As a long time fan of the Linux desktop I was interested to see the the Linux desktop usage number for personal computers increase to over 1.02%. I suspect it’s partially fueled by the popularity of Linux netbooks from the Dell (who offers an Ubuntu option) and Asus (that’s uses a special version of Xandros Linux).

While there’s no one company behind Linux for personal computers, it’s significant that Linux just broke through to 1.02 percent market share for personal computers, the first time it has ever risen that high, according to data compiled by Net Applications. (Meanwhile, even in beta, Windows 7 continues its march, now hitting .25 percent market share.)

I spent a long time trying to convince myself and others that the future for the desktop was an option of Windows, Mac or Linux. I am less bullish then I once was and now I use both a Mac and a Linux laptop. I really like the Linux desktop for it’s stability and I like the virtual desktop environment afforded by windows managers for Linux and the flexibility to adapt the interface in general to your personal needs.

However, I think we will always struggle with Linux as a desktop operating system as long as application compatibility falters (I can’t open sophisticated Excel spreadsheets from colleagues) and hardware vendors don’t feel obligated to support Linux (My Verizon EVDO card takes extra configuration for it to work under Linux while it’s a snap to set-up on Mac OS X).

So why bother with a Linux desktop at all? Well I found when using my Asus N10 netbook that my battery life is much better under Linux and I feel like the operating system is much more responsive than when I run Windows XP (I downgraded from Vista to reduce the resource requirements improving speed and battery life).  My theory is that over time we will see the focus less on the desktop operating system and more on the avialability of hosted apps that run on them like Google Docs and Zoho. I think at that point the emphasis on the desktop operating system will be greatly diminished.

[Desktop Usage Numbers via Matt Asay]

Technorati Tags: compatibility, Desktop, EVDO, Google Docs, Linux, market share, Ubuntu, Windows, Zoho

Today Linux desktop manufacturer Xandros acquired Linspire for an undisclosed amount. Xandros will also be keeping existing engineering, support, and key sales employees and long-time Linspire employee and CEO Larry Kettler will be joining the Xandros executive team as the VP of Business Development. While Xandros didn’t mention their total employee numbers Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos claims Xandros to be the third largest Linux company in the world after the acquisition. Former Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony has some harsh criticism of the deal on his blog.

According to Typaldos Xandros and Linspire have had talks at the CEO level over the years about the possibility of a combination given their historically similar Debian-based roots and complementary product lines. Such talks accelerated in late 2007 and culminated in the current agreement.

Linspire once gained notoriety when they were known as Lindows until eventually settling with Microsoft under an agreement to change their name and to accept a estimated $24 million to transfer ownership of Lindows. As of today Lindows.com still points to Linspire.com I suspect as part of a legacy term of the deal.

Since then Linspire has done some interesting things on the desktop with their Linspire distribution which has always enjoyed billing as an easy-to-use distribution. Their Click-N-Run (CNR) Warehouse supports the one-click install of free and proprietary software as well as media codecs to allow users to legally run proprietary media formats and DVDs on Linux. They also have extended this functionality to support many popular Linux distributions including Ubuntu, LinuxMint, Freespire and had announced plans to support both Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions.

At one time Linspire had a very heavy push into localization of not just their operating system but the open source applications they support using a collaborative platform to allow community users to contribute their translations. They also were a big sponsor of open source software including Nvu (an HTML editor), Lsongs, and Lphoto that roughly compared to the Apple iLife suite.

Linspire also maintains an open source project, Freespire, a free Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Freespire is the community driven project for Linspire, much in the same way Fedora is the community project for Red Hat. Freespire will continue to be maintained as an open source project post merger.

Xandros is one of the more established Linux distributions evolving originally from Corel Linux popular in the late 1990s. Since then Xandros has growing steadily landing the gig as the Linux OS of choice for the AsusEee.

In June 2007 Xandros announced a broad collaborative relationship with Microsoft. Shortly thereafter like Novell they took some heat from the open source community. According to a Xandros’ Typaldos the Linspire acquisition was not influenced either way by the Microsoft :

Xandros has always planned to continue increasing its product portfolio, and Microsoft understands and respects our strategy in that regard. On whether Microsoft was consulted, Xandros is an independent company and consults internally with its board, management, and advisors, and not with outside parties in making decisions.

The Linspire acquisition brings a lot of value to Xandros including the CNR technologies and Linux expertise. Specifically the CNR technologies now allow Xandros to tap into other Linux distribution user bases. It also enlarges the growing Xandros’ customer base.

