desktop

Can 3,000 Brazilians be wrong?

Children in rural areas of Brazil are about to get their geek on with a slew of new Debian-based Linux machines, as Softpedia notes:

Schools from Brazil will receive about 3000 Debian GNU/Linux based computers, with four multimedia terminals, as the Ministry of Education is willing to buy them for 3000 rural schools. The computers will have compatible printers and 36 months contractual support. This is not the first time when the Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying Linux-based computers, as about a month ago they acquired 90,000 Debian GNU/Linux PCs, with compatible wireless cards, wireless … Read more

Survey says: Linux desktop not yet ready for mainstream users

The Linux Foundation recently released a Linux desktop survey, with over 15,000 respondents. Unfortunately, the data seems skewed toward the sort of person who would proactively seek out a Linux desktop survey with over 70% of respondents being students, IT professionals, developers, or other "gear-head" status and 69.4% working for companies with 100 employees or fewer (and I'm guessing they skew closer to "1" than "100" in the "1-100 employees" category).

Why? Because 57.5% declared that they run Linux on half or more of their office desktops. Call me a skeptic, but I doubt there are many dry cleaning operations with a lot of Linux running. I'm guessing that these are 1-5-person technical operations with at least half the staff having the technical "chops" to work comfortably with Linux. This is borne out by the fact that 49.4% of respondents work for computer companies of some kind or in research/education.

In short, the Linux desktop may be doing well, but it hasn't touched the mainstream enterprise market where a critical mass of revenue is to be found. Don't be fooled by overly optimistic readings of the data: there is no mainstream Linux desktop market yet.… Read more

The looming battle between old economy (Microsoft) and new economy (Google)

For those who have spent years wringing their hands over Microsoft's desktop dominance, have no fear: competition is on its way. It's called Google, and it promises to dramatically shake up the computing market by shifting the battle to the Internet, as an article in The New York Times insightfully states.

We should have seen this coming. The cause of Microsoft's weakness is its overreliance on its strengths, a classic "innovator's dilemma." In other words, Microsoft's fetish for the desktop metaphor threatens to leave it with dominance of yesterday's kingdom just as … Read more

New review: 'Hordes of Orcs' for Mac

It's extremely rare for me to talk about games two weeks in a row for the Mac Daily Download, but a recent release from our friends at Freeverse Software is too good to pass up. When I heard the makers of great Mac games like Kill Monty, WingNuts 2, and Burning Monkey Solitaire were making a new twist on the online hit Desktop Tower Defense, I was immediately interested. As with most everything that comes from the folks at Freeverse, I wasn't disappointed.

Hordes of Orcs puts a new spin on Desktop Tower Defense games with smooth 3D … Read more

Red Hat delays its desktop until January due to IP issues

Perhaps there's something to Novell's approach to interoperability, after all. As reported today, Red Hat is delaying (again) the next version of its Linux desktop until January 2008. The reason is very interesting:

[Leigh Day] said Red Hat was postponing the product's release again because it has yet to resolve problems getting the right to distribute software for playing music and viewing videos with the Linux software.

Intellectual property issue, perhaps? Or maybe it's just a matter of ensuring the right level of royalties are paid? I'm not sure, but would love to hear from … Read more

Gadgettes 70: The Who Spiked the Eggnog? Episode

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Google Apps in 2008: More and more like the offline world they left behind

Reading about Google's plans for Google Apps in 2008, I'm struck by how much the new world of online applications is having to mimic the old world of offline applications to thrive. As much as we may want to leave our desktops behind, they clatter along after us, tethered to us by our need to have a physical location.

Google will enable the offline functionality through its Gears technology, which will enable some very interesting things:

Will users be able to edit docs, spreadsheets and presentation offline? [Google's] answer was yes, and that the Google Gears plugin would handle the offline work. In addition, Google Gears support is in the works for Gmail and Google Calendar.… Read more

CandyBar for Mac adds style to your desktop

Part of the reason people buy Macs is because of Apple's attention to style. Whether it's bondi blue, smooth white, glossy black, or brushed metal, Mac hardware is as much about functionality as it is the overall aesthetic. Of course, attention to aesthetics doesn't stop at Apple hardware. Mac OS X and most Mac software shares the same smooth lines and beveled edges of the hardware surrounding it. The application icons in the Dock are bright and slick, and the open and close buttons on documents and applications are like pieces of candy. Anyone who has turned … Read more

Getting a handle on NEC's portable desktop

Companies are always looking for a gimmick to distinguish their products from the pack and, when the direct competition means the likes of Apple and Dell, they may well need all the help they can get.

That, at least, is the predicament Japan's NEC finds itself in where all-in-one desktop PCs are concerned. So what unique feature does it boast? A handle. Yes, NEC's "PowerMate P5000" series has grown a handle in what seems to be part of some odd trend that has seized part of the technology industry. Other than that, this "hybrid" … Read more