LXer Weekly Roundup for 13-Apr-2008

LXer Feature: 13-Apr-2008 In this week's Roundup we have a Gartner report stating that Open Source will quietly take over, a comparison of CrossOver Games vs Wine 0.9.58, Nine Improvements Needed in KDE and a couple of articles on Abiword. Microsoft is all over the news with the OOXML vote having taken place and they released 14,000 pages of code in an attempt to make the European Union happy, I have a funny felling it is not going to work. And Rob Enderle shows with up some FUD for your enjoyment.

In this week's Roundup we have a Gartner report stating that Open Source will quietly take over, a comparison of CrossOver Games vs Wine 0.9.58, Nine Improvements Needed in KDE and a couple of articles on Abiword. Microsoft is all over the news with the OOXML vote having taken place and they released 14,000 pages of code in an attempt to make the European Union happy, I have a funny felling it is not going to work. And Rob Enderle shows with up some FUD for your enjoymen

Managing The GRUB Bootloader With QGRUBEditor On Ubuntu 7.10: QGRUBEditor is a graphical frontend for managing the GRUB bootloader. By using QGRUBEditor, you do not have to mess around with the GRUB configuration in /boot/grub/menu.lst anymore. This article shows how to install and use QGRUBEditor on Ubuntu 7.10.

Gartner: Open source will quietly take over: In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to Gartner; even though IT managers may be unaware of it, and prefer to talk about fashions such as software as a service. Open source promoters have welcomed the endorsement by what is seen as a conservative commentator, but predict the changes will go further than Gartner assumes.

How Will Microsoft Answer The Linux Threat?: One of you had the absolute audacity to email me and state that, in fact, Microsoft isn't even aware of the FOSS and Linux effort...that these Open Source entities are simply existing along side of MS...Microsoft isn't particularly worried about any impact that Linux or FOSS has on it's market.

The Ugliness of it All: But what will be the outcome of all this? Let me outline the following steps in Microsoft’s strategy in regard of standardization. This can be described as a pincer movement. First, Microsoft will try to kill ODF....Next in line will be XPS. If you don’t know what XPS is, check it out from the source. Yes, you got that right. PDF reloaded. Now with more patents, OOXML dependencies, and legal traps.

CrossOver Games vs Wine 0.9.58: Here is the first of a two part post of benchmarks that compare the performance of CrossOver Games 7.0 against Wine 0.9.58, I ran four test this round and they are 3DMark 2000, 3DMark 2001, 3DMark 2003 and Aquamark 3.

Nine Improvements Needed in KDE: KDE 4 is a radical overhaul of the popular desktop. It offers broad improvements like the Oxygen desktop theme, SVG graphics, and enhanced speeds thanks to the latest version of the Qt 4 toolkit. It also offers specific improvements such as the font manager and the Dolphin file manager. In short, there's a lot to like.

Red Hat Asks Federal Court To Limit Patents On Software: Today, Red Hat took a public stand challenging the standards for patenting software. In the Biliski case that is now before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, this patent issue is ripe for consideration. In a friend of the court brief submitted to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bilski case today, Red Hat describes the special problems that patents pose for open source and seeks modification of the standards for patentable subject matter that take open source into account. Here is a quick summary of our brief.

Look out VirtualPC and VMWare... VirtualBox is in the house: VirtualPC and VMWare have a new (and 100% free contender) called VirtualBox. I took this new piece of software for a spin, and just may be completely removing VMWare and VirtualPC from all of my development machines.

Is open source for Windows worthwhile?: Over at Seeking Alpha, uber-schmoozer Joe Panettieri (left), now running Nine Lives Media, has one of those pieces that makes me go “waah?” Short version: open source is Microsoft’s secret weapon. Billgatus of Borg close-upThis is not another paeon to Firefox or OpenOffice. Panettieri is talking about Microsoft’s Windows Server business, its true crown jewel, and the effort to make sure open source projects work on it. Specifically he’s talking about working with Spikesource, whom I wrote about earlier today, in certifying programs to work with Windows Server. Open source, he says, is how Windows will kill Linux.

Microsoft discloses 14,000 pages of coding secrets: Microsoft today lifted the lid on 14,000 pages of sketchy versions of tech documentation for core software code. On show for the first time in public are underlying protocols for Office 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. This is Microsoft's latest effort to satisfy anti-trust concerns of the European Union, which is possibly a tougher adversary for the company than Google.

Puppeee: Puppy for your Eee PC: The Asus Eee PC ultraportable comes bundled with a version of Xandros as its operating system. If you would like to try a different Linux distro on your Eee, there are plenty of options to choose from, including eeeXubuntu, EeeDora, ZenEee, EeePCLinuxOS, and Puppeee. The latter is based on Puppy Linux, a tiny Linux distribution that sports a few unique features that make it a perfect candidate for use on machines like the Eee PC.

New AbiWord looks solid but suffers from age-old Linux problem: In this age of multi-core processors and 3-D desktops, some people still get work done on old resource-strapped single-core machines, thanks to programs like the AbiWord word processor. The latest stable AbiWord 2.6.0 release was unveiled last month, two years after the software's last stable release. Feature-wise, the little cross-platform word processor has closed the gap with heavyweight OpenOffice.org Writer, but it suffers from the oldest Linux ill of all -- it's a pain to install.

Gartner: Windows collapsing under its own weight; Radical change needed: Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes. That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. “Windows is too monolithic,” says Silver.

Open source video editing: what we have now and what we need: Watching the evolution of open source tools for video editing and manipulation over the last 10 years has been less than a thrilling experience. But are things about to change for the better in the near future? Can even the people most disenchanted with the current state of affairs feel tempted to regain a spark of hope?

Abiword 2.6 -- You've come a long way, baby!: I'll never forget attending the first LinuxWorld trade show in San Francisco in 1999, and getting a marketing hand-out from the Abiword team that was printed on re-used office paper. Almost 10 years later, the nimble Word clone has gotten to be "as good as they come," writes Myank Sharma in a detailed Linux.com review.

ISO takes up Open XML-ODF 'harmonization' as Norwegians protest: The ISO has taken over control of the Open XML specification and started a committee to consider harmonization with the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Wednesday was the last day that all resolutions to the new standard, called ISO/IEC 29500, were accepted, according to Brian Jones, a program manager for office at Microsoft who has been involved in the standardization process.

Linux's Performance Advantage: Hardware is always getting faster and with it Windows increases it's system requierments, but Linux does not. In time, this could be an important factor driving Linux's success.

cmd.exe for Linux zealots: My goal, Dear Reader, is not to prove anyone, that Windows’ command-line features are identical to those of Linux. To be honest, this text does not aim to cover the Windows shell features, at all. It is not a goal, it is a measure. The goal is to present you with a few thoughts about “the human nature”, as would Agatha Christie say.

From The PMC To The IPhone And Beyond: The Evolution Of The MID And Linux' Big Break: Analyst Opinion - Last week, I was in China and witnessed the launch of the first generation Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform products based on Intel's new Atom processor. This got me thinking back to what we had before the MID and why some of those products were successful and others were not. Of course, now we can speculate who will be successful with the MID.