ComputerWorld has an interesting commentary from Nicholas Petreley. He looks at the development library that runs KDE, and also happens to be a dandy tool to develop software for nearly every popular platform. But with all this fuss being made about C# vs. Java and the competing frameworks, it's easy to forget that there are many other options for application development. My favorite is Qt, from Trolltech AS. The latest version of Qt, Version 3.0, is the foundation for the phenomenal K Desktop Environment (KDE). I'm crazy about KDE 3.0, so it should come as no surprise that I'm equally enamored with Qt.
What is Open Source? It is a simple enough question, yet the answer has become so obscure that it is anything but simple. The phrase is undisputedly at the core of what drives the Linux community even while it eludes nearly everyone as to what its exact definition is.
Gary Krakow of MSNBC gives a very nice, positive review of AbiWord, an open source word processor which recently hit version 1.0. “It works on most major OS platforms and supports many languages; it's able to read and write most documents in Microsoft Word's .doc format, as well as twenty others; its authors claim it can do most of what Word can; and best of all it's free. It's been in the works for years, but is AbiWord really that good?”
Those of you who regularly visit Open for Business, perhaps since its founding days at the LX-Talk mailing list last September, may have noticed some changes lately. While many of these changes are slight, we hope the end result will be to help you not only keep informed on the latest open source news, but to do so more efficiently.
RedHat, Inc., the leading Linux vendor, announced the
availability of RedHat Linux 7.3 earlier this week. The new
package looks very much like the latest Mandrake and SuSE Linux
releases in respect to the software included, save a few
surprises mentioned below. Interestingly enough, it seems that the most intriguing part
of the new release is not the distribution at all.
Dennis Powell of Linux and Main looks at one of the worst (and most popular) Linux advocacy methods and how it overlooks open source's true advantages. I know people who have embraced Linux chiefly because the alternative (if they are to use Intel-architecture hardware) is to use Windows, and for some reason they're not of a mood to go the *BSD route. For some of them, Linux might as well be named “Not Windows,” because that is the only feature they require. When they write or speak, their hatred of Microsoft (a not unreasonable position, by the way) is quickly evident. Their support of Linux, while rabid, is more a function of their dislike of Microsoft than of their affection for Linux or delight in its power and reliability.
OpenOffice.org, the open source foundation of Sun's StarOffice 6 office suite, announced the availability of its 1.0 release today. While the suite has been stable for a few months, this release no doubt symbolizes its readiness to move from the developer to the consumer.
ZDNet Tech Update's Rich Castagna notes that everything seems to be going right for Linux in the server arena. When Linux made its first impact on the IT scene, it did so largely as a protest—a protest against expensive server software and hardware, against platforms bloated with features that few used, and, of course, against Microsoft. The anti-Microsoft undercurrent still flows strongly, perhaps even stronger today in the wake of the DOJ antitrust proceedings. But now, Linux has found its legs not for something it isn't, but for what it is.
Open source columnist Nick Petreley has an interesting piece over at ComputerWorld noting that desktop Linux is on the way. “I kicked the Windows habit back in 1997 and have since been using Linux exclusively as my productivity desktop operating system. Yes, I know I'm in the minority. But while you understandably nodded off some years ago while waiting for Linux to conquer the desktop, you probably don't want to snooze much longer, or you could wake up to a whole different world.”
NeTraverse announced today the release of Win4Lin 4.0 Workstation Edition, the fourth generation of the SCO Merge-based Windows-on-Linux software. Win4Lin is similar in concept to VMware, except that it focuses purely on running Windows 9x, and as such has been known to run Windows applications at close to native speeds.