Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The first thing we can say about the Linux desktop in 2007 is that there are more users than ever. The Linux Foundation 2006 survey had fewer than 10,000 people signing in. This year more than 20,000 Linux desktop users reported in. Who are these users? Most of them, 69.4 percent, work in small companies […]

Open-source projects often face the problem of keeping track of a project’s code, while avoiding stifling developers’ creativity. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, claims it has a solution to that problem: Bazaar 1.0, its new version control system. Unlike most VCSs (version control systems), Bazaar is a distributed, rather than centralized, system. This may […]

After an unexpected delay of eight days, Novell finally announced its financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter and 2007 fiscal year, which ended Oct. 31, 2007. Novell reported net revenue for the overall year of $932 million, a loss of $26 million or 8 cents per share, although the company also reported 69 percent […]

Second in the Linux server business to leader Red Hat, Novell is continuing to strive for major server wins. In its latest significant victory, Novell announced that Office Depot has elected to consolidate its server infrastructure on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 1. In the past, Office Depot, with offices in 43 countries, […]

Do you really like OpenOffice.org as your office suite? Would you like to be able to use it on any computer with an Internet connection? If you answered yes to both those questions, you’ll be interested in Ulteo’s beta of Ulteo Online Desktop, which allows the use of OpenOffice.org over the Internet as SAAS (software […]

One of the oldest jokes about the Internet goes, “Imminent death of the Internet predicted, GIF at 11.” Just the acronym “GIF” gives you an idea how long people have been predicting that the Internet was about to be overwhelmed by traffic. To prevent our cable and DSL modems from delivering Hayes 1200-baud SmartModem-like performance, […]

On the plus side, Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, version identifier 9.0.115.0 was made available for Linux at the same time as Mac and Windows versions. Its nice to see Linux not being treated as the little brother who only gets the older, hand-me down programs by a major software vendor. An even bigger […]

The SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) announced on Dec. 7 that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications on behalf of its clients, the two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging that Verizon has violated the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License version 2) in its fiber-optic Internet and television service, aka FiOS. Verizon […]

Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will mean millions of Linux-powered PCs in users’ hands. The first change was the continued maturation of desktop Linux. Today, no […]

One question that people who don’t know how open-source businesses work is: “How do you make money from open-source software?” SourceForge.net has a new answer to that question: sell services and support to customers using an eBay like market. SourceForge.net, with millions of monthly visitors, is already one of the world’s largest Web sites for […]

Novell stockholders were unpleasantly surprised on Dec. 5, when instead of hearing from Novell on how the Linux distributor had done over the last quarter and the full 2007 fiscal year, they were presented with an earnings announcement postponement instead. The cause for this last minute delay was a pair of unresolved issues with the […]

Like it or lump it, Microsoft’s Active Directory is a very popular network directory, and thus, management system. It’s been possible to use AD for Linux, but it was never easy. Now, Likewise Software, formerly Centeris, a leader in mixing and matching Windows and Linux network solutions, has announced the first open-source version of release […]