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Matt (friend of the blog) Asay tells Oracle today to expand its open source strategy, but I want to ask the opposite question, namely whether Oracle hasn’t got the best strategy for fighting open source. The answer depends on whether you blame its weak earnings for the quarter on a strong dollar and the general malaise or think its failure to make many new sales hint at declining market share.

Bloggers with a Linux bent took a break from last week's bashing of a misinformed teacher to focus on the holidays -- and to ponder aloud yet again whether next year will be the year of Linux's long-awaited mainstream breakthrough. Hint: Don't hold your breath.

A next-generation package manager called Nix provides a simple distribution-independent method for deploying a binary or source package on different flavours of Linux, including Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Fedora, and Red Hat. Even better, Nix does not interfere with existing package managers. Unlike existing package managers, Nix allows different versions of software to live side by side, and permits sane rollbacks of software upgrades. Nix is a useful system administration tool for heterogeneous environments and developers who write software supported on different libraries, compilers, or interpreters.

Sugar Labs, a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, is joining the GNOME Foundation as part of the GNOME Advisory Board. Sugar Labs creates software for young children used on platforms like the One Laptop Per Child's XO. Sugar is based on the GNOME platform and relies on technologies like GTK+ and Telepathy.

The end of the year is a self-indulgent time, when those who write about technology stop making lists of the best, worst, and most mind-numbingly mediocre applications they find and pause to make lists about tech trends in the upcoming year. Assessing the past is easy: it has been an interesting year for open source software. Predictions that come to pass, unless suitably vague, just fall into the "lucky guess" category. The one prediction I am sure of for 2009: Open source software will hold its own when it comes to growth and adoption.

In her last installment, Akkana Peck gave us a friendly introduction to the Linux command line. Today we learn the difference between the console, terminal, and shell, and some slick shortcuts that are faster than a GUI.

The Git distributed source code management system has won over another major project, Perl 5. The Perl Foundation has announced that they have completed moving the source code of Perl 5 from Perforce to Git and are now opening the system up for developer use. Git is the open sourced source code control system created by Linus Torvalds to manage Linux development. The move to Git gives developers equal and easier access to the Perl source code and the distributed nature of git will allow developers to work on experimental changes to the language more easily.

Managing buddies on a few online social networks isn't too much of a hassle, but throw in your contact list from instant messaging platforms and online apps and services like Flickr, Digg, and Twitter, and you have a contact list that'd rival that of Kevin Bacon. Managing so many people can be a headache, but here are three browser plugins that can help you manage your online presence more efficiently.

This week we take a first look at Novell's openSUSE 11.1, the latest release from the ever popular distribution. In the news, the release of openSUSE 11.1 heralds the adoption of a freer license, Debian calls a vote on whether or not to include firmware in the upcoming Lenny release while Debian secretary quits over backlash from firmware vote, Gentoo begins releasing weekly snapshots of stage tarballs, the Asianux Consortium incorporates its fifth member and expands into Thailand, Mandriva sets up a Community Steering Committee and increases their number of channel partners, a new distro, Hackable: 1, aims to create a GNOME-based software stack for hackable devices while the Openmoko project releases an update to their software stack. Finally, included in their respective new sections are two interviews - one with Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier of openSUSE and the other with Johannes (Hanno) Böck of Gentoo Linux.

In which Rob Reilly's old heap dies for good; he replaces it with the laptop equivalent of an American muscle car, stuffs 64-bit Kubuntu on it, and goes joyriding. Is it a good trip? Does it perform to expectations? Come on in and find out.

LXer Feature: 21-Dec-2008

There were several articles about Netbooks this week. One article entitled "Small is beautiful" that talks about the joys of the Netbook, another of how now that Microsoft has dumped XP on the Netbook market, that it has of course taken the majority of the share of pre-installs. Isn't it nice to know that you can buy a little Netbook with XP installed on it without having to pay for the 'downgrade' (I mean upgrade) like you would have to if you did not want Vista to come pre-installed on a new desktop or laptop? I didn't think so either.

Could your business be paying for a proprietary program when an open source alternative exists? Take a look at our guide as we count down the most popular open source products. Much of the software suggested in this round-up came from sourceforge.net, known colloquially as the open source "phone book". Alternatively, you might want to look at Wikipedia's Free Software Portal. If you need software, it's well worth a look.

SuSE was founded in Nuremberg, Germany in 1992 when the Linux kernel was still almost new. by Hubert Mantel, Burchard Steinbild, Roland Dyroff and Thomas Fehr, with the objective of distributing Slackware (based on the earlier SLS Linux from Soft Landing Systems), in sets of 40 floppies, translated into German, with the approval of Patrik Volderding, the guiding light and sole developer of Slackware. The SuSE organisation began life as Gesellschaft für Software-und Systementwicklung mbH, which later became Software und System Entwicklung (Software and System Development), from which sprang the friendly acronym SuSE. SuSE's own distinctive version of Linux came into being with the absorption of Florian LaRoche’s Jurix Linux and the development of the SuSE installer YaST in 1995, and but for a mild stutter after the collapse of the NASDAQ, has never looked back since.

It has been two years since Linux Format magazine last reported on Ulteo. Back then, we all thought it was going to be a standard new Linux distribution created by Gaël Duval, the founder of Mandrake Linux. If you take a look at Ulteo.com today, you won't find any mention of Linux on the home page. Not only that, but everything about the Ulteo site is slightly confusing. It's very difficult to understand what Ulteo is and what it might do, thanks to some rather vague statements and the use of some very stylised 'lifestyle' illustrations. But Ulteo is actually four distinct technologies.

The year 2008 showed open source -- both in the form of Linux specifically and as a software development model generally -- coming into the mainstream like never before. When it wasn't powering new hardware niches like the netbook, it was forming the core ofGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG)'s new Android mobile operating system or its Chrome browser, and sitting at the center of legal wrangling with wide-ranging repercussions.

You've all heard a major new flaw has been found affecting Internet Explorer all the way back to version 5. Microsoft pushed out a fix out of their regular "patch Tuesday" monthly schedule. The flaw has prompted some commentators to call for the replacement of IE with alternate browsers like Firefox. Just what was so serious? And what do Microsoft say that show Linux has the superior design?

Increasingly, people are finding that much of open source development is actually being directed and supported by companies like IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and others — rather than being the exclusive domain of unpaid volunteers. Though, the effect of the volunteer contributors should not be overlooked, either. It was the volunteers, early adopters, and early commercial supporters that put FOSS on the radar.

The technology landscape is changing, says Novell CEO Rob Hovsepian. On-premise installations are giving way to Software as a Service, Microsoft is distributing Novell's version of Linux for servers and social networking is gaining acceptance for its business value. Novell and other companies must adapt to this new ecosystem, he said.

What can you do to stand out from the hundreds of other Linux distros that already exist? There are a number of angles you can explore for this – choose one, two or all of them if you want!

Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge is best-known for novels like A Fire Upon the Deep and Rainbows End, as well as the concept of The Singularity -- the idea that, in the next couple of decades, humans will become or create a super-human intelligence. What is less well-known is that Vinge has been a free software supporter since the earliest days of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). He has served several times on the jury for the FSF Awards and spoke at an FSF-sponsored event held last month in San Diego to coincide with the LISA conference. As someone who deals regularly with large scale speculations, Vinge places free software in a larger historical context. He even speculates that free software may be one of the factors that will shortly bring about the Singularity.