Posts tagged as “desktop”

Is the End Of the Windows Era At Hand?

By Christine Hall on July 10, 2012 |

Sometime during the summer of 2006, the main computer at the shop where I worked suffered a motherboard meltdown. Since I’m not much of a hardware person, I took the box to my friends at Dragonware Computers. After diagnosing the problem, owner Michelle looked around the back room, came up with a used motherboard that would get the job done and installed it while I waited. Michelle always took care of me.

In those days the folks at Dragonware were very Windows centric folks. They hosted their own website on a white box running Windows, and they knew every trick in the book about configuring Microsoft products. It wasn’t surprising then that Michelle’s husband, Phillip, had a pre-release install of Windows Vista loaded on a box in the back room. It also was no surprise that he was in love with the soon to be released OS. Microsoft wrote the book on computing as far as he was concerned.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com

Windows vs. Android: Does Desktop Linux Win?

By Christine Hall on June 27, 2012 |

Business and Mobile

Every tech writer on the Internet seems to want to be the one to crack the code and figure out what Microsoft plans to do with Surface. I thought I was one of them until I spent three days trying to write this article. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really care what Microsoft’s plans are or if they’ll pan-out for them. They bore me. They’re irrelevant now.

I suspect we’re getting ready to see if they’re nimble enough to completely reshape their business model, much like IBM had to do more than a decade ago. Who knows what they’re going to do, now that they obviously recognize the-proprietary-operating-system-as-a-billion-dollar-property model has reached its sunset years?

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Welcome To Ubuntu’s Penguin Bar – How Can I Help You?

By Christine Hall on June 21, 2012 |

Business, Distros and Hardware

Android on tablets and smartphones may have primed the public to be willing to try a flavor other than Windows on their PCs and laptops, but this means next to nothing in the current computing environment. Consumers are going to buy what’s on the shelves at Best Buy, or what jumps off the screen at them on Amazon.com or Dell’s site. None of these venues are going to feature Linux boxes, at least not where you can find them unless you’re specifically looking for them. Why? There’s nothing in it for the retailers or manufacturers; it’s a zero-sum gain situation.

If an OEM started actively marketing Linux, for the most part they’d just be pushing people who are already buyers from one OS to another, nothing more. Except for those of us who’re already part of the Linux installed base, and our numbers are relatively few, they wouldn’t be selling any more machines or making any more money. They would only be creating more logistical problems for themselves.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

The Time Is Right For Desktop Linux

By Christine Hall on June 18, 2012 |

Hardware

Nobody seems to want to talk about the desktop anymore. It seems that the trend followers have jumped to the next biggest thing. The glamor now isn’t in desktops and laptops, machines that do all the necessary grunt work, but in gee-whiz tablets and smart phones. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but desktops and laptops aren’t going to go away soon – not as long as there’s work to be done.

I mention this because it seems that many of the folks who write about Linux have all but given up efforts to increase the penguin’s share of the installed base. I find this curious, because I think we’ve never been better positioned to get folks to make the leap to Linux.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Is Ubuntu Ashamed of Tux?

By Christine Hall on March 30, 2012 |

Operating Systems

Maybe the reason why we can’t get any traction with desktop Linux is because so many of the people using it don’t even know it. For example, Android users hardly ever know their smartphone or tablet runs on top of the Linux kernel, they just know they’re using Android. Tell them it’s Linux and the only reply you’ll get is a deer-in-the-headlights stare.

That never bothered me much because I figure that mobile users aren’t very likely to want to mimic their mobile experience on their laptops or desktops anyway. I can also understand why Google doesn’t do handstands to associate their OS with Tux, since Linux has an outdated reputation as a hard to use operating system that’s best left in the hands of geeks. The average shopper at the Verizon store is just looking for an easy to use phone with lots of useful apps available. Besides, Android doesn’t look or act like any other flavor of Linux, since there’s nothing GNU there (pun intended).

