Nokia Seeks Application Ideas For Linux-Based N800 Tablet, Feb 26, 2007

Nokia is now scouting about for new application ideas around the N800, its latest Linux-enabled tablet.

When Microsoft and Novell announced that they would work together, Linux enthusiasts were shocked. How has the agreement affected the open source community, and can it recover?

In the face of a big vertical marketing blitz by Microsoft, keenly evident at last week's National Retail Federation (NRF) show, several retailers in the "household name" category keep forging ahead with Linux implementations of their internal computer systems anyway.

... this week, members of the influential CentOS community voiced strong pessimism over Oracle Linux.

Somewhat hidden within HP's launch of otherwise Windows-driven consumer products last week was the fact that the HP Media Vault, one of the newly announced entries, uses embedded Linux underneath the covers.

The new "Linux-enabled" Lenovo laptop launched this week at LinuxWorld will not actually come "pre-loaded" with Novell SUSE Linux, a high-ranking Lenovo official said today, contradicting some industry reports stating otherwise.

What are some of the hottest trends in the Linux/open source market today? Avid activity among some resellers, abundant virtualization, and a growing tendency to mixed open source/proprietary deployments, according to a trio of top industry analysts, who helped to preview LinuxWorld San Francisco in an IDG-sponsored teleconference on Tuesday.

Is the use of embedded Linux rising upward or dwindling downward? Some recent research tends to point in one direction, and some in the other.

Behind the scenes on Wall Street, who is really using Linux? Although developers remain the major practitioners, Linux is also making headway these days as a grid platform for transaction processing, a place for running algorithmic trading engines, and even as a desktop environment, according to participants in this week's SIA (Securities Industry Association) conference in New York City.

In 2006, Novell will launch a "Linux awareness" program meant to migrate more customers, resellers, and development partners from NetWare and Microsoft Windows to open source alternatives.

NuBridges LLC, a major player in electronic data interchange and business-to-business exchange trading, is adopting Linux both internally and as a platform for customers licensing software for use across their own supply chains.

Although the financial services industry has adopted Linux more slowly than first expected, Linux is now starting to hold more sway, even if often from behind the scenes, according to participants in this week's High Performance on Wall Street conference in New York City.

While thousands of members of the Linux community flocked to San Francisco for LinuxWorld, a smaller group of several hundred resellers convened in Las Vegas last week at SCO Forum, where they heard SCO officials deliver a competitive strategy that was anti-Linux and anti-Microsoft, almost in the same breath.

Brushing courtroom battles over Linux aside this week, SCO will use its annual users' forum here to unveil new initiatives around its Unix products, including a future architecture code-named Project Fusion, a new SCO Office appliance geared to resellers, and a distribution deal with network appliance maker Cymphonix.

Companies can make money from Linux—but for that to happen, it's important for them to understand how open-source software models and communities work, said participants in this week's "Linux on Wall Street" conference here.

The SCO Group has finalized a contract naming supply-chain provider Synnex as a distributor, a deal seen by some as a sign that SCO is de-emphasizing its Linux legal woes by making a renewed commitment to the SCO Unix platform.

Retail and manufacturing workers will soon wield RFID wands that support end-to-end Linux, through a new two-vendor pact rolled out this week. In a separate partnership, another vendor will team up with two integrators on an RFID job for Beaver Street Fisheries, a big frozen foods supplier that's quite willingly joining in on Wal-Mart's controversial RFID trials.

In mid-July, Lindows agreed to change its name to Linspire as part of a court settlement with archnemesis Microsoft. Now, with $20 million in hand from Microsoft, also due to the settlement, the company will put more emphasis on business deals around pre-installed Linux PCs, said Michael Robinson, Linspire's president.

In an interview with LinuxPlanet, Robinson used the term "ferocious" to describe Microsoft's legal attacks on Lindows. During a long series of court suits, Microsoft contended that the Linux name impinged on the Windows trademark.

Microsoft Corp. is quietly working on a new initiative, internally code-named Mission Critical Microsoft, to help fight the rising specter of Linux running on enterprise mainframes.

"Mission Critical Microsoft is an internal initiative, but it will probably result in a new program announcement from Microsoft within the next year," Paul Corriveau, group product manager for Windows Servers, told eWEEK.com at the IBM SHARE conference here.

The resulting program will replace Microsoft's existing tech support and maintenance offering in the data center space, according to Corriveau. Microsoft's existing partner program for data center implementations will be impacted, too.

Use of Linux by nonprofit organizations is nothing new. For one thing, the lower costs of Linux fit in well with limited budgets. Now, though, some end users at nonprofit organizations are choosing Linux for a completely different reason--namely, a better desktop experience than they've been getting from Windows.

"Using Windows ME, we've had lots of problems with popups and spyware. There's been none of that with Linux," says Subroto Mukerjea, a site director for the Computer Learning Center in Fairfax County, VA. Mukerjea oversees one of 14 sites within an after school program for children and teens aged six to 16.