linux

Microsoft--down but by no means out

The living dead never looked so good.

For several years now Microsoft has been written off by friends and foes alike as a shuffling shadow of its former self, doomed to feed off the profits of past successes while it goes gentle into the good night of irrelevance. And yet Microsoft's profits remain enviable and its outlook far from bleak.

It may be too soon to engrave Microsoft's headstone as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently did.

Microsoft, after all, has a history of making dramatic changes in direction, changes that have saved it more than once from software … Read more

LifeHacker article: Triple-boot your Mac without Boot Camp

Apple's Boot Camp utility has made installing Windows on your Mac in a dual-boot environment a very streamlined process. With just a few clicks you can use the Boot Camp assistant to partition and format your drive for use with Windows, and then install Windows onto the ready partition. Apple also supplies drivers with Boot Camp so various Apple hardware will work in that environment.… Read more

Where is the Linux 'smartbook'?

The smartbook has yet to emerge from pre-product purgatory, though a couple of high-profile devices are due soon.

But first, let's try to define the smartbook. By some definitions it is simply a Netbook that runs Linux and uses processors based on a design from U.K.-based ARM, as opposed to Windows software and Intel chips, respectively. By another definition, it is all of the above but also an always-on, always-connected device, just like a smartphone. The latter definition is the one we'll use here because it's the original definition as provided by Qualcomm--a major smartbook … Read more

VMware and Red Hat: The war for the data center

Once upon a time Red Hat was content to be the enterprise Linux leader and VMware was happy to be the dominant virtual infrastructure vendor.

No more.

As the two companies have sought growth, they've increasingly stepped on each other's toes, with recent VMware marketing taking strong swipes at its erstwhile partner, Red Hat, highlighting Pizza Hut as a high-profile customer defection from Red Hat to VMware.

Can't the two companies just get along?

Probably not. Back in 2006, Red Hat and VMware announced an "expanded relationship to support customers and ISVs who are deploying virtualization.&… Read more

Apache Cassandra gets boost from Riptano (Q&A)

A new company called Riptano recently launched to provide support and services for the Apache Cassandra project, a nonrelational open-source database designed for high performance that has a strong presence in Web shops like Twitter, Digg, and Reddit. I recently had the chance to chat with Matt Pfeil, founder of Riptano, and he provided some insight into the project and the new world of NoSQL database approaches.

What exactly is Cassandra and who uses it? Cassandra is a highly scalable, distributed, open source database. It's a top-level Apache project with committers from Riptano, Rackspace, Digg, Facebook, and others.

Cassandra … Read more

Hacker runs Google's Android on Apple's iPhone

There are matches made in heaven, and on the other side of the spectrum, there is David Wang's accomplishment: booting Google's Android operating system on Apple's iPhone

Wang, the "planetbeing" member of the a group called the iPhone Dev Team devoted to hacking iPhones, on Wednesday posted a video demonstrating Android on an iPhone.

The demo shows the boot process--complete with the Tux Linux mascot--and Wang using Android for browsing, receiving a text message, answering a phone call, and playing music. The phone is set up with a dual-boot configuration and indeed the video begins … Read more

Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

COLUMBIA, S.C.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer might agree with The Who that "the kids are alright," but he's unlikely to appreciate their changing taste in programming languages and operating systems. But then, neither will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

After all, according to at the Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond, speaking here Thursday at the 2010 Palmetto Open Source Conference, the rising generation of developers are more familiar with Ruby and PHP than Java or .Net, and increasingly opt to develop and deploy enterprise and Web applications on Linux rather than Windows or Unix.

The beginning of the … Read more

Linux: Strong and getting stronger

At the Linux Foundation's annual collaboration summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Executive Director Jim Zemlin kicked off the event with some interesting perspectives on the state of the Linux marketplace today.

The short version: Linux is going strong and getting stronger.

According to Zemlin, the macro-economic trends have played to the strengths of Linux and open source. Few can dispute that Linux is cheaper to procure and run in comparison to proprietary platforms. This applies not only to end users but also to device manufacturers and development shops building platforms.

Would Google be the company it is today … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1202: Multitasking, iAds ... and Folders! (podcast)

In today's episode, we follow the Apple live-stream for earthshattering iPhone OS additions like multitasking (woo!), an interactive ad platform (woo!), and an innovative new app organization structure called ... Folders (WTF?). Also, the UK rushes through a big online piracy law, so that's going to end well, and Google Voice may be coming to the desktop. --Molly

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1202

Purported hack brings Linux back to the PS3

Sony PlayStation 3 owners who held off on updating their systems in order to keep from losing the option to install alternate operating systems have a new glimmer of hope. Hacker George Hotz (a.k.a Geohot) has released a video of a new hack that promises to keep the alternate OS install feature, even with the 3.21 firmware update that was released last week.

Hotz says the hack is nothing more than a custom system software update that can be installed without having to do any hardware modifications, but users need to be on version 3.15 of … Read more