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Migrating to the Linux platform is not an either/or proposition. Linux as a computing platform is so flexible that it offers users a have-it-your-way menu of software options. One option is the Linux desktop. Individual users in home computing, SOHO and SMB operations can choose from a variety of en...

RoboLinux comes with a few extra features that solve some of the potential problems of leaving other desktop platforms. One of its more enticing migration tools is a preconfigured virtual machine add-on that greatly reduces the IT burden of setting up Windows XP or Windows 7 to run in a VM environme...

There was a somewhat quiet, cost-free acquisition of sorts in the Linux world earlier this year when Red Hat announced it was joining forces with Red Hat Enterprise Linux community clone CentOS. The move, which effectively brings organization, governance, backing and technology of CentOS under Red H...

What if commercial software developers for popular Windows products sold Linux versions to a waiting market of open source users? Think in terms of paying a subscription fee to use a Linux version of Adobe's Photoshop image manipulation software, for starters. Is porting commercial products like P...

The Android operating system, which Google touts as open, isn't. Google imposes strict restrictions on smartphone manufacturers and app developers in its Android mobile application distribution agreement, or MADA, according to excerpts of documents revealed by Ben Edelman, an associate professor at ...

The Linux desktop offers distributions for many diverse interests and specialties. Distro Astro is for astronomy enthusiasts. The latest version, Distro Astro 2.0, is dubbed "Pallas." It was released Nov. 20, 2013, at the South East Asian Young Astronomers Collaboration conference in Bandung, Indone...

Red Hat on Wednesday launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 into beta. RHEL 7 incorporates several changes, including a move from Oracle's MySQL to the open source MariaDB, the adoption of the XFS file system, and improvements in various areas, including storage and file size. "Together, the attributes...

Discuss the merits of the many competing desktop Linux distributions out there, and you could fill several hours with heated debate. Turn the conversation to enterprise server distros, however, and the room can become quiet very quickly. The fact is, those on the hunt for the best or easiest or chea...

In the cloud storage competition for customers, a battle is raging over innovative software-only storage systems and wannabe innovators still hawking yesteryear's legacy hardware solutions. Dollars and performance are the battlefield stakes. Nexenta, an open source provider of software-defined stora...

The discussion and debate over open source cloud software's compatibility with cloud leader Amazon's proprietary APIs was just beginning when the 451 Group released "The OpenStack Tipping Point" in April. With the advancement of the OpenStack software and community -- along with lingering questions ...

For many database practitioners, Hadoop is turning the tables on the relational database model. The rise of Big Data is driving what some see as a much-needed change in the platforms that process the massive infusions of aggregated raw data. Take for example, Cloudera founder and Chief Strategy Offi...

Big Data and open source software may be the next great unholy alliance in computing's current promised land, but open source is a broken business model that needs a better vehicle for supporting projects such as programming suites that build database applications. So argues Chris Wensel, founder an...

Does it make good business sense to migrate corporate database software from costly proprietary platforms to free open source solutions or low-cost commercial open source replacements? The answer is a no-brainer, said EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian. Founded in 2004, EnterpriseDB began on a quest to di...

Imagine going out to do your shopping errands in a world devoid of standards. What would that be like? Without standard sizes, something as routine as buying clothes would be an exercise in frustration. Finding a replacement bulb or buying tires for your car would require unique parts made only by t...

Business intelligence could be one of the most essential but little-known secrets that drives executive decisions in the marketplace. The BI market is dominated by companies that sell their proprietary business analytics solutions. Few open source companies have countered with software to overtake t...

Since its start in the summer of 2010, the OpenStack open source cloud computing project has been the subject of a lot of hype. Today, the technology, backers and users of OpenStack are giving substance to all of that sizzle, and skepticism is giving way to service provider and enterprise use cases ...

OpenGamma is the developer of the first open source analytics and risk management platform for the financial services industry. Its products help companies explore flexible open source alternatives to conventional and costly risk analytics tools. The OpenGamma Platform is a unified system for front ...

eScholar's only business is helping state and local education agencies get the best bang for their buck from collecting and using educational data to drive better school performance results. That sometimes involves helping its customers work with data gleaned from a variety of commercial and open so...

Canonical this week announced Ubuntu for smartphones, a version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system aimed mainly at high-end superphones and entry-level basic smartphones. Ubuntu is compatible with a typical Android Board Support Package, said Canonical, which provides engineering, online and profe...

For the installed user base of the former Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris OS, questions about its continued support and development remain largely unanswered. When Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, it raised fees for its technical help and halted further development on OpenSolaris, replacing it with its...