Those who closely followed the first OOXML standardization vote (in which OOXML was not standardized, but was given a chance to make changes and be voted on again) will remember that shortly before the vote, many Microsoft partners joined the group of voting members in the standardization process and voted in favor of OOXML. At the time, I felt that that tactic seemed scummy, as many Microsoft tactics do, but I did not think legal action would be taken against them for it. Now it has, or at least it might.

The EU, continuing to keep a close watch on Microsoft, is beginning an investigation into Microsoft’s actions in the first OOXML vote to decide if anything illegal was done, according to the Standards Blog. Although it is not clear if this investigation will have any impact on Microsoft or the OOXML vote (the author of the Standards Blog says he believes that this investigation will not have enough time to effect the upcoming vote,) the more attention is brought to bear on Microsoft’s questionable practices the better. The more these issues are put in front of people, the more likely it is that Microsoft’s opposition will become unified to fight back against these unfair practices.

A recent Linux.com article related the experience of its author in setting up Ubuntu for his mother.  A subsequent post on The Open Road responded to this article by saying that anything that requires an explanation of how it worked out is too complicated and that Linux sacrifices usability for control. The author of this post also made a comparison with his own experience having his family members switch to the Mac. While I agree that setting up Ubuntu was somewhat complicated, the author of the post does not seem to understand that the same project would have been much harder, if not impossible, if Windows had been used.

The most obvious issue complicating the Linux.com author’s project was that the computer was built from spare parts the author happened to have lying around. This can potentially complicate the project in a number of ways (trying to find drivers, not good enough specs,) but neither of these issues were really the problem. I do not know what exactly would have happened if Windows had been installed on a computer like this, but I can tell you that Vista would not have worked. Once XP is discontinued, Linux will become the only option for old computers.

Another problem from recycling old parts is that you have to install the OS yourself. The author of the post seems to think that installing Windows or OS X is easy compared to installing Linux, but he is really comparing having the OS pre-installed (with Windows or OS X) to having to install the OS oneself. A computer novice will not want to install the OS himself no matter what OS it is, and if you are looking for a computer with an OS pre-installed, there are multiple Linux choices for around $200. (Side note: I have installed Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Windows Vista and I can tell you that none of them are “hard” to install, but I find that Ubuntu is the least painful, since, at least in my experience, it takes the least time.)

After the OS was installed, all that was left to do was customize the interface to be more familiar and install applications that were similar to Windows applications. When you install an OS, you almost always have to install applications and this would be the same on any OS. In fact, in Ubuntu you have a lot more applications available out of the box, reducing the chance you have to install more applications.

The other customization the Linux.com author made was to remove the top panel and customize the bottom one to make it seem more like Windows. To do something like this on Linux, you just have to do some right clicking and drag and dropping. To do this on Windows, you need commercial software. To do this on OS X, well… can you do anything like that on OS X?

While Linux might not have gotten everything perfectly out of the box, compared to what you would have to do to make Windows or OS X work in this situation, it was really quite easy.

News Link: US Army Has Decided to Covert to Linux

(For anyone not familiar with the Linux mascot, the silhouette in from of Uncle Sam is Tux, the Linux mascot.)

Please let me know if you would like to see more comics in the future. If this becomes a regular thing, they will go in a separate part of this site, I think.

Credit: Army poster is in public domain. (Originally created by James Montgomery Flagg.) Tux picture is available for any use with credit to lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP.

In a recent interview with Linus Torvalds, he said that the desktop in general is getting to a point of maturity and that at this point, further innovation is not necessary, and therefore people should focus on small improvements to what we already have. To state it bluntly, the desktop is good enough, there is no need for major innovation.

While this sounds crazy at first, he has a point. Right now, most people view the desktop as whatever their desktop looks like right now. When they move to a new operating system that is different, they view that as bad, so there is a real argument that simply polishing the current desktop is the best thing to do. On the other hand, we could have said the same thing before GUIs existed. Most of us (yeah, yeah, I know there are people that still use the terminal for everything) think the GUI is a huge improvement, so what is to say something like that transition cannot be done again?

