have just become aware of yet another Ubuntu-based distribution (Kubuntu and Edubuntu aside). It is currently using the codebase from version 5 to form a derivative. This distribution, which is called nUbuntu, features the beautiful Fluxbox, which is probably the most attractive window manager among Enlightenment, Matacity, WindowMaker and Sawfish in GNOME (KDE uses kwin).

MEPIS have recently made bold move to become a Ubuntu derivative rather than a Debian derivative. Debian is, of course, the father of Ubuntu. It seems apparent from recent surveys that Debian-type distributions outnumber Red Hat- and SuSE-based distributions. Google continue to use Ubuntu in-house, even on the desktop. They call it Goobuntu.

OW that Windows Vista’s release has been delayed (due to security, drivers, etc.) and a revamped Office has been delayed too, certain predictions seem truer than ever before.

It was only a couple of days ago that Apache’s head permitted 10 years before the complete eclipse, wherein commercial software ceases to exist ‘in the wild’. Essentially, such a scenario would make commercial software (binaries) lose all value. It may serve no purpose as accompanying code will just lodge on the shelves to collect dust. This outlook must be the rationale behind Xara Xtreme going from commercial all the way to the GPL — a complete 180!

It seems ever more evident that any Windows ‘box booter’ and Visual Basic-only programmer could soon become obsolete, unless Open Source skills are quickly acquired. The next couple of years will be rather intersting as they will bring radical changes to the software development market.

Bill Gates recently stated very clearly that the future of computing is in services. This must the reason why many of his executives have already defected to Google and certain governmental departments are migrating to Open Source, which is independent from opaque packages. All that is left, on the face of it, are big budgets for brainwash of businesses and vendors, as well as IT managers and the public.

Related item: Windows Vista is Service Pack III (parody)

Some argue that this would be the last operating system from Microsoft

FTER some long experience with a large variety of E-mail clients, I settled on Mozilla Thunderbird. I did so without any hesitation once the application was sufficiently mature. Thunderbird is immaculate: stable, predictable, highly-extensible and even interoperable (including importers and exporters).

A calendaring component for Mozilla Thunderbird (version 1.5 or later) has been officially released. It bridges a certain gap where Sunbird, as well as another third-party applications, integrated calendaring into Thunderbird insufficiently well. The last time I checked, one such Thunderbird extension was developed to become Windows-compatible only (shame on the developer/s).

The site introduces the new extension as follows:

The Lightning Project is a redesign of the Calendar component. Its goal is to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Mozilla Thunderbird.

I am still reluctant to move my calendar from a portable Palm PDA onto a desktop. It can have an adverse effect on partability. I will have to look into the interaction between the two, as well as multiple desktops. I currently have close to 10 Thunderbird extensions, which make it beyond bloated (albeit very stable and robust, unlike an overloaded Firefox).

Related items:

• Tabs in Thunderbird
• Thunderbird versus Outlook
• Thunderbird Aqua
• Mail Readers Survey

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

N my own eyes at least, this story is pretty remarkable as it marks a certain milsetone. Sony, being a large and proprietary-oriented brand, has opted for Open Source solutions. The news has so far it has been covered in techworld.com and computerpartner.nl. To quote:

Sony Online Entertainment is to replace some Oracle databases with software from EnterpriseDB in a vote of confidence for the open-source company. Sony is the company’s biggest customer win to date.

Oracle’s acquisition of Open Source companies was not enough to prevent the inevitable. They even tried to buy and thus eliminate MySQL, unsuccessfully so.

According to the French, OpenOffice is far more affordable than Microsoft Office. Although the figures do not account for running costs, at least on the face of it, they provide an initial estimate of TCO.

The French tax agency claims that upgrading its 80,000 desktops to Office XP would cost €29.5m, but switching to OpenOffice.org only €200,000

In other news, France will invest plenty of money in Open Source projects. The story’s original source states:

Capgemini, LINAGORA and Bull recently won the largest Open Source support, maintenance and solution development project in the country, as part of the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industry’s COPERNIC program. The deal is worth a minimum of €15 million and a maximum of €40 million over three years.

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

This afternoon, I came across a statement that was simply too difficult to ignore.

According to IT services provider, Unisys, open source software is set to have a similar impact on the marketplace as the internet did in the 1990s.

Coming from a senior giant like Unisys, such prediction cannot be immediately dismissed.

Related item: The Death of Commercial Software

EDUCTION in the number of PC sales is expected for the year to come. As well as an economical study on the matter, one can find the the corresponding evidence in the media.

What does that all mean in terms of people’s software upgrade cycle, as opposed to the hardware cycle? Since the crushing majority of all computers are being sold with Windows pre-installed, this should be good news. Rather than hopping onto a new hardware beast, people could choose operating systems which are less resource-greedy. Ubuntu comes to mind as modest although KDE-based distributions like SuSE (even with some serious ‘eye candy’) should do.

Sales of PCs worldwide will grow at a slower pace in 2006 than in 2005, partly because the replacement cycle for desktop PCs has hit a peak, market researcher Gartner said last week.

[...]

Gartner also warned that worldwide PC shipment growth could fall below the current forecast of 10.7 percent if Microsoft doesn’t set a precise release date for its new Vista operating system and if end users shy away from adopting newly-introduced Intel technologies.

It has been claimed that only half of today’s computers can cope with Windows Vista. No new machines = No Vista, which is encouraging news for the Open Source community.

It is worth mentioning that several countries around the world, government divisions includes, have begun a migration to Linux. Open Source has been making the big headlines recently.