Laptop Project Starts 'Buy One, Get One' Initiative, Nov 13, 2007

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative on Monday kicked off its short-term "give one, get one" project that will send one computer to the purchaser and a second to a child in a developing nation.

Texstar and the Ripper Gang are pleased to announce the final release of PCLinuxOS 2007. Featuring kernel 2.6.18.8, KDE 3.5.6, Open Office 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 2.0, Frostwire, Ktorrent, Amarok, Flash, Java JRE, Beryl 3D and much much more.

Red Hat is planning a packaged Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current client solution.

The One Laptop Per Child project Nov. 27 received its first shipment of the low-cost Linux laptops that are intended for children in emerging-economy nations, project member Chris Blizzard reports on his blog.

What could be brewing? Does it make any sense that Microsoft is going to embrace Linux in a big way? After all, Ballmer used to demean it.

The attitude at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo was exuberant. The conference, which started on Tuesday in San Francisco, hosted Linux developers and enthusiasts who together celebrated the 15th anniversary of an operating system (OS) that did what most people thought was impossible: it challenged Windows.

Today Bill Gates announced that he was going to leave Microsoft and focus on the philanthropic part of his life saying that he wants to give back to society. The over-riding question is: what does it mean to Microsoft's future?

I think it can now be safely said, in hindsight, that Microsoft's entry into the browser business and its subsequent linking of the browser into the Windows operating system looks to be the worst decision—and perhaps the biggest, most costly gaffe—the company ever made. I call it the Great Microsoft Blunder.

CodeWeavers and Linspire on Wednesday announced CrossOver Office for Linspire 5.0, the first time the software has been made available for the Linspire Linux OS.

This year will almost certainly go down in Web history as the Year of the Firefox. The open-source browser ended up the greatest beneficiary of the barrage of bad press aimed at Microsoft Internet Explorer and its various security vulnerabilities. With the ever-present threat of spyware, it's little surprise that so many users have made the switch to what is now widely considered to be the "safe" Web browser, at least compared with IE.

The Nokia 770 could be the start of a great thing. Though it's rough around the edges, this could be a terrific little Internet-surfing gadget once Nokia shakes out the bugs.

Will Linux finally live up to its potential next year? It's tempting simply to say no. Linux continues to experience growing pains as it struggles to catch up with Microsoft and Apple on desktop computers. It has, however, made significant progress in some areas not readily apparent to consumers. To answer the question fairly, we must look at all the OS's applications.

So what are the folks at Nokia thinking? Why is the company introducing a Linux-based Web tablet?

Well, here's one idea: This concept will benefit only Microsoft and probably result in the death of Linux altogether. Let's call it the lopped-off head approach. Microsoft takes its distribution of Linux and sells it as a lopped-off head

The need to justify one's decisions seems to be worsening. This is the sole reason for the never-ending moaning about the superiority of the Mac versus the Windows platform versus Linux. According to each camp, their solution—their choice—is superior. By what criteria? If you were to rate the platforms by the total amount of software that can run on them, then Windows is clearly superior. What other criteria would you suggest? If you were to choose the cheapest, highest-performing platform, then Linux is clearly superior. It runs faster than Windows and runs on the cheapest hardware. If you make coolness and usability the main criteria, then the Mac easily wins.

I still have mixed feelings about the open-source movement, mainly because its most popular component, Linux, is offered by over 100 vendors, each of whom has a slightly different product. Other than Linux, all the other open-source projects move along at a rate best described as glacial. Even principals in the community are sometimes shocked at the slowness of open-source development. This probably is a function of how motivation and lack of fear work among open-source developers. Often they're motivated like hobbyists. And there is no fear to drive anyone to do anything—no fear of getting fired or yelled at by a mean boss.

The usually simmering debate about open-source versus closed-source recently boiled over, following the leak of Microsoft Windows source code on the Internet. And it boiled over here too. After I wrote a column for one of PC Magazine's sister sites about the Windows source code leak and what it might reveal about the value of closed-source code as a security technique (www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1527194,00.asp), 95 percent of the responses said that I didn't get the point: Open-source, being open, gets a better code review. Anyone can get the source, look at it, and find problems in it.