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However great the strides made by user-friendly distros such as Ubuntu and Mint in recent years, it seems fair to say that Linux has not yet enjoyed any sweeping successes on the desktop the way it has on the mobile side with Android. That, however, may be changing. Thanks once again to none other t...

Well another holiday season has come and gone, leaving more than a few jangled nerves and expanded waistlines in its wake. Holiday pressures are bad enough by themselves, of course, but Canonical's splashy and yet profoundly confusing Wednesday announcement so soon afterward hasn't exactly helped. Y...

As we consider a number of key trends in enterprise software and systems, it's clear how critical cloud computing is to the industry. The strong connection between Linux and cloud computing will continue to fuel Linux throughout 2013 with public clouds, private clouds, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS all contr...

Well half a year has passed since Linux Girl last wrote about the invasion of the tiny, Linux-powered PCs, and she's delighted to report that the trend has shown no sign of slowing down. No indeed! "Tiny $57 PC is like the Raspberry Pi, but faster and fully open" is one headline that recently appear...

Well it seems like the dust may finally be settling here in the Linux blogosphere, and Linux Girl is fervently hoping for some long-overdue rest. We endured the launch of Rectangle with Rounded Corners 5; we patiently listened to the endless blaring fanfare surrounding Windows 8's debut. Is there no...

Given the shock they've had to endure as a result of the ongoing Secure Boot saga over the past year or so, Linux geeks may perhaps be forgiven if they're a tad sensitive to apparent attempts to exclude Linux from other new technological developments as well. It was perhaps less-than-entirely surpri...

"Windows 8 hasn't exactly got the best rep at the moment," wrote Ken Quirk, a committed Linux fan and Ubuntu user. "The general consensus amongst most IT professionals and users alike is that Windows 8 is a disaster waiting to happen. "A while back I wrote a review on Windows 8, but when writing a ...

The legendary Mark Twain is said to have once observed, "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes," and much the same sentiment could just as well be applied to life here in the Linux world. To wit: Not so very long ago, gaming was held up as one of the big obstacles kee...

With all the ongoing debate over desktop environments here in the Linux blogosphere, there's never any shortage of discussion of the GNOME project, even on an ordinary day. Last Tuesday, however, was no ordinary day -- at least, if a certain blog post was anything to go by. "The idea of GNOME OS has...

The times, they are a-changin', as the old song goes, and nowhere is that more evident today than in perceptions of our old friend Microsoft. In fact, after years of being viewed by many as an unconquerable leader in the world of desktop software, Microsoft's armor is apparently beginning to chip. E...

The recently released Who Writes Linux kernel contributor list reveals that some of the usual supporters of Linux -- Red Hat, SUSE, IBM, Intel, Oracle -- remain firmly behind the open source OS. There has also been a lot of attention on the other contributors, which now include Microsoft. What I fin...

"Microsoft will be offering signing services through their sysdev portal," wrote Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett late last month. "It ensures compatibility with as wide a range of hardware as possible and it avoids Fedora having any special privileges over other Linux distributions. ... So, in all...

Samsung on Tuesday deepened its involvement in the Linux ecosystem, reportedly upgrading its silver membership in The Linux Foundation to platinum and forking over the $500,000 annual membership dues its new status requires. The move will give Samsung a seat on the Foundation's board alongside six o...

Murmurs about Google's supposed plans to launch its own tablet soon are growing to a roar. Source code from Google and Samsung indicate that a Nexus tablet is in the works, Slashgear reported. "It seems logical that it will be a Google Nexus device consistent with the Nexus smartphone, but the probl...

Life is never dull here in the world of technology, but some weeks it's hard to remember that this is actually the real world, and not some epic tale of the battle between good and evil. We've seen plenty of examples of good pulling ahead in the struggle in recent weeks, of course -- the naming of o...