As the economic downturn has taken its toll on GNU/Linux companies, many surviving companies have decided to move away from the desktop market, and focus on the server instead. This escalated to an alarming pace after the death of Eazel, a startup that created the Nautilus file manager, and while the focus-on-server mania has calmed down lately, it is still very much alive. Yet, it seems to me, that focusing on the server will in the end cause these companies to lose not only the desktop, but the server as well.
Grant Gross of NewsForge writes about Linux's appeal to churches and other non-profit groups. “We've long talked about how government agencies almost owe it to taxpayers to explore low-cost Open Source alternatives to Microsoft and other high-cost vendors, but it seems that non-profit organizations such as churches are also starting to get the Open Source religion.”
Philippe Fremy has written a nice piece describing the benefits of the Qt toolkit over Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). For those of you not familar with Qt, it is the toolkit used by the KDE desktop as well as the Qtopia environment featured on the Sharp Zaurus PDA. Qt - unlike MFC - works on Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Mac OS X (Aqua).
In an article for fellow LDN-member site LinuxandMain.com, Anthony Awtrey comments on GNU/Linux's tremendous growth in the server market. ” I have searched for market information and corporate strategy documents that outline where we are today and give some idea where we are headed. At first glance I can tell you that plans to deploy Linux and other Open Source software are evident everywhere. Independent software vendors, especially those writing software for niches like computer aided design, law offices and medical practices, are porting their applications from Windows and commercial Unix to Linux to take advantage of customer interest.”
It started seemingly innocuously enough; a letter was received by one member of the KDE development team asking the KDE Project to use RedHat Linux on machines at LWCE and to display RedHat's shadow man logo on those machines. In exchange, the letter from RedHat explained, KDE would “benefit from many valuable marketing benefits in our booth, on our website, and in our newsletter.”
UPDATE (7/30/2002 15:21 and 16:04 EDT): New information from RedHat is available at the bottom of this article.
In an announcement late last week, the Debian Project released its much anticipated Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 distribution. Debian is well known for its high level of stability, as well as powerful package (software) management tools.
In a story published today, LinuxGram reported that Linux distributor TurboLinux may have collapsed. The report is not entirely surprising, TurboLinux has been struggling for some time, and outside its strong hold in Asia, the distribution had dismal results at best.
In a move anticipated since rumors of talks leaked out last month, MandrakeSoft issued a press release today announcing the availability of PC's at Wal-Mart's internet division with Mandrake Linux preloaded. This move follows Wal-Mart's earlier offering of PC's with LindowsOS pre-installed last month.
Two long time Linux users - Jerry Kreps and Jethro Cramp - agreed to give us their thoughts on SuSE Linux 8.0. You can find their comments below.