LXer Weekly Roundup for 18-Nov-2007

LXer Feature: 18-Nov-2007 With the holidays upon us I thought a Top-10 gift ideas for the Linux Gadget Geek would be good reading. gOS makes a big splash, Info and opinion on Walmart selling $199 PC's, a DSL 4.0 review, Linux continues to dominate the TOP500 World’s Fastest Supercomputers, Forrester thinks that Linux is for real, Carla Schroder continues her "Linux Backups For Real People" series and a computer consultant finally installs Windows..for the first time ever.

With the holidays upon us I thought a Top-10 gift ideas for the Linux Gadget Geek would be good reading. gOS makes a big splash, Info and opinion on Walmart selling $199 PC's, a DSL 4.0 review, Linux continues to dominate the TOP500 World’s Fastest Supercomputers, Forrester thinks that Linux is for real, Carla Schroder continues her "Linux Backups For Real People" series and a computer consultant finally installs Windows..for the first time ever.

Top-10 gift ideas for the Linux Gadget Geek: Got a Linux Gadget Geek on your shopping list? You can't fail with a gift from this guide to the ten hottest Linux-powered devices gleaned from LinuxDevices.com's news throughout 2007. There's something for everyone, at prices from $150 to $1,000, organized from least to most expensive. Enjoy!

Comparing Linux Distributions - Final Results: Author Mike Davis writes "I have been experimenting with many different Linux distributions over the last month as I posted here and here. In my review of the various distributions, I was looking for ease of install and ease of use as the most important factors in my personal ranking system. I believe for Linux to win the desktop war over the next few years they have to appeal to more then just the technical folks who can install distros in their sleep and are wizards at the command line."

But Everyone Uses It: Microsoft Office isn't quite as ubiquitous as you'd think. If you break it down by the many versions out there, the alternatives may be in use just as much, and probably offer more bang for your buck.

Is Novell the Avis of Open Source?: Whenever I hear chatter about Novell, I think of Avis — the Number 2 rental car company that proudly declares “We try harder” as it pursues the market leader (Hertz, er, Red Hat). Hmmm. Is 2008 the year that all of Novell’s hard work in the open source market finally pushes the company into the fast lane? UBS, the Wall Street analyst firm seems to think so. But I'm not so sure. Here's why.

Will distributions like gOS bring the masses to Linux?: In the mainstream world of computing I think that Linux hasnt even touched everyone in a marketing sense of the word. I keep reading artciles throughout the internet about Linux and it's reference to being "The new Kid on the block" and even words like I have mentioned "The Scarce OS". Is Linux really that scarce? I suppose if one were able to count every Linux OS that is on a computer that it would indeed not mount to much in the big picture.

DSL 4.0: Damn small improvement: Damn Small Linux is tiny Linux distribution that John Andrews originally created in 2002 to see just how many applications could fit into a 50MB system. The project has grown over the years to include many other contributors working on hundreds of packages and applications. Last month's release of DSL 4.0 brought many updates and changes, yet it remains a special-purpose distribution for older hardware because it lacks support for many modern features. Damn Small Linux offers an amazing array of options for running the distribution. You can boot it as a live CD, from a USB stick, or on a hard drive.

Sub $200 PC a sell out at Wal-Mart and ZaReason: Turns out that people are finally getting it. You can buy a “green” low-power-hungry machine built on a VIA C7 chip from Wal-Mart and ZaReason these days, and both stores report that they already sold all of their first stock.

The little desktop Linux that came out of the blue: When a desktop Linux distribution suddenly becomes popular before even DistroWatch starts tracking it, you know you've got something special. One new Ubuntu-based distribution, gOS, has managed to capture users' attention purely by word of mouth over the Internet. gOS was introduced by Everex, a midtier PC vendor, in its inexpensive Green gPC TC2502 computer in late October. This cheap computer is sold for $198 at Wal-Mart stores and online at walmart.com.

Gosh, gOS is good: Many people still question whether Linux will ever make it fully into mainstream computer acceptance. A $199 computer now available on a major superstore's shelves just in time for Christmas might change all that. Anyone who wants a computer to just to send email and instant messages and watch YouTube videos should like the Everex gPC, which is powered by a nifty Linux distribution called gOS.

Windows: my eXPerience: Can you be a computer consultant and generally a computer guy without ever installing windows? I managed for over 12 years... until this week.

30th Edition of the TOP500 World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released: The twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, already a closely watched event in the world of high performance computing, is expected to become an even hotter topic of discussion as the latest list shows five new entrants in the Top 10, which includes sites in the United States, Germany, India and Sweden. The 30th edition of the TOP500 list was released today (Nov. 12, 2007) at SC07, the international conference on high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, in Reno, Nevada.

Why Wal-Mart Linux PC Is A Bad Deal: Newswires are buzzing with Wal-Mart's Linux PC and its sold out status. This news alone should be enough to prove the viability of Linux in mainstream households for people who don't need a mega powerful PC for word processing, e-mail and Web browsing. I can go on and on about the same old issues and solutions, but I don't need to. Wal-Mart's success proves that very well. Here is a response to this article, Response to "Why Wal-Mart Linux PC Is A Bad Deal" article

Wal-Mart's $200 Linux PCs sell out: Right after Halloween, Wal-Mart introduced Everex's Ubuntu Linux-powered TC2502 gPC for a list price of $198. Two weeks later, they're sold out. Everex tells DesktopLinux that more will be coming though. Wal-Mart only bought an initial run of approximately 10,000 units. For once, Wal-Mart's vaunted supply chain management system failed to predict just how popular an item would be. Wal-Mart offers a similar Everex model with more base memory and Windows Vista Home Basic called the Everex Impact GC3502 Desktop, for $100 more. Wal-Mart still has plenty of those.

There's more than one $199 Linux PC out there: Our own Steven Rosenberg writes "In response to one of my Everex articles, commenter Alan Rochester clued me in to the Canada-based Linux store, which is offering a somewhat similar $199 PC preloaded with Ubuntu 7.10."

Microsoft adds NAP for Linux and Mac: Microsoft's Network Access Protection platform is being extended to Linux and the Mac in heterogeneous network environments through third-party products. The Redmond, Wash. software maker announced at its TechEd IT Forum, here on Nov. 13, that UNETsystem will release Linux and Macintosh versions of its Anyclick for NAP (Network Access Protection) product next year.

Forrester calls desktop Linux a credible threat to Windows: Linux is becoming a credible threat to Windows on the desktop, and will grow over the next year as its distributors continue to work hard at making it an enterprise-class offering, research group Forrester predicts. "Will desktop managers continue down the path of standardization on the Windows platform, and will Linux not exist on enterprise desktops? Not a chance," Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray says in a report released Nov. 12 and titled, "How Windows Vista Will Shake Up The State Of The Enterprise Operating System."

Review: Linux Backups For Real People, Part 3: Our own Carla Schroder writes "Today we're going to create menu icons for launching our backups whenever we darned well feel like it, set up a simple network backup scheme, and create automatic scheduled backups."

Get familiar with alternative Linux desktops: Desktop customization in Linux is very flexible; from the ultra-modern KDE and GNOME window managers to with the likes of Fluxbox and AfterStep, there's a Linux desktop to suit everyone. Jack Wallen covers some of your Linux desktop options.