Microsoft makes online Office play, but not for Linux, Mar 07, 2008

Microsoft yesterday announced a beta of its Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta, an online platform were users can store documents and share them with others. Reviews of Microsoft Office Live Workspace have been varied but if you’re running Linux you won’t get to use the Live Workspace at all.

I tend to hammer my Ubuntu laptop. Running a website like Tectonic means I am constantly installing new applications to try them out. Many of which I later have to remove or lie forgotten on the hard disk until I start to wonder where the +40GB of free hard disk space went to.

Living in Africa we have abundant sun, a power source we rarely consider when we buy yet another gadget. Along comes the Aleutia E1, an ultra low power computer setup that can be run from a roll up solar panel or car battery and runs Puppy Linux.

A week before the workshop the South African government became the latest country in the world to adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a government standard for information exchange.

Linux vendor Novell is heading off after the small business sector now with its latest release, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition (say that in one breath).

Kick-start your week with four easy (but still cool) tricks on your Linux desktop. Install the media server you've always wanted but never got around to doing, or fine-tune your hardware to squeeze out a few more hours of battery power ... All this an more in this week's How To Roundup. Oh, and send us your favourite Linux tricks.

There was a time when installing Linux on a notebook computer was a plug-and-pray operation: Most of the time most of the things worked but there were always a few that didn't and you eventually learned to live with it. Not so on the X60.

Governments looking to migrate to open source software (OSS) will need to ramp up their internal skills base, according to Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio.

Impi Linux 7.05, a South Africa-developed version of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system was released today.

The specs were not boosted to accommodate Windows but rather due to the following reasons:

Performance wise Xubuntu is everything I was hoping. It is light and fast. Clicking on the applications menu gives you immediate feedback. And unless you're running about five or six other applications at the time, opening a file browser or a terminal window is almost instantaneous.

The CSIR's Meraka Institute is expected to become the new South African Linux Professional Institute (LPI) affiliate now that the Shuttleworth Foundation has ended its relationship with the LPI.

More Linux companies should look at striking a deal with Microsoft. This is the line from Novell SA country manager Stafford Masie who was speaking at the CITI Foss Forum in Cape Town last week.

It is also the operating system that Microsoft is hoping will be good enough to stave off the growing threat to its business from the free and open source software world.

Today I am running a year-old version of Ubuntu Linux. In the world of Ubuntu Linux, where new releases are issued every six months, year-old Breezy is distinctly old.

The New Zealand Open Source Society(NZOSS) has claimed a moral victory in the patent office after Microsoft amended its patent on XML schema. NZOSS president Peter Harrison says the changes made to the patent were such that the organisation was no longer concerned about the threat posed by the patent.

Six South Africans were this afternoon the first candidates worldwide to write the brand new Ubuntu Professional certification. They wrote the exams, backed by the Linux Professional Association (LPI), during the LinuxWorld show in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Surprisingly, no-one seems to have told Microsoft that it is not good marketing strategy to treat your customers as if they are stupid.

HP South Africa is to release a range of Linux-based notebooks at the end of February. In an interview with Tectonic HP's Sean Owen-Jones said the HP 6110 notebooks will sell for R5999-00 and will run the Linspire operating system.

The tuXlabs project, which installs Linux-based thin client computers into schools across South Africa, won a Communtiy Builder award last night. The award, which recognises projects that contribute to skills development and opportunities in the country, was presented at an event at the Sandton Convention Centre.