Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 8, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Ubuntu accuses Microsoft of Linux netbook FUD

When Microsoft employee, Brandon LeBlanc announced that Microsoft ruled the netbook world, he was exaggerating, shall we say, just a wee bit. I was going to stomp on him but Chris Kenyon of Canonical, the business that stands behind Ubuntu, beat me to it.

LaBlanc opened by claiming that almost all netbooks sold today are sold with Windows. Well, no, not really. The numbers LaBlanc cites are from NPD’s sales survey. NPD focuses on brick-and-mortar U.S. sales, not overall sales. Notice how many Linux systems you see at Best Buy? NPD numbers say a lot more about retail channel sales than it does over-all sales. Besides, as Canonical’s director of business development Kenyon wrote, “However here is an interesting fact–when customers are offered choice on equally well-engineered computers around a third will select Ubuntu over XP.”

Kenyon was talking about the Dell Mini 9, one of the best netbooks out there. Besides, as Jay Lyman an analyst at The 451 Group points out there are other problems with NPD’s numbers when you take them out of their U.S. retail context. First, the United States only has about 20% of the netbook market, and, second, the global market is still 30% Linux. I wouldn’t start the victory parade quite yet if I were Microsoft.

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April 7, 2009
by sjvn01
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Linux desktop neglect

Why isn’t Linux on more desktops? Here are the usual reasons: 1) Microsoft has hardware vendors locked-in; 3) Monstrous Windows installed base; and 3) Operating system and application FUD. Here’s the reason we don’t talk about much: the Linux distributors don’t encourage the Linux desktop.

Oh, there are lots of Linux desktops. You can read my reviews, such as my comparison of Fedora 10; openSUSE 11.1; and Ubuntu 8.10 or my look at Debian 5’s five best features. And, I just touch the surface of Linux distributions. There are hundreds of Linux distributions listed in DistroWatch, and most of them are desktops.

So, what’s the problem? How many of those desktops are actually supported and advertised by their vendors or groups? I count two. They are Novell with its SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 11 and Canonical’s Ubuntu on Dell computers like the Dell Mini 9.

What about all those other Linuxes? They’re all community-based Linuxes. They’re supported by fans for fans, and not for a general audience. Some of them, like the ones I mentioned above and Mint and MEPIS already work well for many people in place of Windows. But, without serious advertising and corporate support, they’re destined to stay niche operating systems.

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April 6, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Free Windows 7?

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web-site, with friends in Redmond Washington, is reporting that Microsoft will provide free, or discounted anyway, Windows 7 upgrades to users who buy Vista or Windows XP PCs between June 2009 and January 2010.

This sounds like a good deal. But, then so did Vista-Capable PCs. You know, the ones, which Microsoft assured users that PCs bought before Windows Vista shipped would be able to run the operating system. The ones which turned out to be only capable of running the retarded little brother of the Vista family: Vista Basic. The ones, which are now the center of the Vista Capable lawsuit.

Now Windows 7 isn’t as much of a resource hog as Windows Vista. I’ve been using Windows 7 both on VirtualBox and on native hardware for several months now, and it’s nothing like as obnoxious as Vista. So, I’m not anticipating real trouble for Windows 7 on most PCs. netbooks are another matter. I’ll go into detail why I think that’s the case in an upcoming review of Windows 7 on netbooks, but suffice it to say for now that I don’t see Windows 7 as a Linux netbook killer.

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April 5, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

If IBM/Sun breaks down, what happens to Sun?

As I write this, on Sunday evening, April 5th, it appears that the IBM/Sun deal is dead in the water. I say ‘appears’ because this wouldn’t be the first, or last, time people threatened to walk out of a deal as a negotiating tactic. You see, I think IBM buying Sun is the best possible thing that could happen to Sun and its product lines.

I say that because Sun has been dying for years. I know it. You know it. The market, which has seen Sun’s stock drop 79% in 2008 alone, certainly knows it.

Sun has been a sick company since its dot com boom days. In the aftermath of the dot com crash, Sun first couldn’t decide if it were a hardware or a software company. Then, under CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Sun slowly, ever so slowly, decided it wanted to be an open-source software company instead of a closed-source business.

Sun took too long to change. The hardware business may have brought it billions in the 90s, but those days are long gone, torn down by the rise of the low-cost AMD/Intel Linux servers. Sun open-sourced Java, but it still keeps too heavy a hand over it despite the JCP (Java Community Process). Sun’s billion-dollar purchase of MySQL just last year appears to have been a billion bucks poured down a rat hole as MySQL programmers leave Sun behind to work on their own versions of the popular open-source DBMS (Database Management System).

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April 3, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

If IBM owns Java …

n the last few years, Sun Microsystems has warmed up to open-sourcing its software. In 2006, Sun opened up Java, and in 2007 it open-sourced most of Solaris under the GPLv3. Smaller, side projects, like NetBeans, the Java-based IDE were open-sourced as early as 2001. Sun has also long allowed developers at least some say in the progress of Java, through the Java Community Process. Historically, though, Sun has had a well-documented love/hate relationship with open source.

IBM has had a closer relationship with open source, but it wasn’t always that way. In December of 1998, IBM realized that it needed to take a closer look at open source thanks to its customers beginning to pick up Linux. Before that, according to Peter G. Capek of IBM Research, IBM handled open source on a case-by-case basis.

At first, IBM software developers were “skeptical that the quality of the open-source software produced could be sufficient to be relevant to us and our customers.” But, the company quickly discovered the benefits of open source software:

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April 3, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Good-bye Solaris? The fate of Sun’s top 5 technologies

By this time next week, IBM will have bought Sun at a cut-rate price. I’d long thought Sun was going to down for the count, so the news that IBM was moving in didn’t surprise me. What happens next though? Specifically, what’s going to happen to Sun’s product lines? As a long-time watcher of both Sun and IBM, here are my best guesses.

1) Solaris/OpenSolaris: Could IBM just kill this pair of operating systems? No, I can’t see that. Solaris has too many customers even now. What I can’t see though is IBM spending any more money on developing Solaris.

IBM already has its own house-brand of Unix, AIX, and Big Blue had invested a billion dollars in Linux back when most people were still ignoring the penguin. Besides, the Unix server market share has been dwindling for years. Sure, IBM plus Sun equals the lion’s share of the Unix market, but it’s a dying market.

OpenSolaris will likely live on as a purely community-based operating system. After failing to gain any real traction against Linux, I expect it to become like the BSD operating systems: useful in niches and with a strong, core group of developers, but never to become a major operating system power.

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