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Stali is a new Linux distribution from Suckless.org that is based on a "hand selected collection of the best tools for each task, and each tool being statically linked (including some X clients such as xterm, surf, dwm, dmenu, mplayer)." Suckless has often delivered outstanding software, and I am eagerly awaiting an official release. So, what else is in store?

It's been an exciting time lately, and there have been a lot of developments. Here are some of my favorites: iPad, Stali, Psystar, RevLin, ReactOS, Haiku.

Except for those operating systems that are still gaining their foothold (Haiku, Syllable, ReactOS), it seems as though we are becoming increasingly platform independent.

Here we are not long after the release of many different operating systems and hardware platforms. What an exciting time in the industry! With Google launching phones, Apple confirming a tablet, Oracle buying Sun, Microsoft releasing Windows 7 and talk of a new gaming device, and companies like Novel and Red Hat standing back to see what happens. This is certainly a contentious atmosphere. Of course, the success and failure of any company comes down to dollars and cents, so what is the data there telling us? What information can we gleam. Well, for one we can certainly say that Apple and Google are our heaviest hitters.

So, you sucked it up and you bought a Macintosh. You may have bought one on Ebay, or Craigslist, or even in a store (if you have that much money). Great. So now you upgraded the motherboard, or the motherboard died and you didn't have AppleCare. The EULA says that you can only install on an Apple-branded computer. It does not say that the Macintosh has to be unmodified. So, what are you left with? Windows, Linux, BSD, or Solaris. WRONG. OSX will install and run just fine. It does take a little work though. The advantages are simple. All of your Linux/BSD/Solaris software will be usable through MacPorts or Fink. You can even still have X11 with KDE or GNOME (that's right you can get rid of the finder), but you still have the advantages of commercial application support (Adobe CS4, Microsoft Office, many video games, etc...).

When we say that Linux is UNIX-like, what are we saying? At my college, we have a course that is named 'an introduction to UNIX using Linux'. All over I hear people use the phrase 'UNIX/Linux' when referring to UNIX-style systems. It is somewhat hilarious to me, as Linux and the surrounding community have, for the most part, left the UNIX philosophy behind.

So here we are. Windows 7 launched and it isn't like the whole world changed. We knew it wouldn't. Snow Leopard launched with much less fan fare, but it brought some changes that someone needed to make. A fully 64bit OS that focuses on multi-core technologies as well the disposal of the Power libraries that permeated the Darwin landscape. Windows and Macintosh will be battling this out for many years to come. What changed with Linux? With the latest release of Ubuntu we saw some major changes. Things have become more tightly integrated, flashier and heavier.

As the development team over there at GoboLinux works away on making an up-to-date CD-ROM ISO image, I figured I would revisit the distribution. For those of you who are unaware, GoboLinux is a distribution that does things quite a bit differently from others.

Why do we love Linux so much? What is it that draws so many of us into the tinkering, experimenting, and everything else? In the Linux world, we blur the line between applications software and the operating system. This is important. It allows us to have more flexibility than any other operating system on Earth.

Oracle Corporation has Oracle Unbreakable Linux, and offers several different software solutions for businesses, the most notable of which is the Oracle Database. As of this writing, the last stock traded for Oracle (ORCL) went for $20.67 (USD), which was about 1 minute ago. Oracle's revenue stands at around $22.97 Billion.

The GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) and the K Desktop Environment (KDE) have long been the Linux/UNIX options for fully graphical environments. Long ago, it seemed that these two were truly all we needed. You chose one. It would work well in nearly any situation. It was nimble enough to run on most hardware, and it was prettier than most other operating systems' graphical environments.

Lately, a lot of talk has been coming out of Europe. The talk I am referring to concerns an anti-trust case against Microsoft for bundling a web browser they make with an operating system they make. The claim is that Microsoft has made competition in the web browser market difficult because Internet Explorer is included with Microsoft's Windows (a computer operating system).

Recently, I stumbled upon a new Linux distribution aimed at the x86, general use, desktop microcomputer. Naturally, I had a bit of an urge to groan, moan, and otherwise throw a temper tantrum. The predisposition to loathe new Linux distributions is not based in a dislike of Linux distribution plurality, but more of a dislike for redundancy.

A kernel module that replaces X11? Some may love it, some may hate it, but it may take us into the future of desktop and mobile Linux graphics systems.

The threat to Linux is its users, advocates, and fanboys not the megacorps of the IT industry.

There are some great distributions in our wonderfully cluttered Linux distro landscape. Some are very similar to others, and some are wildly different from the rest. The one thing to remember is that while these distributions may be amazingly well thought out, and amazingly well put together their obscurity will present two problems. First, smaller communities will not be as capable of helping you with every problem you face. Second, with fewer users you also have fewer contributors. This means that releases may be infrequent and irregular, and package repositories will be sparse. If these problems are not crucial deal breakers for you, read on.

I wanted to take a moment to admire the software we use everyday. There is something beautiful in the power we are granted. We can change any piece of our software to suit our needs. We have tens of thousands of software packages available to use at any point in time, and those packages can run on a platform that is radically diverse. Each GNU/Linux machine that I have seen is far different from every other GNU/Linux machine I have seen.

While one would imagine that trying to mass market proprietary software that is intended for an open source platform would be problematic, there are some major advantages.

So, apparently Microsoft isn't allowed to use the docx format. Another company has patent on using XML for documents. Wonderful. I would love to be rejoicing in Microsoft's ailings... but I'm not. That's a friggin' rediculous patent.

So, my HDD went bust. I have been using GoboLinux since its launch, and there has yet to be a new release since 014.01. Try as I might, I couldn't switch distributions. So, I installed. This isn't an easy task. The install CD is so old that you will have to do a lot of updating to install anything new. So where to start?