Come on in, the Linux is lovely!, Jun 28, 2005

Every month, I get a rush of e-mail from readers who have one question for me: How do I get started with Linux? It's a simple question, and I wish there was one simple answer for the folks who've decided they've had enough of Microsoft Windows. The good news is that you don't need to be a geek to install Linux these days.

This device is based on Debian Linux, a desktop version of Linux. This means, among other things, that developers will have to do less work to port existing Linux applications.

As a Web developer and parent of teenage children, I'm adept at removing viruses and spyware from Windows machines, but I am getting fed up with doing so.

A totally new release of Knoppix was unveiled at LinuxTag 2005, Knoppix 4.0. This is the release that introduces the split between "maxi" DVD and "mini" CD releases. I've tried out the 4.0 DVD and let me tell you, I'm like a kid in a candy store.

But it's often hard to find communities of people interested in the same thing. And the Internet has done that and open source has really done that for a lot of technical people, where you end up knowing all these people that are interested in what you're interested in and you have common interests.

In stark contrast to Fedora, Debian is (in)famous for its road-map conservatism—the last stable version of Debian to ship, code-named Woody, was released nearly three years ago. In the interim, the Debian project has updated Woody only to patch security vulnerabilities.

Earlier this month, REAL Software released a beta of its latest object-oriented, visual RAD (rapid application development) environment for Linux.

The company is resisting EU pressure to let makers of open source products such as Linux use the data. Microsoft has said it won't allow its proprietary information to be distributed under licensing terms used by Linux and other open source products

In the wake of SCO's controversial attempts to claim ownership of key elements of the Linux operating system, industry watchers have noted that senior IT executives are becoming much more worried about open source intellectual property indemnification.

The South Korean government is moving forward with a program to roll out servers running the Linux operating system that will handle student data for 10,000 of the nation's schools by 2006

IBM has acquired privately held Meiosys, a company that sells high-end clustering software that provides backup functionality, Big Blue said Thursday. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

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