Stories about: Xandros

Multimedia software maker CyberLink sees a lot of opportunities in the fast-growing netbook segment of the computer market, from online access to files stored on home PCs to multimedia software made for Linux OSs.

For three health care centers, the challenge was clear: Find a way to improve internal communications by expanding e-mail accounts to all employees, including doctors, nurses, security staffers, dietary workers and others, without breaking their IT budgets.

New York-based Linux company Xandros on Wednesday bought Linspire, another open source distributor in a bid to increase its presence in the enterprise, an executive said.

Today's IT managers face tough choices. PCs that run fine today have an uncertain upgrade path, now that Microsoft has chosen to discontinue Windows XP. Upgrade costs associated with Vista, coupled with the ever-escalating cost of application licenses, make switching to desktop Linux an increasingly attractive option.

It was just over a year ago that Microsoft dropped a bombshell of a claim: users of Linux and open-source software were unwittingly violating as many as 235 Microsoft software patents.

Linux visionary Hans Reiser has been convicted of first-degree murder for killing his estranged wife in 2006 and faces life imprisonment.

Linux, long the laggard to the Windows desktop, is pushing into emerging markets, onto mobile devices and other client form factors, and is poised to give Microsoft something to really compete against, according to attendees at the annual Linux Foundation Summit.

As the release of low-cost laptops based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor draws near, Microsoft is getting boxed into a corner. The software company plans to stop selling most Windows XP licenses after June 30, yet most of these low-cost laptops won't be powerful enough to run Vista when they arrive later this year.

Asustek Computer (Asus) predicts the Eee PC it has started selling with Microsoft Windows XP Home edition on board will outsell the original Linux-based version by a ratio of 6 to 4 in the market by the end of this year, a heady prediction considering the Windows machine costs nearly twice as much as the cheapest Linux one.

During the 2007 holiday season, there was another small, white and cheap tech device that became a hard-to-find bestseller: the ultra-portable Eee PC notebook by ASUS. (It also comes in black and three other colors, but the white model appears to be the most popular.) Despite looking like a toy, the Eee PC is a fully capable computer primarily meant for wireless Internet use. It runs Linux and includes Firefox and OpenOffice.

In the second part of Computerworld's analysis of the Office Open XML debate, platform strategy manager for Microsoft, Sarah Bond, and several Microsoft gold partners offer their views on why the OOXML format should become an internationally approved standard.