LXer Weekly Roundup for 27-Jun-2010

LXer Feature: 27-June-2010 In the LXWR this week we have a Mac devotee moving to Linux, you want Linux to run what?, Marcel Gagne talks about when Linux was fun, Phoronix does a five-way Linux distro comparison and Steven Rosenberg says goodbye to Ubuntu..sort of. Enjoy!

This Mac devotee is moving to Linux: "Seeking real freedom of choice in a technology ecosystem where vendors are exerting more and more control" ... "I'm not religious about technology. My strategy is to use what works best, period. This is why, for more than a decade, I've been using a Mac as my primary computer (and had been using Macs for some of my work long before that). Apple's personal computers continue to be the best combination of hardware and software on the market today."

50 Great Open Source Apps for Education: The educational community has discovered open source tools in a big way. Analysts predict that schools will spend up to $489.9 million on support and services for open source software by 2012, and that only includes charges related to operating systems and learning management systems. Teachers, professors and home schoolers are using open source applications as part of their educational curriculum for a wide variety of subjects.

You Want Linux to Run What?: Someone left a comment on one of my posts similar to, "Linux won't be popular on the Desktop until it runs Windows applications." To which I silently responded, "Huh? and, "You've got to be kidding me." We have WINE for running Windows applications and it works reasonably well for those who care to spend the time to work through any problems with it. I don't think the Linux Community needs to spend time on such an undertaking. Is anyone asking Apple to run Windows applications so that it will gain popularity? No? Then, why should Linux? If you want to run Windows applications, run them on Windows.

More "Paul Murphy" Anti-Linux FUD: SCO or Son of SCO Can Still Win: Were you imagining that "Paul Murphy" was going to apologize for his attacks on Groklaw or for being so wrong in his support of SCO? Or that he'd keep his promise to stop blogging if SCO lost? Or that he'd finally admit SCO has no case Au contraire. He continues to insult, and he predicts SCO, or a new owner of Novell, will surely succeed yet in fulfilling SCO's plot, in what he believes, if I've understood him, will be a legal Hail Mary pass to go down in history. The new FUD is his article, Suicide by Victory: More on SCO, in which he predicts gloom and doom for Linux because Novell won at the jury trial in Utah. I know. He's so funny. It makes no sense. But I'll answer him seriously anyway.

Back When Linux Was Fun: Somehow, somewhere along the way, I'm supposed to have matured and become serious about things. And so it is with Linux. It all started out in fun. I know. I've got Linus Torvalds' "Just for Fun" here on my bookshelf. Says so right there on the front cover. Fun. And it was fun. But as with anyone approaching adulthood, Linux was apparently not taking itself seriously enough. If Linux was to conquer the server room, the desktop, the mobile market, the real time processing world, etc, etc, then it had better clean up its act. Add a little polish. Get serious about business. And it did.

A Five-Way Linux Distribution Comparison In 2010: With many Linux distributions receiving major updates in recent weeks and months we have carried out a five-way Linux distribution comparison of openSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, and Arch Linux. We have quite a number of tests comparing the 32-bit performance of these popular Linux distributions on older PC hardware.

Red Hat CEO Predicts VMware Will Suffer Sun's Fate: Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has a cautionary message for VMware partners and customers. Indeed, Whitehurst claims VMware over the next few years will suffer the same fate as Sun Microsystems. Here’s what Whitehurst had to say.

Linux, the Numbers: A little over a month ago we released the Linux port of Osmos, promising statistics on our sales and downloads. We wanted to find out - from a financial perspective, for our studio - “is it worth porting games to Linux?” The short, simple answer… is “yes.” Did we get rich off it? No. But the time we invested was repaid, with room for margin of error, and possibly with a little extra at the end. Allow me to break it down..

Goodbye Ubuntu, it's been fun — as part of my withdrawal, I'm running Xubuntu ... for now anyway: Ubuntu, it's been a nice ride, and I fully support what your doing in terms of spreading the full-custom gospel sounds of the free desktop (apologies to the Rev. Horton Heat). I'm OK with the desktop innovation — the "social from the start" initiative, the Ubuntu One integration. It's just not for me. It's mostly not for my hardware, but I'll extend that to me, the user.

Moving to Linux: Several organizations have been successful in moving to Linux. I'd like to discuss this topic again. How do you move an organization to Linux? What's the process? It's not as simple as coming in over the weekend, re-installing everyone's desktops with the latest Linux distro, and hoping things go for the best. You need a real transition plan, a strategy to move the organization.