Ubuntu founder doesn't 'get' enterprise Linux, Jan 24, 2007

OK, that's not really true. Mark is a sharp guy, and gets open source as well, indeed, better, than most. But he's completely wrong on his criticism of Red Hat (which Greg of the Fedora Project shoots down). His basic point? Because RHEL is a closed binary, it's proprietary.

"Linux is a non supported platform for the DC7700 Series. How can you screw up that? I tried SuSE Linux Enterprise 9, Knoppix and RHEL 8. Couldn't get it past the boot screen."

At a recent Sun Microsystems press event, Sun execs talked up plans to market the company's Solaris Unix OS to startups and small-to-midsize businesses. "Open source is what [customers] want to go after," said Peder Ulander, Sun's vice president of software marketing. "It's not so much Linux. Linux just happens to embody open source."

There is no question about it, Linux and tax software have not been the best fit over the years. As expected, the usual excuses were being used: there are not enough Linux users to warrant a Linux version, or if people want, there is always the online options made readily available to those who chose not to.

Microsoft and Novell have garnered a big customer win following their odd couple deal to collaborate: Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has decided to ditch Red Hat in favor of Novell's Suse Linux, with Microsoft providing assistance in managing interoperability with Windows in the company's mixed-platform IT environment.

This week we announced that CNR will soon be available for many of the most popular desktop Linux distributions, not just Linspire and Freespire.

How dumb is Microsoft? No, really: a few weeks ago, they decided to "give" bloggers a free -- as in beer -- $2,300 Acer Ferrari laptop. When some people -- like me -- suggested that this sounded like a bribe, Microsoft immediately back-peddled.

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