Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claims that “Linux violates more than 228 patents. Some day, for all countries that are entering WTO [World Trade Organization], somebody will come and look for money to pay for the patent rights for that intellectual property.” With that comment, Microsoft declared war against Linux and open source yesterday…Oh wait. My […]

Microsoft is putting its own spin on its “re-re-announcement” that it believes that Linux and open source violate 235 of its patents. The company is now sending out a release to some members of the press explaining its position. Microsofts statement opens, “The companys longstanding preference is to license rather than litigate and Microsofts work […]

Analysis—Some people have been anxiously waiting for the summer blockbuster movies to arrive. Many Linux fans, on the other hand, have been waiting impatiently for what they hope will be the next Linux desktop box-office smash hit: KDE 4.0. On May 11, the KDE community released the first alpha of KDE 4.0—aka “Knut”—which will boast […]

Linux virtualization is hotter than hot. VMware is offering better native Linux virtualization support; the Linux kernel, starting with 2.6.20, is incorporating KVM virtualization; Red Hat is introducing the idea of Intel vPro-based virtual appliances; and, not to be left out… …OpenVZ is making its virtualization software available on a Knoppix 5.1.1 bootable live CD. […]

The Linux world rejoiced when Dell announced that it was going to pre-install Ubuntu Linux on some of its consumer desktops. But then the Linux world was befuddled when Dell announced that it would be buying certificates for Novell SUSE Linux from Microsoft. Some Linux users have reacted with rage to what they see as […]

VMwares new desktop virtualization program, VMware Workstation 6, arrived on May 9 with support for the companys open paravirt-ops, a virtualization performance optimizer, which as of the 2.6.20 kernel, is now part of Linux. According to the company, paravirtualized Linux operating systems are modified operating systems specifically optimized to run in a virtual environment. Unlike […]

On May 4, Robert Love resigned as chief architect of Novells Linux desktop efforts. He has since announced that he has accepted a position at Google. While Love hasnt spelled out what hell be doing at the Internet search giant, he did write in his blog that hell be working at Googles Open Source Program […]

A typical Linux desktop user is a guy in his twenties whos computer savvy but may very well not be an IT professional. Those are some of the conclusions you can draw from the just-released openSUSE survey results. The survey, published by OpenSUSE.org (PDF download), was run for almost three months, and more than 27,000 […]

When the Supreme Court of the United States ruled for KSR in the case of KSR Intl Co. v. Teleflex Inc., it also served notice to the software industry that major changes may be afoot in both the granting and protecting of existing software patents. For several years now, software patents have frequently been seen […]

In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. In 2007, Dell, a top computer manufacturer, is introducing pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on its main PC lines. The worlds of baseball and the desktop will never be the same. In both cases, people worked long and hard to reach the top. In Linuxs case, the […]