Author: JT Smith
In between all those warnings about the Code Red worm hitting Microsoft servers, some Open Source-related news actually broke out during these slow days of early August. Unfortunately, some of it was bad news, as computer maker Dell’s U.S. operations announced it would no longer ship Linux on desktops and laptops.
Dell, saying the market demand didn’t support pre-installed Red Hat Linux, made the decision about nine months after the company first announced it would ship Linux on desktops, and that’s not the only way the PC giant was acting two-faced about its commitment to Linux. Just a couple of weeks earlier, Dell announced factory-installed Red Hat 7.1 on some servers and workstations, and just days after the decision by Dell’s United States divisions, Dell Australia said it would continue to offer Linux on desktops.
Tux Racer for Windows: Say it ain’t so
More semi-bad news from the camp of Tux Racer, the beloved Linux game. NewsForge news editor Tina Gasperson reported that Tux Racer developer Sunspire Studies will
release a proprietary version of the game for Windows. Sunspire CTO Jasmin Patry says he plans to eventually release a Linux version and eventually GPL the game, but Windows players will get the first shot at the commercial product.
New on the scene
MandrakeSoft raised $3.76 million USD in its initial stock offering this week. Now, Mandrake fans can buy stock in the Marche Libre exchange in Europe. Meanwhile, NewsForge editor in chief Robin Miller suggested that Mandrake and SuSE should team up and dominate the Linux market, at least outside of the United States.
The Mozilla browser project continued crawling to a 1.0 version with its 0.9.3 release this week. However, one report called the new version “branched and buggy.”
In the case of the missing beta, Red Hat denied that a rumored Roswell beta exists. Red Hat people say others are probably mistaking it for the already-existing Rawhide.
Hewlett-Packard announced it is GPLing parts of its Cooltown interconnected computing software project, earning the company kudos for its commitment to Linux.
New in NewsForge
Stories unique to NewsForge this week:
