Microsoft's Mojave Reveals Vista 'Truths', Jul 30, 2008

Microsoft's campaign to show that Windows Vista has received an unfair rap continued Tuesday with the launch of its Mojave Experiment Website, which showcases videos from a focus group Microsoft held in San Francisco earlier this month.

Face it: Linux is still intimidating to most PC users. And that has nothing to do with the occasional Linux snobbery that newbies can encounter when searching message forums for basic help in getting up and running.

One year after Dell became the first tier-one OEM to offer modern Linux preloaded on desktops, Dell hasn't blown up, its customers haven't revolted and the Earth still spins on its axis.

Linux has been enjoying a nice ride for the past 18 months, but the folks at Hewlett-Packard are still content to sit it out.

It was a five year deal, but 18 months in to the hell-frozen-over cooperation agreement between Microsoft and Novell, Novell executives indicate things are still moving along swimmingly.

Although running some form of Linux within a Windows environment has been done before, no one has been able to implement it with 100 percent success--yet. But if the recently released beta of Ulteo Virtual Desktop is any indication, it appears that this achievement is now within reach.

Every few days, it seems, another "Office Killer" is turning up in the market to challenge Microsoft by offering productivity applications for free. Some are cross-platform. Many are Web-based. All offer the promise of delivering Microsoft-level functionality for nothing, or next to nothing.

As the season of giving nears its apex, Mozilla got into the spirit, announcing on Wednesday the release of Web browser Firefox 3 Beta 2 for testing.

CMP Channel Test Center conducted its first-ever World Series of Linux, looking at six desktop distributions of the Open Source OS. Over three rounds, they were put through the paces to see if Linux is ready for prime time.

Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Server 2008 provides a two-for-one bonus: virtualization software with the operating system itself, and potentially closer integration with some Linux operating systems than it has ever offered before, according to an early, initial look at the server's Release Candidate 1 (RC1).

Novell channels and alliances vice president Steve Erdman has left the company and this week Novell appointed a former Hyperion executive to a newly created position of vice president of global channel sales.

Lenovo executives Monday backtracked from remarks last week that the company would not support Linux on its PCs, saying it would continue to pre-load Linux onto ThinkPads on a custom-order basis for customers who purchase licenses on their own.

Novell will include its "Beagle" search engine and virtualized server and storage features in SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, one Novell executive said.