I know that the Tux Brigade and open source diehards like to paint Microsoft as some great big bad monopolistic company that is out to destroy everything Linux and turn open source into a bad word; and for the most in the past this might have truly been the case.

Not so much any more though as Microsoft has been making some interesting moves when it comes to open source and Linux, and it doesn’t involve any nuclear options but instead the company has been embracing many of the fantastic products that have come out of the open source movement.

The most recent example of course is the company’s support of Node.js with their Azure cloud initiative as well as supporting Hadoop at the expense of their own large data project, Dryad.

Much of this change of heart is laid out in a new post from Wired and places all of the credit for the move to embrace open source at the feet of the last man you would probably expect – Bill Gates

From the Wired article:

At the invitation of the company’s chief legal minds — Smith and Gutierrez — Ramji sat down with Gates, chief software architect Ray Ozzie, and a few others to discuss whether Microsoft could actually start using open source software. Ramji and Ozzie were on one side of the argument, insisting that Microsoft embrace open source, and Gutierrez offered a legal framework that could make that possible. But other top executives strongly challenged the idea.

Then Bill Gates stood up.

He walked to the whiteboard and drew a diagram of how the system could work, from copyrights to code contribution to patents, and he said — in no uncertain terms — that the company had to make the move.

For Ramji — who would spend more than three and a half years as the company’s chief open source strategist — the moment Bill Gates stood up was the moment Microsoft turned the corner on its approach to free software. “He was given little to no credit by the open source community — or anyone in the tech industry — for really understanding open source and why it can be important, how it can be a competitive advantage, and why when your competitors start to use it, you have to too. He really got it, and in that moment, he taught us all.”

Microsoft may have done a lot of things wrong but there is no denying the fact that when the company decides to change course it doesn’t mess around and woe be to anyone who stands in their way or tries to stop them.

via GigaOM

Have you been wondering about Microsoft change of heart on open source? Thank Bill Gates for that. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ubuntu, one of the World’s most popular Linux distributions, is going mobile with smartphones, tablets, televisions, and even cars. When most people think of Linux, they think of an uber geeky crowd which is true to an extent, but a wide range of people use it, Millions Worldwide.

The OS has grown in popularity over the years and with more streamlined interfaces and solid alternative programs, users can get a good experience for the price of $0 aside from time and effort involved. Recently, they switched to the Unity interface which is touch-friendly and one of the changes in eventually adapting to mobile platforms wherever they may be.

Via ZDNet UK:

“Especially in mobile, there’s a lot of OSes [from various parties] that have come and gone very quickly. But they are platforms that were created specifically for a purpose, whether it was for a particular company’s hardware or for a particular reason. They are not established platforms.”

“We have that heritage, we have that user base, we have the developers, and we have the experience of building and maintaining a platform. For the last four-and-a-half years, we’ve had an active engagement dealing with [hardware] manufacturers. We have relationships with the top five PC OEMs, from laptops and the mobile perspective, as well as servers.”

Linux is in everything from what powers your web hosting to your smartphone. Yes, even your smartphone has traces of Linux. It’s a very secure, very customizable operating system and with that said, you’ll see it in all sorts of devices.

Have you ever used Ubuntu? Like/dislike?

Ubuntu Going Mobile, Expected To Arrive In 2014 is a post from: The Inquisitr

There’s been some controversy since September of last year. It seems that Microsoft, while unsure if it’s intentional or not, is going to make it quite difficult for people to install Linux on a computer that comes with Windows 8.

Basically, it comes down to a process called UEFI secure booting. Hardware makers must have it enabled in order to qualify for a “Designed For Windows 8″ logo. The technology prevents operating systems from booting that are not signed by a trusted certificate authority.

This means that in order for Linux to be installed on a “Designed For Windows 8″ PC, one would have to figure out a workaround in order to make it happen and that means your choice of what to install, may be quite limited.

The technical lingo from a Red Hat engineer:

“Now, obviously, we could provide signed versions of Linux. This poses several problems. Firstly, we’d need a non-GPL bootloader. Grub 2 is released under the GPLv3, which explicitly requires that we provide the signing keys. Grub is under GPLv2 which lacks the explicit requirement for keys, but it could be argued that the requirement for the scripts used to control compilation includes that.”

