Microsoft and Seinfeld: A Comedy of Errors?, Aug 25, 2008

Microsoft's hiring of Jerry Seinfeld as a Windows Vista pitchman had the Linux community in stitches last week. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that it's an indication Windows has jumped the shark. Dell's plans to ship a subnotebook with Ubuntu gave bloggers a further boost.

The Linux blogs were abuzz with accounts of Ubuntu's newly released version, Hardy Heron. The distro has pushed the envelope of capabilities and appeal with nearly every release, and the latest version has Linux fans speculating that it will attract more users away from Windows.

I see a lot of predictions that say Linux is going to be one of the top three operating systems for mobile devices in coming years -- and a lot that say that mobile devices are going to make up an ever-larger portion of our information technology usage in the near future.

Red Hat has appointed Jim Whitehurst, formerly Delta Airlines' COO, as its CEO following the resignation of Matthew Szulik. Although Whitehurst is reportedly a Fedora user, his career doesn't include open source software experience.

LinuxInsider met with Zemlin to get his views on the changing trends in open source computing and his predictions for where all of this is headed in the new year.

The servers in question were for community functions such as blogs and local documentation, and not for downloadable software. Nonetheless, Canonical apparently was not amused.

Microsoft and Novell have garnered a big customer win following their odd couple deal to collaborate: Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has decided to ditch Red Hat in favor of Novell's Suse Linux, with Microsoft providing assistance in managing interoperability with Windows in the company's mixed-platform IT environment.

In an open invitation to Novell OpenSuse developers concerned about the recent Microsoft-Novell pact, Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth makes an argument for abandoning Novell and joining the Ubuntu Linux development effort. He is trying to lure developers away from Novell by suggesting that they could thus avoid working with Microsoft.

Where Linux stands to gain the most is in clustered, high performance computing and grid environments where Unix has been present and Microsoft has not, says Gartner Research Vice President George Weiss.

Industry analysts have welcomed the court injunction against the UK arm of Fortinet for allegedly using Linux in its products illegally.

Perhaps the strangest unexpected new use is a program that enables you to install Linux, the open-source operating system, on your iPod. The idea is that once you have installed Linux, you can use the native features of your iPod while taking advantage of additional applications written for Linux.

Novell has launched an indemnification scheme to protect its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server customers against what it described as "certain intellectual property challenges to Linux."

Firefox missionaries promise an Internet experience that's faster, more secure and free from pop-up ads. And that's just the beginning of their Utopian vision. To hear many of the faithful talk, their ministry stops nothing short of changing the lives of Internet users.

Waltham, Mass.-based Novell said on Monday it planned to sue Microsoft over the program, which it owned from June 1994 to March 1996 after its merger with WordPerfect Corp.

This week's release of a new media-focused version of Windows shows that, despite five years of antitrust battles, Microsoft plans to use its near-monopoly power to crush its rivals.

AT&T acknowledged today that it is testing alternative operating systems to the Windows platform it now uses, but said the review is not specifically related to security concerns.

Mike Dickman, AT&T spokesperson, said reports suggesting AT&T might be considering scrapping Microsoft Windows for Linux are "Fiction. Out of context." He said that AT&T has no intention of dropping Microsoft at this time.

The road to browser Nirvana is not always paved with improved productivity and better security. Switching browsers may be more challenging for hard-core Web surfers and business users. Many users who consider breaking with IE also have to resolve concerns about cost, staff training and compatibility issues.

The penguin has switched from sandals to suits. No longer confined to the world of computer programmers and academics, the Linux open-source operating system and its penguin mascot are starting to permeate the business world.

And so some of the nation's biggest technology companies, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, gathered at the LinuxWorld conference and expo in San Francisco this week to declare their devotion to Linux.

CA said it will offer support and indemnification to CA-TOSL Ingres as added cost options. According to the company, the indemnification will protect users in case they are sued by the SCO Group, which claims the rights to some of the code used in the Linux operating system.