Last year Xandros shortly after announcing their agreement with Microsoft, Xandros acquired Scalix, an open source messaging platform to broaden their server offering.The main thrust from Xandros recently has been their Open Bridgeways product.  At the Microsoft Management Summit in April they announced a beta of Open BridgeWays a systems management product that provides cross-platform management for many enterprise platforms, including Xandros, Red Hat, Solaris, Debian, Novell and Oracle. Xandros BridgeWays Management Packs help extend the capabilities of the Microsoft System Center to heterogeneous environments with Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Xandros legacy on the desktop included Windows interoperability. Through partnerships with Win4Lin and Codeweavers they ran Windows applications. Also as evidenced with signing a deal with Microsoft it makes sense that they would continue to focus on interoperability. Now with the Linspire deal they have a even stronger story of interoperability not just with Microsoft but other Linux vendor.

[One interesting side note when I mistakenly typed www.freespire.com in doing research it resolves to Carmony's new company, DatingDNA.com looks like Kevin speculated on some domains that were ]

Technorati Tags: acquisition, Linspire, Linux Desktop, Microsoft, Open Source, Scalix, Xandros

I love Twitter but when I use my Linux laptop (Ubuntu running Hardy Heron) I don’t have many native options for Twitter clients. The preferred native client appears to be Twitux. Though the nascent client is a little primitive for me. Another popular choice is gTwitter though in my experience it’s only been marginally better.

On Mac OS X I prefer Twhirl which allows me to send tweets to separate accounts from individual windows. So I can send tweets for my @zenoss and @mrhinkle accounts. Twhirl is an Adobe Air application which now is available for Linux as an alpha. Thanks to Seth Yates I now have Twhirl running as an AIR application with Adobe Air running natively on Ubuntu. the only downside seems to be that the notification windows are a little “flutterly” I really don’t care for them anyhow so I turned them off and everything seems to run well.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Air, gTwitter, Linux, Twhirl, Twitter, Twitux

• openSUSE Spotlight » The most popular Linux desktop? The numbers might surprise you – Acccording to Joe: Xandros in about 4th place, but closing rapidly. Ubuntu, unfortunately, doesn’t track —but Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted a couple of times as saying that they have 6 million or 8 million users.
• Canonical makes Ubuntu Netbook Remix official at Computex – Engadget – Canonical has chosen Computex as the expo where it will officially showcase Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Hailed as a “reworked desktop image of Ubuntu built specifically for a new category of portable internet-centric devices
• Xandros Adopts Moblin for 25% Battery Boost on Netbooks – Xandros Works with Intel and Moblin to Bring Energy-efficient Internet Experience to Intel Atom Processor-based Netbooks
• Practical Technology » The most popular desktop Linux is… – Steven talks about Xandros place as one of the most popular Linux distributions.
• PC World – Desktop Linux Face-Off: Ubuntu 8.04 vs. Fedora 9 – Ubuntu takes the prize in this bake-off but Fedora still gets good reviews and shows improvement.
• Electronista | Eee Box leak: “finally” a Mac mini rival – Asus alternative to the Mac mini the Eee box running Linux is on its way.
• 5 Reasons Why Switching to Ubuntu is a Really Dumb Idea ~ Tackling Technology – Fve reasons why you should think carefully before even attempting to install Ubuntu. Fair points but I still think he skips over some of the advantages like cost, stability, and speed. I know my Ubuntu laptop is exceptional in these areas
• ZDnet: OpenSUSE 11 RC1: The Mercedes-Benz to Ubuntu’s Volkswagen - Jason Perlow’s assessment of the opneSUSE RC1 Many improvements in usability, performance and stability have been made, enough that OpenSUSE has won me back as an end-user. However, I would still say at this point in the distro’s evolution, it is not the Linux for the masses or even for the people. It remains true to its roots, which was and still is for power users with systems that can fully take advantage of everything it has to offer. If Ubuntu is a Volkswagen, then OpenSUSE is a Mercedes-Benz.

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Asus Eee, Desktop, Linux, Open Source, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Xandros

There was a time when I thought the Linux desktop was going to take a market share at least equal to Apple’s. Maybe even 5% or 10% of the total desktop market. I had high hopes that the One Laptop Per Child Initiative would put Linux laptops in the hands of impressionable young minds who would never have the chance to become dependent on Windows. Though that plan has fallen through the cracks. I don’t hate Microsoft Windows I just don’t have a desire to see any operating system dominate the market in such a way that the lack of competition stifles innovation and forces users into an endless upgrade cycle, offering progressively smaller incremental value.

