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Right! Brazil is has a BIG uptake of OSS, look. I think Mandrake is making a smart move by getting people who know the terrain (south America) on board as quickly as possible.

In the desktop market, Linux has moved past Apple to become the #2 player, with about 6% of the market.

Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.'s MacOS.

IDC estimates that Linux now claims more desktops worldwide than Apple.

It works with Linux. Doesn't everything, these days?

...(running Windows 2000 and later, of course)."

of course. because goodness knows spyware doesn't affect windows nt (or 95 for that matter), and no one uses them anymore anyway.

right?

According to this article, Ballmer's source is not clear at all yet. However, it might be based on this report, that states that: "283 software patents not yet reviewed by the courts could potentially be used to support claims of infringement against Linux." Not at all, as Ballmer claimed, certainly patent violations, but only patents not yet reviewed.

Oh, you mean like making movies and music? Go Google it and you will see that free software mixed with non-free on Linux dominates the business now and has for years. When your job depends on this and your company wants to be competitive, you will use Linux.

On the personal level, you should read this glowing Mepis review by a long standing Winblows professional who detailed how to do every conceivable multimedia task, including DVD watching and video editing. If you want a computer that will do tomorrow what it does today without getting schmegged by scammers, advertisers and others, you want Linux.

Where do you want to go today? Free software will get you there with less trouble and cost.

If you liked SUS then check out Ximian/Novell's Red Carpet. Think SUS for Windows and Linux machines.

The are lots of articles on the web about recording with open source software. Also check out Dave Phillips's site and his articles in Linux Journal.

HP, which discovered the defect during routine notebook testing, said the flaw could result in blue screens, which indicate a computer crash; intermittent lock-ups or memory corruption.

Gosh, I've seen a lot of that out there. They won't give you your money back, but free replacements which are easy to install have been getting rave reviews. After hundreds of similar replacements, I can say for sure that the RAM was not the problem. Every now and then there really is a hardware problem, like a dead back up battery ($3.00 at Walmart), but mostly it's bad software. So spin a CD before you pop the cover.

I see the world of computers migrating away from error-prone console commands/programming and moving toward the idea of "concepts" that can be manipulated graphically. Each "concept" can be a tried/tested predicate and our "programming" will be simply (ha) to arrange concepts or include a group of concepts to accomplish higher-level tasks. "Concepts" will NOT be instructions, but rather expressions of ideas/thoughts, along the lines of natural language expression, but without the inherent natural language ambiguity.

You say there's no way to do system maintenance without "low level" commands... well young grasshopper, it wasn't that long ago we were toggling in boot loaders from front-panel key switches and diagnosing system problems by looking at register display lamps on those front panels. So, even "low level" is evolving. I'm just saying it's going to continue to evolve, despite your apparent reluctance.

In my original post, I was simply lamenting (for a Linux "newb") the nature of older hardware and the difficulty of loading some versions of Linux (I'm not the only one to notice this, here's a recent example from a "Linux expert" who discusses Linux/Gnome/KDE bloat here). Incidentally, the machine I described installs and runs Win98 (dual booted w/Debian) without any problems. Yes, it appears to be faster running Debian, but then I don't serve pages on it when running Windows (though I did play with Xampp/apache/php/mysql a bit on this machine). I also recall running VMS on a 6MB 11/780 and thinking it was handling 20 users, several large digital circuit simulations, etc quite well), so the fact that Linux can handle one user on a 32MB machine doesn't impress me much.

Desktop Linux has just published this article: The Best Free Desktop Linux . . . and how to make it better

This is a great article that shows what a Desktop Linux could do. It's a great piece for Linux advocates to forward to people who'd like to switch but think that "Linux is way too hard to install and use".

0$ price it's very hard to beat, I expect that the forces of the economy will swipe MS away as soon that people realize that they could do with Linux the same things they do with Windows (only more secure and cheaper) . Good times ahead :)

I pointed out that my laptop runs Linux, and that there are no Linux viruses in the wild, but they made it clear that that doesn't matter -- any machine without a virus scanner is a risk to their uber-secure network.

Which, if you have a SAMBA share, is true.

