TuxRunner

How long has Linux been around?  I mean seriously, I think we’re going on two decades of Linux existence at this point.  I think it’s been around long enough now to prove itself quite useful in MANY different areas.  The question I’d like to have answered is NOT “Is Linux ready for the desktop?”.  It’s not even “Can Linux work in the workplace?”  I know it’s ready and can do both.  The real question is…. “Is Linux welcomed in Corporate America?”

I think it would be foolish to deny that we live and work in a Windows-dominated world.  I think everyone pretty much knows that at this point.  Sysadmins, Mac users, even my mom knows that.  Corporate environments are for sure dominated with Windows-powered computers, yet why?  Is it the fancy corporate support Microsoft provides?  Seriously, have any of you called Microsoft for help with Windows on the desktop at work, ever?  No, you probably call your “IT guy” or department.  And usually they’re savvy enough to fix it without involving Microsoft.  If they can’t, they re-image your PC and be done with it. (continue reading…)

I have to admit, when I first started seeing news about Microsoft releasing code to be included with the Linux kernel, I thought that the world had stopped spinning.  Really, this is like GM designing the engine block for a Ford vehicle, and submitting it to them for use on their next line of cars.  Unheard of (well, maybe it’s possible now since all of the car companies are trying to get out of the same hole.)

I thought for sure this was going to float like a lead balloon with the Linux community.  Seems that in some areas of the open-source community it has, people are not happy with this. Then I read Linus Torvalds’ reaction to the submission and was proud to hear what he had to say! (continue reading…)

Next attempt at getting a fairly stable copy of Linux on my Cloudbook: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.  I decided to give this a try because of a few comments I found on the Netbook User Forums talking about some changes that were made into the 2.6.26 kernel and beyond which may have introduced more instability with the Cloudbook.  I’d really like to run the latest version of Ubuntu/Mint, but if it’s actually more troublesome than the older version…forget it, I just want a nice usable device.

Ran into a couple of gotchas already with just installing it.  First, I don’t have an external CD/DVD drive I can use to do the install.  So I have to resort to installing from USB thumb drive.  I found a great little program called Unetbootin which allows you to take just about any Linux ISO and make a USB thumb drive bootable and put a copy of that ISO on it.  It also has a decent list of “known” distros that it can automatically download the ISO for, and then create the bootable USB thumb drive. (continue reading…)