Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

While Dell Inc. recommends the use of Windows XP Professional, in France Dell and Mandriva S.A. have announced the availability of a Dell laptop preloaded with Mandriva Linux. This is the first time any Dell laptop with pre-installed Linux has been sold or supported by Dell. Previously, only Dell N-Series Precision Workstations with Red Hat […]

Blum Partners revealed this week that, disappointed by recent Novell results, it wants big changes at the NetWare and Linux vendor. In an unusual move, the Blum Capital Partners LP investment firm publicly revealed it was very unhappy with Novells current direction. The San Francisco-based company published several letters to Novell CEO Jack Messman detailing […]

One of technologys dirty little not-so-secret secrets is that Microsoft has been using open-source software since the early 90s in its TCP/IP network stack. Now, however, Microsoft has finally confessed to using open-source in a forthcoming product: Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition. The reason why Microsoft uses BSD-licensed TCP/IP for its network stack was […]

In San Francisco at LinuxWorld a few weeks ago, the newly formed Debian Common Core Alliance promised that it would soon deliver its first beta distribution. The group quietly did so late last week. “The first preview release of the DCC, DCC 3.0 PR1, was made available late last week,” said Debian founder Ian Murdock, […]

Strange, strange things are afoot in the land of open standards. First, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) showed that it could be as incompetent on the Web as it was on the ground in New Orleans by making it so hurricane victims couldnt apply for aid unless they were using Internet Explorer. Then it […]

Not so long ago, Sun and Red Hat were getting along like cats and dogs. Recently, however, the erstwhile partners have returned to acting like real partners. Whats happened? For those that follow Sun Microsystems Inc. closely, one of the more amazing sights at Suns quarterly New York Network Computing event on Monday was not […]

On Monday, Novell CEO Jack Messman looked at the challenge of Microsofts forthcoming Vista desktop and saw an opportunity for the Linux desktop. Speaking at Novell Inc.s BrainShare conference and expo in Barcelona, Spain, Messman said, “The cost of migrating from XP to Vista will be higher than the cost of migrating to Linux and […]

Novell announced on Monday that SugarCRM is now a partner in Novells Market Start program, which is designed to provide back-office software for small and midsize businesses. SugarCRM Inc.s Sugar Suite is Market Starts first CRM (customer relationship management) product. This is part of Novell Inc.s plan to engage SMBs with its Linux line, and, […]

A few months back, the Open Source Initiative announced that it was going to start cutting back on the number of open-source licenses. OK, I agree. Boy, do I agree. So when do we start tossing out these losers? Back in April, the OSI recognized that “License proliferation has become a significant barrier to open-source […]

In a real shift, eBay, as is evidence by its purchase of Skype, wants to not just help you auction off your old stuff, but it wants to become your Internet phone company as well. Good luck, guys. When eBay CEO Meg Whitman said, “Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community,” who can […]

The Firefox 1.5 beta is out, and at a first glance, it looks pretty darn good. But, and this is a big but, this is a beta build, so there is no guarantee that it will work. It worked with every Web site I tried, but it also will not work with the vast majority […]

Ever since Samba came along, its never been too much trouble getting information from Windows machines to Linux systems. You just mounted the Windows file system with SMB (server message block) as a network drive, and you could read and write to the Windows NTFS (New Technology File System) disk volumes as easily as you […]