Digg geeks' May Day: Here's the back story, May 08, 2007

At the root of the May Day Digg riot is Linux, the open-source operating system beloved by geeks — the same geeks whose mind-set is steeped in those 1960s values and who hold dear to the culture of free. Linux is where it all comes together.

Red Hat Inc. reports first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, June 28. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.

You can even run entire operating systems from a thumb drive, provided the host PC supports booting from a USB device. Several variations of Linux will run from a thumb drive, but installing them in most cases requires some knowledge of Linux.

European antitrust regulators are considering a requirement that Microsoft sell two versions of Windows in Europe — one with the music- and video-playing software stripped out — should they find the company to be an abusive monopoly, people close to the case said Tuesday.

Regulators may also demand that Microsoft itself propose "within a few months of a ruling" what computer code for Windows it should disclose to make the operating system fully compatible with programs and servers manufactured by rivals, these people said. Servers drive networks of personal computers.

In an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft productivity software and is encouraging the development of an open source alternative.

A spokeswoman for the Finance Ministry, which oversees government purchases, said Tuesday that government agencies would use existing Microsoft Office products for the time being rather than upgrade to newer versions.

Carefully, quietly, Vietnam is plotting another revolution. This time its foe is not a foreign army but a corporation whose reach extends worldwide.

"We are trying step by step to eliminate Microsoft," said Nguyen Trung Quynh of Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology. Quynh and other government tech officials want Vietnam to be on the cutting edge of a movement to embrace open-source software -- products that can be downloaded from the Internet for free and perform the same tasks as Microsoft Windows or Office.