Saw that one coming

Sun OpenSolaris to become "Linux-like"

From Enterprise Linux:

Analysts familiar with Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Project Indiana say that as early as this week the company could reveal plans to revamp the OpenSolaris operating system by incorporating key pieces of Linux software.

In March 2007, Sun officially announced Project Indiana, whose goal is to create an OpenSolaris binary distribution. The long-term objective of the project is to increase the technology's user base and cultivate mindshare. Similar to Red Hat's Fedora Core and Novell's openSUSE projects, OpenSolaris is Sun's open source operating system and includes experimental features that might eventually make their way into its commercial Solaris operating system.

This is of course, of course old news

Linux needs more support

In Mark Shuttleworth's blog he has started a new series of posts regarding Linux's lack of support.

Whenever I’m talking to an audience of typical computer users about Linux I’ll hear those words. I also often hear them when I’m meeting with organisations that could well benefit hugely from free software infrastructure or desktops. “I’ve heard about Linux, it sounds great but it’s not supported.”

This holds true for some people, who expect "support" to be this centralized IT help desk, or that computer shop down the street doesn't know his sudo from his judo. But for those willing to dive in to Linux, there is plenty of support to be found, on the distribution's forums, or forums dedicated to that distribution. I myself have even resorted to using Yahoo Answers just for a quick and easy answer to a particularly daunting problem. If you're really the type of person who needs "real support" you could go with Red Hat or CentOS for all your Enterprise computing needs.

Protest against MS/Novell deal

Here is an open letter running a petition to end the madness of this new deal Microsoft is putting out, because we all know they are just doing it to bring down Linux, there's plenty of evidence to show how much Ballmer is against linux.

Considering Microsoft's track record, it's pretty obvious they plan to use this to take out all of Linux, starting with Novell, and their next likely target is Red Hat.

Damn Small Linux

The new version of Damn Small Linux is fast approaching, and I for one am eager to see what changes will make it to the final version. Damn Small Linux is that one distribution everyone should have, it fits on almost any usb/pen drive, and on minidiscs, but still packs quite a lot of features you'd come to expect from the bigger Linux distributionss.


The Damn Small Linux project has released the fourth release candidate of the distribution's upcoming version 3.1. From the changelog: "Damn Small Linux v3.1 RC4 is now ready for testing. Cumulative changelog: improved mount tool for 'after boot' pen drive support; fixed reported issues with mount tool - sort order and missing devices; fixed incomplete Lua conversion of dslMirrorSel.lua and icontool.lua; updated .jwmrc for recent menu changes; updated hard drive install for consistent fstab; updated hard drive install - lilo to partition instead of Master Boot Record; updated frugal lilo - dropped hda requirement and lilo to partition; new theme - envane...." Download: dsl-3.1RC4.iso (49.8MB, MD5).

via Distrowatch.com

PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS is the perfect halfway house between Windows and Linux. After seeing some of the basic feautures in this distro, I can't help but recommend it to anyone who wants to get their friends into Linux. It isn't horribly Windowsy like Linspire or XandrOS, but rather only mimics some aspects of Windows such as menu's and icons:





But dont let this apparent clone fool you into thinking you wont be able to tinker with it just like you would any other linux distro. You can use apt and Synaptic Package Manager(even you yum lovers have to admit apt is good, better than portage anyway) and invoke the terminal to run all those commands you want. A quick look at the Free Software Magazines beginner's introduction to the command line should give you an idea of what to expect from this. And for those who just can't decide on what distribution to pick, try this neat litte quiz