Eric S Raymond will be speaking on the NJIT campus in Newark, NJ on
Wednesday April 10th from 2:30-4pm in Kupfrian building, room 117. This event is open to anyone and any LUG that wants to come. We’d like a
huge turn out. So would you please pass this along to your LUG or anyone
you know would like to come. There’s more info on our website (don’t laugh,
its the first website I ever made :)). That’s penguin.rutgers.edu.
— Jennifer Scalf, PR, RUNLUG, runlug@penguin.rutgers.edu

“If you left the 1980s and traveled ahead 20 years into the early 21st century, you probably wouldn’t recognize the new IBM.

Once a purveyor of closed and proprietary solutions, the company has recast itself as flag bearer of all things open and interoperable. Seeing the company’s peace, love and penguin ads for Linux are indeed worthy of an eye-rubbing double take.” More at ZDNET.

LinuxAndMain: “”Draeker figured that a company that wrote and sold games for Linux actually would make money. If the venture capitalists were eager to finance what anyone could see were sure losers, they surely would fall over each other in the rush to back a possible — no, sure — winner.

He had some high-tech experience; he’d worked at Apple in the early 1990s. Which was more experience than the heads of some other California computer companies had. This would probably work, right?”

bryam writes: “With a *amazing* list of speakers that covers interesting features about Linux Kernel. Herethe List“

Anonymous Reader writes: “Mungkie has released a new security enhanced version of their linux thin client distribution. Version 1.4 adds major encryption improvement tunneling of rdesktop, vnc, and X. New netupdate functions simplify autosystem updating reducing cost of administration.
Checkout http://freshmeat.net/projects/natld/
for further info.”

A ZD Commentary piece by David Coursey points out that Microsoft’s license terms may prohibit using MS Office XP on Linux. Quote from the story: “CodeWeavers’s Aric Stewart said a clause in the Office XP End-User License Agreement, which stipulates that Office XP be used only on top of a Microsoft operating system, could throw a hitch into those plans.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “This whitepaper by MontaVista Software’s Glenn Seiler provides an introduction to one of the most important emerging applications forLinux — as a “carrier grade” operating system platform in public network telecommunications products. Seiler explains why Linux is rapidly becoming the OS of choice in the telecommunications equipment industry, and outlines the key requirements for what he calls “Carrier-grade Linux . . . a newly emerging category of Linux”. Read it at LinuxDevices.com“

– By Dan Berkes –
It could have been an April fool’s prank, or it could have been idle e-mail rumor-mongering, or it could have been any one of a few dozen other ways these things get passed around. But Xandros president Michael Bego would like you to know that what you may have heard about his company probably isn’t true.
To answer the first and most persistent rumor, Bego has not left the helm of his fledgling Linux company. He said as much when I spoke to him, and I was willing to take his word for it, especially when the caller ID box flashed the name of his company when he called me.

As for the second story going around, no one has been laid off from the engineering staff, or any other Xandros division for that matter. “We did have five interns that left us at the end of the semester,” Bego says, “but that’s out of 42 employees total in the engineering staff.

“In fact, in all the time that we’ve given out internships, only one person has ever turned us down. In the entire history of Xandros, not one employee has ever left us — ever. We’ve got a really good team here, and everyone is really excited about the products they’ve created.”

Filing those rumors in the overstuffed folder marked, “unsubstantiated,” I figured now was a good of a time as any to ask the Xandros CEO what’s really going on at his company.

The Xandros corporate story starts in the first half of 2001 when Corel announced it was getting out of the Linux distribution business. Linux Global Partners negotiated a licensing deal with Corel that granted the new company the rights to develop and market Linux distributions and other products based upon the software formerly known as Corel Linux.

Linux Global Partners sent off their new licensing agreement in style, opening up new Ottawa offices a stone’s throw from the Corel corporate bunkers, handing over $10 million in corporate backing, and blessing their creation with a new name: Xandros. Ever since that day, the Xandros engineers and a small army of beta testers have been working together to forge a very user-friendly Linux distribution.

