Rumors Archive

Today, AnandTech brings you the second part of the series, which focuses on Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 and how it compares to the Linux-based MythTV.

"Linux has made some excellent advances in making itself more consumer friendly, but it cannot directly compete with the Mac OS or Windows yet. Also, while there are plenty of applications available for Linux, few consumer-oriented app makers produce apps for Linux. The Mac's app base is smaller than that of Windows, but it is far more robust than Linux's base, and apps are key." Read the rest of the editorial at MacObserver. Also, "Who's Losing Most Desktops to Linux, Apple or Microsoft?" LinuxWorld discusses on the other side.

Quite frankly, I got fed up with my Windows XP. Everything was wrong with it - security, stability, and price. So, I took a new step in my computer experience and tried going Linux. My only previous experience having been using and FTP Wizard to upload files to a web host, I could definitely be put into the "newbie" category.

Microsoft executive Martin Taylor's schedule is packed with meetings like the one in June when he met with representatives from French drugmaker Aventis in his Redmond, Wash. office. Aventis has tied together groups of computers running not Microsoft's operating system but the freely available Linux. These high-performance clusters can analyze proteins at blazing speeds. "That's great for Linux," Taylor said cheerily, at the time.

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer came out swinging -- verbally and even physically at times, at the Worldwide Partner Conference where he mocked open source technology, Linux in particular, while touting opportunities on the company's own platforms. During a keynote address, Ballmer also identified Novell customers as prime targets for Microsoft's partners to pick off as potential new customers.

Sun has brought the debate over who is "more open source" down to the playground level, and both companies could do better at it, eWEEK's Linux & Open Source Editor Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes.

A new white paper positioning the IBM J2EE Middleware Platform vs. the Microsoft .NET Platform is now available and reflects IBM's overall marketing plan to aggressively combat Microsoft. While it will be useful to many, its primary target is CEOs, CFOs, and other high-level decision makers at ISV companies who are focused on the mid-market and looking to make a platform/partnering choice in the next 12 months. The outcome of the J2EE vs. .NET decision by ISVs is critical to IBM's ongoing success and relevance in the midmarket arena, traditionally a Microsoft stronghold.

By the time Longhorn comes out I'm sure everyone will be sick of the subject "windows vs linux." Will longhorn finally destroy that pesky linux and mark another decade of Microsoft's monopoly, or will the underdog come out with a stunning upset and send a multi billion dollar company to it's grave?

Even at the enterprise server level, there are wide differences between Linux distributions, not only in price, but in ease of installation, included features and software, and particularly in ease of administration. See how the two most popular Linux enterprise server distributions match up.

The GNOME Foundation had a meeting with some representatives of the Mozilla Foundation about how they could collaborate a little closer in future. More info here about what was discussed.

"In any relationship between two or more entities, the "small" issues usually are the big issues or at least they evovle into big issues. Several of these type of public engagements a month, every month, for several months will result in some harm to the psyche of the community and lesser confidence by the commercial interests who will deem them as a form of instability or unpredictability of the open source model." Read the editorial here by Taurayi Chitaukire.

The open discussion about how the future of desktop development for Linux should look like is continued between Novell's Miguel de Icaza and Red Hat's Havoc Pennington with multiple posts in their blogs.

Red Hat has maintained the pure open-source approach, making open-source software available to users, says Gartner analyst George Weiss. "For the end-user, the software may be open source, but the question is, 'How much do I have to pay to enable the software with a subscription?'"

http://codewars.osdever.net marks a new beginning in the OS Development Ring. A totally new idea of code wars? No, code wars aren't any new idea(Allegro SpeedHack) but coding an OS in such a short time? Even at all. OS development is a relatively new and growing hobby for programmers. Now you have a chance to openly develop OS code, have it judged, and win Challenges.