SAN DIEGO — July 15, 2002 — Lindows.com, Inc. today announced the
addition of Sun’s (NASDAQ: SUNW) StarOffice? 6.0 software, a
full-featured office productivity suite that runs on LindowsOS, to its
Click-N-Run Warehouse. StarOffice (www.lindows.com/staroffice ) is the
first commercial application to be added to the Click-N-Run Warehouse
(www.lindows.com/warehouse) and will help provide LindowsOS users a
complete business software solution. The Click-N-Run Warehouse provides
a one-stop, one-click venue for LindowsOS users to be able to add over
1,300 Open-Source and now commercial applications.”We believe that people should pay no more than $99 for their general
computing software needs, and adding StarOffice to our Click-N-Run
Warehouse will provide our members with a comprehensive business
solution that is comparable in power with Microsoft Office but at a
fraction of the cost,” said Michael Robertson, Chief Executive Officer
of Lindows.com, Inc. “Even though we are adding StarOffice, which
represents a $75 value, we are maintaining our $99 membership fee.”

Effectively immediately, all Insiders and Full Members (users of
LindowsOS who sign-up for unlimited access to the Click-N-Run
Warehouse) will be able to download StarOffice as part of their annual
membership to the Click-N-Run Warehouse at www.lindows.com/warehouse.
Purchasers of Walmart.com computers running LindowsOS can upgrade their
trial membership to obtain StarOffice 6.0.

“We find the Click-N-Run concept extremely innovative, and Sun is proud
to now be part of the LindowsOS Warehouse,” said Mike Rogers, vice
president and general manager for Desktop and StarOffice products at
Sun Microsystems. “Customers are increasingly looking for a
cost-effective desktop productivity alternative that is complete,
easy-to-use, and compatible with their Microsoft Office file formats.
StarOffice and LindowsOS together provide customers a real choice.”

StarOffice 6.0 Features

StarOffice 6.0 comprises all vital office applications:

* StarOffice Writer, the word processing application
* StarOffice Calc, the spreadsheet application
* StarOffice Impress, the presentation program
* StarOffice Draw, the drawing program
* StarOffice Base, the data source management tool

Thanks to its intuitive menus and high level of user-friendliness,
StarOffice 6.0 represents a powerful, all-around solution for the
office and is fully compatible with other file formats. With
StarOffice, it is easy to manipulate files created with Microsoft
Office or Office XP applications and save them easily in their native
file format.

Some of the top new features in StarOffice 6.0 include Extensible
Markup Language (XML) file formats, which give users the
interoperability, portability and flexibility to create, manage and
access complex documents and Web pages; and improved Microsoft Office
interoperability. For example, for finance and accounting tasks,
StarOffice Calc offers rich functionality comparable to Microsoft
Excel. StarOffice 6.0 also provides integrated support of TrueType
fonts that enables font rendering and printing to be equivalent across
all platforms.

To receive Lindows.com press releases or newsletters via email, visit
www.lindows.com/mailing

About Lindows.com

Lindows.com is a consumer company that brings choice to computer users.
Lindows.com, Inc. was started by Michael Robertson, founder and former
CEO of MP3.com. LindowsOS is a modern, affordable, easy-to-use
operating system that allows users access to hundreds of applications
via the Click-N-Run? Warehouse. All applications in the Click-N-Run
Warehouse (www.lindows.com/warehouse) are licensed on a per-person or
family basis and can be downloaded, installed and run with just
one-mouse click. LindowsOS is presently available on LindowsOS
Certified Computers (www.lindows.com/walmart) being offered from
Lindows.com Builder partners (www.lindows.com/builders). The General
Release of LindowsOS, available presently for download and preview to
Lindows.com Insiders (www.lindows.com/signup), will be made available
later this year for those wishing to install and run LindowsOS on their
existing computer hardware. The General Release version will support a
wider range of computer hardware and includes unique features such as a
“Friendly-Install” alongside an existing Microsoft® Windows operating
system, a streamlined installation process which requires no computer
knowledge, and the ability to run a select set of “bridge”
Windows-compatible programs. For more information see
www.lindows.com/products

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — “The Network Is The
Computer[tm]” — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to
its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware,
software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more
than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, StarOffice, Solaris, and “The Network Is The
Computer” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems,
Inc. in the United States and other countries.

