Posted January 11th, 2007 in News

The Linux community is heading for a clash between three disparate groups with very different goals and agendas. We’ve already seen some light skirmishes between them already. Sometimes these groups will align for the purposes of advancing their own views, but for the most part, these three groups will either destroy Linux as we know it or have to learn how to get along. Just about the only thing these groups have in common are the passion for their viewpoints. Can these three groups get along in the end and work toward a common goal? Will Linux be pulled apart and allow Windows to win by default?

Hopefully we can all look at these groups critically and poke a little fun at ourselves along the way. This is a passionate topic and I’m sure to get some hate mail for this piece, but hopefully you’ll get a good laugh while you light up your flamethrower. ;-) Am I stereotyping here? Yeah, pretty much. Just enjoy the piece.

(I would be remiss if I didn’t mention dividing users into groups for the purposes of pseudo-humorous computer articles is my Intellectual Property. If any large software companies want to license this technology from me, send me an e-mail for the address to mail the blank checks.)

The first group - Philosophical Linux User

The second group - Business Linux User

The third group - Home Linux User

Read more

no comments

Posted January 11th, 2007 in News

In November, Microsoft and Novell announced a five-year patent and technology agreement around Microsoft software and Novell’s SUSE Linux software. The parties to the deal called it a “patent covenant.” Others called it a sellout, a FUD attack, or a declaration of war on Linux specifically and open-source software generally. So what is this Microsoft-Novell deal really about?

In trying to understand any legal agreement, it’s usually helpful to look at the money flow. In this case, it’s a little complicated—with some of the money flowing now and some later, and with Microsoft buying Linux support coupons from Novell, committing money to market Novell products to Microsoft customers, and granting patent indemnification to Novell customers while receiving patent indemnification for Microsoft customers from Novell.

It nets out, though, to hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from Microsoft to Novell. So you’d think that the question would be, “What did Novell give Microsoft for the money it got from Microsoft?” But instead, the reaction to the announcement was all about something that Microsoft was giving to Novell, or rather to Novell customers, under the agreement: A promise not to sue them for intellectual property infringement…. more

no comments

Posted January 10th, 2007 in Downloads

FreeBSD® is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™), amd64 compatible (including Opteron™, Athlon™64, and EM64T), UltraSPARC®, IA-64, PC-98 and ARM architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development.

Download links 

alpha: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/alpha/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

amd64: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

i386: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

ia64: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ia64/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

pc98:  ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/pc98/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

sparc64: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/sparc64/ISO-IMAGES/6.1/

—–

Installation Guide: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

Release information: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/index.html

no comments

Posted January 10th, 2007 in Downloads

The Fedora Project is a Red Hat sponsored and community supported open source project. Its goal? The rapid progress of Free and Open Source software and content. Public forums. Open processes. Rapid innovation. Meritocracy and transparency. All in pursuit of the best operating system and platform that Free software can provide.

Download Links

i386: http://redhat.download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/iso/

x86_64: http://redhat.download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/x86_64/iso/

PPC: http://redhat.download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/ppc/iso/

Bit-Torrent: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download/BitTorrent

Mirrors: http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/mirrors.html

Download and Installation Instructions: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download

no comments

Posted December 25th, 2006 in News

Welcome to A-Z Linux Guide, online Linux information center!

no comments