LXer Weekly Roundup for 13-Jul-2008

LXer Feature: 13-Jul-2008 In this week's Roundup we have a slew of Microsoft related articles ranging from more MS-Yahoo! fallout to keeping a report in the UK from going public. A OpenSUSE 11.0 review, VMware Ousts CEO Diane Greene, The Swiss Army Distro, Xandros buys Linspire - What does it mean for Linux? and on a sad note longtime Linux evangelist Joe Barr passes away.

In this week's Roundup we have a slew of Microsoft related articles ranging from more MS-Yahoo! fallout to keeping a report in the UK from going public. A OpenSUSE 11.0 review, VMware Ousts CEO Diane Greene, The Swiss Army Distro, Xandros buys Linspire - What does it mean for Linux? and on a sad note longtime Linux evangelist Joe Barr passes away.

Looming IT talent shortage sidesteps FOSS folks: A Gartner study from earlier this year suggests that a skills shortage will leave companies scrambling in vain to find qualified help. However, open source developers say there's an adequate supply of potential employees with the skills they have. "The difficulty is not so much if they exist. It's finding the right people," says Jon Masters, a Red Hat Linux kernel engineer who also works on the real-time kernel team and helps support third-party drivers on Enterprise Linux distributions. He says that the supply of competent Linux and open source software types will be enough to meet the demand.

The Swiss Army Distro - Might Someone Finally Be Getting It?: One of the things that's bothered me to no end for quite a while is the ridiculously huge number of Linux distributions out there. 350+ active or semi-active and nearly 200 dead distros is rather pathetic in my opinion. I understand that some of this comes from the open source mentality of "if they won't change, then we'll fork the code and do it ourselves." That's where we got Gnome and KDE from, Compiz and Beryl, Debian and all of its derivatives, Xorg and XFree86, and many other forks and splits within the FOSS community.

VMware Ousts CEO Diane Greene: VMware ended a long-running battle over its strategic direction on July 8, ousting co-founder and CEO Diane Greene and installing Microsoft veteran Paul Maritz in her place. Investors pounded VMware's once high-flying stock on the shakeup and a warnings on sales growth. Still, Maritz's ascent could be just the tonic investors have sought as the company squares for a fight with the new CEO's former employer and grabs turf in the emerging cloud-computing market.

Approximately 800 vulnerabilities discovered in antivirus products: Not Linux, but pertinent, I think....In what appears to be either a common scenario of "when the security solution ends up the security problem itself" or a Vulnerabilities Antivirus Software 2005/2007 product launch basing its strategy on outlining the increasing number of critical vulnerabilities found in competing antivirus products.

Pictures And Details Of Ubuntu Being Sold At Best Buy: Best Buy is now selling a boxed version of Ubuntu in stores. Though the placement could be better, the marketing on the box is really good.

Microsoft gags UK schools: The threat of reprisals from Microsoft lawyers has stopped Becta, the UK's technology quango for schools, from publishing the details of the three-year megadeal it agreed with Microsoft in April. Microsoft already forbids Becta from saying how much money UK schools spend on its software. The US multinational has also forbidden the British people from knowing how much it is charging their schools for its software.

Linux examined: OpenSUSE 11.0: A few weeks ago, the OpenSUSE Project announced the release of OpenSUSE 11.0, the "community" edition of SUSE Linux, Novell's commercial Linux distribution. Like most recent distributions, OpenSUSE is made up of the usual suspects, including GNOME and KDE-based desktops, Live CD and full DVD installation options, and an online repository of software that can be installed using a GUI tool.

Lotus Symphony: Big Blue Got It Right This Time: It's arguably the prettiest alternative to Microsoft Office, with a clean interface in a soothing IBM blue. Oddly, the once-biggest name in computing christened it"Lotus Symphony," after a spectacular and expensive failure that dates back to the days of DOS. But this new IBM Lotus Symphony seems poised for success.

Microsoft Crosses a Line: Until today I've largely been a big supporter of Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo. A couple of days before Microsoft placed its initial $44.6 billion bid for the company, I told Fox Business Channel that a Microsoft merger had to happen to save Yahoo (and I certainly wasn't the first to say this, I just had magnificent timing). Throughout the ups and downs and stupendous drama of the negotiations, I held firm that a deal was in the best interests of both companies. Not because I'm a huge Microsoft fan, but because the health of the Internet requires a competitive search market. Google controls too much market share and too much related search revenue. A counterbalancing force is needed to keep the system healthy. And Microsoft or Yahoo standing alone cannot counter Google.

An Ubuntu PC From Canonical: Is it a good idea?: Just a few days ago, the news appeared that there was a boxed version of Ubuntu being sold at Best Buy stores. While I, and just about everyone else, was excited, there is a reality, as a WorksWithU article pointed out, that just having the software hidden away on some shelf is highly unlikely to attract new Ubuntu users. This made me wonder if it would be a smart move for Canonical to introduce an Ubuntu PC, probably a laptop?

In memoriam: Linux evangelist and Linux.com editor Joe Barr: Our colleague Joe Barr sometimes described himself as a doddering old geek. Many knew him as a Linux evangelist; others knew him from his ham radio activities. And those of us who worked with Joe knew him in all of his sometime irascible, often funny moods. Joe was always one of our favorite people, and we are devastated to report that he died at home, unexpectedly, last night.

Xandros buys Linspire - What does it mean for Linux?: Xandros bought Linspire the other day, and nobody really noticed. Neither Xandros nor Linspire has won the hearts and minds of Linux users or developers. Both are sold as Linux for the Windows user. Both sell versions of GNU/Linux that are easy to install and use, and both have tried, with varying success, to break into the business and consumer desktop market that is currently owned by Microsoft.

A Little Linux and Unix Humor - Error Messages: A list I found on the net of some hilarious error messages. Possibly for the Linux and Unix enthusiast only ;)