LXer Weekly Roundup for 05-Aug-2007

LXer Feature: 05-Aug-2007 Some of the big news this week includes Mepis going back to Debian, Linus speaks out on the desktop, Microsoft finally got the result they wanted in Mass, An LXer settles the Mandriva - PCLinuxOS debate, some KDE 4.0 screenshots and Matt Hartley goes two for two in the FUD section of the LXer Weekly Roundup.

Some of the big news this week includes Mepis going back to Debian, Linus speaks out on the desktop, Microsoft finally got the result they wanted in Mass, An LXer settles the Mandriva - PCLinuxOS debate, some KDE 4.0 screenshots and Matt Hartley goes two for two in the FUD section of the LXer Weekly Roundup.

How Microsoft bought China: Some people seem to have a short circuit in their minds when they try to explain why Windows has such an enormous desktop market share. Some of them have the delusion that Windows is technically better than the competition. It never was. It isn't now. And, considering how Vista is staggering along, it never will be.

Uh Oh. Another Smooth Move from Microsoft: Watch out, Ruby. Watch out OSI.: Pamela Jones writes, "I guess you saw the news about Microsoft submitting some licenses to OSI hoping for approval as "open source" licenses. You can watch Bill Hilf of Microsoft giving his talk at OSCON, which is where the stories emanated from."

MEPIS to switch from Ubuntu to Debian: SJVN tells us, "SimplyMEPIS, a very popular desktop Linux, is going to change back to using Debian Linux for its core from Ubuntu. In March of 2006, MEPIS founder Warren Woodford, decided to switch to Ubuntu from Debian for the next version of SimplyMEPIS, version 6. Things have changed...."

Torvalds rebukes desktop critics: Linus Torvalds, creator and maintainer of the Linux operating system kernel, has reacted angrily to suggestions that the kernel's development process is skewed in a way that prevents improvements on the desktop. Torvalds was responding to criticism by programmer Con Kolivas, who had developed a patch designed to improve the performance of specific Linux desktop features.

Laying to Rest the Mandriva/PCLinuxOS Debate: In an article by one of our own readers, 'devnet' begins, "The one thing about FOSS that I love is that you can take whatever you need from various sources and build what you opine is a better wheel. Take Ubuntu for instance...they took Debian and made it into something that many users are happy with. Is this wrong? Not at all. Each day, many non-commercial distro makes wake up and check various distributions for updated security fixes. They pull source rpms, updated tar.gz's, and debs into their distro, make minor adjustments, and drop it into their repository. Distros share with one another...they take and hopefully give back. If not monetarily, at least by the number of users that they have that may report bugs or provide fixes.

Windows vs. Linux vs. OS X: CIO John Halamka Tests Ubuntu: Last summer, CareGroup CIO John Halamka began looking for a viable alternative to the Microsoft Windows desktop operating system. After 16 years using Windows, he had enough of its instability and the countless updates that automatically installed themselves on his computer—often at inopportune times, like when he was in the middle of a presentation. As CIO of a health-care organization and affiliated medical school with 40,000 employees and 9 million patient records, Halamka has to be sure that the computers in the hospital, its administrative offices and medical school are secure, stable and easy to use.

Massachusetts Falls to OOXML as ITD Punts: Andy Upgrove reports, "In a not anticipated move, Massachusetts announced today that Microsoft's OOXML formats have made the grade. The announcement was made even as it appears more questionable whether the National Body members of ISO/IEC JTC1 will conclude that the formats are good enough to be granted global standards status, and despite the fact that the ITD receive comments from 460 individuals and organizations during the brief comment period announced on July 5 - most of them relating to the inclusion of OOXML."

From Fedora, through Ubuntu and Slackware, getting close to ZenWalk: In the "if it ain't broke, then why the hell are you fixing it?" department, maybe I should refocus my energies on Debian and not worry so much about Fedora/Red Hat. ... At the risk of repeating myself, after hearing so many horror stories about how hard it is to install and maintain Debian, I've found it to be extremely easy and trouble-free. It's no harder than Ubuntu, although there's a simplicity to a standard Ubuntu install that isn't there with Debian, meaning there is less stuff installed with Ubuntu, more with Debian.

KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Screenshots: The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications.

MEPIS begins return to Debian Linux with alpha release: As expected, Warren Woodford of MEPIS Linux has announced that the next version of SimplyMEPIS 6.9.51 will be based on Debian Linux instead of Ubuntu. As Woodford explained recently, he is switching MEPIS from using Ubuntu to using Debian as its base operating system because Ubuntu's "Dapper was not updated in the way our users expected. ... The fact is Dapper was updated with security fixes, but not with new versions of the applications."

SimplyMEPIS 6.9.51 Pre-Beta Screenshots: MEPIS has been making news this week with the return to Debian as the base for its upcoming SimplyMEPIS 7 release. Debian was the MEPIS base prior to their short-lived relationship with Ubuntu on the bottom. Continuing with the news, yesterday afternoon was the first development release to reincorporate the Debian Stable OS core was SimplyMEPIS 6.9.51prebeta. This pre-beta release includes the Linux 2.6.22 kernel, Debian Etch core, KDE 3.5.7, Firefox 2.0.0.5, and OpenOffice.org 2.2.1.

The Cradle of Independence Rolls Over for Microsoft: Michael J. Jordan writes, "John Adams, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere and John Hancock - all Massachusetts men who fought against tyranny. What do our political leaders in the Bay State do today? If they lived in 1776, we'd still be British colonies."

Hackers find serious problems in California voting machines: A new California study has found that several electronic voting machines have serious security vulnerabilities. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned the study which pitted two hacker teams, better known as “Red Teams” against voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Hart and Sequoia. The hackers found several security problems and were able to change firmware, access the election database and even open up the machines without detection.

Blackhat Training instructor denied entry into US: Halvar Flake was scheduled to teach a class on computer security entitled Analyzing Software for Security Vulnerabilities today and tomorrow at Blackhat Training in Las Vegas. Instead, US customs officials cross-examined him for nearly five hours, then decided not to allow him into the country and put him on a plane back to Germany.

What's Wrong With Dell Selling Linux PCs: Ahh yes, Dell is selling computers with Ubuntu on them. There has to be a way to make this sound bad, and Matt seems to be up to the task once again.

Linux Has Just Vanished Forever: I will admit that this isn't exactly FUD in the traditional sense, but just what exactly is the point of this article? Talk about not being able to think of anything to write about.."I've got an idea, what if Linux didn't exist?" Yikes!