This issue is a very difficult issue to take a side on. On one hand, the desktop works now and it is very hard to identify specific shortcomings of it, so why change? On the other hand, it seems like an oppertunity to make something that could revolutionize computing is too big an opportunity to just ignore. So what is the right answer? I don’t know, but, luckily, with open-source, it does not matter. Some people will go to work making small improvements to what will happen and others will go to work on a whole new idea for what the desktop is. Proprietary companies will be forced to choose one path or the other and if they choose wrong, they will die, but open-source does not have that problem. Whatever is the right answer, if there is a right answer, open-source will have choosen that path, because open-source never has to take a single path.

Following many European goverments pledging to switch to Linux, the US army is beginning a similar program with the goal of gradually moving the entire army to Linux, according to the Register. The motivations behind the switch include better security, sability, and vendor independence. A major switch involving so many computers will not happen overnight, however. The army is using Red Hat’s software to ensure interoperability with the Windows computers currently in use. This will allow the army to make a slow transition over sevral years (as the European goverments plan to do as well) to Linux without issues.

The army is also working on weapons and vehecles that will be more Linux-friendly. My question is do they intend to release the code as open-source code. GPL nuke drivers anyone? (Just kidding.) Either way, it looks like Tux is armed and dangerous.

Now that many parts of various goverments are moving to Linux, how long can it be before everyone in the goverment is using Linux? Of course, it will take years for these projects to complete and even more years for the rest of the goverments to preform the switch, but it looks like Microsoft’s dominance in the goverment will soon end. With this competition in the goverment, Microsoft is now facing serious competition in every market they compete in and it looks like their time on the throne is coming to an end.

In each beta of a new distribution, there are new features, new bugs, and fixed bugs, but one thing that is often not seen until the end is the artwork. Although it might not be the most important part of the system, it creates a first impression that can be quite lasting if the theme is well done. I have gone through the concepts in the Ubuntu Wiki and picked out some of the coolest ones.

Themes

This contains many of the basic (and very attractive) characteristics of the more complete themes below. Although I don’t think this would be used as a theme, it is a very good base from which to work.

Wiki Page

This concept may have potential as the final theme, due to its consistency and polish. I particularly like the rounded edges and the shading in the window, though I do not like the background (it seems too busy.)

Wiki Page

Another excellent looking theme. Again the shading and rounding in the top window looks excellent. I am not a fan of the mac-ish icons in the dock, though.

Deviant Art Page

There are two parts of this that I like. First, the bar along the top of the windows looks very nice. Second, I really like the idea of having some sort of texture or image in the background of some of the windows, just not as bold as they are here (or as Vistaish.)

Wiki Page

Desktop/Login Screen Backgrounds

I don’t really have anything to say except that this is a really nice looking background that fits the Ubuntu color scheme closely.

Wiki Page

(The heron is a reference to the upcoming release being called Ubuntu Hardy Heron.) Again, this is a very eye-catching, but not distracting background/login screen graphic. There is not really much to say about it.

Wiki Page for Login/Wiki Page for BG

I prefer the other themes, but I think the background in this is quite nice. If people decide the artwork has to be kept simpler than the other ideas above, this would be a good option.

Conclusion

We are still months from the final release and the artwork is already looking great! It looks like Hardy Heron will be a very attractive release.

One of the things that annoys me the most about Microsoft is their love of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt.) I have no problem with companies marketing their products to customers, but I do object to false conclusions that cannot be backed by real, relevant facts. One argument that bothers me in particular goes like this: our product has fewer security vulnerabilities than yours so it is better. This argument works great for headlines, but when you really look at it, it falls apart. Below are two examples of these claims:

• Jeff Jones, a security expert for Microsoft, claims Vista is more secure than Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
• Windows Server is more secure than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, according to a Microsoft FUD site

As I said, these claims are full of issues. Here are the problems with the arguments: (not every such argument suffers from all these flaws, but all of them suffer from one or more of them)

• The severity of the vulnerabilities is not included. Security vulnerabilities are ranked by what kind of a threat they pose. If this data is not included, a product with 100 minor glitches of almost no consequence would be considered less secure than a product with 75 major glitches. (The kind of thing where a hacker can take control of your computer.)
• There is no consideration of the status of a vulnerability. If a vulnerability is quickely fixed it is counted the same as if it has been weeks or months and is still unfixed.
• Not all companies admit to all the bugs that exist. In an open-source project like Ubuntu, if a bug is found and can be duplicated, it is known and reported, but not all companies act this way.

