For years, backers of open-source software have hoped to push Microsoft out of its dominant position in desktops and laptops. Windows-powered personal computers account for more than 90% of unit sales,. Linux 4%, Gartner says.
In a previous column, I asserted that Linux is ready to meet the demands of corporate desktops, while it is still some way off from being ready for mass use in the consumer environment. But, with that said, the obvious question that remains is: which distribution is right for your organisation?
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Desktop Linux is on the agenda of many organizations, especially government, in the case of South Africa. But, so often the costs of managing and deploying Linux are not factored in. Once these considerations are included, it is surprising which distributions come out on top.
The recommendation for any company moving to a Linux desktop environment is, therefore, to focus on features that benefit the computing environment, not just individual machines, and to consider both the competency and costs of management and support for any given distribution.
The computing industry is familiar with the low-cost lab known as the garage, a historic hot-bed for innovation, and this week LinuxWorld had its own "garage" to showcase embedded Linux.
As you all probably know Linux is not limited to just desktops. It’s far reaching, actually. Not that you’d have a Terminal app on it or anything, but you could. Some of you may have a mobile phone running Linux and you probably don’t even know it. The most popular phone in the world runs Unix. That’s right. The iPhone runs on Unix. Are there any other cool devices out there running on Linux or Unix?
Now virtualisation is run on somewhere between six to eight percent of servers, we think in the next two years that will be 90 percent of servers
At the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, McKesson CIO Randal Spratt explains why his company deploys its health care applications on Linux. He says these applications are scalable, affordable on tight hospital budgets, and reliable--making better patient care possible.
so the very kind folks who won the Akademy awards last year ( sebastian trueg, matthias kretz, danny allen ) decided to go ahead and award Amarok with the Best Application award! we are obviously very excited and very pleased to win this award, and want to (tearfully) thank all those users who have been with us through the long dark (teatime of the soul) times of Amarok 1.x.... wait, we never had those. nevermind.
Out of the 3 programs previewed, I liked Kdenlive the best, but not having the Title show up was a real bummer. Kdenlive could eventually become my editor of choice by the time it gets to 1.0 status. The trick is going to be to keep the development moving and thus keep my interest alive. This type of progression is what has helped Linux reach critical mass as desktop choice.
At Akademy 2008 in Belgium, Qt developers Simon Hausmann and Andreas Aardal Hanssen announced dramatic improvements in the web browser engine in Qt and the canvas that is used by, for example, the Plasma desktop shell. Video support, animations and transitions, optimisations to speed up painting and animations, and new graphical effects open up nearly endless new possibilities for developers to present their user interfaces with. Read on for more details.
And speaking of speed, Ubuntu gets my notebook running so fast that the processor gives off noticeably more heat, especially when I had Ubuntu running in it’s own partition. For anyone else that may consider Ubuntu on their laptop, I would recommend picking up a cooling pad.
What I find really interesting about Mac owners is the lack of customisation they generally add to the desktop and interface. Maybe a change of background picture, quicksilver and thats about it. While on the linux side I've seen radical changes, for example Glyn has stuck with the standard Ubuntu theme while Sheila has her ubuntu setup so weird it looks like Xubuntu.
One of the most obvious barriers to unified communications and using instant messaging (IM) as a collaboration tool for those outside your enterprise is the plethora of IM standards. Those standards are, bizarrely, continuing to proliferate with Facebook recently introducing its own IM service.
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The sixteen IM platforms Pidgin supports
1. AIM 2. Bonjour 3. Gadu-Gadu 4. Google Talk 5. Groupwise 6. ICQ 7. IRC 8. MSN 9. MySpaceIM 10. QQ 11. SILC 12. SIMPLE 13. Sametime 14. XMPP 15. Yahoo! 16. Zephyr