"As system administrators move to Linux files servers they have a real problem to deal with since the Linux file server can store Windows-based viruses. Windows-based viruses can write to a Linux/Samba network share as easily as they can on a Microsoft Windows based network. System administrators must protect the Linux server from storing these viruses. The only way is through active antivirus defense on the Linux server itself."

According to this, it also ships with a copy of SuSE Linux 9.1.
If it's a boxed version, which I assume it would be, Personal retails for $29.95 US, and Professional for $89.95 US.
That means you either get the keyboard for $20 US, and a copy of SuSE 9.1 personal, or $40 US off the price of 9.1 Pro, with a keyboard thrown in for free. I'm betting on the first one, personally....

What's a link without a click through?
Linux Keyboard

Perhaps his column was trimmed by an editor, but Mr Adelstein knows about the U. S. Courts switch to Red Hat in the server room, because he wrote about it last month.

Over a year ago: Review: Photoshop under Linux.

...which requires the use of the root password.

Don't be ignorant. If people were keeping themselves in their own damned user accounts on Windows we wouldn't have to worry about viruses that require privileges either. To think they wouldn't gleefully type in the root password every time they were prompted or, worse, just run as root all the time, is to think they're going to magically get that much more computer literate just because they run Linux.

The hard truth is that Linux is virus-safe, and will remain so for years.

Although you'll undoubtedly take this as a personal attack, that statement right there is an example of the wealth of ignorance that plagues the people who insist on touting Linux as some cure all for the computer world's ills. QED Double QED

Kinda ironic, considering you're the whining one.

Why is it that when someone relates a negative experience about Linux they're "whining"? This is NOT EXPECTED BEHAVIOR. There were NO changes done to the system during the uptime prior to it crashing. For no apparent reason, the lo just took a shit. There doesn't appear to be any hardware problem, unless it is one that requires time to creep up. A reinstall of Linux failed to resolve the issue. A fresh install of FreeBSD resolved it. Where does the problem most likely reside?

It would only matter if Windows or BSD were themselves unambiguous in the same situation.

Good answer. "I'm advocating Linux. Windows is bad because of x. Linux isn't bad because of y, however, because other systems aren't good when y occurs"

This is going to be interesting to follow. The biggest problem will probably be the users that Do Not Want Change. There's always some of these, and they'll raise a stink about it. Hopefully, things will go mostly smoothly such that not to many No Opinion Either Way-people are swayed by their bickering.

I hope that IBM/Novell/SuSe provide some easy and well documented way (should be in the training "If you have a problem, don't mumble, speak up and we'll fix it!") for the users to send in bug reports. That and some developers/funds dedicated to fixing those precise problems could dramatically improve OpenOffice.org and the other applications they're switching to. That way, the users will see "Hey, we can actally influence this!" and the software projects will move forward, regardless of how the switch project ultimately ends.

Just wanted to point out to all that didn't RTFA, this product is from China. Incase you proof check here.

Now I know slash is full of good 'ol Mickysoft haters, but do we realy want to be celibrating a product from a country that's eyeing our technology jobs probably more so than India? It hasn't started yet, but most people agree that off-shoring develpment jobs to mainland China will happen soon. And this is basicaly their proof of concept that they can do it.

So, maybe its for the best not to give these guys any more publicity then they allready have.

No one wants to deploy it ??

brandybuck is bellyaching

How could you? They don't give you Windows refunds anymore. You have to send back the entire system.

You might try crossover too. I havn't tried it myself, but there's been some good reviews of its support for photoshop in linux.

Just Google for photoshop+linux:
Hit #1: Review: Photoshop under Linux -- "Prior to testing CrossOver Office, I was not sure how much the emulation would affect performance.... There do not seem to be any performance bottlenecks. Everything worked seamlessly, as promised... Access to the Photoshop files was easy."

What version of Mandrake didi he use? What are the exact models of the hardware it didn't detect? USB mice have been supported for ages for example. If you havnet tried Mandrake 9.2 or 10.0 then try again. Windows 95 would probably wouldnt work either, but does that mean that Windows 95 IS TOO HARD?

