What Kind of Person Uses Linux, And Should You Be One Of Them?, Oct 25, 2007

Linux is one of the great mysteries of the computing world. It’s an operating system that looks like a clear winner by most standards, from technical to functional. Linux supports more hardware than any other operating system and is virtually virus free. It offers many distributions which include many easy-to-install programs with complete application sets.

TCP/IP, the lingua franca of the Internet, was developed on UNIX systems. As such, Linux has benefited from this heritage by naturally fitting in to any TCP/IP network. Yet, sometimes you still need to deal with computers whose operating system has distinctly non-TCP/IP legacy networking components. A case in point is sharing your printer to Windows users.

Ubuntu fanboys have been crying into their beers after discovering internet connection problems with Canonical's latest open source Linux distribution operating system, dubbed the Gutsy Gibbon.

Open-source software company Red Hat has said that it is concerned that Microsoft patent arrangements may not be compatible with open-source licensing models.

The SCO Group is seeking U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval to sell its Unix business to a New York investment management firm for $36 million, according to documents filed today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Alan Cox emailed me this morning to note a presentation he gave way back in 2000 called "Dear Mr Brooks, or: Software engineering in the free software world." It's no surprise to me that my recent blog post (on the topic of optimally sized development teams) was better articulated by Alan many years ago.

Banshee developer Aaron Bockover announced the PodSleuth project earlier this week, which is designed to expose iPod metadata through the Linux Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). PodSleuth replaces the old libipoddevice and is designed to be more adaptable and future-proof.

Mandriva, the leading European Linux editor, announces that its Club is open to all Linux users, free of charge.

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