What does it take to create business disruption?, Jul 30, 2009

Linus Torvalds and the developers who originally built Linux certainly didn't come from a background of heavy-duty Unix experience, yet they disrupted all of the incumbents. Heck, IBM couldn't figure out how to compete with Microsoft, yet a university kid out of Helsinki created the fastest-growing server platform ever.

Microsoft's Vista is a classic case of an OS so bloated and unwieldy it barely crawled along on machines that could run Linux like a bat out of hell. So here's one for you. How come Linux (or UNIX for that matter) doesn't suffer from feature creep in the same way? Or does it?

A timeline from 1969 to the present.

I recently upgraded a friend of mine to Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop for his five-year-old Acer laptop with 512 MB of RAM. He immediately fell in love with the GNOME interface, the speed at which the system booted and how snappy it responded to his barrage of clicking. He was in heaven. What came next was a bit of a shock. A few days after the "big transition," I received a frantic phone call.

In Germany, two of the top 10 best-selling laptops currently run Linux. What do these folks know that we don't?

If you are new to Linux, a few common mistakes could land you in hot water.

Microsoft gave rival Red Hat a taste of the real IP world on July 22nd, 2009, arguing that making contributions to open source projects while ensuring that intellectual property rights were respected by rivals were in no way business strategies that excluded one another.

Whatever software and OS you use, whatever you do with the machine, sooner or later you're going to install, update or upgrade something. How does the process compare on the two platforms?

Linux is undoubtedly well placed to be the foundation for a global platform. Not only highly functional and scalable, Linux also has a long, successful history in embedded systems, setting the stage for "cross-platformization" between mobile and other categories such as desktop and consumer electronics.

Instant-on Linux platform vendors Phoenix and DeviceVM have responded to the revelation that Google will soon be releasing its own lightweight Linux platform.

Chilean IT firm Linux Latin America expects sales to the retail banking segment to reach some US$5mn-7mn during fiscal year 2010, starting August 1, and aims for its new category as platinum channel for Suse Linux to drive growth.

Back in the day, Netbooks ran Linux and packed solid-state drives. But Windows XP and big hard disk drives have prevailed.

While acknowledging that Nokia has denied that it is working on Android-based smartphone, sources from Taiwan's handset industry still believe that the world's number one handset vendor will not sit idle and let Android-powered models further erode its market share.

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