ubuntu

What happens when open source turns out to be better? Much better?

Chris Blizzard of Mozilla gives a great interview to der Standard in which he highlights how Firefox is increasingly pushing the envelope on browser innovation. If you've taken a look at Mozilla Labs lately, you'll understand what he means.

While Mozilla may not have innovated everything in the browser wars (e.g., tabbed browsing, which arguably came from Opera), it is responsible for driving these innovations onto more than 150 million desktops worldwide.

The most salient point for me is that Firefox is gaining market share because it is better, not because it's open source. Firefox, then, … Read more

Ubuntu's Shuttleworth wants Linux to "out-pretty" Apple desktop

I've been writing about the year of the Linux desktop for at least five years at this point. So far, the majority of the progress seems to be coming from Ubuntu.

What's amazing to me is that more hardware companies don't spend time on the Linux desktop. No matter how good a PC or laptop may be, you are pretty much stuck on Windows. Unless you get a Mac. Then you have limited hardware choices. Seems like a huge opportunity considering the rise of browser-based applications.

Besides the lack of a few important applications, namely MS office … Read more

Ubuntu opens up a new market for Linux: Mobile

For as long as some have been talking about "The Year of the Linux Desktop," I've been hearing the same thing about "The Year of Embedded Linux." My first open-source company was Lineo, an embedded-Linux vendor. I used to preach the gospel of embedded/mobile Linux.

But its "year" never came. As with Godot, we're always waiting for Linux to own mobile and to own the desktop. And despite Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin preaching that embedded Linux's time has come, I've become a bit too jaded to lend much … Read more

Dell goes for latest Ubuntu Linux: Hardy Heron

Dell is taking its Ubuntu Linux investment a step further by announcing plans to release the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron, on select Dell consumer systems. The open-source operating system will show up on XPS M1330N, Inspiron 1525N, and Inspiron 530N models for customers in the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Canada, the United Kingdom, and some Latin American countries.

In early August, the company will also add the XPS M1530n and Studio 15n to the Hardy Heron-enabled lineup, according to Dell's Direct2DellBlog.

Ubuntu looks to open-source applications to boost its server business

The VAR Guy has the scoop on some upcoming Ubuntu news: Ubuntu and Openbravo are teaming up to help push Ubuntu into the enterprise.

Now, Canonical is seeking killer server applications for Ubuntu. MySQL, the open-source database now owned by Sun, has backed Ubuntu quite a bit. And now Openbravo is joining the party...Smart move by Canonical and Openbravo. CIOs, midmarket IT managers, and solutions providers don't care much about server operating systems. It's all about the applications.

I agree, and so do Red Hat and Novell, which built their formidable server businesses by focusing on applications.

It's interesting, however, where Canonical/Ubuntu is focused. It started with some select, big-name partnerships with IBM and others, and is now focused on shoring up that story with open-source applications. Openbravo is the first to leak, but there are others in the works.… Read more

Microsoft ahead of Apple, Ubuntu in OS update reliability

A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.

Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.

"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, … Read more

Why you want a Linux Live CD

For the most part, on this blog, I try to convince readers to do something defensive on their computers - like a parent nagging a child to eat their vegetables. Only once have I put my foot down, so to speak, saying unequivocally last year that all Windows XP users should employ DropMyRights. Now, another emphatic endorsement - all Windows users should have a Linux Live CD, and, know how to use it.

If you're not familiar with the term "Live" applied to a CD, that's because it's not something that exists in the Windows … Read more

Ubuntu being sold retail by Best Buy. But will it stay?

The news is out that Best Buy is selling Ubuntu Linux retail for $19.95. It's a nice step forward for Ubuntu, but not for Linux. It used to be possible to buy Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux retail. That's actually where I bought my first copy of SUSE Linux while working at Novell.

So, the real news isn't that it's being sold retail. The real news will be if it stays. Red Hat didn't see the value in keeping a retail distribution of Linux. Will Ubuntu?

Introducing the Linux user interface

A few days ago, Walter Mossberg, writing in the Wall Street Journal, offered a verbal peek at the Mac user interface (see Some General Tips for Switch to Mac From Windows) intended as heads-up for Windows XP users thinking of switching.

I'm not a Mac user, but from reading the article, it seems that the initial learning curve for switching from Windows XP to Linux, is less than that for switching to Macs. Both Macs and Linux are immune to the vast majority of malicious software, so from a Defensive Computing standpoint, each is good choice.

One advantage Mac … Read more

Shuttleworth: Desktop Linux can be better than the Mac

Mark Shuttleworth addresses a range of interesting things in a recent interview, but there are two, in particular, that strike me. First, Mark acknowledges the obvious: The Mac is a superior usability experience. Second, however, while placating his upstream developer communities, he also notes that improving on their work is going to be critical to beating the Mac:

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has historically been very, very deferential to what we call our upstream communities - GNOME, KDE, and so on - in the definition of the desktop experience. Our view, very strongly, is that they hold the real … Read more