PR Contacts for Press and Analysts:

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Cheryl Schwarzman, Lindows.com
(858) 587-6700 ext 241
pr@lindows.com

Nancy Lee, Sun Microsystems
(408) 276-6143
nancy.k.lee@sun.com

Wired: “Just eight hours after the East Coast’s largest hacking conference opened its doors Friday, H2K2 had already
taken on the feel of summer camp for enthusiastic engineers.

While most are here to hack around the clock for a few days and catch up with friends they rarely see face-to-face,
a significant number said they came hoping to find employment or clients.

“There’s no better place to find a government job than a hacker
convention,” said Gray Adams, an unemployed programmer
from Chicago. “There are always people at these shows who
are looking to hire hackers.”

“Microsoft will, as suggested here last week, be shipping a Protected Extensible
Authentication Protocol (PEAP) client with SP1 of Windows XP. This will beef up
wireless security in XP and will no doubt come in handy for the mysterious security
of Microsoft’s forthcoming home wireless products.

Thanks to readers for the snap of XP SP1’s wireless properties, showing Protected
EAP security enabled, and for a couple of useful links. Microsoft Technet’s Cable
Guy discusses PEAP in the July column, and over at Sifry’s Alerts there are a few
pertinent comments.” More at The Register.

Sy-lla-ble writes: “OSNews has put together a long article regarding the future of Amiga and the new markets is after, and includes exclusive information about the new G3-based Amiga and screenshots of the anticipated AmigaOS 4.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “LinuxFreak.org has just released a new nightly newsletter delivering a days worth of Linux news and information to your inbox nightly.

The LinuxFreak newsletter can be scheduled for delivery by signing up here and will be delivered nightly at 11PM PST.

Click here to see the most recently delivered newsletter in text format.

Upcoming revisions of the nightly newsletter will feature security alerts as well as a HTML version.

For more information visit http://linuxfreak.org/newsletter/“

Anonymous Reader writes “From ZDnet: Under current copyright law, Americans who record a TV program or radio segment generally may “sell or otherwise dispose of” that analog recording or digital file as they wish.

The proposed bill would end that exemption, handing copyright owners substantial new control over the distribution of their works by curtailing copying rights granted to consumers under a doctrine known as “fair use.”
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-943153.html“

– by Tina Gasperson –
NewsForge broke the news last month that Microtel was putting together
Mandrake-Linux PCs for Walmart.com, the online division of the giant American
retailer. If you were beginning to think those PCs were never
going to make their way online, you were wrong. As of Sunday evening, they’re
online in the desktop computer section of Walmart.com.Walmart.com is offering nine Mandrake-Linux powered systems, ranging
in price from $391 USD with a 900MHz Duron and 128MB RAM, to $648 USD with a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 and 256MB RAM.

The systems come complete with Mandrake-Linux 8.2 and all the accompanying
software — including the Sun StarOffice 6.0 office suite, which retails for over
$75 USD. Walmart.com says, “Additional software includes Web, email, chat, photo
and image editors, CD burning, MP3 ripping and several games.”

The low-end system, retailing for $391, also includes a 3.5-inch floppy drive, a 52x
CDROM drive, and a 40GB hard drive. The “accessories available for this item”
include the Lexmark Z23 printer and the 100 pack of Durabrand CD-R discs. The
system is almost $100 more than the lowest-priced LindowsOS system that debuted
several weeks ago on Walmart.com — probably because the Mandrake system’s hard
drive is 30GB larger, and the Lindows system doesn’t include a floppy drive.
Neither one of these features is very expensive to the builder but could make up
a good chunk of the $100 retail difference.

The high-end Mandrake system, retailing for $648 USD, has the same 40GB hard drive teamed
with a 2.0GHz Pentium processor and a CD-RW drive. The most expensive
Walmart.com Lindows system runs $599 USD with a 1.8GHz Pentium 4, but is otherwise
identical to the Mandrake system, hardware-wise.

