LXer Weekly Roundup for 07-Dec-2008

LXer Feature: 07-Dec-2008 Ok so first some numbers, Tech Republic has a nice list of 10 mistakes new Linux administrators should look out for. Steve Emms gives a review of 6 Lean Linux Desktop Environments of which I had only heard of two before. I also came across Cynthia Harvey's big list of 40 Open Source Tools to help you protect your privacy online that has working links to each of their SourceForge webpages, very cool.

Ok so first some numbers, Tech Republic has a nice list of 10 mistakes new Linux administrators should look out for. Steve Emms gives a review of 6 Lean Linux Desktop Environments of which I had only heard of two before. I also came across Cynthia Harvey's big list of 40 Open Source Tools to help you protect your privacy online that has working links to each of their SourceForge webpages, very cool.

As of November, the percentage of browsers connecting to the Internet through a Windows machine has dropped below 90 percent for the first time ever while Mac's share grew from 8.21 to 8.82 percent. Linux? It went up as well to 0.82 from 0.71 percent. You better lookout people because once we hit 1% its all downhill after that. ;-)

In some browser news, it looks like Google developers are considering enabling extensions for Chromium even though its not exactly what they had in mind when creating Chromium's "minimal light-weight user interface". Now for all you Dillo users who enjoy its speed but wished it didn't destroy the look and feel of some webpages there is the new H3v web browser.

This past month a virus hit nearly 75% of the computer systems on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan which led to a base wide ban on USB drives. I have seen this kind of story before which made me ask, why in the world is the U.S. Military using Windows when everyone knows that it has more security holes than a block of Swiss Cheese? After reading this article Carla Schroder asked a similar question, "why does Microsoft always get a free pass when this happens?

An article entitled "Ideas can be owned" sparked a lengthly philosophical debate on the nature of Intelligence and Knowledge. A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich Switzerland were trying to find real world evidence to support Zipf’s law. They decided to study the Debian 'system' (the structure of the distribution itself and the network of people that support it) and discovered that that it proved the Theory true.

A UK company has stated that its switch from Linux to Windows will save it £1 million (roughly $2.3 million). Come to find out that it is over the course of five years which equals about £200,000 a year. I still don't see how that is possible unless Microsoft exercised some "creative" pricing again. And in what was apparently a shock to only Roy at Boycott Novell, he says he has proof that Microsoft pays companies to recommend Windows. I think that the big "This Vendor Recommends Windows XP/Vista" banner seen on just about every OEM advertisement in the last ten years kinda gave that one away good guy. ;-)