That’s why I like Linux as a desktop platform. For many years I was an advocate for using the Linux desktop, I even wrote a Windows to Linux migration book for business users. Though the time has yet to come for the widespread Linux desktop adoption. I have speculated in the past that Novell’s SUSE Linux Desktop or Ubuntu would see traction but as of late I think that even that prediction is off base. I think the companies that will break our addiction to Windows will not be neither of them. It will be Google and Amazon. Here’s why.

I think that real reason people become dependent on Windows isn’t the operating system, it’s not the great support from Microsoft’s 800 support number. It’s applications and hardware support. As an independent software vendor (ISV) there’s not a great incentive to develop to any other operating system when you consider the 90%+ of all PC users are using Windows. For a while I was convinced that the intermediary step for desktop independence was going to be virtualization e.g. run two OSes side-by-side. Recently Citrix announced a new desktop virtualization product, XenDesktop that does just this. Though recently my opinion has evolved. I think what will happen is that most users will skip this step and go right to the network for browser-hosted applications.

The reason I think a web-centric is going to be the norm is due to the size of the market. As you look at the size of the potential users( buyers) the next generation of information workers will likely become dependent on web applications like Google Docs and less so on Microsoft Office. The market for browser based applications will be the greatest and vendors will be able to develop to W3C standards and not that of individual OS vendors. At that point the desktop operating systems becomes more of a conduit to your applications and less of an end unto itself, at that point we achieve desktop independence.

Case in point, my company recently shifted to Google Docs as our document collaboration platform. Initially we used Google Docs to author simple documents or to upload a document originally authored in Word. Today I noticed that my Google Docs had a link called, Insert Plugin. It gave me options of things I could insert into Google Docs. When Google bought Writely(the product that formed the basis for Google Doc) it was very slick but only offered rudimentary features. Google has since continued to add features and now they are even crowd-sourcing the addition of more features through the plugin exchange. Couple this with a ever-improving GMail application and the dependence on Office is nullified. Though maybe we are just trading one master or another.

Google is only one of many web applications that are slowly replacing my native applications. For photo editing I find myself uploading pictures to Flickr and editing them in Picnik rather than editing them on my desktop. To-do lists and projects are managed in a hosted task-manager application (Tasks). I could go on. The bottom line is that with each new web-application I am reducing my dependence on any one vendor. The downside is that until that data is portable I am locked in to some extent to those applications, but not one vendor who owns my desktop and productivity suite.

Web applications are going to proliferate. Amazon’s EC2 brings the barrier to entry for deploying scalable web applications (and companies) so low that you don’t need Google’s billions to develop and grow a scalable redundant architecture. Amazon and cloud computing are changing the rules for building and hosting infrastructure. This is good for the end-user as choice and competition keeps innovation high and prices low.

Beyond applications Ihave been playing around with file storage via Amazon’s EC3 this too is one step towards desktop independence. The economics for storing files has been broken down to bandwidth and cheap per gigabyte storage. You only pay for what you use. There are also intermediaries for these services like, JungleDisk which provides software and value-added services in addition to EC3. This combination now frees my data along with my applications.

The Linux Desktop Opportunity

This opportunity is the same for Linux as it is for Mac. If you are no longer dependent on your desktop operating system for tight application integration you have a lot more freedom in your desktop platform. That opens the door for Linux. Frankly, I use an Apple OS X desktop (which supports my EVDO card) for my work laptop but much of the time I prefer the quick response of my Ubuntu operating system running on a Dell laptop which costs about one-third of the what my Mac Book Pro does. With a little tweaking and growing hardware support (for me it’s support for my Verizon EVDO card) I see Linux desktops like the AsusEEE being a good alternative to one running Windows. If all your apps are in the network it’s likely you could use inexpensive desktop computers at work running Linux and ultra-mobile PCs on the road. I don’t expect a massive migration to Linux or Mac from Windows. I just envision a opportunity for a greater and more realistic number of choices for desktop computing.

And who do we have to thank…Gamazon?

Technorati Tags: amazon, Google, Microsoft Windows, Novell, OLPC, SUSE, Ubuntu

At LinuxFestNW this weekend I ran into a company, Zareason, that sells computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. Not just desktops but laptops that have camera’s, wi-fi, and support for power management of modern laptops.

