The subject of this week's Linux Picks and Pans is a representative of a less well-known computing platform that coexists with Linux as an open source operating system. If you thought that the Linux kernel was the only open source engine for a free OS, think again. The Berkeley Software Distribution...

Migrating to the Linux platform is not an either/or proposition. Linux as a computing platform is so flexible that it offers users a have-it-your-way menu of software options. One option is the Linux desktop. Individual users in home computing, SOHO and SMB operations can choose from a variety of en...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...

The Kindle Fire, the Android-based tablet Amazon revealed in late September, could well be the next step in the ongoing metamorphosis of Google's Linux derivative into a proprietary operating system. Even if Amazon does not lock down its altered Android platform, it clearly has created a major fork ...

My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too. Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average...

Two weeks ago I looked at IBM's forthcoming cell processor architecture and last week speculated about the impact it might have on the x86 desktop. This week, I want to go beyond that and look at the impact the cell architecture will have on the battle for server dominance over the next five years. ...

The tension in the room is as thick as quicksand. The smoke gets heavier by the hour, and with each poker hand, the players wonder how long they can hold out. Who will hold? Who will fold? Who is just bluffing? One by one, they drop. The ongoing legal wrangling between SCO, IBM, Novell, AutoZone, Da...

My Web logs show that somebody asked Google an interesting question sometime just before 08:03:41 Eastern on January 24th and then again sometime before 04:54:29 Eastern on January 26th. As entered the first time, the search was for "linux to unix relationship," although that became "relationship of...

ArcoLinux is a big change for the better for anyone switching from another Linux distro to the Arch infrastructure. ArcoLinux previously was known as "ArchMerge Linux." It is a rolling update distribution based on Arch Linux, but it offers an unusual learning path to make assimilating into the Arch ...

As cloud popularity grows, so does the collection of free or low-cost online office tools that services like Microsoft Office Online and Google Docs/G Suite provide. However, those two major league offerings, along with a swarm of other cloud-based productivity platforms, are proprietary. Until now,...

If "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" summed up all that was wrong in Jan's world on "The Brady Bunch" all those many decades ago, an equivalent for today's computing world might be, "tablets, tablets, tablets!" After all, the widely hyped new devices pretty well dominated the news coming out of CES, and the...