Microsoft loses Munich contract to Linux, Jun 17, 2004

Microsoft lost a contract for programs to run 14,000 PCs for the Munich city government to the free Linux software.

The City Council voted yesterday in a closed-door meeting 50-29 in favor of a detailed plan to switch to Linux from Microsoft's Windows, according to the ruling Social Democratic Party

Leading InfiniBand companies and organizations have banded together to form OpenIB Alliance, an industry association with the mission of delivering an open-source Linux-based software stack for deploying InfiniBand architecture.

InfiniBand is a channel-based, switch-fabric architecture. At first, starting in 2000, its proponents pushed it as a system bus/network bus network replacement for everything from PCI to Fibre Channel. The technology found it rough going though with questions about whether major OEMs would support it well into 2003.

Does your job require you to create designs or documents with special fonts? Ever wonder what 'anti-aliasing' fonts or 'hinting' really means? Fonts can improve readability for computer users and are important as elements of style and design. Users of Apple and Windows operating systems have long had a large number of fonts on their systems. Today, Linux is gaining both enhanced font technologies and access to large font foundries as the first independent digital foundry, Bitstream, is working to make sure that users of open source have the same rich text experience as those using other OSes.

DesktopLinux.com spoke with Lycoris and Bitstream about the technology and a little bit about the joint projects they have underway.

We talked with Joseph Cheek, Chief Executive Officer of Lycoris; Anna Chagnon, President and CEO of Bitstream; and Sampo Kaasila, VP of Research and Development for Bitstream about the state of fonts on the Linux platform . . .

Scalix released a new version of its Linux-based e-mail and calendaring software and expanded desktop support.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based vendor of messaging software said that Scalix 9.0, released on Monday, offers a migration path to Linux messaging by providing cross-platform interoperability. Scalix develops messaging software for Linux and open systems architectures. Scalix includes e-mail and calendaring functions, shared folders and contact management, while the underlying technology is extensible to other kinds of messaging such as IM or collaboration applications.

Nexedi and Mandrakesoft have announced a strategy to deliver a Linux desktop with zero transition costs. With rentalinux Desktop Linux Server (DLS) the companies are providing a solution to deploy Mandrakelinux without any upfront investment and minimal disruption. According to Nexedi, rentalinux requires no software installation and no changes to existing hardware or networks.

DLS combines server hardware rental, software setup, custom configuration, support and maintenance service in a single package.

 View older news this year: Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View news from other years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999