Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 9, 2008
by sjvn01
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Building Linux Software the easy way: OpenSUSE Build Service

Let’s say you want to write an easy-to-install program for any Linux distribution. That’s a a problem. There is no single, easy way to install software for all versions of Linux OpenSUSE thinks it has an answer: the openSUSE Build Service.

The openSUSE project, the community Linux distribution supported by Novell, announced the release of its openSUSE Build Service 1.0 on July 7th. The first major release of the Build Service provides developers with direct access to the code repositories for the openSUSE Linux distribution.

Access to code is nice, but this is open source, we always have access to code. What’s more interesting is that the build service enables developers to build programs for different hardware platforms without a “compiler farm” of different hardware. It also provides automatic resolving of dependencies to other packages. If a program depends on another package, say a KDE application on a Trolltech Qt library, the KDE application will be rebuilt automatically if its Qt library is changed and rebuilt. That takes a lot of the drudgery out of building Linux applications .

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July 9, 2008
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu Linux goes retail

The cheapest way to get Ubuntu Linux is to download it, burn it to a CD, and then install it on your PC of choice. The easiest way to get Ubuntu is to buy it pre-loaded on a Dell PC. The U.S. consumer way to get Ubuntu may turn out to be buy it yourself at Best Buy.

Steve George, director of corporate services for Canonical, announced on a blog that Canonical along with ValuSoft, a U.S. retail software distributor, have paired together to get a boxed version of Ubuntu 8.04 into Best Buy retail stores. The retail box contains a “Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99.”

“The aim” wrote George, “is to provide Ubuntu to users who want the software and support conveniently presented in a boxed set. 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.”

If that describes you, and your closest Best Buy is several hundred miles away, you can also order the Ubuntu package from Best Buy.com.

The packaging is designed to make it clear to anyone that Ubuntu enables users to do the PC basics of “Web Browsing”, “Productivity Suite” and “Email” without any additional software. Or, as I’d put it, $19.95 for the operating system and the office suite vs. $279.90 for Windows Vista Home Premium and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007.

The real value-add for new users is that the 60-day support contract will make it easy for people who’d get the shakes at the very thought of installing an operating system.  It gives the reassurance of having a helping hand no more than a phone call away.

For users who really don’t want to try to do it by themselves, Best Buy’s in-house tech crew, Geek Squad, will install it for you for $129.95. That’s still cheaper than Windows, but at this point, you’ll really be better off just clicking your way over to Dell’s Ubuntu store.

Dell not your speed? There are smaller companies, like LinuxCertified, that will also sell you preinstalled Ubuntu systems. In addition, other OEMs will soon be offering Ubuntu-powered PCs.

Desktop Linux used to be pretty geeky. With moves like this one, and the flood of Liunx-powered cheap UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs) like the Asus Eee PCs, by year’s end, it’s going to be just as easy to buy a Linux PC at a local retail outlet as it is to buy a Mac today.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

July 8, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

VMware gets slugged

I told you so. I told you back in late June VMware was about to get its block knocked-off by the one-two of open-source virtualization and virtualization being baked into operating systems. On July 8th, VMware’s rump hit the canvas.

That was the day Diane Greene, CEO and co-founder was fired and replaced by former Microsoft. executive Paul Maritz. Officially, VMware’s board gave the usual executive song-and-dance about needing to “bring in new leadership with the experience and operational breadth to capitalize on the opportunities in front of VMware as it scales up from its current place to a billion-dollar software company.”

Scale up!? Please!

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July 7, 2008
by sjvn01
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Ballmer, dead parrots, and dead deals

What part of “Yahoo doesn’t want a thing to do with you” did Ballmer not get? The new lord and master of Microsoft seems to be deaf, as well as dumb, in his latest attempt to try to buy Yahoo.

Microsoft, along with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who at 72 seems to be losing his business smarts, confirmed that they still wanted to buy Yahoo. All that Yahoo has to do, to get in on this new deal, is fire its board of directors.

In other words: “Dear Yahoo leadership. You recently turned our offer down to buy your company. Then, you decided to turn down our offer to buy the search part of your company. Please quit your jobs so we can replace you with people who will take our lowball offer. Thank you very much. Ballmer and Icahn.”

Just how stupid is Ballmer? The deal is dead.

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July 5, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

We’re Number Two: Firefox Grabs More Market Share

Mozilla’s successful attempt to set a world record for downloads of a single program, Firefox 3 was dumb. It was also incredibly successful.

Does anyone really care about how many copies of a program are downloaded in a day? In 2008? When a program can be downloaded from hundreds of different sites? When BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) networks makes measuring file ‘downloads’ more of an exercise in speculative fiction than a science?

I guess so because, not even counting the fuzzy downloads of P2P networks and the like, Firefox was downloaded 8.3-million times in one day. This is spiffy. Meaningless in and of itself, but spiffy.

Having said that, I will say Mozilla’s pounding the drum for downloading Firefox did do one good thing. It did a great job of marketing Firefox.

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