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Xandros this week began shipping its Linux-based Xandros Business Desktop and Operating System, an enterprise Windows desktop replacement that the company says is completely compatible with Microsoft Windows servers. The software -- priced at $129 per copy or $500 for a five-license pack -- aims to ...

In their ongoing, worldwide tit-for-tat battle over a name, Windows maker Microsoft and Linux desktop player Lindows have been in courtrooms in a handful of nations, with a U.S. case set to begin later this month. In the latest chapter of the ongoing saga -- which Microsoft depicts as an abuse of it...

What really are the most fundamental differences between Windows variants like 2003/XP and Unix variants like Linux? From a practical perspective, cost is an obvious differentiator, as are access to source and the ability to run outside the Intel processor environment. But it's possible to argue tha...

Last week, LinuxInsider published a story looking at the role of Groklaw.net, an informational Web site dealing with The SCO Group's lawsuits against Linux users and supporters. The story contained both expressions of support for, and criticism of, Groklaw and its founder-publisher Pamela Jones, inc...

Want to know why most business analysts and venture capitalists simply don't get it with respect to Unix? Take a look at the computer books they study while working toward their MBA, financial analysis certificate or accounting designation, and you'll understand that their ignorance isn't entirely t...

In stark contrast to the long waits typical for Windows users wanting to patch software vulnerabilities, recently discovered security weaknesses in the core of the Linux operating system were addressed by major vendors in a matter of just a few days this week. Two security vulnerabilities in the Lin...

One of the unfortunate realities of the Wintel monoculture is that expectations are set mainly by ads, the Sunday supplements and stereotypes like TV character Marshall, the supertech on the show Alias. But delivery is constrained by reality. As a result, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engin...

Didn't Netscape lose the browser war? Mozilla, the technology that lies underneath Netscape products and a slew of its own products, just gets better and better. Netscape is effectively dead, but Mozilla keeps on keeping on. In 2010 we'll look back and say 2003 was the year that Mozilla really began...

IBM reportedly is working with Microsoft to port the Redmond, Washington-based company's popular Office desktop software to the Linux platform, a platform that IBM has wholeheartedly endorsed and leveraged to win market share in the enterprise-computing space. Although open-source alternatives such ...

Microsoft's Get the Facts site, which I discussed in my LinuxInsider column last week, "Getting the Facts About Windows and Linux," makes the case that Windows is cheaper than Linux. The site includes a contribution from Meta Group dedicated to the proposition that the combination of Linux plus a da...

Open-source developer the Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of its next-generation browser, dubbed Firefox after a name change and the addition of new features that bring the browser, according to the group, to "the bleeding edge of Internet technology." The browser was formerly known as...

If you read a report sponsored by the Flat Earth Society in which an independent research organization found the world to be flat, would you believe it? I'd guess not, but any reputable research organization hired to survey the society's membership on the question would have to come to that conclusi...

Looking to head off bugs and to allay fears that its software is not as robust as its competition, MandrakeSoft announced a new development process this week that the company hopes will broaden the appeal of its software. According to the company, which is known for its Linux distributions targeted ...

Waiting for a PC to boot up can be quite boring. Who wants to sit there and watch the Microsoft Windows hourglass graphic for a seemingly interminable amount of time? This problem has plagued the PC industry for years. But a solution could be at hand, at least for entertainment PCs -- those PCs buil...

If you were to make up your own list of the top 10 issues likely to affect computing over the next five to 10 years, would you include liability reform in the American legal system? I think you should, even if you live, as I do, in Canada or some other country where American law doesn't apply direct...

The publication in the Harvard Business Review of an article by Nicholas Carr titled "IT Doesn't Matter" raised much controversy. Carr's fundamental argument is that every widely used business technology conferred significant strategic advantage on early adopters but lost that potency as it m...

Mixing two of the hottest tech trends -- notebook computers and the Linux operating system -- Taiwanese computer maker EliteGroup and San Diego, California-based Lindows have announced the deployment of more than 300,000 Linux-based laptops to the U.S. market. The $700 machines -- preloaded with Lin...

A few years ago, the only IT system I wasn't responsible for at a multimillion-dollar company consisted of a SCO server with an ancient accounting application maintained by the remaining representative of the company that had originally sold it. At the time, I thought old Vitki (not his real name) w...

The people who run Toronto's municipal IT infrastructure have managed to ground themselves so securely between rocks and hard places that they're about to charge the taxpayer another hundred million or so to bail them out. It really is too bad, but Toronto's not exactly beloved by the rest of the co...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of computing -- and that, of course, has to include Microsoft's future. Microsoft's own vision of its future seems clear. The company sees a transition to a secure Windows OS environment, continuing strength in Office and server applications, and deve...