“It’s a grey area, and exploiting it would be a pretty good show of bad faith. Secondly, in the near future the design of the kernel will mean that the kernel itself is part of the bootloader. This means that kernels will also have to be signed. Making it impossible for users or developers to build their own kernels is not practical. Finally, if we self-sign, it’s still necessary to get our keys included by every OEM.”

A big problem for Linux enthusiasts out there. With the launch of Windows 8 being a bit away, hopefully a fix can be found.

Want To Run Linux On A Windows 8 PC? Good Luck is a post from: The Inquisitr

Don’t get too excited right away, the first generation will be launched with programmers in mind, so if you are just looking for a really cool plug and play device, Frontier Developments’ head David Braben said in an interview with Edge Magazine

“this is a developer board – it’s not a consumer device. The plan is to do that next year.”

The idea is to offer a device that will inspire the imagination of those to whom computers have become the facet of the rich and famous.  While it is true that computers have become less and less expensive, it has become increasingly difficult for those looking to develop really cool programs and interactive devices for an affordable base.

Enter Raspberry Pi.  Its cost is right on target to make it the cheapest computer out there.  The Raspberry Pi contains a  700MHz ARM processor, 128MB or 256MB RAM depending on  which configuration you take type A or B, HDMI and RCA video outputs, and SD card storage, with 5V Micro USB connection power source . It’s designed to plug into a TV or any other HDMI type monitor. , and you should be able to do most everyday computing tasks from there.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation (the devices maker) says there is really nothing you can’t do with this device that you can do with a simple desktop.  The Raspberry Pi can already run things like OpenOffice, Twitter, browse the web, Facebook etc.

The consumer edition should be hitting the market next year, but the current device is a simple credit card sized, uncased board.  Looks pretty cool from here.

Are you excited about the launch of Raspberry Pi?

Watch a video of Raspberry Pi!

Raspberry Pi Credit Card Sized Computer Will Handle 1080p Video for $25, Due Out Next Month is a post from: The Inquisitr

I am the first to admit that I give Microsoft a hard time over its ridiculous variety of Windows versions that gets released with every new iteration of the famous OS but equally so, I’ll point out that Linux is not going to be any real threat to the desktop landscape anytime soon.

Not only is the desktop interface and user interaction not ready for the general consumer market the vast variety of versions, also called distros, makes Windows look like a walk in the park. To give you an idea of just how insane the world of Linux distros are take a look at this infographic.

hat tip to @pauloflaherty

The insanity of the Linux distro ecosystem [Pic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

However there is one headline that while being reworded has the same basic message: OS X and Linux Growing Faster Than Windows.

It is this headline that Klint Finley used in a post at ReadWriteWeb and is the latest one today to really irritate me because it is being based on the two things with the first being Windows 7 while setting records for the fastest selling OS in history saw a dip of 4% in Microsoft earnings. The second source of this imaginative massaging of numbers is a Gartner report, which should immediately be considered suspect.

However. Let’s look at what is being said in the Gartner report:

Linux (server) and Mac OS were the fastest-growing subsegments in the server and client OS segments, respectively, while Microsoft maintained its leading position in the overall OS market, with 78.6 percent market share.

First the Linux matter.

There is no denying, and no-one in their right mind has ever denied that Linux rules the server market; and it will continue to do so for a very long time, but nowhere in the Gartner report does it give any percentage of how Linux was beating out Microsoft products. In fact what they do say is that Linux was the fastest growing subsegment:

“In the server OS market, Linux (server) was the fastest-growing subsegment in 2010 as end users adopted more open-standard systems. Within the Unix OS market, IBM AIX had high single-digit growth, but Unix generally experienced modest or negative growth,” said Alan Dayley, managing vice president at Gartner. “The EOL threat for Unix OSs such as Tru64 and NetWare pushed the ‘other proprietary Unix’ subsegment down 39.6 percent in 2010 as some vendors retired their proprietary Unix and moved users to more open systems.”

