'Microsoft negotiates', Sep 25, 2004

These two words were part of a recent NewsForge headline, and to me they were the two most important words in it. For many years Microsoft execs have taken an "our way or the highway" attitude toward almost everything. Now they seem to realize that, like it or not, Microsoft is not the only software company in the world, and Windows is not the world's only operating system.

There is still plenty of institutional hatred within Microsoft for Linux, free software, and open source. The GPL is still evil and will destroy the software business if it continues its viral spread. But the fact that Microsoft is willing to negotiate with people who produce that evil code at all represents an admission, however grudging, that open source is popular enough with major IT users and vendors that it must be accepted as a fact of life not only today but for the foreseeable future.

Sun and Microsoft are using a common strategy to attack a common enemy--Red Hat.

Sun President Jonathan Schwartz fired a major counteroffensive against Linux nemesis Red Hat by unveiling hefty discounts on the forthcoming Solaris 10 Unix OS upgrade due later this year and an offer to repurchase Xeon-based servers from any customer that buys Sun's discounted AMD Opteron-based servers.

KDE and GNOME, the open-source software projects that together form the face of most Linux installations, have undergone revisions that boost their usability and enterprise readiness—advances that build the case for Linux as a viable alternative to Windows on mainstream corporate desktops.

Some of the biggest changes in KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.8 lie in the projects' respective e-mail and collaboration clients, Kontact and Evolution. Both applications are well-integrated into their desktop environments and cover a full range of groupware functionality, but eWEEK Labs found Evolution to be more refined and pleasant to use.

ATI is here in Cyprus to outline its recently announced X700 and Catalyst drivers.

Terry Makedon, a senior product manager, largely talked about those, but he did say the firm is readying a major push in the next few weeks to outline its plans for Linux driver support.

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