Bego is audibly excited about the future of Xandros’ first product, Xandros Desktop. “When we announced the beta test in January, we had over 2,000 applications for 150 beta slots,” he says. The first beta culled the most technologically savvy applicants to pick apart the installation aspects of the new distribution.

Bego says, “That was done because our first and primary goal was to nail down the installer, and we’ve done that. We’ve got a fantastic installation system that goes back to the ability to install with just four clicks of your mouse from the Corel product, we’ve got fantastic hardware detection.”

Should the more technical members of the Linux market feel excluded from all the fun, Bego reassures us that there will be something for everyone in Xandros Desktop: “We’ve made it easy for the non-technical users, but it will cater just as equally to advanced Linux users.”

And Xandros is certainly not afraid of following industry trends, including the current push to bring Windows applications to the Linux desktop through the use of the Open Source WINE project or a few proprietary emulation programs. Bego confirmed that Xandros Desktop would indeed include a few enhanced bits and pieces of that nature, provided by an as-yet-be-named business partner.

The second beta, which may include that capability along with a few other features that need testing, is due to be released near the end of this month. Bego says Xandros is still on track for the 1.0 release of Xandros Desktop at the end of May.

– By Sandeep Krishnamurthy –

Linux needs to move to the next level. Instead of languishing as an
also-ran operating system, it needs to be viewed favorably by the decision-makers who write the checks. It needs to become the mature adult rather
than stay an impetuous teen striving to carve its identity. To do so,
Linux needs to avoid the two extreme paths — love and hate.
The community surrounding Linux is legion. Those who like the product,
swear by it. What can you say? They, justifiably, love the product. They
love the fact that it runs and runs, as opposed to Microsoft’s products, which crash now
and then. They like its flexibility. Bottom line, they are in love. Yet,
Linux cannot be sold using this love alone. Many of these users can get
Linux into a university lab, but not into a Fortune 1000 company. They can
run a back-end server using Linux — but not help it diffuse within a company
of decent size. They cannot convince the decision-makers and those who sign
the checks — at least, not without some serious marketing help.

On the other extreme, the avid Linux enthusiast hates Microsoft. There are
no ifs and buts about this. This hate can be fueled to get some of these
people to use the product. However, it cannot take it to the next level.
When was the last time you bought a product because you hated its
competitor? Moreover, playing on this hate only accentuates some people’s
perception that Linux is not a professional product.

What is needed is a professional approach to marketing Linux and educating
the mainstream about it. Already, efforts such as Linux International have
started to take important steps to effectively market Linux. What is needed
is a global consortium of players who can create a global Linux Inc. that
will ensure that the product takes its rightful place in the world.

In order to achieve that, Open-Source thinking needs to be applied to
marketing. For too long, Open Source has been about product development.
Yes, we need good products. What we now need is a collaborative effort to
market products. The thousands of people who believe in the product must
collaborate to develop the right message and disseminate it. Organizations
that have adopted Linux must talk about it and act as references.
Collateral needs to be developed. Flashy online ads need to be developed
pushing the product. Simple calculators showing the potential savings from
switching to Linux must be developed. The basics of marketing need to be
revisited — identifying the target audience, establishing brand equity, practicing the four Ps of product, price, place and promotion, etc. Perhaps, we need a marketing avatar of Linus Torvalds to marshal these resources.

In the end, what matters is the merits of the product. So, forget about
love and hate. Let us get professional and market the heck out of Linux.

Sandeep Krishnamurthy is an assistant professor of e-commerce at the University of Washington.

NewsFactor network writes “The flap over the Microsoft-Unisys “We Have the Way Out” Web site, revealed to be running Apache and FreeBSD, has overshadowed flaws inherent in the ad campaign itself. The site implies that because Windows is prevalent on the desktop, it makes sense in the data center. Yet in one of the “research reports,” a chart labeled “Important Issues That Drive High-End Server Selection” shows “reliability; stability; availability” as the top answer, at 53 percent. “Easy to use; simple; familiar” is last, at 8 percent. Doesn’t seem like “desktop familiarity” is much of an argument for Windows over Linux. Such flimsy arguments are just the latest evidence that Microsoft simply doesn’t understand Unix.”