters. The Red Hat move that will catch the eye of most users is the Embedded Linux Hypervisor, oVirt. This is a lightweight, embeddable hypervisor that currently lets you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows VMs (virtual machines) on Linux. What makes this more interesting than just another virtualization...

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd... Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP. Such appreciation for history is not likely to warm the cockles of Microsoft's heart, especially when Linux is getting lots of love from developers (13 percent writing apps for it this year and 15.5 percent in 2009). The Mac? I don't have...

I really, really need some help here. Long story short, I've lost two old computers in the last few months and now have a box that is running on Linux with Ubuntu and Firefox. As far as I can tell, Firefox does not allow me to just copy and paste the LOLCat pictures... There goes my entertainment! I have no connectivity problems, but I think I'm showing my age. I 'grew up' with DOS based apps and I can't find anything! I have printer software that I need to install, and can't find the right way to do it. Cry...

Quite a few reviews of new Linux releases these days try to determine if a distribution is "ready for the desktop." I myself have probably been guilty of using that phrase, but I think it's time we officially retire this criterion. What defines an operating system as being ready for the desktop? Surely everyone has a different opinion on the actual definition. While my search for an official definition or list of guidelines has failed, to me this phrase means that the OS is usable by everyone, meets everyone's needs, and is able to do everything that everyone wants it...

RECOMMENDATIONS WANTED FOR REBUILDING MY COMPUTERI built this system 7 years ago and it has performed well until now.  The motherboard won't post, so I have decided to upgrade but would like to use as much of the legacy devices that I have as possible.  Here's the main specs on the system I want to upgrade: Motherboard (non-posting now): Soyo SY-KT333 Dragon Ultra Platinum (ATX form factor - Soyo no longer makes motherboards) Processor: AMD Athlon XP 2100 (socket A) Video card: BioStar GeForce 6800 (128mb, AGP) Ram: Corsair DDR 3 1024gb dram sticks   HHD: 2 Maxtor 80gb ATA...

The largest stock exchange on Earth is a Linux shop. NYSE Euronext has chosen Red Hat's Linux offerings to power the critical financial trading platform that services approximately $141 billion in daily trading volume. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed at this time. The stock exchange win is a dramatic victory for Red Hat and for Linux as the NYSE and its family of exchanges will be migrating from HP UX, IBM AIX, and SUN Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX) operates multiple exchanges including, the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext, Liffe,...

Reality, as good writers know, is sometimes stranger than fiction. SCO's recent performance in the U.S. District Court in Utah is a perfect example. With years to prepare, SCO executives made some remarkable statements in their attempt to show that SCO, not Novell, owns Unix's copyright. While this case is not about SCO's claims that IBM and other companies placed Unix IP (intellectual property) into Linux, Novell's attorneys decided that they would address this issue as well. One presumes that, since this may be their one and only chance to attack SCO's Linux claims in a courtroom -- what with...

Excerpt - Linux visionary Hans Reiser has been convicted of first-degree murder for killing his estranged wife in 2006 and faces life imprisonment. Reiser, founder of Namesys which develops the Linux-based Reiser file systems, was charged with the deliberate and premeditated murder of Nina Reiser by an Oakland, California courthouse after an almost six-month trial. The fate of the troubled ReiserFS and Reiser4 file systems may be sealed, following media reports that Namesys has ceased commercial activity and the rapid loss of support for the latter system in the open source community. ReiserFS was the first journaling file system included...

A reinvigorated SCO Group Inc. goes to trial Tuesday to once again defend its claims to a widely used computer software code against Novell Inc. Although what's at stake in the scheduled four-day trial pales in comparison to the unresolved major claims in the case that have rattled parts of the software community for the past five years, millions of dollars are on the table in a legal battle that has been widely watched. In play in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball is as much as $37 million that Novell claims it is owed in the dispute...