Anonymous Reader writes “silicon.com carries a story that a pressure group called OpenForum Europe has been created to speed the take-up of open source software (OSS) in UK businesses.
Comments are invited from registered users”

LPH writes “Just thought NewsForge readers would be interested in an email sent out by Michael Robertson. It appears they are about ready for Preview 2 of Lindows and a ruling from the Judge regarding the Lindows.com name.”

From BSD Today: “March 9/10 was a big “Linux” event at the university of Chemnitz, Germany. About 1500 attendees visited technical sessions in several tracks, went to
the “install fest”, watched demonstrations or participated in workshops. The event also had some BSD content: a booth with (Net)BSD was available as
well as several presentations mentioning NetBSD in detail.”

Dre writes, “The Dot is running a story about LinuxQuestions.org‘s Linux desktop poll, in which KDE made a great showing.
It came in first in the Desktop Environment of the Year category
with almost 69% of the votes. In addition, KDE standouts
Konqueror tied with
Mozilla (22%) as Browser of the
year; KMail
took top honors as Mail Client of the Year (beating
Evolution
by a large margin); and KOffice
earned second place (substantially behind
StarOffice) as
Office Suite of the Year. Check out the
complete
results.”

Joe writes: “Taken from a thread at: http://www.mandrakeuser.org/mub/viewtopic.php?topi c=8201&forum=12&4.
Linux software is in the same place now that DOS software was in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The trend then was shareware (Doom and Wolfenstein come to mind) and freeware. This trend went the way of the Dodo when the market was opened up by Redmond. It became obvious that there was a profitable market in the PC area because a little program called “Windows” was going to make PCs easier to use. Prior to that only geeks, colleges, businesses and the military were really ‘into’ PCs. Shareware of old transformed into what we know now as demos.

If Linux is to succeed in gaining it’s deserved place in the market a few things need to happen.

1. An all out attack on the U.S. desktop market via an assertive ad campaign (i.e SuperBowl spot)
2. Big money investors that will sink big money into it in hopes of an even bigger return.
3. A distro that will not only attack the desktop environment to make it absolutely usable by all user but one that is willing to develope bundled software of it’s own (Office and Quickbooks like), not to mention aggresively making internet bundling as IE did….charging websites to be added into the bookmarks folder by default.
4. If any distro is to take on this task then it must address these issues inhouse. A) Easier installation. B) The desktop. C) Office Suite D) Financial Suite E) Games (not the soltaire variety but Sierra and Apogee variety). F) Attract the attention of major vendors like Apple etc.

Why are companies like Loki going belly-up? Because they limited themselves. Loki’s development of Linux games was a noble cause but because they ignored th mainstream Windows users in their campaign they lost. If they wanted to develope games just for Linux then what (IMHO) they should have done was attacked both markets using mainstream sales to propel the company, then once the Linux market grew big enough to support them soley…dump Windows development. Which would do something else, attract even more users towards Linux for their beloved games.

In the 80’s and 90’s I played a lot of Sierra titles because their games challenged my intellect (yeah I’m the geek variety). But recently Sierra dumped it’s Adventure genre because there wasn’t a huge demand for them in comparison to other genres……PCs were no longer just for intelects and geeks. If someone could convince a company as big as Sierra that this genre has a place in Linux (and it does in my opinion) and if we will pay to for these game then perhaps other companies would follow their lead.

Attacking only one small part of the market and ignoring the larger more profitable side is nothing short of shooting yourself in the foot. And with the recent financial woes of certain companies I think it is time we rethink the marketing of Linux Distros.

Let’s face it, I go into a large software store and I see aisles and aisles of Windows software. But when I ask do you have any Linux software I get pointed to two boxes….one a copy of RedHat 7.2 and Mnadrake 8.1. Why is this? Because Linux distros literally pull each other apart. Now I love freedom of choice just like the next TuxHead, But what needs to happen….no, what has to happen is each of the distros needs to consolodate into only One company. No more distros targeting a small sector, but One that will target the world market.

If each of these distros would simply meet in one place and consolodate their efforts then the market will be stood on it’s ear. Financial centers would start to drool and Silicon Valley would start to think “Micro-who?”.

I don’t think this will happen overnight, but I hope that this idea is passed on to those in charge of heading distro managment and they give it some thought. Hell, I’d even be willing to attend the meeting and give my 2 cents worth……Scratch that I’d even take on the task of leading it…I’m brash enough to give Steve Ballmer a run that he wouldn’t soon forget.

ComputerWorld Singapore (on CNN.com) reports that Linux is making inroads into the PDA market with “a number of handheld companies announcing support for the open source operating system. Lineo, which supplies the operating environment for a number of mobile devices, is upbeat about both its and the open source operating system’s prospects in the handheld devices space.”

From LinuxPR: Linux Motor purposes different GPL’ed distributions (Red Hat, Mandrake, FreeBsd, Debian…) with technical support for a unique price 19.95$ for 60 days by Mail or 29.95$ by phone and E-Mail.

Visit the Web Store store.linuxmotor.com

From Salon.com: “‘ Hebrew is now supported on Solaris.’ Thus reads the first line of the release notes for the most recent version of Mozilla, the open-source Web browser born out of Netscape’s decline. And right there, you can learn all you really need to know about why free, or open-source, software is so vital — even after being declared a has-been by its competitors, or even worse, un-American.”

Newsweek International (on MSNBC.com) reports that oung programmers turned off by Microsoft?s anti-piracy policies are looking to alternative software. “One of the burning issues in computer circles is whether servers ? the fastest-growing segment of the computer business ? are going to run Microsoft software or an alternative, Linux, in the future. Microsoft?s selling point has been its universe of tightly designed software that fits together like a puzzle, from the basic operating systems that make each computer run to software that controls networks to programs designed for specific tasks. But lately Microsoft has been placing more and more restrictions on how its software can be used. That bothers programmers, who crave the freedom to use the tools of their trade as they see fit.”

From PRNewswire: Lineo(R), Inc., a leading innovator of embedded operating
systems and host development environments for vertical-specific markets, and
Infomart today announced the continued development and expected Q2 release of
the Kaii personal digital assistant (PDA) utilizing the Lineo Embedix(R) Plus
PDA vertical software stack. This follows the announcement of Embedix Plus
PDA integrated to run the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500D.