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Bear Turns Open Source Shark in Deep Water

By Christine Hall on June 30, 2011 |

Business, Internet and Mobile

Storm Bear Williams comes into the the FOSS Force office and plops onto one of two big, overstuffed chairs in our conversation pit. After a howdy, he says “I couldn’t find any microcassettes, so I got this.” He hands me a new, still in the box, Sony hand held digital audio recorder with a built-in microphone, good for 500 minutes.

stormweb — Storm Bear Williams relaxing in San Francisco Bay.

He’s come for an interview. When I’d set up the appointment, I told him I was running low on microcassettes and asked if he could pick up a couple, just in case I needed them. When he discovered microcassettes are now obsolete and pretty much unavailable, he went ahead and sprang for something to get the job done.

A cynic might think this was only to curry favor, but I’ve known Storm for over twenty years, so I know better. For one thing, he doesn’t like to disappoint. For another, he’s pragmatic and always the businessman. He didn’t want the interview to go south just because it couldn’t be recorded.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

As Android Passes RIM, What’s Next?

By Christine Hall on May 9, 2011 |

Mobile and News

In the smartphone market, Android is now number one, according to a press release issued Friday by comScore, a company that measures online activity.

According to their figures, Android has passed RIM to take the top spot, with a 34.7% market share, up from 28.7% on December 10. During the same period, RIM’s share dropped 4.5 points, from 31.6% to 27.1%. Apple’s share remained relatively flat, increasing slightly from 25.0% to 25.5%. Microsoft and Palm dropped 0.9%, and now claim 7.5% and 2.8% respectively.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Linux Coming to…Commodore???

By Christine Hall on April 11, 2011 |

Business, Hardware and News

There’s a new OEM getting ready to make a consumer desktop offering with Linux preloaded as the default OS. Get ready for the new and improved Commodore 64 running Linux. Wouldn’t it be a gas if Linux on the desktop finally took off due to it’s being the default operating system on a Commodore?

For those of you too young to have any experience with Commodore, let me offer this little description from our friends over at Wikipedia:

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

MS Vs. Linux on Mobile

By Christine Hall on July 5, 2010 |

Mobile

Last month I posted an article on why I think Windows Phone 7 will fail to get traction in the already crowded smartphone field. It now appears that others have similar viewpoints. Yesterday, Brook Crothers wrote a blog on cnet , “Microsoft faces Android juggernaut,” in which he expresses a sentiment not too different from mine:

“A killer Microsoft smartphone may always be out of reach. And Microsoft should understand this better than anyone.”

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Friday FOSS Week in Review – Android Coming to PC

By Christine Hall on July 2, 2010 |

Hardware and News

It’s been rather hectic here at FOSS Force this week. You might have read that we had to replace our old worn computer with a new-to-us (that means “used”) box, and we’ve been spending the week configuring our POS app, plus downloading and installing all of the stuff we need to operate our daily business.

This means, however, that the FOSS Force army is currently working in (ugh) Windows. We’ve got a key dreaded legacy app we use that’s Wintel, and we’re not partitioning the drive and installing Linux to run it in WINE until we’ve thoroughly tested the new/used box and determined it fully ready to go. Don’t fear, however, everything else here is open source. I’m writing in OpenOffice, doing graphics work in Gimp, emailing in Thunderbird and browsing in Firefox. By this time next week, we’ll hopefully be running Linux.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Why Buy a “White Box” Instead of a Dell?

By Christine Hall on June 29, 2010 |

Business and Hardware

On Friday, when I went to start up the main computer at our office I found it had died. I turned on the surge protector and hit the start button, only to hear none of the familiar sounds of a computer firing-up. No whine or clicking from the hard drive, no beeps from the self-diagnosis, not a noise except for an almost silent whir from a cooling fan.

This wasn’t entirely unexpected. The box was probably ten years old, and a few years ago we’d replaced a failed motherboard on it with a board that’d been salvaged from a worn out HP. The computer had served us well, but it was time for it to go.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com