Linux Foundation: Microsoft's OOXML Argument 'Ridiculous', Feb 28, 2008

Executive Director of The Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin blasted Microsoft's attempt to create a second certified international standard document format for Office Open XML (OOXML), calling Microsoft's argument for two standards "ridiculous" and "disingenuous."

The Linux Foundation has appointed a new fellowship to Ted Ts'o for his contributions to the open source community.

A user or sysadmin posts about problems with a brand new Vista PC on a support forum. Within minutes, a "helpful" soul suggests a fix: "Install Linux!"

The desktop Linux market got a big boost earlier this month at LinuxWorld, where Lenovo unveiled plans to soon begin selling ThinkPads preloaded with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. The deal makes Novell the second major vendor to support Linux on its consumer PCs, following the trail Dell blazed in May with its decision to offer machines loaded with Ubuntu Linux.

Dell wants to see better software drivers for Linux so that the firm can ship more notebooks and desktops running the operating system, according to one of its software engineers.

There's been a lot of legal saber rattling in and about the Linux world in recent weeks, including dire warnings from Microsoft's lawyers that open-source software violates patents held by the software giant and fears that the Free Software Foundation might punish Novell for its controversial patent deal with Microsoft. But so far the response from the solution provider community has been more of a collective shrug.

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is defending his company's actions in the Linux community, hours after Linux creator Linus Torvalds ripped Sun for taking but not giving back to the open source universe.

Palm's new Foleo smartphone companion has received the thumbs down from industry experts, with Gartner describing the gadget as "offering too little functionality to justify the burden of carrying around another device".

The San Diego Unified School District has tapped education solution provider Arey Jones and PC maker Lenovo to provide Linux-powered notebooks for students, standardizing on Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system in the first phase of a districtwide deployment, according to officials there.

With increasing chatter about whether 2007 will be the "Year of the Linux Desktop," you hear considerably less about whether it's time for the Linux Office. But business desktops aren't just islands unto themselves. In a networked world, the desktop is just a piece of the office puzzle. There are also servers, printers, faxes and productivity applications.

Adding more fuel to the Linux versus Windows fire, a US research firm this week released a survey that noted only eight percent of Linux developers had ever seen a virus infect their systems.

The back-and-forth rhetoric between Linux companies Red Hat and Novell has reached a new intensity, with top executives lobbing verbal grenades at each other over Novell's decision last year to enter into a cooperation agreement with Microsoft.

Lotus Software on Wednesday extended its Linux support to the desktop with the introduction of a Web-based client for its Domino messaging and collaboration server.

Novell partners have till the end of the month to get authorized for the company's wares, but some who cannot make that deadline may get a break.

Red Hat, the biggest distributor of Linux software, on Thursday forecast annual cash flow growth that would top market expectations, sending its shares up almost 6 percent.

The bottom line: Trying to ignore or boycott Microsoft is not a sound competitive strategy for the Linux community, not from the end customer's nor from the channel's point of view.

or this review, the CRN Test Center evaluated offerings from the four leading Linux enterprise desktop alternatives: Linspire Five-O, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, the newly released Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5.0 and Xandros 4 Professional.

Open source community members expect the long-awaited GPL 3 (or at least another draft of it) to be unveiled this Saturday at a Free Software Foundation meeting in Cambridge, Mass.

The OpenOffice Project has sent a letter to Michael Dell, showering praise on Dell Inc.'s chairman and CEO and asking him to consider pre-loading OpenOffice onto PCs.

Hewlett-Packard is closing custom deals for thousands of desktop PCs running Linux, which has the company assessing the possibility of offering factory-loaded Linux systems, an HP executive said.