Thanks to an article on DesktopLinux.com, I was reading about the Asus Eee PC 701 system. One interesting thing about this system is that it will reportedly run a variant of Xandros Desktop Linux.
If you haven’t heard of it already, and you deal with the hosting of any sort of a website on a frequent basis, you may want to look into lighttpd. It is truly a remarkable HTTP server. And according to Netcraft’s data for the past few months, more and more people are beginning to realize the power that lighttpd holds.
Those who follow GNOME have probably read about the GNOME Online Desktop. After reading about this concept, I find myself very confused at what it is they’re actually trying to accomplish.
Take what is, at the time of writing, the second paragraph under the “Philosophy” section: Imagine an OS that keeps all its information online, so you can use a live CD as easily as a full installation. When you start up a newly-installed computer, or visit a friend’s house, your whole environment will be waiting for you, with no setup to redo. For the techies, think Stateless Linux Desktop; your files and settings are somewhere else.
I’m sure that most people who follow developments within the open source community have read about Mark Shuttleworth’s high-end, free-software-only laptop idea. While his focus appears to be more ideologically-driven, I think such a laptop would be useful for those of us with more pragmatic concerns.
Understandably, his writing about this topic focuses mainly on the use of Ubuntu-derived distributions on such a laptop. But I think it would also be very valuable for users of systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and even Haiku.
I’m very happy to see that Ubuntu has been a major force in bringing Linux to the masses. Those users get a better desktop experience that they would likely have gotten using a different operating system, while also benefitting from the low cost and the better security Linux offers. Unfortunately, I see a bothersome trend forming: Ubuntu users who seem to be under the impression that GNOME is the only desktop for Linux.
At far too many companies I have witnessed the effects of homogenized enterprise-grade networks. While many claim that it’s easier to support such networks, I often find that difficult to believe. The benefit brought on by the widespread similarity is often overshadowed by the severe negative consequences when things go wrong.
There is currently an article at Yahoo! News that takes a look back on how the market has so far reacted to Microsoft’s Windows Vista. It covers a lot of the problems that many people have experienced when using Vista. And after reading the article, I find myself asking a pretty important question: Why would one subject himself or herself to the problems of Windows Vista?
About a decade ago, it was often a problem to get hardware to work with Linux. Even if the device in question was somewhat supported, the Linux drivers available for it at the time may not have been of a very high quality. So your options were to wait until other people improved the driver, improve the driver yourself, or acquire different hardware. There were a variety of lists that would indicate how well certain pieces of hardware were supported. But thankfully, things have changed quite significantly since then.