Several of the mid-range Mandrake systems are exactly the same, with regard to hardware
specs and pricing, as the LindowsOS systems.

alan Knowles writes “In Pear Weekly News it’s been another busy week, 2 stable releases and 5 beta releases, along with interesting discussion on SQL parsers, builders and errors, standards, PEAR in PLD Linux Distribution, a lot of new contributions and 3 new package proposals.”

–By Grant Gross –

Members of the Phoenix Linux Users Group ran into some resistance this week while meeting with Maricopa County officials. The county has a clause in its procurement rules that allows it to stop doing business with companies convicted of illegal business practices, and PLUG members used that clause to question the county’s continuing relationship with convicted monopolist Microsoft.
But the county said, thanks, but no thanks. Essentially, the word from county officials was that they are happy with Microsoft products. But PLUG members said they were encouraged by the county’s willingness to listen, and they’ll keeping plugging away. Check out the discussion on this story for some interesting debate on Linux evangelism as well.

P2P for you and me

EFF cc-founder John Gilmore is funding the Public Software Fund’s first project, a P2P file-sharing program for RPM packages, with the goal of competing with several for-pay offerings from Linux companies. There’s some interesting discussion on this story, too, with several wondering why the Public Software Fund wants to take business away from companies like Red Hat.

IMs for you and me

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols runs through some of the more popular IM clients for Linux and offers suggestions, depending on your needs.

Tina Gasperson also has a story about why the Jabber open IM standard is so important. What if your favorite IM provider suddenly decides it doesn’t want to provide the service for free any more?

Odds ‘n’ ends

A former Microsoft fan makes a confession, by saying “loyalty can cause a scientist to cling too long to a discredited theory.”

Gnutella creator Gene Kan died at age 25 this week.

Success story of the week

A Florida private school is among the several schools using the Linux Terminal Server Project to power its computer labs. A whole lab is controlled by one terminal server, making for fewer crashes and allowing students to customize and save their own desktops, then use that desktop on different machines.

Newly released

The KDE folks have released KDE 3.1 alpha1, for all you who want to run the very newest stuff, or who just want to see what KDE’s up to.

openMosix for the 2.4.18 kernel was released.

Newly reviewed

OfB.biz asks if SuSE 8.0 is superb (only with a cute way of capitalizing SuPERB to make it look like SuSE). The answer is a resounding “maybe.”

LinuxPlanet looks at Gentoo Linux and admits it has a soft spot for the new kid on the block.

New at NewsForge/Linux.com

Among the other stories we reported first this week:

Robin “Roblimo” Miller suggests there’s a business to be made out of an Open Source word-processing program customized for writers’ needs. Maybe other specialized needs can be met by Open Source businesses as well.

Tina Gasperson reports that Outpost.com is offering a PC line preloaded with ThizLinux.

Stock news

The Nasdaq closed Friday at 1,373.50, down yet again for the week, and closing lower than the market crashes after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The tech-centric market closed at 1,448.36 July 5. Of our 11 Open Source-related stocks, eight were down, with Linux companies Red Hat and Caldera two of the three that were up.

Here’s how Open Source and related stocks ended this past week:

Company Name	Symbol	7/5 Close	7/12 Close
Apple	AAPL	18.74	17.50
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	9.13	6.93
Caldera International	CALD	0.661	0.91
Hewlett-Packard	HPQ	16.30	15.27
IBM	IBM	73.50	69.21
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e2.30	e2.20
Red Hat	RHAT	5.39	5.70
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	5.39	5.27
TiVo	TIVO	3.65	3.59
VA Software	LNUX	.90	.85
Wind River Systems	WIND	5.15	5.30

Anonymous Reader writes: “MontaVista Software Inc. will announce on Monday a partnership with Seoul, Korea based Mizi Research Inc. whereby Mizi will market, distribute, and support MontaVista’s products in Korea. Both Mizi and MontaVista offer their own unique embedded Linux distributions and toolkits. Mizi is apparently taking advantage of MontaVista’s breadth of embedded application support to enlarge their opportunity in the Korean market, while MontaVista hopes to gain a strong marketing partner in Korea for its products. Full details here at LinuxDevices.com.”