This isn’t a case of Linux beating out Windows but rather it taking marketshare away from other UNIX based server providers. As much as Microsoft would like to see some big growth in the server market that isn’t likely to change anytime soon as Linux based servers are the defacto standard of the majority of web companies out there as well as being a favorite of new startups.

Plus does 5.7% really equate faster growth or it is just a natural growth curve based on the number of new servers that have come online over the last year?

Now about those Mac OS X numbers.

Gartner has a number of 15.8% as its growth but I have also seen 23% being bandied about as being Mac’s growth point but regardless, this fastest growing OS is an operating system that only had 1.6% market share in 2009 and grew to 1.7% in 2010. This is an OS that hasn’t even broken the 10% market share level, and this is also at a time where Microsoft went from a 77.9% market share in 2009 to a 78.6% market share in 2010.

Where’s the fastest growth that everyone is babbling about, a fraction of a percent difference between the two isn’t faster growth. No, what it is though is normal market growth across all the companies as more people start actually using computers.

Is Apple, or rather its Mac division growing? Of course it is and 15.8%, or even 23% growth is gratifying to see especially in a time when there is increasing choice of platforms. Lets be real here though – as much fun as numbers like these from Gartner are, and provide excellent fodder for pageview headlines, there is no fastest growingsituation here. It’s just normal growth so get back to me on this fastest growth thing when we start seeing Windows market share going down at the same rate that Mac is.

Originally posted at WinExtra and reposted here with permission

About that silly “fastest growing OSes” thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

Kno Tablets Begin Shipping On Tuesday, Single And Dual Displays Available is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Humble Indie Bundle, a collection of independently developed video games offered on a pay-what-you-want basis, first debuted in May 2010 and raised well over $1 million for indie developers and charity.

And now there’s a sequel! The Humble Indie Bundle 2 can be downloaded from HERE for as little as a buck, with proceeds going to charity or the developers (you choose where your cash goes!). It contains Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans, and is available for the Mac, Windows or Linux.

These just aren’t any old crappy games, either. Games like Braid (90% on Metacritic), the beautiful Machinarium (85%), and Osmos (80%) are fine, fine titles. And while I’ve yet to try Revenge of the Titans or Cortex Command, I’d bet on them being worth [INSERT YOUR PRICE HERE] as well!

So, err, what are you waiting for? It’s cheap as you want it to be (though don’t be a total skinflint, eh?), will net you some amazing titles, and does some good for charity. Stop playing Call of Duty, Slackjaw, and try something more imaginative for a few hours.

[Via Humble Bundle]

Pick up five amazing indie games for $1 is a post from: The Inquisitr

A report from the Financial Times says that many Google employees are indicating that Windows has been restricted from use within the company over security concerns.

Two unnamed employees were briefly quoted in the piece about the decision, which reportedly has Google employees offered Mac OSX and Linux as alternatives:

“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee.

“Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another.

According to FT, the policy isn’t exactly new, as they say employees reported new hires being directed towards the other operating systems as early as January. It’s said that use of Windows requires some serious string pulling:

Employees wanting to stay on Windows required clearance from “quite senior levels”, one employee said. “Getting a new Windows machine now requires CIO approval,” said another employee.

While some employees say the move has caused “mild discontent” within the company, others say that there would be more outcry if the Mac OS was banned. The consensus seems to be that the move is really a push to get workers to use Google products internally as well.

The hacking in China hastened the move. “Before the security, there was a directive by the company to try to run things on Google products,” said the employee. “It was a long time coming.”

Some feel that the reports out of Google are just rumors and that it is unlikely such a big player would ban something as ubiquitous as Windows in the workplace. As the reports all cite unnamed employees and Google has not commented publicly on the supposed policy, it is difficult to determine the credibility of the sources. ZDNet points out the limitations of a Windows ban at Google:

This story makes little sense to me.  For starters, Google’s software products are made for — and marketed to — mainly Windows users.   How exactly are software developers expected to build products for an operating system when they’re not allowed to use it?

As it stands, not one named person as confirmed the switch, so the extent of the ban (or whether it exists at all) is still not verified.