When you fill in the missing data, you get a very different conclusion from what Microsoft would like you to believe. I will only go through the data pertaining to Microsoft’s FUD site claim, but you can do the same thing for Jeff Jones’s claim.

(All of the below data is from Secunia, solving the problem of companies not reporting all the bugs that exist.)

Starting with the severity of the vulnerabilities, here is the data:

As you can see, Ubuntu has less critical vulnerabilities. The data is even more impressive for fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities:

Here Ubuntu has a perfect record, having fixed all of the flaws.

In conclusion, Microsoft’s argument is flawed and their conclusion is incorrect. This will not be news to many of you, but hopefully you will appreciate seeing real numbers behind it.

Obviously, the Eee PC has been a huge success for Asus, as well as for Linux, but until now it has not been clear if Linux is really a part of Asus’s long term plan. It seems quite likely that Asus intends to use the Eee PC as a way of becoming a better known computer company. (If you ask a random person what Dell or HP does, they will know. If you ask them the same question about Asus, chances are they will not.) What has not been clear, however, is if Linux was just a temporary plan for the Eee or if it is a long term plan for Asus. With the recent announcements, it has become clear that Linux really is part of Asus’s long term plan.

Now that Asus has released three new Linux products, some of which (mostly the E-TV) are clearly designed to start a whole new class of product, they have shown a commitment to Linux. If their plan was to do the Eee with Linux and than start offering Windows, they would have done it by now. There have already been some calls for Windows on the Eee (which Asus plans to answer, by the way), so it would be a perfect time. Instead, Asus announced three new Linux products.

I would even go so far to say that if Asus keeps up its support of Linux, it may be the company that is credited with bringing Linux on the desktop to the masses.

Even Microsoft has realized that open-source cannot be ignored. For years, Microsoft’s open-source strategy has basically been to destroy or ignore open-source software, and it seems like they have not gotten much smarter. Microsoft’s “Director of Platform Technology Strategy and the company’s Open Source Software Lab” recently explained the company’s open-source strategy to ZDNet. If this is really the strategy Microsoft intends to follow, it is almost comical.

As far as I can tell, the theory is this: let open-source people port their applications to Windows and hand them a piece of rope so they can tie themselves to all of Microsoft’s proprietary products and cannot leave. (And if you need Linux, use Microsoft’s virtualization technology to run it on Windows.) As you can see, this is not going to work.

Perhaps this strategy would work if Microsoft had an absolute monopoly on the OS market, but if that is what they are thinking, I have bad news for them, once they catch up to the 21st century.

If anyone can figure out what Microsoft is thinking, please let me know. I sure can’t figure it out. Unless.. I know! This is how Balmer will make everyone port their applications to Windows!

There’s been a lot of talk today about Microsoft’s effort to acquire Yahoo and what a successful takeover might mean for various open source software work with which Yahoo is associated. I’m not sure what to make of all that, but I am struck by the fact investors seem to think that a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo will make the combined company worth about $8 billion less than the sum of the values of the separate companies. How did I get this number? Well, the merger became public information before the stock market opened this morning. At the end of today’s trading, Microsoft’s stock price had fallen by $2.15 per share, while Yahoo’s stock price had risen by $9.20 per share. Multiplying these share price changes by the number of shares for each respective company, the implied value of Microsoft was reduced by $20 billion, while that of Yahoo was increased by only $12 billion. Investors, at least, are betting that Microsoft cannot successfully integrate Yahoo’s business into its own, and that the takeover will effectively waste $8 billion.