Weekly news wrap-up: Trouble at Lindows and Lineo

It was a challenging week for a couple of Linux-related companies, Lindows and Lineo. Lindows, the company that’s promising to make Microsoft programs run on its Linux distribution, lost its business relationship with Codeweavers, a company actually making products that run Windows applications on Linux.
In a more expected Lindows-related move, Microsoft is appealing a judge’s refusal to grant an injunction against Lindows using its own name. Microsoft claims Lindows violates the Windows trademark. Meanwhile, Lindows is promising to release its SP2 OS in a couple of weeks.

Over at Camp Lineo, there are reports that the leading embedded Linux company has run out of money and has laid off 50 employees.

Sun knocks Linux on mainframes … again

When Shahin Khan, chief competitive officer at Sun Microsystems, knocked Linux on mainframes a couple of weeks ago, he raised a fuss. Well, he’s at it again, calling Linux on a mainframe “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

Microsoft and Unisys anti-Unix site, the final chapter>

Our own Robin “Roblimo” Miller wraps up the story of WeHaveTheWayOut.com, part of a marketing effort by Microsoft and Unisys to get customers to switch to their products from Unix and Linux.

As you may know, the two companies first ran the site on FreeBSD, an Open Source Unix, and the Apache Web server. Then, when they switched to Microsoft’s IIS, script kiddies promptly found all kinds of security holes and crashed the site for a couple of days. Microsoft’s claim: Unix locks you into using high-priced sysadmins. Well, when pre-teens can obtain Microsoft certifications, and Microsoft can’t make its own Web server secure, maybe you want a competent sysadmin to run your important Web sites, don’t you think? Think of this whole episode as a real-life parable explaining the problems of using IIS.

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