Acer likes Linux for laptops, Jun 05, 2008

Yahoo and Microsoft used the press to negotiate for several months regarding a potential merger. Now it appears Acer and Microsoft are having a public spat. Or, if they aren't yet, Acer's comments Wednesday will likely start one.

Ron Hovsepian, CEO of Novell, took an unwarranted swipe at Red Hat for failing to show up to the Linux desktop market, but by Red Hat's own admission, it's not really interested in the traditional desktop market.

Red Hat has published a "preview release" of Fedora 9, the next version of its freely available Linux distribution, which will be the last public release before the final edition next month.

The most undisputed assertion in the trial of Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer accused of killing his estranged wife, is that he's a geek to the nth degree. He's been called strange, socially inept, devoid of emotion, and paranoid...and no one disagrees.

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday, and Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth isn't being shy and retiring about it.

Miguel de Icaza, who heads up the open-source Mono project, has provided an update on a project to create Silverlight applications that run out of the browser, moving a small step toward what Adobe Systems offers with AIR

Australian university students have developed a Linux-based data forensics tool to help police churn through a growing backlog of computer-related criminal investigations.

Sun formally completed its acquisition of MySQL on Tuesday. I was fortunate to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, after the press conference.

Sun Microsystems said Tuesday that it has completed its acquisition of open-source database company MySQL for about $1 billion--and now is turning its attention to other acquisitions.

Linus Torvalds, leader of the Linux kernel project that's among the best-known open-source threats to Windows, has words of praise for Microsoft's announcement last week that it would share some previously hard-to-get technology with open-source programmers.

Adobe has traditionally been strong on Windows and the Mac and turned a relatively deaf ear to Linux. That's about to change, however, with Adobe AIR, a cross-platform runtime for delivering Rich Internet Applications to the desktop, set to move beyond its Windows and Mac OS X roots to Linux.

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

Mozilla has released a third beta version of Firefox 3, bringing about 1,300 changes to the widely used open-source Web browser.

Dave Rosenberg once wrote that the winner in a given open-source category (ERP, CRM, etc.) takes all. There's no room for second place. The first mover to get critical mass tends to horde the community and media resources.

I wouldn't mind being in a list with companies like Google and Salesforce.com, which is precisely the company Red Hat is keeping in its continued growth trajectory. Forbes just named Red Hat the 11th fastest-growing company in the United States. Red Hat's sales have grown 41 percent over the past five years.

Linux (and principally Red Hat Enterprise Linux) has become the primary production platform for the animation industry, largely due to the engineering efforts of DreamWorks. Behind that effort sits Ed Leonard, chief technology officer at DreamWorks, who has been recognized for his work with an Annie Award for "promoting the Linux open system for animation in animation studios and gaming software development."

Another interesting tidbit from the release: Shipments of Linux-based smartphones were flat in 2007, despite the strong growth in almost every other segment of the market. That's Google's hope for Android, that it can take the promise of a mobile operating system based on Linux and actually get some traction.

Linux is getting more mainstream exposure than just appearing in inexpensive computers. It's now being offered by two of the world's largest PC manufacturers, Dell and Lenovo, and is making its way into tiny--not to mention trendy--inexpensive laptops

Shuttle turned a lot of heads with the announcement of its $199 Linux PC at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. Now Linspire is looking to tempt retail customers with its own version of the sub-$200 PC.

Forgive me if I sound skeptical, but during the nine years I've covered Linux, not once have I seen a favorable outcome to the partnership of the type Mandriva and Turbolinux announced Wednesday.