Barmy Steve Ballmer, sometime monkey dancer and full time Microsoft top dog now that Bill Gates has gone, has surprised us all by informing the world that January 13th will not be Windows 7 day as predicted. The good news is that Windows 7 day will be on the 9th January instead. Yes, Ballmer has... (Read More)

There are over 1 million Linux system deployments worldwide. No, make that 2 million. Wait, it's really closer to 3 million. Ok, I really have it this time--there are over 3.5 million Linux deployments worldwide as of January 7, 2009. But according to the Linux Counter, there's fewer than... (Read More)

Linux will continue its soaring success in 2009. Yes, Linux is free and free is good but what about its other advantages over commercial Unix flavors and Windows? Here are the top seven reasons why Linux will continue to smash the competition in the face of the economy, the Cloud, and the smart... (Read More)

According to the latest figures just published by Net Applications, a specialist Internet measurement company, Apple has seen Mac OS X grab a record gain taking it dangerously close to a 10 percent market share for the first time since the company started tracking OS usage. In stark contrast,... (Read More)

Instant karma's gonna get you Gonna knock you right on the head ~John Lennon. It's 2009 and I'm sure the powers that be at Microsoft are hoping it's going to be a good one without any tears, but even as the old year closed, the news kept getting worse for the software giant. Just yesterday the... (Read More)

Whether the ailing economy is real or imagined, you might be looking for ways to shed some pounds off your bloated IT budget. You should seriously consider Linux and Open Source software to put your 2009 financial appetite on a diet. Here are 10 reasons to choose Linux in a bad economy and none of... (Read More)

We already know quite a lot about Windows 7: it has a distinct Office 2007 feel to the UI, it is likely to feature some kind of instant on fast booting process, and the OS itself should scale to some 256 processors. The launch of an official 'Engineering Windows 7' blog has helped with this... (Read More)

I've looked at GoodOS (gOS) before in two other posts: The Netbook Market Booms with Linux Onboard and Three Linux Distros to Watch and Use but now they've taken the lightweight operating system (OS) one step further with Taiwan-based manufacturer GigaByte. The GoodOS team created a very stripped... (Read More)

Steve Ballmer called Linux a "Cancer" in the past, ranted about patent infringement, accused Linux programmers of ripping-off intellectual property, and penned a deal between rival Novell to sell Linux. Wait, that last one doesn't fit with the others. Did you ever notice how someone is often mean... (Read More)

Henry Ford, father of the mass production assembly line, would have hated Linux although embracing it today might help pull his company out of its current financial nosedive (Current stock price under $1.50 per share). Ford held 161 patents and if he were alive today, some of those might well be... (Read More)

Do you need to connect your Linux Desktops or Servers to Microsoft's Active Directory (AD)? If you do, now you can learn how to do it straight from the source at Microsoft's TechNet site in the article: Authenticate Linux Clients with Active Directory. Do you wonder why you'd want to do this? It... (Read More)

What happens when your security software thinks your operating system is out to get you? Users of AVG8 discovered the answer when it decided that a Windows XP user32.dll system file was infected with a Trojan, and deleted it. Uh oh Buck, biddly biddly biddly. What happens when you delete the... (Read More)

Way down deep it's the same old you Way down deep you ain't hiding the truth Just for a minute you had me confused Baby way down deep it's the same old you ~Tom Petty, Same Old You. My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols in his aptly titled Cyber Cynic column on Computer World is always good for a... (Read More)

About a month ago, research firm IDC released a report summarizing personal computer (PC) sales and their projected growth over the next few years. Included in the report are Desktop computers, Server computers, and Laptops. The boost in sales and projected growth are due to the upsurge in... (Read More)

Support for RESTful Web services, JBoss Seam and Java refactorings and code inspections are among the new features in IntelliJ IDEA 8, JetBrains' Java IDE for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows that began shipping today. If you're not familiar, JetBrains' raison d'être is to make an integrated... (Read More)

You cannot have escaped the fact that this week is the Microsoft PDC2008. Those attending the Professional Developers Conference, only held every other year, were lucky enough to witness the first full public demo of Windows 7. What's more, PDC attendees even walked away with a full pre-Beta build... (Read More)

After posting 5 Things I Wish Linux Had, I did some mulling and gathered comments from readers and compiled this additional list of items that I wish Linux had. I've also included one thing that I wish Linux didn't have. These are part of my 2009 Wishlist and are more focused on the future... (Read More)

John Dvorak at PC Magazine, a grand old curmudgeon who never pulls any punches created a wish list for Windows 7. It got me thinking about my own wish list, so here goes: 1. Don't Make Me Wait Forever at Boot Time Nothing aggravates me more than waiting for Windows to boot up. It takes forever... (Read More)

I'm a fairly prominent member of the Linux Community as a writer, contributor, and longtime evangelist for the cause and there are a few things I'd like the Community-at-Large to consider on my behalf. These are five things that I wish Linux had. Consider this as my wish list for the 2009... (Read More)

Here is the big announcement I promised you from VMWorld. MokaFive, a Desktop Virtualization company, originally created Desktop VMs (Virtual Machines) that reside on a USB flash drive. Now, MokaFive takes Desktop virtualization to the next level: Your Desktop on your phone. MokaFive specializes... (Read More)

Making what now seems like the next logical step for operating system evolution, VMware today told the world about Virtual Datacenter OS, which it positions as a way to "pool all types of hardware resources--servers, storage and network--into an aggregated on-premise cloud." The solution gives... (Read More)

A new application programming interface released this week gives development and test teams the ability to link their ground-based test systems with virtual operating systems accessed through a browser. It all comes from Skytap, which earlier this year released Virtual Lab, a Web-based... (Read More)

If your plan is to strong-arm customers into offering your products exclusively, you had better give them something people want to buy. With Microsoft and Windows Vista, such is not the case, and Hewlett-Packard isn't taking it lying down. HP, the world's number one PC supplier in terms of volume... (Read More)

Has The Idea of one Mega Internet Computer Operating System ever crossed your mind? I have definitely thought about the possibility of a World Wide Operating System but I guess I was not the only one thinking about it. Google started out as a Search Engine, Their next big step was announcing... (Read More)

If you have to release a statement explaining your commercial, I think it's safe to say it was a failure. The much anticipated Microsoft commercial featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld debuted yesterday, and quickly rose in the viewer ranks on YouTube. Not only was the 90-second spot not funny, it... (Read More)