For a tiny notebook, eee-sy does it, Feb 29, 2008

All empirical evidence tends to prove that the standard unit of currency for Awesomeness in mobile computing in the past year is $400. It's the price of everything I've reviewed recently in that category which has really made my Spidey-Sense tingle. First the $399 iPhone, then the $399 Kindle . . . and now the eee PC ultracompact notebook by ASUS. It's $350, which gives you $50 left over for a couple of steaks.

Think of it as the biggest Linux swap partition in the world, since the whole system is running on Debian Linux. The genome project uses open source software as much as possible, and one of its major databases is run on MySQL, although others rely on Oracle.

Worldwide sales of servers rose modestly in the fourth quarter of 2007, driven primarily by rising revenues from volume systems, which include x86 Windows and Linux servers, a market research firm said Wednesday.

Imagine standing on the road. An oncoming car is heading rapidly towards you. You have a choice to move, or to stay. Now consider that in business you need to choose a server platform wisely but often Windows shops become entrenched because it is the status quo. A couple of user experiences show why you ought to think about it more.

A group of former execs from a Microsoft messaging hosting partner are going to launch a Linux-based unified communications platform that will compete directly against Microsoft.

... despite the rock-bottom prices, neither PC qualifies as a bargain. They use lowest-of-the-low-end components--you're essentially paying fair prices for inferior products.

There's a still nearly 11 months to go before the penguin sets up camp on the Apple Isle but the wheels are slowly being cranked into motion by the Tasmanian Linux Users Group as they prepare to host the 2009 Australian national Linux conference.

Chumby Industries announced volume shipments of its Chumby "consumer Internet device" at a price of $180 apiece. Chumby also announced a slate of content providers for the Chumby Network, including CBS, MTV Networks, MySpace, The Weather Channel Interactive, AOL's SHOUTcast and Scripps Networks.

In October I discussed the way people tend to misinterpret phishing botnet statistics. The key point was that people saw that many of the phishing Web sites were on Linux servers, and somehow leaped to the conclusion this meant Linux desktops were parts of the botnets sending out phishing emails.

... can the likes of Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Haiti, Rwanda, Mongolia and a myriad of other impoverished countries stump up with the cash needed to join the OLPC bandwagon? The sums are not that difficult to do.

Linux fans that need a Windows app or two can take advantage of WINE, but what about Windows fans that need to run Linux apps? If you're lucky someone has already ported your favorite Linux app over to Windows, but if they haven't, you might want to check out and Linux.

With the Save XP campaign continuing to capture momentum, and signatures, and myriad XP users facing, in the words of one such reader, a choice between "an operating system that would soon be obsolete (XP) or one that was buggy and would break much existing hardware (Vista)," both Linux and Mac desktops could be appealing right about now.

POS Terminals running Microsoft Windows operating systems drove $3.8 billion of the $5.56 Billion North American Retail POS Terminal Market in 2007, according to a new study by IHL Group. IBM 4690 terminals generated $1.02 billion and Linux-based machines $475 million, with DOS and other operating systems being installed on the remainder of units. These figures take into consideration the 2007 current shipments and maintenance on existing terminals installed in the U.S. and Canada.

The "Save XP petition" asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.

CIOs love Linux, but what does your Linux-using reputation say about you as an employee? IT execs say it shows a kind of problem-solving skill they're looking for

King penguins are supposed to be a wildlife success story. The flightless Antarctic bird — the second-biggest penguin after its movie-star emperor cousin — was hunted into near-extinction by sailors in the 19th century, who used their fat as cooking oil. When the slaughter ended — penguin fat no longer being the preferred way to simmer your cruise dinner — the penguin bounced back, and today numbers about 2 million. This is a healthy, robust species that sits near the top of the complex Antarctic food web.

At first, ranking GNU/Linux distributions seems alien to the spirit of free software. After all, free software is all about choice. What should matter is that your distro suits you, not how others judge it.

Seven years ago, Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School, which is situated in a suburb of Melbourne, took a step that made it stand out from other educational institutions.

PC maker and services company Elonex is to launch a $195 laptop aimed at students.

The maturing expectations of desktop operating systems have given Linux a better chance than ever of denting the desktop - even as they have helped down Windows Vista, says Linus Torvalds

I tend to hammer my Ubuntu laptop. Running a website like Tectonic means I am constantly installing new applications to try them out. Many of which I later have to remove or lie forgotten on the hard disk until I start to wonder where the +40GB of free hard disk space went to.

