Who writes Linux: Corporate America, Oct 01, 2008

I'm not sure why the silly notion that "Only .10068% of Linux kernel developers are paid" keeps circulating, but it does. So, let me just say, once and for all, Linux is written, for the most part, by paid software engineers and programmers from major American corporations.

Getting new software installed on Linux doesn't have to be hard, but it can differ depending on what you're installing

Microsoft encourages us to think of Linux, when we think of it as all, as an also-ran operating systems for nerds. The last thing Microsoft wants us to think about is that there are some spaces where Microsoft is a distant number two and Linux is on top

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, has become a member of the Foundation.

VMware’s new CEO Paul Maritz (right) used his first VMworld keynote on Tuesday to introduce the company’s Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS) to an audience of IT professionals and technology industry insiders at the VMworld 2008 conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Developers are choosing commercial, rather than non-commercial, distributions of Linux when it comes to building high-performance or mission-critical systems, according to new research.

After two years in development, VLC, the universal media player, has moved from the 0.8.x versions to version 0.9.2. The release, named "Grishenko", is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems, is available to download from the Videolan web site.

Cafiero is leading a revolution in the redwood-ringed town of Felton. He's been inspired by others around the country and with them he's dubbed the effort "Lindependence 2008,'' a scheme hatched to turn Felton into an all-Linux enclave.

My wife often rolls her eyes at me, because once I find a new hobby I latch onto it as though life depended on it. The more arbitrary the nature of the hobby, the less she's impressed with it. So imagine her immense delight when, a year ago, the only thing I would talk about with her was Linux.

The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project which fired its first shot yesterday around its 27km circuit, runs Linux.

Lenovo, which years ago purchased IBM's personal computer business, appears to have quietly stopped offering Linux as a pre-installation option. None of the company's 49 ThinkPad and IdeaPad notebook models -- nor its many ThinkCenter and IdeaCenter desktops -- can currently be ordered with Linux.

... "as optimistic as Linux enthusiasts are and will forever remain, they're beginning to sound like Cubs fans with the never-ending hope of 'There's always next year.'"

It should have been a great day on the London Stock Exchange. The U.S. government had announced on the Sunday before that it was coming to the rescue of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Trading would have been extremely brisk, but then, at 9:15 AM GMT, the Exchange's software failed due to "connectivity issues."

Wireless management on Linux is a bit of a hodge-podge, especially for roaming users. NetworkManager, KWifiManager, and various other utilities that have come and gone all attempt to make managing different network connections easy. NetworkManager and KWifiManager do a pretty good job, though you often have to finick and fuss a fair bit. wicd (pronounced "wicked"), the wireless interface connection daemon, tries to do the job better, so we're going to give it a test drive.

Windows Vista has been out for almost two years now but it still suffers from stability and compatibility issues, let alone an insatiable desire for beefier hardware. You don't have to live with it; here are five reasons why Linux makes a better choice for your computer.

Linux versus Windows is the stuff of near endless controversy. Linux lovers trash Windows for being slow, unreliable, insecure and overpriced, whilst Windows bigots accuse Linux of being hard to use and clunky.

A low-cost XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child Project that carries both Windows and Linux will be out within the next month or so, according to an OLPC official.

We asked the devoted Linux users, the dual-Windows-and-Linux-booters, and the newer converts to the open-source operating system last week why they made the switch to Linux, and received over 330 responses as of this posting.

The 451 Group has issued a report that shows that companies are beginning to pick up something serious Linux users have known since day one: You don't have to buy Linux to use it.

IF YOU BUY one of those nifty Linux preloaded notebooks from the likes of Dell, Asus, or Lenovo, the default web browser will always be Firefox.

Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives.

Cisco Systems Inc. agreed to buy closely held PostPath Inc. in a $215 million deal, highlighting the networking giant's bid to expand its business-applications portfolio. PostPath, Mountain View, Calif., makes Linux-based email and calendaring software that it markets as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange software.

...have you ever heard of a community version of the open source operating system displacing one of the popular commercial distributions? That's exactly what happened in Germany's third-largest public TV and radio station

Walk into the Ponto Frio electronics store here, which proudly displays a penguin-shaped logo, and you will find a healthy supply of Linux PCs alongside the usual Windows machines.

The much-hyped "year of the Linux desktop" may still not be with us but there’s no doubting the free open-source operating system has gained significant traction in the last year. One reason for this is, with equal certainty, the mess that is Windows Vista. Here's how it's actively driving new interest in Linux.

