India slowly dumping Windows for Linux?, Jul 04, 2007

Indian state Kerala is looking at Open Source software to help improve literacy rates and boost the local economy; in January of this year, another Indian state Tamil Nadu switched over more than 3,000 government desktops to Linux and will not offer Windows unless it's an "absolute necessity".

GPLv3 looks good for customers: It increases user protection from patents and lock-in, while clauses that could have affected Web services have been dropped.

As the open-source movement completes its first decade, the fast-growing industry is at a crossroads, experts say, having advanced from nerdy novelty to recognized market niche while attracting the double-edged attention of its biggest rivals.

There are many good reasons to be concerned about security and privacy online. For example, Internet banking can be at risk if there is any possibility of malicious software on your computer's hard drive. Banks even expressly warn that before using their systems you should ensure you have taken steps to ensure your personal security.

The Slackware Linux team this week released stable v12.0 of its Linux distribution. Slackware Linux v12.0 boasts a 2.6.21.5 kernel, a KDE 4.5.6 default desktop environment, the latest modular X11 Window System, and numerous other advanced features.

Gartner is urging businesses to put pressure on Microsoft to provide “commercially reasonable” support for all enterprise licensees running virtual machines (VMs), not just Premier subscribers.

A federal judge refused on Tuesday to rule on a last-minute Google antitrust complaint about Windows Vista's desktop search, saying she trusted government attorneys who said they were already satisfied with Microsoft's planned changes.

"We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data.

Some of you may be shocked by Red Hat and Microsoft even considering working together. I'm not.

Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth has declared more publicity would be generated for open source software if the three large desktop projects of KDE, GNOME, and OpenOffice.org agreed on a common and regular release cycle.

Even though patent talks between Microsoft and Red Hat broke down last year before Microsoft went on to sign a technical collaboration and patent indemnity deal with Novell, Red Hat is still willing to work with the Redmond software maker on the interoperability front.

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