LXer Weekly Roundup for 14-Sept-2008

LXer Feature: 14-Sept-2008 This week's LXer Roundup is full of all kinds of good stuff, but not if your Microsoft. HP is attempting to work around the Vista GUI, an ad campaign that doesn't seem to be about anything and to top it off The London Stock Exchange went down because of a .NET crash. Also, Mark Shuttleworth says that the Linux Desktop needs a facelift, a very funny article on why you should switch from Linux to Vista. Did you know that the largest and most complex scientific instrument ever built, called the "Large Hadron Collider", which when powered up could theoretically create a black hole and suck the entire Earth into it? It runs Linux.

This week's LXer Roundup is full of all kinds of good stuff, but not if your Microsoft. HP is attempting to work around the Vista GUI, an ad campaign that doesn't seem to be about anything and to top it off The London Stock Exchange went down because of a .NET crash. Also, Mark Shuttleworth says that the Linux Desktop needs a facelift, a very funny article on why you should switch from Linux to Vista. Did you know that the largest and most complex scientific instrument ever built, called the "Large Hadron Collider", which when powered up could theoretically create a black hole and suck the entire Earth into it? It runs Linux.

HP: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Vista: Hewlett-Packard is working on a simplified user interface for Windows Vista easier, and on its own Linux-based operating system. It's a resurgence of an anti-Windows movement that started in the 1990s but was crushed by the strong arm of Microsoft. Would Redmond dare such tactics today?

Internet traffic begins to bypass the U.S: Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network's first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.

Windows Vista: The OS About Nothing: Microsoft's new Windows ad, featuring Jerry Seinfeld, is outdated and not very funny -- but it's highly revealing of all that's wrong out there in Redmond. The background: Windows is losing market share to Apple's Mac OS and even Linux. And Vista, the latest version, has been a big fat dud. Businesses have shunned it outright, and many consumers find it unintuitive and difficult to use. So, Microsoft hired "award winning" agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky -- at a reported cost of $300 million -- to give Vista, and the Windows franchise in general, an image makeover. The Seinfeld ad debuted Thursday and it's the first piece of an integrated marketing campaign covering TV, the Web, and point-of-sale outlets.

London Stock Exchange suffers .NET Crash: So what really happened? I doubt we'll ever get a detailed, nitty-gritty explanation, but I have friends in London and... Well, let me just make the following points about TradElec. First, TradElec runs on more than a 100 HP ProLiant servers in several locations in London. These servers are running Windows Server 2003. On top of this runs the TradElec software itself. This is a custom set of C# and .NET programs, which was created by Microsoft and Accenture, the global consulting firm. Its back-end databases, believe it or not, run on Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The goal was to maintain sub-ten millisecond response times. In short, it's meant to be a real-time system.

40 reasons to lose Linux and vote Vista!: Challenged by my iTWire colleague and Linux lover Sam Varghese to come up with 40 reasons to lose Linux and vote Vista, I’ve done just that. It all started quietly enough with iTWire colleague David M Williams writing an article entitled “5 reasons to upgrade from Windows Vista to Linux”, with David being a strong and well respected proponent of Linux.

ONE reason why OS X is better than Vista and Linux: The iTWire Vista Vs. Linux battle has been great fun to watch unfold, however it does seem to have missed the point that Apple Mac OS X is better than them both...Forget 10 reasons why Vista is better than Linux, or 20 reasons why Linux is better than Vista. All you really need to know is that there is one single reason why Apple Mac OS X is better than them both.

Switching From Windows To Linux In 3 Easy Steps: In my ongoing quest to take over the world with Linux as my OS of choice, I've noticed that simply handing someone an install CD doesn't really do the trick. I've also noticed that formatting their Windows 95 install with a fresh version of Linux tends to make angry faces as well. The more tech savvy the user is, the more resistant to change they tend to be. As with most worthwhile endeavors, it takes time and patience for a person to learn to love Linux. The problem is that hating Windows isn't enough. Most people hate Windows, but feel trapped into using it. That's where my 3 step approach comes in.

Firefox vs. Chrome: Is It a Fight if Everyone Wins?: A new high-tech soap opera kicked off last week in Silicon Valley as Google, long a supporter of the Mozilla Foundation and its open source browser Firefox, jumped into Mozilla's turf with its own browser, Chrome. Will the sexy new Chrome catch the eye of those early adopters who helped Firefox get started and eventually grab nearly 20 percent of the browser market once dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer?

Large Hadron Collider - powered by Linux: The most powerful physics projects in the history of known universe - The $10 Billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC)- shot its first light speed beam this morning around its 27 km circuit. Beyond the 20 years it took to build and half of all the world's astrophysicists it also takes another key ingredient to make LHC work -- Linux.

Grumpy Gnome-Hater Almost Changes Mind: I used to think that Gnome 1.4 was the Last Good Gnome. Because when Gnome 2.0 came along, everything I liked was gone. It was dumbed-down to the point of unusability, and the roadmap called for yet more dumbing-down. So I switched to KDE for my main workstation, and IceWM, XFCE, and Blackbox for lower-powered PCs. For all these years I haven't seen much to like in Gnome. Not until Ubuntu Hardy Heron, that is.

Ohio Linux Fest Looms!: Don't forget to pre-register for the coolest Linux event in the MidWest!

10 Tips for Lazy Linux Admins: A lazy sysadmin is a good sysadmin. Time spent in finding more-efficient shortcuts is time saved later on for that ongoing project of "reading the whole of the internet", so try Linux Format's 10 handy tips to make your admin life easier. Includes shortcuts for SSH and screen, along with ways to roll out admin commands across multiple boxes.

Shuttleworth: Open source desktops need a facelift: Canonical, the leading backer of the Ubuntu version of Linux, is hiring a team to help make open source software on the desktop more appealing and easier to use. The company plans to sign up designers and specialists in user experience and interaction to lead Canonical's work on usability and to contribute to other free and open source desktop-environment projects, including Gnome and KDE, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical chief executive and founder of the Ubuntu project, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Lancelot reaches Holy Grail of KDE menu: KDE 4 is barely eight months old, and already it has three options for a main menu. Until now, users have either used the default Kickoff, which makes for awkward navigation of the menu tree, or reverted to the familiar but unwieldy classic menu. Now, with the first full release of Lancelot, users have another option that overcomes the shortcomings of both other alternatives and gives KDE 4 a thoroughly modern menu. According to comments on the project Web page by main developer Ivan ?uki?, Lancelot started life as a SuperKaramba applet for organizing desktop icons. Its name is a homage to Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- as evidenced by the default grail icon -- as well as a pun on "launch-a-lot."

What is happening in the world of Ubuntu?: I have been talking about Ubuntu for a number of articles now and how easy it is to use. In this article I will look at the next two upcoming versions and investigate what they have to offer. Ubuntu, unlike other Operating Systems which could be mentioned, strive for a predictable release schedule. They have only missed it once in eight releases and then only by two months. A new version of Ubuntu is released every six months in April and October. The naming convention is associated with the year and the month that it is released. 8.04 was released in 2008 in the 4th month, April. The previous release was 7.10 in October 2007.