OStatic

Because it's only proper to give credit where it's due, Matt Kohut, Worldwide Competitive Analyst for Lenovo, could be spot on in his prediction that Linux will remain a niche market on netbooks. Heck, netbooks could be called a niche market -- I guess it would all come down to how you define and apply niche in given areas.

Usually, when someone (particularly an industry analyst) puts forth such a prediction, it is followed by the reasoning that drew him to such a conclusion. Kohut explained his theory to TECH.BLORGE, highlighting a few issues Linux grapples with today, and many, many more that were laid to rest years ago.

Over at ComputerWorld, Seth Weintraub waxes poetic about Microsoft's decision to offer a Windows 7 Starter edition to keep its presence strong in the netbook arena, and why this is a huge advantage for Google's Linux-based Android.

Windows 7 Starter edition is designed to run no more than three applications simultaneously -- purchasing an upgrade allows users to run, presumably, as many apps as their netbooks can handle at one time. Now, three concurrent applications at a shot might be sufficient for a number of users; it might be all that some netbooks can handle, depending on the applications and system resources running in the background. Microsoft isn't hiding the fact it is experimenting with a limited Starter, and hopefully netbook manufacturers will also make buyers aware of this. But awareness and being almost sufficient in even most cases is irrelevant. It's the concept that there is a limit, and purchasing an upgrade for functionality that most won't need every day (but when it's needed, it's really needed) that will make netbooks running alternative operating systems increasingly attractive. It's an advantage not only for Android, but any Linux distribution netbook builders optimize for their hardware.

Early Saturday morning, U.S. President Barack Obama named Aneesh Chopra, Virginia's Secretary of Technology, the country's new Chief Technology Officer. While some in the tech industry were more than a little disappointed that the appointee wasn't one of their own, others are optimistic about what Chopra can do for technology in government (especially where health care is concerned). Tim O'Reilly goes into particularly fine detail about what this appointment means for open source.

A few weeks ago, on the WebWorkerDaily blog, I did a post called The Home Wi-Fi Reboot: Don't Neglect It. It discussed a problem I was having with my home Wi-Fi network, where I was occasionally getting dropped connections. I solved the problem I had by doing a cycled reboot of my router, access points, computers, and checking all physical connections, followed by a channel change on my router. (Changing channels can get rid of interference problems with other wireless devices.)

I was really interested, though, in several of the reader comments that came in about using open source firmware on a wireless router. Here are the two open source firmware products that readers mentioned to me, and why you want to know about them if you have a home Wi-Fi network. You can get a better wireless signal and improved performance with these, and much more.

Google Chrome update offers tab micromanagement options. The 2.0.174.0 update released Thursday adds features such as the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page.

The five best, new things in Ubuntu Linux 9.04. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols cites his favorite additions.

Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth: Oracle is a litmus test for Linux, Ubuntu. Here's what he has to say about the lack of Oracle certification for 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Common public license (CPL) merged into Eclipse. The two licenses were already similar, so a merger made sense.

Zamzar now converts text to speech. This free application was already useful for file conversions, and now you can take advantage of text-to-speech features for documents, PDFs and more.