The New Zealand Stock Exchange is moving to a Linux platform for its settlement and clearing system, replacing its existing HP NonStop platform and applications in order to reduce cost and increase flexibility.

Right now, my candidate for the worst job isn't a nanny on a visa or a roofer on a hot summer day. It's being a publicist for Trend Micro. By launching a patent violation suit against Barracuda Networks for distributing a piece of free software called ClamAV, Trend Micro has created a public relations disaster for itself, and possibly a financial one as well.

A Silicon Valley company has bought the assets of Utah supercomputer maker Linux Networx Inc. for an undisclosed amount of stock.

Krishnakant Mane says that the freedom and flexibility provided by open source software enables him to work with a variety of interfaces and is integral to his work at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

FROM his hot, dusty, locust-plagued property in the NSW outback, a software engineer who goes by the name Quozl is doing his bit to help educate 1.5 billion of the world's poorest children.

Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Ever since he was a young boy, Jonathan Oxer has been fascinated by manipulating electronic devices to his mischievous ends.

What if I told you that it would actually be possible to see a Linux monopoly with the right components in place taking form within a short five-year period? That would be impossible due to licensing and availability, right?

The focus of the two-day show at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel will be on the Linux operating system - made to work like the mainframe stalwart Unix but now available for servers and desktop computers of all kinds. But a big part of the SCALE 6X show will be how companies like Google, Ticketmaster and Shopzilla use free, open-source software to build huge businesses.

The operating system was the first thing I had to choose for my server. The choice was between Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and a proprietary system (Windows or Unix). Unix systems include Linux, BSD, Solaris, and a several proprietary Unices. Windows variants include servers based on NT, XP, and so on. If you are thinking of deploying a server, this is your first decision, too.

[lead Enlightenment developer Carsten Haitzler] sees a big future for Linux in the mobile and embedded space and notes that Enlightenment, with its small memory footprint, is ideal for deployment on such devices.

A few weeks ago a former boss and mentor of mine made my jaw drop by asking me, "Why has open source failed?"

The BBC says it will make a download version of its iPlayer available for Macs before the end of this year.

Friday, February 8 is the last day of Decade Zero of Open Source. Saturday, February 9 is the anniversary of Open Source and the start of Decade One. It's a computer scientist thing. We always start counting from zero

Melbourne's Stewart Smith heads the 2008-09 team of office-bearers who have taken over at Linux Australia; the 26-year-old Smith is a senior software engineer at MySQL.

Linux needs to be the best thing that could happen to Linux. Anything less than that won't cut it.

The Ubuntu Linux distribution now includes the Parallels virtualization software in the partner repository, marking the first time that Ubuntu has offered access to commercial software through the package management system.

The Linux desktop may be moving forward slowly in the United States, but it's a vastly different story in Europe. Today, Jan. 30, Chris Kenyon, Canonical's director of business development, announced on a Canonical blog that "the Gendarmerie Nationale [the French national police force] announced the migration of up to 70,000 computers to Ubuntu over the next three years."

The LiMo Foundation plans to release the first version of its Linux software platform for mobile phones in March, with handsets running the software due soon.

Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell, the man behind the Samba file server and self-confessed TCP packet molester talks with Dahna McConnachie about Samba and some of his other favourite pastimes. He also discusses the recent deal that Microsoft signed to release previously secret code and data to the Samba project. Tridge will be speaking more about clustered Samba at the upcoming linux.conf.au.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers are testing a Linux-based automotive telematics system intended to reduce traffic congestion. CarTel is a distributed, GPS-enabled mobile sensor network that uses WiFi "opportunistically" to exploit brief windows of coverage to update a central traffic analysis program.

I've been running Ubuntu Linux on my notebook, a Sony VAIO TX model, for some time now. I'm impressed with how stable it's been and how a whole raft of features like action-key support (for things like dimming the display) are available directly out of the box, without having to install additional stuff that I needed to download from Sony's site.

IT workers who specialise in free and open source software are earning more than the national average for IT, according to the results of Australia's first open source census.

Microsoft will deliver more than 1,000 support subscription certificates for Suse Linux Enterprise Server to French automaker Renault, under an agreement announced by Microsoft and Novell on Wednesday.

The next Australian national Linux conference will be held in Hobart, the first time the Tasmanian capital has been given the honour of playing host.

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