GNU/Linux Rising: Relevant News Items From March
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-19 19:12:45 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-19 19:12:45 UTC
Desktop
I'm sure there will be objections from people who want to define "the year of the Linux desktop" differently. There will be those fans of GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu who will object that the Linux Desktop has not arrived until we're all running KDE and Gnome. I fear those folks have a while to wait. Others will object because there are still so many copies of Windows and new PCs are still shipping with Windows. That's a fair point, but I believe even those users are actually Linux Desktop users. As I argued last year, Linux has already won on the Windows desktop.
Eurocom sent out a news release that beginning today they will be offering choices of operating systems in their line of GPU-upgradeable, high-performance, professional laptops. Besides the high-end laptop line-up, they will also be offering Linux options for their lightweight notebooks.
If your office runs 24/7, you'll have to do the migration in stages. You may have to migrate servers one at a time, and migrate departments group by group. So, some work gets paused, but most of your business will run during the entire migration process.
Linux has a reputation for being designed for geeks only, but that’s old history. Many modern Linux distributions exceed the user-friendliness of XP, and they’re free to download. If you don’t like the feel of one, you can easily switch to another. What’s more, each Linux distribution comes loaded with useful software such as productivity suites, modern browsers like Chrome or Firefox, and photo and music management apps.
"This is a subject very near and dear to me," Linux Rants blogger Mike Stone told Linux Girl over a fresh Tequila Tux down at the blogosphere's Punchy Penguin Saloon.
Though Stone spent several years teaching "how to" computer courses for faculty and staff at a local university back in the 90s, "all those years barely prepared me for my greatest challenge: my own mother," he said.
To wit: After buying his parents a Windows 95 computer way back when, "I sat her down and showed her how to use the basic hardware," he explained. Yet "even after hours a day over the course of weeks, the computer was too much for her. Windows just had too many options, and she kept getting herself into places she couldn't get out of.
"I literally spent years looking for environments that would make her comfortable," Stone went on. "She went through the Windows OSes (95, 98, ME and finally XP) and some Linuxes -- Red Hat first and then a couple variations of Ubuntu. She always found ways to get herself into trouble."
I’ve been a computer user since around 1991, when we got our first PC, a Tandy from Radio Shack (almost $1,000), which came with Windows 3.1. Since then I’ve used each and every version of that operating system (OS), and still do. But at home and for personal use, it’s Linux for me. Why? Well that’s a question with many answers.
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The biggest driving factor for software developers to work together with open source is cost. It is much cheaper for them to cooperate through open source than it is to remain isolated with proprietary software, asserted Inktank VP of Product Management Neil Levine. "You can no longer rely on one particular vendor to provide everything you need with regard to technology."
After the Desktop
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QOOQ is a durable tablet designed for use in then kitchen. It's even got its very own Linux-based OS...
There was a time, back before smartphones and tablets, when most of us used, at most, only three operating systems.
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For months now David Herrmann has been working on a new project known as OpenWFD for open-source WiFi displays on Linux. OpenWFD is an open-source implementation of the WiFi Display Standard / Miracast. That work is now showing success and as part of that Herrmann has just announced Miraclecast as a component to providing open-source Miracast/WFD support on the Linux desktop.
Chromebook
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Chromebooks are making a big statement in the laptop world: NPD Group Inc. reported that Chromebook sales accounted for 21 percent of all notebook sales last year. For devices that are functionally little different from tablets — designed for basic tasks like checking email and web browsing — they're growing fast. Even as the tablet market continues to grow, capturing 22 percent of the entire personal computing market just last year, Chromebooks are giving people an alternative to rectangular touch screens.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
- some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
- Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
- If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
- Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
- Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
- Because proprietary software makes you worse off
- "What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
- The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
- Making More Work Space
- I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
- MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
- Reject demagogues
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- Science is Under Attack
- Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
- Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
- "social justice warriors"
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
- At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
- The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
- Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
- Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
- some of the junk Google News is promoting
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
- Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
- Links for the day
- Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
- Links for the day
- Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
- Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
- The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
- Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
- Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
- Links for the day
- Code of Censorship
- Extortion is peace
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
- miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
- Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
- Will the axe fall again by month's end?
- Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
- Links for the day
- Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
- GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
- Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
- Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
- Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
- In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
- The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
- Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
- New Techrights Turns 2
- Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
- What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
- Wikileaks was a good example of this
- If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
- be (or become) independent
- Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
- Passing fads are like this
- Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
- Betas for now
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
- In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
- The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
- Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
- Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
- This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
- Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
- Links for the day
- The Blob Slop
- Give me more words, give me some text
- The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
- Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
- Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
- That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
- Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
- Links for the day
- Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025