Windows, Mac or Linux: It's not the OS, it's the user
Who's got the safest operating system? Apple, Google, Microsoft? According to one security expert, what really matters is who's using the OS.
Who's got the safest operating system? Apple, Google, Microsoft? According to one security expert, what really matters is who's using the OS.
People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.
Open-source software is one of the great success stories of the past few decades. The Apache HTTP Server is the world's most popular Web server, Linux has more than held its own against Unix and other proprietary operating systems, and Mozilla's Firefox browser has given Microsoft's Internet Explorer strong competition over the years.
In case you’ve been too busy dealing with rogue iPhones, October 2009 was a big month for operating systems. Do CIOs care about operating systems? Probably not as much as they used to, but with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" (from here on abbreviated to simply "Karmic" for sanity purposes) being released within days of each other, CIOs at least have a reason to be excited about the future of the desktop. Here are five things about Karmic that senior IT executives should consider before disregarding Linux as an option for their desktop and server fleets.
Nokia's N900, the next tablet/smartphone/whatever to bat against Apple's iPhone, ships today. It's a big occasion for Nokia, as the N900 is its most powerful smartphone yet, and the device's Maemo 5 open source operating system is a diversion from Symbian, which Nokia tends to support.
In the insurance business, everyone's headed into the hinterland. But the cost of every new branch can bite deeply. Here's how going Open Source helped ING Life save US$1.7 million and funded its expansion plans.
Open source virtualization app QEMU has reached version 0.11 and brings some 1400 changes from 90 contributors.
Less than a week after Linux kernel 2.6.31 was released, the kernel developers are beginning to submit changes and improvements across virtualization, power management, file systems and device driver code for the upcoming 2.6.32 version.
Like a fervent preacher appearing before his flock, Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin emphasized benefits and potential for the Linux platform Thursday during an industry conference that also featured an update on mobile Linux efforts. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, Zemlin cited advances by Linux into multiple spaces, including supercomputing and embedded systems. "It is the fastest growing platform in every aspect of computing," Zemlin said, "Linux is growing two to three times faster than any other platform out there today."
Under the glare of Microsoft's historic Linux kernel code submission this week is the fact that the software giant on many levels still lives in a community of one much more so than a community at large.
Microsoft Monday made an historic move by submitting device drivers to the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license. Microsoft has had a checkered past with both Linux and its open source GPL licensing structure, so the move was a jaw dropper. Here is a look at some of the milestones since Microsoft internal memos leaked in 1998 that attacked the open source Linux operating system as it began to pick up steam as an alternative to Windows.
There's little doubt in my mind that Google will not fail with Chrome OS.
Ubuntu Server is a fast, free, no-frills Linux distribution that fills a niche between utilitarian Debian and the GUI-driven and, some would argue, over-featured Novell SUSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
As mentioned in my last posting, I'm not a very good Linux evangelist. I don't try and convert family and friends to Linux. Therefore, as surprising as it sounds, putting Ubuntu on my dad's new laptop--as I did a week ago--was the first time I've ever directly converted another individual to Linux.
Recently, the Web site analytics company Net Applications came out with figures that showed that in April, the percentage of "client devices" used to surf the Web that were running Linux crossed the 1% level for the first time ever -- 1.02%, to be exact. The firm enthusiastically noted that "Linux has reached