Debian on a Compaq. Compaq were
acquired by HP and Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux.

NE of the key challenges that Linux has faced lately was its inability to get shipped by giant hardware distributors. A milestone can now be marked as Hewlett Packard begins to sell Ubuntu Linux, pre-installed on both desktops and laptops.

HP’s Sean Owen-Jones… said the company would shortly be releasing desktop and notebook PCs running Ubuntu Linux. The NX6110 notebook would be available shortly with Ubuntu and a desktop PC would also be available.

…

[HP's] Schulz said that HP’s entire email infrastructure… is run on Linux and delivers in the region of three terrabytes [sic] of mail annually.

Next up: Dell Computers.

Why you might ask?

Rather recently, Michael Dell asked Steve Job (of Apple) if he could take advantage of Mac OS X, which is now compatible with x86 architectures. Mac OS X , which is Linux-based (see correction in comment), can easily be incorporated into a massive stock of Dell machines. Tiger, being the most recent version of Mac OS, is taking some niches by storm already, security and eye candy being a major pro.

More importantly, as I pointed out 2 months ago, Michael Dell gave $100,000,000 to RedHat Linux out of his own pocket while Fujitsu opted for SuSE Linux and server support services.

To spice up this discussion, a Gartner Group study concluded that mainstream use of open source in IT environments may be just 5 years away. What a glorious turn of events.

Somebody had to clean up the trash

have come across a very funny and heavily-cited story from a guy who turned down a job at Microsoft, the “king of proprietary”. I particularly enjoyed reading his reply to the recruiter, a snippet of which lies below:

On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive.

Flush the full capacities of the hardware…

…or throw away money purchasing a new computer

Details about demanding system requirements in Windows Vista are unveiled in an item from bit-tech.net.

CPU: Threading is the main target for Vista. Currently, very little of Windows XP is threaded…

…

RAM: 2GB is the ideal configuration for 64-bit Vista, we’re told.

…

Display: Prepare to feel the red mist of rage – no current TFT monitor out there is going to support high definition playback in Vista.

The worrisome hardware requirements were mentioned previously in an item titled Vista Perils. To be more impartial, Jaguar/Tiger are said to be resource hogs as well. It is primarily due to animations and transparent widgets, at the bottom of which there is on-the-fly indexing of data. Likewise, KDE (Linux window manager) can be computationally-expensive if customised to behave this way.

Your eyes do not mislead you. This is Linux.

DE-LOOK.ORG is already including some themes for KDE version 4, which I impatiently anticipate. Shown above is Black Halloween, a Mac OS X-like theme.

The theme loosely relates to a previous item on Mac OS X-like themes for KDE (notice the clean shadow casting). While on the subject of Apple themes, my Jaguar-reminiscent Firefox theme is shown below and is available for download/installation. I believe it will remain compatible with Mozilla Firefox 1.5 (I am yet to test it tonight), which is now in release candidate phase!

Mac OS X theme for Firefox

I have found a very amusing Flash clip involving Monkey Boy Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. He sure seems to love his iPod, but so does the Queen of England.

Context: Massachusetts says Goodbye to Office – including a reference to Ballmer’s ugly side.

HERE appears to have been a recent growth in PageRank and SEO analysis tools. Such tools have an on-line front-end (interface) so they are easily and readily accessible. Here is a short survey of tools that not only have I used, but I can also confirm are valuable:

• Simple PageRank prediction tool (RustyBrick)
• Tippy PageRank comparisons (temporary location)
• Multi-URL PageRank prediction
• Search engines saturation check
• Google cache lookup
• Google datacentres and IBL‘s
• Netcraft uptime statistics – risk factor, server, and host lookup
• Page analysis and optimisation

We shall soon see yet another powerful laptop that runs Linux and Windows. Pay careful attention to the specs though:

Processor: 6.8GHZ CPU (AtomChip® Quantum® II processor or 4 x Intel® Pentium® M processors 1.7CHz) / System Compliance: Two Operating Systems with Voice Command (Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional and Linux®) / Memory: 1TB Quantum-Optical non-volatile RAM (NvIOpSRAM-SODIMM 200-pin) / Storage: 2TB non-volatile Quantum RAM (NvIOpRAM-ATA IDE)

UPDATE 08/09/2005 14:00 – there are speculations that the source may be over-enthusiastic or even a hoax.