To Push Desktop Linux, Radical Shift may be Required

"For Linux to reach the ordinary user, it has to offer more than good office suites and The Gimp and other free software implementations of common applications. Most people won't make the move just so they can keep doing what they did before. Security and freedom mean a lot to a few of us, but they are not enough incentive for the vast range of Average Schmos. And we need those Average Schmos; the median is the message." Read the editorial at OReillyNet.

XFce 4.0.1 Released

Xfce is an easy-to-use and easy-to-configure environment for X11 based on GTK2. A priority is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org. This version has various small bugfixes including panel and window manager fixes. New translations are available. French documentation has been added.

Is Novell-SuSE deal a brilliant Big Blue power play?

As Novell CTO Alan Nugent told ZDNews yesterday, notwithstanding a $50 million injection from IBM, his company's decision to acquire Linux distributor SuSE was backed by a significant amount of market and technical rationale. But legally speaking the move may go down in history as pure chess brilliance on behalf of IBM and Novell in one of this industry's most notorious power struggles.

Ballmer: Linux is not Innovating

"So anybody who thinks they want to be in the intellectual property innovation business needs to ask, 'How do I differentiate myself from this thing?' It has to be through innovative work and through integrated innovation. The non-commercial world doesn't move that fast. Linux is a clone of UNIX. Linux hasn't blazed the trail, new approaches to security, new approaches to program development. Even program development in the UNIX world, the sort of trail-blazing, is quite broadly being done by BEA and IBM and Sun and the Java crowd. But at the end of the day, it's about innovation. It's about competing. And it's about building up enough of innovative intellectual property to have a good business." Ballmer told Always-On.

SCO, IBM Battle Heats Up; Linus, RMS Targetted

Subpoenas are flying in the high-profile lawsuit between the SCO Group and IBM, as both companies try to buttress their legal claims by turning to third parties for information. SCO said Wednesday that it has filed subpoenas targeting six different individuals or organizations. Those include Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the OSDL; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta.

Xandros Announces Desktop 2.0 Linux OS

Xandros today announced the release of the of Xandros Desktop 2.0. With a strong user focus, Xandros Desktop 2.0 offers a graphical environment that's easy to use, and installs with 4 clicks of a mouse. Based on Debian Linux 4.0 and a Xandros-enhanced KDE 3.1.4, Xandros Desktop 2.0 provides seamless compatibility with Microsoft Windows programs, including MS office and MS networks. Read more for pricing and for the free download trial edition.