You may like to also try another distribution. Such as Knoppix. Knoppix has top class hardware support and doesnt need installing.

Windows XP dosent support my hardware, it BSODs when I plug my AGFA easypix camera into my computer, Mandrake pops up a disk on my desktop, and so does all the other Linux distros. My 52 year old mother can't figure out Windows XP, but she loves linux, and she uses it to play her games and online banking!

You may also like to report the non-detected hardware to Mandrake QA.

Here are some more links to back up my claim!

So try and get your Neighbour to try Linux again, tell him that its improving all the time!

Useful quote from the review '...it's now so easy (and reliable) to use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for reading doc, ppt, and xls files, that I'm beginning to fear that those programs -- which I was getting so good at doing without - - might no longer be relegated to the status of "options of last resort".'

Breaking the MS Office to Windows OS tie-in will seriously undermine the MS monopoly.

Included into every KDE installation, which has 70% of Linux desktop market share according to Recent surveys.

Included in Mac OSX Panther Edition

Faster and less complex than Gecko

Mozilla stomps KHTML/Konq for usage share. Mozilla and Mozilla based browsers have about a 68% share compared to KHTML.

Also, wait about a year and see how KDE usage drops considerably in numbers compared to Gnome, or how Gnome usage surges past KDE. Why? Because Novell purchased Ximian's XD2 which is Gnome based and Novell WILL leverage that investment. Evolution is critical for an Enterprise roll-out, since many Enterpriese use MS Exchange. KDE has nothing that can connect and use and MS Exchange server, while Novell/Ximian Evolution with Novell/Ximian Connector works great. And no, Enterprises are not going to be doing a large scale replacement of MS Exchange for KGroupware. With Novell buying SuSE, you may see some using Novell/SuSE MS Exchange replacement, again with is integragted and supported by Evolution.

Also, Sun's Linux desktop uses GNome and Solairs 9 now uses Gnome as well. Sun also just did that 1,000,000 Linux desktop deal with China, that will be a LOT of new Gnome desktops out there.

One other point, KHTML is no where near as standards compliant and ready for the web as Mozilla is. I have been to tons of sites that just don't work with KHTML/Konq that work fine with Moz. I am a developer for a fortune 500, we have a lot of Oracle and People Soft Enterprise apps that are now web enabled. Most of them work perfect with Moz 1.5/1.6 and puke with KHTML, though as this topics suggest, there are still some that require IE only : (

Included into every KDE installation, which has 70% of Linux desktop market share according to Recent surveys.

Included in Mac OSX Panther Edition

Faster and less complex than Gecko

Mozilla stomps KHTML/Konq for usage share. Mozilla and Mozilla based browsers have about a 68% share compared to KHTML.

Also, wait about a year and see how KDE usage drops considerably in numbers compared to Gnome, or how Gnome usage surges past KDE. Why? Because Novell purchased Ximian's XD2 which is Gnome based and Novell WILL leverage that investment. Evolution is critical for an Enterprise roll-out, since many Enterpriese use MS Exchange. KDE has nothing that can connect and use and MS Exchange server, while Novell/Ximian Evolution with Novell/Ximian Connector works great. And no, Enterprises are not going to be doing a large scale replacement of MS Exchange for KGroupware. With Novell buying SuSE, you may see some using Novell/SuSE MS Exchange replacement, again with is integragted and supported by Evolution.

Also, Sun's Linux desktop uses GNome and Solairs 9 now uses Gnome as well. Sun also just did that 1,000,000 Linux desktop deal with China, that will be a LOT of new Gnome desktops out there.

One other point, KHTML is no where near as standards compliant and ready for the web as Mozilla is. I have been to tons of sites that just don't work with KHTML/Konq that work fine with Moz. I am a developer for a fortune 500, we have a lot of Oracle and People Soft Enterprise apps that are now web enabled. Most of them work perfect with Moz 1.5/1.6 and puke with KHTML, though as this topics suggest, there are still some that require IE only : (

Not that I'm complaining, but wasn't 2003 supposed to be the year of desktop linux?

The evidence that SCO was broadly aware of this work lies in the SCO Linux 4 ("powered by UnitedLinux") marketing materials.

