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Posts tagged as “desktop”

Linux Coming to…Commodore???

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:

MS Vs. Linux on 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

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

Friday FOSS Week in Review – Android Coming to PC

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

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

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

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

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

GPL: The Google Public License

Until a few years ago, hardly a day went by without an article being featured on Linux Today about how “the year of Linux” had arrived. Every Linux user with a blog was willing to bet, year after year, that this was finally going to be “the year of Linux.” This was going to be the year when the public got wise, quit paying the Microsoft tax and moved over to the obviously superior Linux.

And year after year, it didn’t happen.

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

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