Report: Google ditches Windows over security concerns is a post from: The Inquisitr

The editors at PCWorld and MacWorld are the master minds behind this, not-so scientific-yet-there-is-so-much-truth-in-it chart.

I recognize a lot of attributes from a few of my friends, though none of us drinks Mountain Dew while playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Click to see a larger image.

Source: PCWorld

Chart Compares The Characteristics Of Fansboys is a post from: The Inquisitr

When the next PlayStation 3 system update lands on April 1st, it might take away a useful function used by a small but passionate minority of PS3 owners: Linux support.

Sony has revealed that PS3 firmware update 3.21 will remove the ability to install an alternative operating system on the console, due to what the company is calling “security concerns”.

Sony bigwig Patrick Seybold argues that this will “ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system.” I’m guessing that means: “Hey guys, our console got hacked, and we’re officially crapping it.”

Hence, Linux will soon be gone (though the option to install it wasn’t even on the PS3 Slim). Sure, only about fourteen people ever installed Linux on their machine, but it’s a shame nonetheless.

See also: PlayStation 3 hacked at last

[Via Joystiq]

Next PS3 firmware update to drop Linux support is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ubuntu 9.10 doesn’t only bring new advances to the Linux OS front, it has what I think is the coolest OS name to date. I still think a Snow Leopard would quite easily tear apart a Koala, literally and figuratively, but the new Ubuntu OS seems like it was named by a hippy on LSD while playing Commodore 64 games.

The new OS features a better (faster) graphical boot sequence which ditches those annoying text scrolls, while also providing a much improved audio framework which was needed to spread sound more evenly across multiple applications during multitasking.

Ubuntu 9.10 also features a software center which makes it easier to “visually” remove or add applications, much like what we already see in Windows PCs.

The new system is available for desktop, server and netbook systems and can be downloaded now from Ubuntu. [Engadget via Ubuntu]

Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” OS Now Available is a post from: The Inquisitr

The hype is building.

You can hear the panting of excitement growing as rumors of it getting closer to release – in beta of course.

We see screenshots of it apparently sneaking out into the wild on someone’s laptop.

Even one well known blogger has been getting a racing pulse at the sight of folder on an ftp server somewhere with the magical name included.

Yes folks – it’s Google’s ChromeOS and it is coming to a browser Linux based computer near you – soon.

According to Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web Google has a really big treat in store for everyone tomorrow – especially those that make it to the “do no evil” mecca in Mountain View. Yup it’s time for them to let us all in on a little bit more about what they plan with this revolution in operating systems.

Well let me be the first one to break it to you. It ain’t revolutionary. It ain’t nothing spectacularly new.

It is just one more of the countless customized distros of Linux. You could get the same effect by downloading and running any one of the many Linux Live CDs, or you could use an already existing WebOS.

But because it’s Google, and of course they can do no wrong, ChromeOS is going to be just the greatest thing since Wave (or is that the other way around).

Here’s another thing regarding ChromeOS.

Why?

Someone mind explaining what makes ChromeOS so damn special? is a post from: The Inquisitr

At a roundtable at LinuxCon 2009 Linux creator Linus Torvalds was asked by Novell engineer James Bottomley whether feature sets in the Linux kernel were being released to fast, before the kernal is stabilized. The question came about due to a study that tracked kernel releases that suggested performance had dropped about two percentage points at every release for a total of 12 percent over the last ten releases.

As he was asked if this was a problem Torvalds said “We’re getting bloated and huge. Yes, it’s a problem.

Even as the problem is acknowledged the solution doesn’t seem to be readily available as Torvalds admits as well that there is no plan to try and put the kernel on a “diet”

Asked what the community is doing to solve this, he balked. "Uh, I’d love to say we have a plan," Torvalds replied to applause and chuckles from the audience. "I mean, sometimes it’s a bit sad that we are definitely not the streamlined, small, hyper-efficient kernel that I envisioned 15 years ago…The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse."

He maintains, however, that stability is not a problem. "I think we’ve been pretty stable," he said. "We are finding the bugs as fast as we’re adding them — even though we’re adding more code."

