A Look at Fedora 7, Jun 28, 2007

Time for some self-criticism: Free Agent has become a bit of a one-trick pony of late. Recent output might lead you to believe this is PC World's Ubuntu Linux column. Well, it isn't. In fact, Free Agent is not even intended to be a Linux column per se; the overarching topic here is Free Software.

Watching Wine run IE got me wondering what else it can run these days.

One longstanding Unix tradition is best summed up thus: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together." On a Linux machine, this philosophy is most clearly visible from the command line, where Unix hackers continue to provide simple, flexible tools that talk to one another and don't have the huge overhead of a graphical user interface.

I'll begin with thoughts on the Microsoft-Novell deal, move on to Sun's having set Java Free, and then wrap up with some thoughts and an open question about hardware support in Linux.

Freespire is the new, cost-free alternative from Linspire. How well does it compete with the likes of Ubuntu's Dapper Drake?

The problem, as I've detailed in previous columns, is that Ubuntu Linux does not come with all its batteries included. For example, the library that makes it possible for an Ubuntu machine to play DVDs is missing when the Ubuntu installation process completes.

Linux is great, but sometimes a guy's gotta play games. Here's how to set up a quicker Dual-Boot to get you back into windows.

The Free Agent takes Mandriva Linux 2006--the successor to Mandrake Linux--for a test drive. The experience is less than magnifique.

As you already know, if I have to sit down in front of a computer, I want it to be running the Gnome desktop on Linux. I've watched it mature from a downright ugly, needlessly complex playground for geeks, to an attractive, simple interface that holds its own against commercial alternatives. And yet, every day I still encounter rough edges that make me think there aren't nearly enough folks out there hacking away at this stuff. I'd like to watch.

I've been playing around with the boxed edition of SUSE Linux 10.0, but Novell representatives assure me that the Evaluation edition available for download through OpenSUSE.org is the same product, complete with proprietary extensions (such as Java, Flash, and RealPlayer) that other distributions tend to leave off their freely downloadable editions.

I'm writing this column on my trusty IBM Thinkpad, which has been running the newly released Gnome 2.12 for about a week now. This is thanks to Ubuntu Linux, which has gotten so much praise in my recent reports, a colleague suggested I should change the name of this column to "Ubuntu Agent." Ahem.

For just the cost of a blank disc and the time and bandwidth it takes to download one ISO image, you can determine whether an entirely Free operating system floats your boat.

Every month, I get a rush of e-mail from readers who have one question for me: How do I get started with Linux? It's a simple question, and I wish there was one simple answer for the folks who've decided they've had enough of Microsoft Windows. The good news is that you don't need to be a geek to install Linux these days.

... the reality is that the overwhelming majority of our magazine's readers run Windows, not Linux. Since we do our darnedest to make every page of PC World engaging to our readers, I'm out to craft a Linux column that might prove relevant to those who are still computing Bill Gates-style.

I'm going to just come right out and say it: I absolutely adore Ubuntu Linux 5.04 (the "Hoary Hedgehog" release, often referred to as "Hoary"). I'm now running Ubuntu on both my laptop and my desktop PCs, and I don't think I've ever been such a happy Linux user.

I tested a beta version of the OS and soon realized why I'm glad competition exists in the Linux realm: If Linspire were my only option, I'd probably stick with Windows.

Our Free Software guru looks at new software for his Gnome desktop--some of which he can run, some of which he can't.

Several new distributions make communicating with a Windows network more difficult than it should be.

Want to give Linux a try with little fuss and bewilderment? Xandros may have just what you're looking for. I took a shipping version of Xandros Desktop OS Deluxe 2.5 for a spin and was pleased to find that everything just plain worked.

So I was at LinuxWorld Expo here in San Francisco a few weeks back, looking for news to bring to the Free Agent crowd. (It is a continuing pleasure to read the responses that flow in via e-mail with each new column. Please keep that feedback coming!) And you know what? I had to dig. I mean, really dig.

This is typical at the Expo. The big, in-your-face news--the stuff that generates press releases and press kits and tchotchkes, and flows out of garish, hypercolored booths--is almost always geared at big business. We're talking enterprise solutions, here. Clusters. High-availability this-and-that. It's all very interesting if you're a CTO or an IT manager--or if you're a journalist catering to those crowds.