If you visit the US Democratic Party Convention site and try to use the streaming software using Linux you will be told you should pay for your operating system like every other good clean living American.

South Africa’s Stellenbosch University now has a high-performance Sun Fire cluster running OpenSuse Linux, courtesy of Breakpoint Solutions.

The new version 3.3.0 of the free virtualisation solution Xen has a number of revamped features and is now available to download. The new version is also available as part of a package with a 2.6.18 kernel version of Linux as the host system, also known as Domain 0

...it's still great to claim Utah as the home of Linux in the United States. We'll take the honor. It's a nice diversion from that other search term.

Standing at the headwaters of the ecosystem that is Linux is the Linux Foundation and its executive director Jim Zemlin. The Linux Foundation was forged out of the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group in 2007 as a new group with a new mandate for Linux.

The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar's RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

What's the big deal about Linux? Isn't it at heart just a PC-based version of UNIX – the ‘70’s hit operating system which has outlived the predictions of its demise throughout the ‘90’s? If you’ve come from a Solaris or HP/UX or AIX background isn’t a PC-based UNIX a bit, well, passé?

Memopal announced a free trial download of a Linux version of its online backup utility. The public beta of Memopal supports Ubuntu 8.04 and Debian Etch, says the company, which says it may release an open source version in the future.

Now that Canonical has added its name to the roll call of companies on board with the Linux Foundation, a question comes to mind: Is the foundation becoming the thing that "separates the men from the boys" in the Linux world? It may well be, and that wouldn't be bad news.

A new netbook for European schools runs Linux on a Chinese-designed processor. With a generous 10-inch, 1024×600 display, the 2.4-pound Emtec Gdium boots Mandriva Linux from removable USB flash keys, running it in 512MB of DDR2 RAM on a 900MHz Loongson-2F processor made by STMicroelectronics (ST).

I said I wouldn't post as much about technology unrelated to the Web, but I have noticed that Linux is a hot topic on Digg right now. The OS - and, let's face it, Linux is easier to define when we just view it as an OS - has been gaining momentum ever since Windows Vista turned into a nightmare for Microsoft.

I am going out on a limb here…really opening myself up for a flame-war. But you know - there are some defining moments that beg for such an action. That action? To question why anyone (when they KNOW the difference) would seriously choose a Windows operating system over Linux.

While at LinuxWorld at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, I chaired the panel on what the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that are pre-installing Linux on their PCs are up to and I attended another panel on what the Linux desktop architects have planned.

It is common for the open source community to be called upon by vendors--including proprietary vendors--to be beta testers for Linux releases, according to an industry player.

The operating system may be losing its luster. In fact, you could argue that the operating system–Linux, OS X and Windows–will become an application that just happens to boot first. And hardware vendors are on to the OS’s diminishing importance.

Our open source expert foresees the future of Linux: By 2012 the OS will have matured into three basic usage models. Web-based apps rule, virtualization is a breeze, and command-line hacking for basic system configuration is a thing of the past.

To see fantastic online video of the Olympics, go to NBCOlympics.com. But you'd better be on a PC or newer Mac and have Silverlight 2 onboard, because NBC and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) have shut out some Mac and Linux users.

Petite laptops with small screens and even tinier price tags may do more than shake up the computer hardware industry: They might loosen Microsoft's grip on the computer operating system.

Linux rarely needs to be rebooted but, when it does, it often takes longer than you'd like.

The other day I blogged about how the Foxconn G33M-S motherboard didn’t play nicely with Linux because it broke ACPI support. Well, as it turns out the problem isn’t a Foxconn one but it’s down to American Megatrends (AMI) having shipped a defective BIOS. Also, as it turns out, other boards are also affected.

In watching the many negative blog posts and comments about Microsoft’s “Mojave Experiment” — designed to try to distinguish perception from reality around Vista — I can’t help but wonder how different the take would be if it were Apple doing the same kind of marketing campaign.

I just renamed my two previous blogs about migrating from Windows XP to SLED 10 in a business environment as “Linux Desktop Odyssey” so everyone can easily keep up with my progress.

Purple Labs, a company based in France with a multinational management team, is pushing Linux mobile phones outward in capabilities and downward in price.

Considering how crowded many Japanese cities are, it’s not surprising that local vendors like Plat’Home are increasingly eco-conscious. Smaller systems just make business sense.

A company is now selling what it calls the "world's cheapest laptop," which at US$130, is not a bad deal if you can bear some hardware limitations.

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