Bottomley took this to mean that Torvalds views that the current level of integration acceptable under those terms. But Mr. Linux corrected him. "No. I’m not saying that," Torvalds answered. "Acceptable and avoidable are two different things. It’s unacceptable but it’s also probably unavoidable."

Source: The Register – Linus calls Linux ‘bloated and huge’

As much a Linux has been praised for its slim and trim operating system the reality is that as more and more is added into the development cycle to keep it modern it is inevitable that it might get a bit paunchy in the midriff.

Torvalds says Linux kernel ‘bloated and huge’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

GraphJam has compiled a handy venn diagram to help you select the operating system that suits your needs.

Seen in the comments: Linux is user friendly… it’s just very selective about who its friends are.

Which OS is right for you? is a post from: The Inquisitr

For almost as long as there has been OS wars the mantra of the penguin herders has been that the likelihood of Linux ever being vulnerable to tings like viruses and trojans was next to nil. This was something that they liked to hold over the heads of all us dumb Windows users – much like the Mac contingent does as well.

How many times have we heard the chant … “you want to be safe use Linux – Windoze is for losers” or some such similar childishness?

Well now Windows users can tell all those Linux lording geeks to stuff it because just as with any operating system there are weaknesses that can be exploited (usually the person behind the keyboard) and Linux is no different. Regardless of how the Tux lovers might pontificate about the security of Linux the fact is that Linux can be exploited which is exactly what a security researcher has found with the discovery of a cluster of Linux servers that is being used as a special ops kind of botnet. As well it is being used to distribute malware to unsuspecting web surfers.

Each of the infected machines examined so far is a dedicated or virtual dedicated server running a legitimate website, Denis Sinegubko, an independent researcher based in Magnitogorsk, Russia, told The Register. But in addition to running an Apache webserver to dish up benign content, they’ve also been hacked to run a second webserver known as nginx, which serves malware.

"What we see here is a long awaited botnet of zombie web servers! A group of interconnected infected web servers with [a] common control center involved in malware distribution," Sinegubko wrote here. "To make things more complex, this botnet of web servers is connected with the botnet of infected home computer(s)."

Source: The Register – Linux webserver botnet pushes malware

While it is unclear how the infection began Sinegubko suggests that it may be because on nothing more than careless administrators who had their passwords sniffed – hence my comment about the biggest security weakness being from behind the keyboard regardless of operating system. Current the network consists of about 100 nodes running the Apache webserver on different distros of Linux.

Linux not so pure and safe after all is a post from: The Inquisitr

Meet Abbie Schubert, an attractive looking college student who would we’d be blissfully unaware of, until she blames Ubuntu for her failure to complete two semesters at college.

The story starts innocently enough. Schubert ordered a brand new $1,100 Dell laptop to help her with her college studies. Despite Linux being an optional extra, she managed to order a Dell laptop with Ubutnu installed. This is where it gets interesting.

Having no idea what Ubuntu was, she inserts her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD into the laptop, and it won’t load, so she can’t access the internet. She also can’t install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for her college’s classes.

To quote the report: “As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC’s fall and spring semesters.”

Holy crap, how dumb is this woman. The version of Ubuntu she had comes standard with Open Office, so she obviously never tried opening a document. Second: despite some flaws with Linux, exactly how difficult is it to use a setup wizard to get online…oh, but it doesn’t support the CD hardly anyone ever uses from the ISP which is Windows only.

Despite her complete and utter stupidity, help is at hand: Verizon has offered to dispatch a technician to assist her accessing the internet without the CD, and her college says it will accept any of her papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

EPIC FAIL.

Worlds Dumbest Woman Blames Ubuntu for College Failure is a post from: The Inquisitr

The program you buy is the same exact one you can download at no cost from Ubuntu’s web site. So why put it up for retail sale? To target users who might not know about or be able to access the free downloadable version, execs say.

“Making it available through Best Buy is an opportunity to reach users who are unaware of Ubuntu or who are bandwidth restricted and don’t want to download Ubuntu themselves,” Corporate Services Director Steve George explains.

The packaged version does include 60 days of support as well as a “getting started” guide. The web site, of course, includes unlimited community support and ample startup documentation.

Your choice.

Best Buy Selling Free Software is a post from: The Inquisitr