Linux Archive

Linux Gets a Bit Thinner

Linux 10 Comments
Thin computing on Linux got a significant boost this week with a pair of separate releases. Wyse Technology, one of the world's leading thin-client vendors, announced its newest Linux thin client. And just yesterday, the Linux Terminal Server Project, the "granddaddy" of all Linux thin-client open source projects, released LTSP 4.1.
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Yellow Dog Linux on Power Mac G5

Linux 19 Comments
The IBM PowerPC 970 CPUs are well-designed, high-performance chips that ship in millions of end-user systems under Apple Computers' Power Macintosh G5 moniker. These CPUs greatly lower the bar for 64-bit computing on the desktop and on small servers. Currently, Terra Soft's beta Y-HPC is one of only two 64-bit Linuxes that run on G5s. As their names imply, the G5-enabled betas -- both 32- and 64-bit versions -- are for evaluation only. This article is an early look at the promise of Linux on a G5 and is intended for developers interested in trying out this combination in anticipation of production-ready releases to come.
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Windows-To-Linux Migration Hits Speed Bump In Munich

Linux 28 Comments
The proposed operating-system migration of the City of Munich's 14,000 desktops from Microsoft to Linux was placed in jeopardy Friday, when a Munich alderman petitioned the Bavarian city's mayor to examine the status of software patents in the European Community. The issue was raised by Green Party Alderman Jens Muehlhaus, who warned that patent issues could grind some of the city's departments to a halt in the future. The issue involves a proposed directive on software patents that is being considered by various European governments, including Germany, France, and the U.K.
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Opinion: How Desktop Linux Should Behave

Linux 147 Comments
The promise of Desktop Linux (DL) has been long coming. It's made significant progress since the mid-90s when GNOME and KDE came out, giving Linux users a somewhat modern desktop to work upon. However, it's been 7 years and DL hasn't progressed much at all since then. Today, DL is still nothing more than a UNIX-clone with a task bar, a start menu, and a desktop with some icons on it. But why has DL evolved at such a glacial pace?
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The Linux Filesystem Challenge

  Submitted by Erik Terpstra Linux 40 Comments
Linux boasts the widest array of filesystem support among mainstream operating systems. However, Microsoft (with Longhorn) and Apple (with Tiger) have made it clear that they consider the filesystem of the future to be a database of information to be mined, and that client PCs will be a major part of the next chapter in the "search wars."
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A ‘Linux Desktop Base’ could help solve dependency problems

Linux 32 Comments
The package installation problem is one of the primary barriers to desktop Linux adoption. Most if not all solutions so far have addressed the wrong problem (at least for desktop users) -- resolving dependencies at package installation time. A much better approach is to ensure that as few dependencies exist as possible. While this might seem a lofty goal, given the open source development emphasis on reusing as much code as possible, this goal is indeed achievable through a process of desktop component standardization.
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Opinion: Why Linux isn’t ready for the Desktop

Linux 231 Comments
First of all, we should agree on what the definition of "ready for the desktop" stands for. For some of us it refers to a graphical user interface in which applications have icons and can be launched in an intuitive manner without the need of complex commands. Even a Commodore 64 running Geos could be "ready for the desktop" by this definition, but the fact is that when we read "ready for the desktop" we understand "ready to replace Microsoft Windows".
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