There is an interview from August last year where Darl McBride not only says that SCO Linux would be "certified enterprise-ready by IBM", he also says that he understood what Open Source was in 1994, when he was first shown Linux.

I do not believe that Darl McBride can continue to pretend that he (i) didn't know what the GPL was about, or (ii) that he didn't know that Linux was going to the Enterprise.

Promised for Q4 2003.

The IBM and Novell connection just seem stronger now with slide 17.

See this and reapeat after me:
"Enterprise Desktops."

What a nice image, just a shame Tux didn't try biting off his 'third' leg.

I really liked this picture. (Bill Gates getting bitten by a penguin.)

without much imagination....
Spain has put 80,000 Linux computers in schools

The Wrong Choice: After picking NT, Trampoline firm leaps to Linux

Over at DesktopLinux.com:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7770280571. html

The reviewer put three different versions of Photoshop through their paces and all worked extremely well. This might help make my wife a convert (a graphic designer... QuarkXPress would also be needed)

Over at DesktopLinux.com:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7770280571. html

The reviewer put three different versions of Photoshop through their paces and all worked extremely well. This might help make my wife a convert (a graphic designer... QuarkXPress would also be needed)

...and mentioned in the review here:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7770280571. html

There is a review here.

Rather than another of Steve Jobs proprietary projects, how about something that's open source?

While I don't know if the code has been made publicly available, there is a guy who has built up his own studio automation system. Linux Journal featured Bill Goldsmith in this article on KPIG.com and Radio Paradise. In the print article, there was talk of making his studio software available, it might be worth contacting him for details.

I know that if I were in the radio biz, I'd much rather have a system as much under my control as possible. This also includes scrapping mp3 in favor of Ogg as this recording studio professional did (while the article is supposed to be about Linux, the deeper story is about the use of Ogg files).

Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.

The expectation that Linux will fulfill the hardware driver installation off the distribution CD, when you admit that you may have to replace the entire hardware for XP, is inherently unfair and beyond what can be reasonably expected in any operating system. XP is not without it's major problems when it comes to older hardware ( especially scanners ) support and driver conflict problems.

The lack of any relative comparison in your article to the Microsoft alternative, paints Linux in a far worse light than is the reality. Compare your article to the recent articles by Joe Barr, comparing Linux installation with XP and Windows 2000.

Also, given the rapid improvement of Linux distributions, 18 months is in my opinion, too long ago to represent the current state of Linux on the desktop. See Michael C. Barnes updates look at leading desktop operating system options on the market.As with Joe Barr's article, it benchmarks Linux against Microsoft's offerings.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing out faults, in fact any *constructive* criticism over current releases of Linux is both welcome and necessary to the Kazan like rapid improvement of Linux. However, just repeating war-stories without acknowledging either that the issue has been fixed in the lastest release of that distribution, or similar problem also exists with Win2k and XP, does nothing but provide fodder for Microsoft's trolls. I am surprised that this article in it's current form, made it past the editors at Linuxworld.

Not all linux distributions are targeted for the non-technical deployer. For example: Lycoris, Xandros and ELX are more likely to have SMB functionality preconfigured on install.

However, does not someone also re-configure windows for your colleagues? When they log in, is the SMB shares,printers and defaults always pre-installed for them? If not, who ever provides techsuppport for you is not doing their job properly.

Deployment, day to day management and just using a computer, require a different level of technical knowledge, no matter what operating system you are using.

Although many non-technical people to install and with windows often reinstall the operating system, that does not mean that they do a good job of it. I have been too often called in to repair a screwed up home based 98 to XP systems to personally attest to that.

That some Linux distributions, for example RedHat 8, do require a lot more knowleadge to deploy, once properly deployed and configured, they are a hell of a lot easier to remotely manage on a day to day basis, even using GUIs. ( hint - ssh -X root@TARGET-IP ). The quality of the technical knowledge from Linux user groups and distributions forums, especially in comparison to phone support from Microsoft, can more than make up for the difference in relative difficulty. That Tsu Dho Nimh set up a a pre-requisite that no external support was aceptable, is unrealistic even for windows XP.

