In somewhat of surprise move, Wal-Mart, the United States largest retailer, has started selling PC's pre-loaded with a Linux distribution. The PC's, similar to the ones that Wal-Mart made news with earlier this year by selling them without any operating system, range from $300-$600.
Richard M. Stallman is the founder of the Free Software movement that created the basis of the GNU/Linux operating system. Since founding the project back in 1984, Stallman, known by the community as RMS, has spent his time programming and promoting free software in the hopes of eliminating the need for non-free software completely.
IDG.net has a report on the current status of countries adopting Open Source and Free Software. While it notes a few countries are adopting Microsoft-friendly policies, in large part most of the industrialized world is taking a serious look at Linux and related software. “Government officials the world over are getting drawn into the debate over the relative merits of using open source software rather than Microsoft Corp.'s Windows applications and other software developed by vendors who closely guard the intellectual property of their source code. Some countries, such as Germany, have decided to replace Windows and other commercial software products with open source applications.”
CodeWeavers, a leading contributor to the WINE project, announced today that they had made available an update release to their CrossOver Office product. The new release adds official support of Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer to CO Office's repertoire.
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.”
Time and again, one of the most common excuses about moving to Linux is that it does not have Microsoft Office. Never mind that OpenOffice.org provides most everything one needs, people are use to Office, and are not interested in changing, thank-you very much.
In an unprecedented move today, Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE, and Turbolinux announced a joint development program known as UnitedLinux. As was expected based on leaks from the companies earlier this week, the foursome will merge their R&D efforts to create one core Linux distribution.
Leading Linux distributor RedHat, Inc. announced today a policy on its much publicized patent registrations. According to the company, “we are forced to live in the world as it is, and that world currently permits software patents. A relatively small number of very large companies have amassed large numbers of software patents. We believe such massive software patent portfolios are ripe for misuse because of the questionable nature of many software patents generally and because of the high cost of patent litigation.”
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.”.