New Eee PC arrives, Linux same price as Windows, Jun 20, 2008

ASUS has announced the release of the new Eee PC 901 and the reduced prices of the previous 701 and 900 models.

Users of the open-source Samba software are being urged to patch their code following the discovery of a critical bug in the file-and-print software.

The Novell executive who architected an historic technology and intellectual property agreement with Microsoft has scolded rival Red Hat for not being innovative and warned Oracle's Linux play will fragment the company's operating system.

"If Microsoft forces us to make a choice of Vista or Linux, they might just be unpleasantly surprised as to the choice many of us will make,"

Since announcing its intention to contribute to and support the open source PostgreSQL database on its flagship Solaris 10 operating system in late 2005, Sun Microsystems has published a customer win that pulls no punches towards Linux and Oracle.

In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.

When we talk about the Microsoft monopoly, we usually mean Windows. Yet the Office productivity suite enjoys such total market dominance, analysts occasionally ponder whether there are even customers left for Microsoft to win. Mac or PC, you've gotta have it. It's so ubiquitous that whenever an organization of significant size threatens to give it up cold turkey, even Linux users take the news with a grain of salt.

Microsoft continued turning up the heat on Linux with its Get The Facts campaign last week. This time, Microsoft claimed that Windows 2003 was faster at file and print serving tasks than a Red Hat Linux server, based on a test performed by Veritest.

Throughout the 5-year-old Microsoft antitrust case, one of the chief potential rivals to Windows' dominance cited in court arguments has been Linux. And that was true again this week, when opponents of the 2001 Bush administration settlement with Microsoft returned to appeal that ruling.

The sole holdout state, Massachusetts, asked the court to impose remedies that it contends are needed to help Windows rivals, which essentially means Linux. The state, which was the first to seek action against Microsoft, wants the settlement to require the Microsoft Office suite to be ported to Linux.