Summary: Updates on four companies and products that enable Microsoft to 'tax' Linux with imaginary patents

IT has been another quiet week for SUSE, but Novell has bragging rights for recapturing the #1 spot in the world's top computers (Red Hat took the lead from SUSE last year [1, 2]). Novell's PR department wastes no time and quickly writes about it.

The world’s fastest supercomputer, the Jaguar XT5, built by Seattle-based Cray Inc., runs on a version of SUSE Linux Enterprise.

More on SUSE in supercomputers:

The system supports up to 16TB of global shared memory in a single system image. The machine uses the SGI 15GB per second NUMAlink 5 and features the MPI Offload Engine acceleration. The machine is designed to run Novell SUSE or Red Hat Linux. Pricing is unknown.

This pretty much sums up news coverage about SUSE, perhaps with the following exceptions:

i. Google Disappoints: No Chrome Just Yet

But I guess that's the good news. Rushing the introduction of such an important OS would've been a bad idea, especially when Chrome proposes to be nothing like Mac OS X, Windows, or the various flavors of Linux from Ubuntu, Novell's (Nasdaq: NOVL) SuSE, and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT).

ii. Lenovo IdeaPad S12: netbook or not?

The current use of the term 'netbook' started with the original Asus Eee PC. Weighing less than 1kg and sporting a 7in screen, it was clearly distinguishable from notebooks - especially as it ran Linux rather than Windows.

iii. Doing nothing the costliest cloud option: IDC

“Choose your vendors wisely,” says Steve Osborn, service line manager, Gen-i. His advice is based on working with Novell in moving away from the centre’s legacy model.

Xandros

The Xandros GNU/Linux distribution is just a shadow of its former self. It happens to be mentioned in this one article but in no special way.

Forget Windows and Mac OS blah, how about Ubuntu, Fedora, Xandros, Mint and Mandriva? I'm going with Ubuntu 9.04 for home because it's Dell's distro of choice, and Fedora 11 for work because it's free - two factors marking them out as frontrunners, should this Linux revolution ever occur.

From the comments in a post about Firefox we have:

I use firstly a first-generation Linux based eeePC. And yes Firefox is VERY slow. But I don't care since the Asus Xandros OS has a fine-tuned kernel with a thread scheduler optimized in order not to have the whole netbook hangs while a single app hangs.

LG

LG is one of the companies that pay Microsoft for Linux, so it is worth paying attention to this new LG product that boots Linux alongside Windows. Does LG pay Microsoft for this?

Samsung

The news about Samsung's Ballnux phones is no longer hot, but there are more discussions about Bada, which is likely to be 'taxed' by Microsoft.

Korean electronics giant Samsung is helping the Linux-David Enlightenment with development ressources. It's possible that the lightweight and robust window manager might be the basis for Samsung's upcoming Bada mobile phone platform.

Lastly there is this: "Sprint’s Moment: Open Source Released By Samsung"

Well hopefully with this nugget of information someone can get it rooted and get it going. Android 1.5 is nice and all, but 1.6 is a bit better and 2.0 seems to be awesome.

Android may contain Linux, but it is a closed platform that utilises some user-hostile tricks. Still, it's better than platforms without Linux and without source code. ⬆