Oct 31
Linux may finally hit the mass market thanks to Wal-Mart, PC maker Everex, and startup called gOS. Wal-Mart began taking order online Wednesday for the “Green gPC” which is made by EverEx of Taiwan and sports a Linux “gOS” which is derived from Ubuntu.
“It’s heavily oriented toward Google’s Web sites and online applications, like YouTube, Gmail and the company’s word processing program, all of which can be used only when the computer is connected to a broadband line.”
The PC will have 512Meg of memory, 80 Gig hard drive, DVD drive, and CD burner. I can see a huge potential for this PC for children or first time computer buyers or even seniors. Could this be “tipping point” for Linux making it into the home? Can’t wait to see what happens with this.
Oct 25
Governments of South Korea, Japan, Australia, and China are becoming the “positive spokespeople” for the adoption of Linux according to Matthew Szulik, CEO of redhat. In fact these regions are key for Redhat earning 60 percent of it 2009 revenue outside of the US.
At the end of August, Red Hat’s revenue for the first six months of its fiscal year was US$246 million [m], up 34 percent from the previous year. About 85 percent of its revenue came from software subscriptions with the balance coming from services like consulting and training.
Redhat also plan to offer new technologies in the coming months to help customers build a virtualized computing infrastructure. Redhat is also seeing increased income from the middleware offering JBOSS. I hope soon that Rehdat will be offering complete solution stacks with better intergration, installation, and updated features.
Oct 24
In a stunning move Misys, a global software and services company, has announced that it will make its Misys Connect health care solution available to the open source community. Misys is a market leader in the health care industry serving more than 110,000 physicians in 18,000 practice locations and 600 home care providers.
Mike Lawrie, Misys plc Chief Executive said: Making Misys Connect available to the open source community is an innovative way to connect healthcare communities and advance the improvement of patient outcomes, which is critical to addressing some of the systemic issues in the U.S. healthcare market today.”
I have a feeling the Misys Healthcare has just established its leadership in the software health care industry for the next decade. Congratulations guys!
Oct 12
In a poll just released by Barracuda Networks, IT Professionals trust in open source software is roughly the same as proprietary vendors for applications with similar functionality.
“The OSS option actually had a small lead in the survey results, with 53 percent expressing a preference for open source versus 47 percent opting for commercial solutions.”
The reasons IT professionals favored open source over proprietary software:
- 80% for price
- 57% for availability of code
- 41% for community code reviews
The reasons IT professional favored proprietary software over open source:
- 65% quality of support
- 47% ease of adoption
- 47% automated software updates
Interesting poll, I can certainly see the arguments for both sides. I guess what matters most is that consumers now have a viable choice.
Oct 09
In an attempt to reduce licensing fees of existing software, by 2009 all school children in Russia are to be taught using the free and open source software Linux . It will be tested first in three pilot regions, while other regions will have the option to use it as a second operating system.
” Alexey Smirnov, Director General of the Company ALTLinux, said that schools formerly tended to run illegal copies of Microsoft operating systems, but after Russia entered the WTO, the laws became much stricter and schools began to be prosecuted for doing so.”
Could be a lot of political positioning with this effort, nonetheless, it is one huge migration to keep an eye on.
Oct 08
The internet is now buzzing with rumors of what exactly is the Google phone. Would it be a hardware that would compete directly with Apple’s Iphone, or would it be a Software OS that would run on any mobile phone and compete with Windows Mobile? It probably makes more sense for them to create a Mobile Linux OS platform first. This would then enable them to break any ties with Windows Mobile, and allow them to extend Google applications as well as advertising to the phone without relying on Microsoft. Once that is in the place, they could then contract with hardware vendor to create their own Gphone. This is also seems to be the opinion of Miguel Helft at the New York Times as quoted below.
“The essential point is that Google’s strategy is to lead the creation of an open-source competitor to Windows Mobile,” said one industry executive, who did not want his name used because his company has had contacts with Google. “They will put it in the open-source world and take the economics out of the Windows Mobile business.”
Oct 03
The Swedish National Police are implementing a plan to build their entire future IT systems infrastructure on open source software. It will be based upon Linux, Mysql, and JBoss. Reasons for making the switch.
- Cut costs
- Reduce vendor lock-in
- Increase reliability
- Increase security
They expect an IT savings of around 50% within five years.This is covered in a press release from MYSQL. Perhaps the best quote from the release, which should be the “mission statement” of every government on the planet.
Oct 02
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected Voltaire Grid Backbone solutions to install 8 Linux Super Computing clusters in the national weapons laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
Their job function will be to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nations nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing
The installation will include 12,096 processors with up to 96.8 TeraByte of memory. What a great testament to the viability of Linux computing power for the enterprise.