Zareason started out refurbishing computers in Berkley, CA and soon realized there was a demand for new Linux laptops and PCs. That’s when they started selling re-branded laptops from Asus and desktops from Shuttle. They tell me that they are one of Ubuntu’s larger OEMs. The thing I thought was really novel is that unlike most manufacturers that have disclaimers about cracking the case of your laptop voiding the warranty Zareason laptops actually come with a screwdriver and an Open Hardware Warranty. The Open Hardware warranty states:

We actually encourage you to lift the lid and see what makes your system hum inside. It’s your system after all and we want knowledgeable users, not dependent users.

If you want a supported Linux laptop at reasonable prices and you like to tinker you may want to consider Zareason for your next Linux laptop.

Technorati Tags: Laptops, Open Hardware, Ubuntu, Warranty, Zareason

When you live in Raleigh, NC you realize any trip to the west coast isn’t direct. What’s really bad is when you I to a small city on the west coast  I have a double layover trip. This time to beautiful Bellingham, WA. Today I will be enjoying the fine amenities of the Atlanta and Salt Lake airports.  Luckily, LinuxFest NW is one of my favorite Linux festivals and Bellingham is a neat little town that lies between the mountains and the ocean about 60 miles from Vancouver, British Columbia.

If you are coming to the show stop by the Zenoss booth and say “Hello” or come to my talk on Saturday morning at 11:00 a.m on Zenoss Core.

Technorati Tags: Belllingham, LinuxFest Northwest, Travel, Washington, Zenoss

I saw an announcement that the OpenMicroServer (OMS) is now available in the U.S. It has been produced in Japan for some time but has just been made available domestically. What’s cool about it is that it is small  and can be powered from an Ethernet port. It reminded me of the BlackDog USB Server that made a splash a couple years back.The little OMS only measures 9” x 4” x 1.3′ It’s officially supported for Debian (Etch) and NetBSD. Plat’Home also maintains their own OS SSD/Linux which is a combination of Linux and BSD code. I love little gadgets like these and try to figure out some innovative ways to use them.

The OMS would be a cool security device that could run Nessus or Snort to scan for security vulnerabilities.  Or you could use it as a little virus scanning device running ClamAV. For highly secure data centers you could turn the OpenMicroServer into a portable YUM server to bring in updates only have they have been downloaded and tested the downloads outside the firewall.  It looks like Plat’Home, the company that distributes the OMS, is also advocating it as a VPN server running their software but I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be used with an OSS solution like OpenVPN. 

First off the OMS doesn’t have a hard drive but does have a compact flash slot for storage for a persistent OS. 

The specs for the OMS are as follows: 

• Gigabit Ethernet (2 ports)
• Separate Ethernet port for administration or dedicated line
• Internal Compact Flash card slot
• USB 2.0 ports (2)
• Dust-resistant semi-hermetic construction
• Stable under maximum ambient operating temperature of 50°C/122°F(when using PoE)
• RoHS environment directive compliant

Full specs are here.  

What would you do with a Ethernet-powered server that small? 

Technorati Tags: ClamAV, debian, Linux, Nessus, NetBSD, OpenMicroServer, PoE, Snort

Mandrake Linux Founder now Ulteo Chairman and CTO Gaël Duval today announced a new beta release of the Ulteo Online Desktop a hosted desktop solution built from open source technology. The Ulteo product suite includes the following:

• Ulteo Online Desktop (Ulteo OD, version 1): UOD lets users store their documents online, and open them with a choice of applications that run within their web-browser (Firefox, IE and others).
• Ulteo Application System (Ulteo AS, beta1): is an installable version of Ulteo, for a PC
• Storage: Ulteo offers up to one gigabyte of storage for Ulteo desktop users

There is a free access beta and Ulteo will supply additional service levels for a price.  There isn’t a lot of information on the Ulteo website but I took the online version for a spin. I thought this was interesting because back in 2000 I was an executive at a firm that did the exact same thing. My experience at the time was that the applications available at the time didn’t have good enough interoperability with Windows standard applications to be practical. With Microsoft and other moving toward supporting an XML document standard 

Ulteo: Thin Client Computing 

The Ulteo Online desktop is a Linux desktop using KDE that redisplays to a Java enabled browser. You can choose to run a full desktop or individual office applications from the OpenOffice.org Suite. The redisplay technology used to display the UOD is VNC. My experience was not great with performance or screen refreshes running on Mac OS X. You can see the cursor trails on the screenshots below. 

