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
- EFF Celebrates Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office as "Digital Inclusion", Mocks GNU/Linux-Based ChromeOS
- Yet another example/evidence that EFF has become a rotten pile of junk
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 05, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 05, 2024
- [Meme] How to Keep Granting Hundreds of Thousands of Fake Patents (Without Upsetting Anybody in Politics and Media)
- This is very Kremlin-like
- EPO Examiners to Adopt Resolution Condemning EPO Management for Breaking the Law in Order to Grant Many Illegal Software Patents
- Europe's second-largest institution (EPO) is a law-breaking institution hiding behind the veil of "law"
- [Meme] Sup, Nazi?
- "Come back, one year"
- Calling "Nazi" and "Right Wing" Everyone Who Does Not Agree With You (Even Leftists Whose Views on Some Issues Slightly Differ From Yours)
- Oil money has become exceptionally notorious for takeover of online platforms and institutions/NGOs (using them to incite society inwards, not upwards)
- EFF Losing the Plot
- Like the Linux Foundation and OSI, the EFF has succumbed to corporate influence and is derailing itself (along with its original mission)
- Links 05/10/2024: Patents Being Squashed, EFF Insists on Children's Access to Porn
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 05/10/2024: Multitudinous Agreeable Futures and Misfin Mail
- Links for the day
- Links 05/10/2024: Amazon Culling 14,000 Managers, About 160 People Resign From Automattic
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Moles in Nerdearla, Openwashing and Whitewashing Microsoft With Its Latest Ponzi Scheme and Storytelling
- Also GPL violations en masse
- The Danger of Outsourcing Your Platform to Social Control Media and Getting "Information" There
- Stella is probably not aware of what she has just done
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 04, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, October 04, 2024
- Links 05/10/2024: Shift to ARM, Microsoft XBox Crisis
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Who to Trust on Privacy... (Not Someone Who Boasts About Breaking Into Devices Without Authorisation)
- You're not even a computer scientist...
- When It Comes to Encryption, The Web (as in World Wide Web) Isn't Secure and Uses Weak Ciphers About as Often as Every Day, Even in 2024
- Gemini Protocol does not
- The GPL Does Not Prohibit Use of Code for Death
- Windows kills even more people, but in other ways
- Journalism in Europe on Life Support
- Assange articulated some of the ordeals he went through
- [Video] Stella Assange and Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir on Protecting Journalists Who Expose Injustice
- Stella (the wife) says her husband received an invitation from the committee (PACE) while he still undergoes recovery
- [Video] Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland, SOC) Explains That Julian Assange Was Punished for Exposing Crimes (Instead of the Criminals Getting Published)
- Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir speaks out...
- Links 04/10/2024: Health, Asia, and Censorship
- Links for the day
- Links 04/10/2024: Ingrid's Back and Creative Mornings
- Links for the day
- [Video] The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly on Julian Assange
- The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly has voted to confirm that Julian Assange was held as a political prisoner
- Links 04/10/2024: Telegram Issues Deepen, Texas Sues TikTok
- Links for the day
- "The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly has voted to confirm that Julian Assange was held as a political prisoner."
- This stuff should not have been in Twitter (X)
- Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) Do Not Run Windows
- The projects that deal with ICBMs are extremely unlikely to involve Microsoft
- "Microsoft is asking for a handout... yet again"
- Just over a month after the last bailout fell through the cracks
- One Step Closer to the End of Microsoft's XBox
- XBox sales are down over 50% in the past year
- GNU/Linux Flaring Up in ASEAN
- We said we'd not post statCounter for a few months
- Gemini Links 04/10/2024: Asteroid City and Retro Gaming
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 03, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 03, 2024