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There is a great deal of commotion about the cloud, and rightfully so, but the noise can be overwhelming. The market is crowded with different products and platforms from the smallest of startups to industry behemoths, a condition that is not helped by cloudwashing and other tactics designed to take...

So Turkey Day has come and gone for another year here in the good old U-S-of-A, but what comes next might be even better -- at least from a geek's perspective. That's right, it's Black Friday once again, and the tech shopping deals are ripe for the picking. Who has time to worry about Novell, Attach...

The very same corporations that are making small fortunes with Linux servers give short shrift to Linux Desktop, I argued in a recent article, setting off a spirited discussion. Many of you responded with counterarguments, siding -- surprisingly -- with businesses. Perhaps not surprisingly, I contin...

When the Internet and World Wide Web finally went mainstream in the mid-1990s, new Unix-like operating systems running on PCs went mainstream too. Developers working on these systems had access to a wide range of development tools, but these platforms didn't initially offer anything like the mature,...

The founders of Lustre software technology company Whamcloud opened for business in June with a lot of potential and years of experience working with high-performance computing. What they lacked from their first day was any signed contracts. Whamcloud Cofounder and CEO Brent Gorda still is waiting t...

Just a day after Oracle filed suit against Google for its use of Java in Android, the FOSS community received another blow at the hands of the tech giant in the form of news that it plans to kill the OpenSolaris project. "This is a terrible sendoff for countless hours of work -- for quality software...

Oracle on Thursday filed suit against Google for patent and copyright infringement in the latter's development of the Android operating system. Google "knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property," according to the suite, which "seeks appropriate remedies...

My newfound favorite computing app is the desktop dock. Over the last few weeks, I freed myself of dependence on the desktop icon to find and launch the programs I use every day. My search for the ideal docking app came to a halt with Avant Window Navigator, also known as "AWN." I was ready to settl...

A new group announced Tuesday aims to create a community-built and -maintained version of Oracle's OpenSolaris operating system in which all portions of the code are open and fully available for use by developers. Called "Illumos," the new project will replace the closed portions of Oracle's OpenSol...

I have a problem with Linux! It has too many cool ways to navigate the desktop and launch programs. I fell in love with the really awesome GNOME Do recently and started a feud with my other computing personas. One relishes the panel, and another is enamored with the desktop draped in icons of my alw...

The LiMo Foundation and the GNOME Foundation on Monday announced that they have begun working together as partners to further open source innovation. Starting immediately, LiMo Foundation will become a member of the GNOME Foundation's advisory board and the GNOME Foundation will become an industry l...

By now, you should at least be passingly familiar with Python. One of the fastest-growing languages, Python has been gaining popularity for years and has reached a level of maturity that makes it a top choice for enterprise development. Companies from Microsoft to Google have embraced Python and are...

In this debate series for LinuxInsider, we've heard from Evan Prodromou, CEO of StatusNet, who put forth the case for an open, distributed, federated model for social networking in contrast to Facebook's approach. We've also heard from Steven Bristol, partner and self-described "Chief Nerd" at Less ...

Steven Bristol is a partner and "chief nerd" at Less Everything, a company that focuses on building easy-to-use Ruby on Rail Web apps. The company created LovdbyLess, a free open source social network platform, after getting requests from customers. Users download a copy and are responsible for inst...

Facebook has been battling users, prominent people in the high-tech field, and privacy advocates over the question of privacy for years now, and the problem appears to have intensified. In November 2008, Evan Prodromou -- founder of identi.ca and CEO and lead developer of StatusNet -- published a bl...