Dispite the absolute terror of the Microsoft advocates, Linux is NOW a more than adequate as a desktop for the enterprise, a replacement for XP and an upgrade from window98 and NT4.

At work , we have upgraded 80% of our ghosted win98se desktop from Microsoft Office 98 to StarOffice6 and Mozilla

A guy called Austin Acton has put together the Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo for Mandrake 9.1.

It uses packages contributed to Mandrake 9.1 to build an audio workstation (including a low-latency "multimedia" kernel) - using URPMI to simplify package dependency issues.

Quote from the HowTo: "You can setup a professional quality audio workstation in an afternoon or less, with Mandrake Linux. No compiling. No text editing. No dependencies. It's this easy.".

I don't know enough about computer audio to comment further, but you might be interested in checking it out.

It's not a matter of if you must upgrade, but when. However, realize that buying new products from the same company will not necessarily protect from this happening again. It would be a bad idea not to use the situation to explore options. Many are making the move.

There may be some ideological reasons to try Microsoft's server experiments, but no technical ones. Even the ideological ones don't float: no matter how much you admire Bill G's enormous personal wealth, giving him more of your company's money is not going to make you rich(er).

So many corners have been cut on service and products that it looks like Microsoft may not live out the summer. WinNT and other legacy software can keep running with the help of work-arounds as long as no one was dumb enough to sign a subscription.

Ah. Turns out I didn't look in the right place. I'm now downloading the pertinent .iso files at a reasonable clip, though that took some rummaging around even among the "members only" mirrors.

(Sigh...I'd just grabbed the release candidate version last night after reading a nice Mandrake Audio Workstation HOWTO. Mutter, mumble.)

"Steve Cook, a DesktopLinux.com reader, relates his experience setting up Linux in the professional recording studio -- including a switch to the Ogg Vorbis audio format. Increased productivity, greater stability, tighter security, lower costs, and a higher quality finished product are all reasons this station switched without missing a beat . ."

Linux in the Professional Recording Studio

As you can see ogg is slowly making it's way into professional settings.

Of course yes! Look at http://www.mandrakebizcases.com - there is an impressive number of companies running Mandrake in their business there.

I also noticed today this interesting story at DesktopLinux.com - a guy working in a professional sound-production studio, for radio-broadcast, who has switched all the system from Windows to Mandrake Linux 9.0 and Ogg. He noticed that he had all his hardware working perfectly, and also noticed the quality of the MandrakeSoft support answers. This is a very interesting case, because it's out of the traditional "server" business case, more in the multimedia area, and definately shows that Linux is gaining more and more momentum in all sectors of activity.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5847717353. html

If you looked closely you would see that this "article" was actually taken from a Windows-to-Linux Migration topic on a Desktop Linux's message board. He wasn't writing a HOW-TO, or addressing any propeller heads. If you do want the answers to your questions (instead of bitching for karma), head over to the source and ask them.

Wow. I've never read such a vague article in my life.

Here's the synop:

We used Windows. It crashed and got viruses. We didn't want to upgrade to XP.

We played around with Linux. We decided on Mandrake. We went Ogg Vorbis. Life is grand.

Nothing on the implentation, nothing on what programs/hardware they used in Windows or Linux, nothing in regards to performace of said hardware and/or ported software.

Linux is great for them, but being too vague doesn't help small time studios understand how to use it in their shop, or how best to go about it.

Why not get a little more in-depth, such as what utilities they used, what hardware settings needed to be tweaked (if any), and how difficult it was to train for.

For example:

What was the hardest part to train/learn?
What features are you hoping Linux audio programs will add in the future?
What advice would you give to a small, struggling studio in regards to using Linux in a studio?
Do you know of any other studios who have utilized Linux?
The list goes on.

I'm glad to see the GNOME team still plugging along. Even though KDE is at 3.1 and has already won Germany over, it isn't too late for GNOME to grab a nice market. I just hope they spent the time and effort to get it right this time and that their early release isn't an attempt to "appear relevant" in the face of KDE's overwhelming lead. I really hate that kind of rat race mentality.

The Desktop Linux Consortium has a website with more details, here. Also, the DLC's full announcement is available here.