OStatic

What if the Elliott Associates bid for Novell is just the beginning of a financial game? Here is how that game might play out.

Microsoft's desktop future may look like a phone. Just as Apple and Google have desktop operating systems going mobile, Microsoft wil too.

Google open source guru says Android code will be in Linux kernel in time. Chris Dibona said he doesn?t think the Android phone operating system code is any more a fork of Linux than Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Can open source make 311 relevant? It's the 911 for non-emergency calls, but never went anywhere.

How to get Linux to boot in one second. MontaVista Software specializes in embedded Linux commercialization.

Will open source accept Microsoft leadership? Its sponsoring the upcoming Open Source Business Conference, but does the FOSS community accept the company yet?

Top 10 open source server technologies you need to know. From Zenoss to Apache, there are lots of server tools you can leverage.

Fitting Android and a processor on a SIM card. South Korea's SK Telecom has all the major components needed to run Android on a card.

PHP job growth not linked to multilingual developers. Some surprising other factors are central to the rise of PHP gigs.

Is MeeGo Linux's answer to the iPad? Linux can compete on price, but where?s the magic?

Stop me if you've heard this one before -- the reason why so many people choose Windows over alternative platforms is because there are too many choices.

All right, hold on to your hats, folks. In a few cases, I think that's an accurate statement. Why? Because people just want to use their computer. I also know that when given a computer running an alternative operating system, this same demographic happily gets on with using the computer.

On the desktop, of course, there's been a long history of vendors pushing proprietary operating systems by default. While it appears that trend will change in the future, it's already changing in the mobile arena.

Microsoft's Robbie Bach is applying the old argument to the new playing field. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, unsurprisingly, thinks this is a bad move on Microsoft's part.

One of the difficulties open source software faces is in implementing support ? where it is even possible to do so ? for the wide variety of codecs, formats, and other proprietary technologies that users have come to rely on. One such technology is Microsoft's Silverlight framework, which until early this year, was a no-go for Linux users.

That changed in January, when the first version of the Moonlight project ? a collaboration between the Novell-sponsored Mono project and Microsoft, begun in 2007 ? was released, providing Linux users with Open Source Silverlight support.

How to avoid modern day public GPL floggings. Here are some simple guidelines.

Desktop virtualization for Windows and Linux heats up. VMware Workstation 7 is still king for developers and techs, but innovative VirtualBox 3.1 and easy-to-use Parallels Desktop 4 gain ground.

Microsoft crippled by its antitrust past. The company seems haunted by previous monopolies.

Open source, Linux set for unheralded coronation in 2010. No more will open source and Linux be the scruffy-bearded outsider.

Eucalyptus cloud platform updated. It now features multi-cluster support and enhanced concurrency management for improved scaling on almost any infrastructure.

Linux to own 32 percent of the netbook market? ABI Research predicts that Linux will get there, particularly because of sales in less developed countries.

What would make you trust Microsoft? Without the competition of open source, would Microsoft?s trend toward bureaucracy have ever been slowed?

Amazon's move mocks EU's fear of Oracle. Oracle hasn't even started with MySQL yet, and it already faces significant competition from forks like Amazon's.

Why Funambol acquired Zapatec. Fabrizio Capobianco explains how the move extends Funambol's mobile tech strategy.

Linux is booming, but unpaid adoption may hurt vendors. IDC is projecting Linux revenue to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 16.9 percent from 2008 to 2013, but nonpaid usage abounds.

WineXS: a simple graphical environment to configure Wine. Wine is a well-liked compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux, and here is an easy way to get going with it.

SpringSource enables Java cloud apps. Cloud Foundry is an enterprise Java cloud where developers can sign in and deploy Spring, Grails, or other Java apps within a public cloud.

Report: OpenOffice doesn't infringe like MS Word. After the permanent injunction barring Microsoft from selling Word, many wondered if it would affect OpenOffice, and here are the details.

Larry Augustin: Open source fueling enterprise software shift. Over time you will see Microsoft adopt more open source principles as they strive to continue to make Windows relevant, he says.

Ever since netbooks--low priced, ultra-mobile computers with very low price points--became a hot hardware category, with both Linux and Windows versions available, reports have flown around saying that the return rates for Linux netbooks are vastly higher than return rates for Windows machines. Kevin Turner, Microsoft's COO, helped fuel the fire by saying that return rates for Linux netbooks are more than four times higher than return rates for Windows netbooks, here.? I challenge you to find a retailer who wants to sell Linux on these netbooks, because the returns are bad, Turner said.

That position has been challenged a number of times, with the most serious challenges coming from netbook manufacturers. Asus' CEO has said that return rates for Linux netbooks are no higher than they are for Windows systems.?He ought to know, and he's also said that Linux netbooks are quite popular in Europe, where overall open source adoption is high. Now, as The Register reports,?Dell, the number two computer manufacturer in the world, is refuting Turner's position as well.