The Ulteo site warns that you need the Sun JRE and to run the UOD and so Ubuntu users who haven’t installed it make sure to do so. The one criticism that I have is in the choice of redisplay technologies. It looks like Ulteo has chosen to use VNC protocol to redisplay the desktop. Using RealVNC or TightVNC performance might help but can be less than optimal for productivity applications. My preference for Linux and open source friendly redisplay would be NoMachine which performs well in low bandwidth and latent network environments.

Here’s some screenshots of Ulteo in action though they aren’t that telling. It’s simply a themed KDE Linux desktop environment. 

Ulteo Bootup Screen 

Ulteo Deskop

Ulteo Running OpenOffice.org  

Verdict

This is simply a beta so I am reserving judgment on Ulteo’s first product offering. Normally, I would say this idea has come and past. For core productivity applications the market has skipped over personal thin client computing to rich Internet applications like Google Docs,Instant Messaging (Meebo), and web mail. However, for people to move completely to a web-based online desktop you either need to have all your applications available from a web browser. Here are some of the Ulteo challenges and opportunities. 

• Google Desktop – Google’s combination of applications including docs and email for productivity is formidable. Using Ulteo in that capacity is probably only going to appeal to privacy advocates (See the Ulteo Privacy Policy for their details) and those who are more inclined to favor Linux. Ulteo would do well to carve out a niche that’s not a frontal assault on the Google offering.
• Legacy Application Migration – The opportunity for Ulteo could be migrating legacy applications running on DOS (yep there are still many point of sale and other applications out there) to run on DOSEmu
• Community Powered – Here’s why I think that Ulteo is noteworthy. Ulteo founder, Gaël Duval at one point had driven Mandrake to be one of the most active Linux and open source communities on the web. The forums at Ulteo already show good activity even before the product has launched and there’s also a significant team participating in the project:
• Thierry Koehrlen – CEO, VP Product Development
• Gaël Duval – Chairman, CTO
• Alain Revah – Advisor
• Daniel Zumino – Angel
• Daniele Favara aka nomed – Lead Engineer
• Gauvain Pocentek – Developer
• Arnau Vàzquez Palma – Developer
• Julien Langlois – Developer
• Laurent Clouet – Developer
• Sandaruwan Gunathilake – Web developer
• Jérémie Corbet – Developer
• Antoine Walter aka anw – Web Engineer
• Jeremy Desvages aka Jejem – Web Engineer

For now the jury is out. I am not clear if Ulteo will be a viable commercial company or simply and interesting application of open source technologies. I will post as their product matures and goes live. 

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Docs, KDE, Meebo, mobile applications, NoMachine, office, online desktop, Open Office, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, rich internet applciations, Thin client computing, utleo, VNC

Recently, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on two laptops. One of my first tasks after updating all my software was to install my favorite Firefox extensions. Unfortunately I was unable to do so. I didn’t receive an error message the download and installation process just stalled.

I wondered if the problem was Ubuntu specific so I scoured the Ubuntu forums and tried numerous fixes to try to get my extensions to install.  I changed permissions in my plug-in directory, reinstalled, and deleted directories and preferences. I discounted network problems because I could easily download and install on Mac OS X. I then went and looked at the Ubuntu Forums for help.  

I was getting suspicious so I rebooted from the Ubuntu live install CD and had the same problem running from the liveCD. This was puzzling I figured I did something funky during my installation.  

I believe what was happening was that the download was timing out but I had no idea why.It seems that some Linux distributions and contributions have difficulties with the IPv6 protocoI then stumbled upon this tip. Firefox on some Linux about:config in the URL bar and change the network.dns.disableIPv6 setting to true.

Here’s an explanation of the Network.dns.disableIPV6 setting from the mozillaZine Knowledge Base.   

IPv6 was designed in part to solve the problem IPv4 will soon be facing: the exhaustion of all possible IP addresses. Mozilla implemented IPv6support in early 2000, but that support did not receive wide spread testing until recently as IPv6-capable OSs and network software/equipment became more common.

One particular bug that has appeared exists not in Mozilla, but in IPv6-capable DNS servers: an IPv4 address may be returned when anIPv6 address is requested. It is possible for Mozilla to recover from this misinformation, but a significant delay is introduced.

I also looked for some hints in the Ubuntu bug database and found that the IPv6 problem does affect other programs too. I wish I had a better insight on why exactly the problem happens but hopefully I saved someone a few hours.  

Technorati Tags: extensions, failure, Firefox, Install, IPV6, Mozilla, Ubuntu