Accurate market share statistics and The $60 Billion dollar question, Apr 28, 2008

Earlier this week an article concerning Vista and market share and one about how Open Source Software has cost the IT Industry $60 Billion dollars over the last five years or so hit the newswire.

With Linux on the desktop going from a slow crawl to verging on an explosion, many have toiled with the question: How do we make this happen faster? A well-known Austin-based Linux Advocate thinks he has the answer.

The Southern California Linux Expo has filled all available speaker slots for not only the SCALE 6X main conference, but also all three Friday specialty conferences.

Back in 1999 I remember the first PC entered our house coming preloaded with Windows 98. One of the things I liked about it was the defragmentation screen where blocks presenting 'datablocks' on the harddrive were moving over the screen for almost eternally. I remember at that time it seemed like a logical maintenance requirement for any filesystem.

In response to one of my Everex articles, commenter Alan Rochester clued me in to the Canada-based Linux store, which is offering a somewhat similar $199 PC preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10.

For many years Linux has flourished as distros big and small have dotted the landscape. That's the beauty of Linux. Each distro is created to either meet a need, solve a problem or scratch a developer's itch. Either way, most distros roll merrily along with their release schedules without ne' er a worry.

In its second year, T-Dose, the Dutch Open Source event aimed at developers takes place in Eindhoven. Your two LXer editors went there to find out what's happening and what's new in open-source land. Todays topics include QTopia for PDA's and smartphones, open source software in the iLiad digital paper device, KDE4 application programming, the Lodel publishing tool, efficient data structures and how to overtake proprietary software without writing code.

I have to wonder- where on Earth did Ms. Fairchild get the idea that alienating her customers is a good business practice? So what if she finds sexist, demeaning humor funny? It doesn't belong in Linux Journal.

Benedikt Meurer was kind enough to agree to an Interview with yours truly. As one of the lead developers of the Xfce desktop environment his knowledge of the goings on concerning Xfce are second to none.

Mandriva Benelux NV (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg) was launched on August 16th 2007 as the sole Benelux partner for Mandriva S.A, offering Mandriva Linux operating systems.

An interview with IBM's Vice President of Open Source and Standards about their Open Source Strategy, the recent pledge of its patents for more than 150 open software standards, his take on the ODF vs. XML issue, and much more in The LXer Interview of Bob Sutor.

Normally I try to avoid Rob Enderle's stories. The one-man analyst group is more often wrong than right, his analyses incoherent and filled with off-base assumptions. His latest few pieces are downright insulting but also offer us an insight into his reasoning.

A look inside what makes KDE tick, a glimpse of what the future holds and more in The LXer Interview of Sebastian Kügler

In part 1 I introduced you fine readers to my new obsession, digital SLR cameras. If you're used to compact point-and-shoot digital cameras, and you're thinking of making the move to a DSLR, there are several important points to keep in mind:

I understand and agree with the Debian stance on not including proprietary software and not budging on it but the Mozilla infinite right to revoke usage sounds like something they got from the Microsoft EULA.

Fred Miller is a prolific GNU/Linux evangelist and active member of the OpenSUSE community. He has converted numerous small businesses and individuals from Windows to GNU/Linux. He is also a big OpenOffice.org fan.

There are plenty of ways to transfer photos from your digital camera to the World Wide Web. Here's how I took my photos straight from my camera to my website with Konqueror.

Well what do you know? Microsoft seems to be gaining ground with their "patent protection" scheme. But what if they discover they've only bought a few bricks of fool's gold?

Would you believe that, in 2007, there are people who still blame Linux for the lack of hardware vendors who advertise Linux support and who believe that the Bash project's evangelists are hurting Linux uptake? Look, if you're going to claim the GNU/Linux community is not grasping the average computer user, at least use some up-to-date arguments - not the tired old arguments from 1999.

LXer inquired about Google's advertising program to find out why Google ads show up with the words "Dell Linux Desktop", even though Dell hasn't yet launched its line of Ubuntu-based computers, and whether Google considers the practice misleading. Can Dell fix the misleading advertising problem?