Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols's Most Recent Posts

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

The good news is that Dell is now shipping Ubuntu Light, an instant-on version of Ubuntu, on at least one Dell Windows laptop. The bad news is that Dell isn't telling you this and that their Windows systems can be cheaper than their Ubuntu systems.

We're beginning to see who ends up with Unix and other intellectual property in the Novell deal. Hint: Microsoft did just fine for itself.

Attachmate may be the official owner, but I believe Microsoft is the real power behind the Novell buyout. Here's why.

VMware dropped out and Attachmate, with some help from Microsoft, ends up buying Novell.

A new, small scheduler patch may give the Linux desktop an incredible speed boost.

It won't happen immediately, but the X Window System, the long time mainstay of Unix and Linux graphical interfaces seems to be on its way out.

Technically, there are no big surprises in the just released RHEL 6. What's more important is that, with this announcement, RHEL has become one of the two mainstream server operating systems.

And, the future of Java lies in the balance.

Ubuntu isn't just changing their desktop look; they're changing the Linux desktop itself.

Ubuntu is continuing to forge its own path. Now, it's dropping the venerable X Window System from its desktop foundation to use Wayland instead.

I'd thought that Android Linux tablets would end-up delayed until next year. Now, it looks like they're going to get here sooner than that thanks to Amazon and Barnes & Nobles turning their e-readers into tablets.

Open source's open ways have just run into Apple's App Store iron-clad restrictions and VideoLAN's VLC broke.

We like to talk about open-source being a meritocracy of developers, but really isn't just as much about the people who can lead programmers?

Besides its new Unity interface, the next desktop version of Ubuntu Linux will feature new applications-and some of them, like Banshee, won't make everyone happy.