The Taiwanese newspaper Taipei Times reports government officials in Taipei are considering the advantages of Linux. “Weeks of debate over what the government considers exorbitant fees bureaucrats will have to pay Microsoft Corp for use of the Windows operating system culminated yesterday at Computex Taipei 2002 in an call by lawmakers for the development of an open-source operating system.”
Russell Pavlicek takes a look at VMware Workstation 3.1.1, a popular tool similar to Win4Lin, over at NewsForge.net. “In the thunderous noise of this growing herd of desktop alternatives, it is easy to forget that other options have existed for some time. Such is the plight of (the non-free) VMware Workstation, a virtual machine architecture that has been serving Linux users since 1999.”
Linux news site LinuxandMain.com broke the news today that Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and TurboLinux are planning a joint announcement on Thursday morning. The ground breaking communique from the distributions is quoted as saying “On May 30, join the CEOs of Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, Turbolinux and several major industry partners for an announcement that will shape Linux in the enterprise and around the globe. Please book 8 am Pacific time in your calendar for this global announcement … followed by media-only teleconference information.”.
LinuxToday has a copy of the press release
from popular Linux desktop developer Ximian noting that they will be
including StarOffice with their Ximian Desktop Professional product.
“Customers buying the boxed version of Ximian Desktop
Professional Edition or subscribing to the premium Red Carpet
Express software updating service will receive StarOffice 6.0 with
their purchases. Workgroups and organizations purchasing the Red
Carpet CorporateConnect service for centralized software management
can also install StarOffice 6.0 on each of their supported
systems.”
Linux journalist Joe Barr looks at Mandrake Linux 8.2 in a review over at LinuxWorld. In the review, he reports “
The second installation went just as smoothly as the first. The only difference being that I had the laptop connected to the cable modem. When I got to the same point the second time, I selected a site to download the updated apps from and clicked OK. After connecting to the site, I was presented a list of applications to choose from, with 20 or so “preselected” updates already checked. I accepted the default list and clicked OK again. About 20 minutes later (this could be much longer if you have a 56Kb dialup line instead of broadband Internet access) I had the latest security or bug enhanced versions of those applications.”
ComputerWorld has an interesting commentary from Nicholas Petreley. He looks at the development library that runs KDE, and also happens to be a dandy tool to develop software for nearly every popular platform. But with all this fuss being made about C# vs. Java and the competing frameworks, it's easy to forget that there are many other options for application development. My favorite is Qt, from Trolltech AS. The latest version of Qt, Version 3.0, is the foundation for the phenomenal K Desktop Environment (KDE). I'm crazy about KDE 3.0, so it should come as no surprise that I'm equally enamored with Qt.
Gary Krakow of MSNBC gives a very nice, positive review of AbiWord, an open source word processor which recently hit version 1.0. “It works on most major OS platforms and supports many languages; it's able to read and write most documents in Microsoft Word's .doc format, as well as twenty others; its authors claim it can do most of what Word can; and best of all it's free. It's been in the works for years, but is AbiWord really that good?”
Dennis Powell of Linux and Main looks at one of the worst (and most popular) Linux advocacy methods and how it overlooks open source's true advantages. I know people who have embraced Linux chiefly because the alternative (if they are to use Intel-architecture hardware) is to use Windows, and for some reason they're not of a mood to go the *BSD route. For some of them, Linux might as well be named “Not Windows,” because that is the only feature they require. When they write or speak, their hatred of Microsoft (a not unreasonable position, by the way) is quickly evident. Their support of Linux, while rabid, is more a function of their dislike of Microsoft than of their affection for Linux or delight in its power and reliability.
ZDNet Tech Update's Rich Castagna notes that everything seems to be going right for Linux in the server arena. When Linux made its first impact on the IT scene, it did so largely as a protest—a protest against expensive server software and hardware, against platforms bloated with features that few used, and, of course, against Microsoft. The anti-Microsoft undercurrent still flows strongly, perhaps even stronger today in the wake of the DOJ antitrust proceedings. But now, Linux has found its legs not for something it isn't, but for what it is.
Open source columnist Nick Petreley has an interesting piece over at ComputerWorld noting that desktop Linux is on the way. “I kicked the Windows habit back in 1997 and have since been using Linux exclusively as my productivity desktop operating system. Yes, I know I'm in the minority. But while you understandably nodded off some years ago while waiting for Linux to conquer the desktop, you probably don't want to snooze much longer, or you could wake up to a whole different world.”