linux

With all the many reasons to use Linux today -- particularly in a business setting --it's often a relatively easy decision to give Windows the boot. What can be more difficult, however, is deciding which of the hundreds of Linux distributions out there is best for you and your business.

Rumors swirled once again this week regarding a possible takeover of Red Hat, this time by SAP, but a number of industry observers said Thursday that the prospect is unlikely at best.

When Canonical broke the news recently that Ubuntu 10.10 will include uTouch 1.0, a multitouch and gesture stack, it caused a flurry of excitement about the Linux release's potential for use in tablets.

As the industry call for cloud interoperability grows more fervent, open-source enterprise software company Red Hat has submitted its cloud platform, Deltacloud, to the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) as a potential standard for cloud interoperability, the company said Wednesday.

Google's patching of vulnerabilities in its open source Chrome Web browser last week wasn't so much notable in itself; Microsoft, to be sure, is forever issuing patches for the many bugs that afflict its products.

Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment that Linux is a "cancer" that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property.

Canonical this week released a software framework that brings multitouch interaction to the open-source Ubuntu OS, which could accelerate adoption of the OS on tablets.

The latest edition of the widely used Vim text editor now supports both the Lua programming language as well as the latest versions of Python and Perl.

Asustek Computer plans to launch its long awaited Eee Tablet with an 8-inch LCD touchscreen in October for around US$300, though prices vary by market.

Organizations hoping to streamline their deployments of Linux got two new options this week for running the open source OS remotely.

The Apple iOS, which runs on its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, has a flaw in how it reads PDF documents that makes it easier to hack. This flaw is exploited by JailbreakMe, a one-click site that makes it easy for anyone without any real tech skills to hack into their own iPhone.

Despite being widely derided (even by Microsoft executives), the Vista OS was instrumental in finally bringing to the world a secure version of Windows, at least if a presentation by a Microsoft security expert at the Usenix Security Symposium, being held this week in Washington, D.C, is any indication.

Organizations that are interested in using open source in their own products but are wary of intellectual property issues might want to examine a new, mostly free, assistance program just launched by the non-profit Linux Foundation.

Despite the wealth of free applications out there, many small business owners continue to spend an inordinate amount of their all-too-scarce resources on software.