Recently a diagram that depicts Microsoft’s “empire” competing or fighting its competitors, particularly open-source. The diagram (older versions), while probably mostly intended for fun, shows two important realities for Microsoft:

1. Microsoft is huge. They will never just disappear overnight or over a year. If they die, it will be very slow as they gradually lose various parts of their bussiness to competitors.
2. Microsoft is surrounded on all sides. They are facing serious competition almost everywhere they go. No longer are they the only player in anything.

Although these two points may seem simple, and to some extent they are, they are important. If Microsoft wants to continue to survive, it must remember that it does not have a free ride. Whether or not Microsoft will be able to beat back the competition remains to be seen, but so many (myself included) seem to think Microsoft will fall.

Recently, an article appeared on OSWeekly titled “Everex: The Dell of the Linux World.” The article makes a good point that Everex could be what Dell should have been for Linux, but based on their products so far, I am skeptical that they will succeed.

Right now, what they seem to be is what Dell is now. Full of potential, but so far from meeting that potential. Dell’s big mistake, in my opinion, is mostly not publicizing their Linux computers enough on their site. Even if you are looking for Dell’s Linux PCs, it can be difficult to find them. Everex has not made this mistake in particular, but they have made other mistakes.

Their first Linux computer, that I am aware of, was the gPC. The gPC was an inexpensive desktop PC ($200). Unfortunatly, it had two major problems. First, the software (Everex’s gOS) seemed to have lots of issues. Second, and not the fault of the gPC really, many reviews criticized the minimal hardware.

Next, Everex introduced the Cloudbook. From what I can tell, it was a fine Eee PC competitor, but it never managed to get the hype around it that the Eee PC had and still has.

Most recently, Everex has introduced a Mac Mini-ish computer for MySpace users. I think the idea of targeting a small niche is a good idea, but making your computer look like a beige CD drive from 10 years ago is not a good idea. Also, including a DVI port (mostly used on fancy monitors) instead of a VGA port (used on almost all monitors) is not smart, especially in a low-end PC.

So basically, Everex has a lot of potential, but they keep messing small things up and never really meeting their potential. What can Everex do to fix this, though? Below are some of the things I would do to change Everex if I was in charge.

1. Leave gOS behind and use Ubuntu. There are a number of reasons for making this change. For one thing, it would generate a lot of good press and get Ubuntu fans excited. Another advantage is that Everex’s products would no longer be plagued by small bugs that seemed to be a lot of the downfall of the gPC.
2. Instead of taking a lesson from Apple’s software, take a lesson from Apple’s hardware. Recently, Everex has been modeling gOS after Apple’s OSX in many ways. Instead of doing this, since they would be using Ubuntu, learn from Apple’s hardware. Apple is, after all, very good at making a box look pretty and Everex is a hardware company.
3. Consider dropping Windows completely. Without seeing Everex’s sales figures, it is impossible to know if this is even realistic at all, but a well timed dropping of all Windows computers could really bring the attention back to Everex. Imagine that a few months after introducing some new Linux PCs, Everex dropped their Windows PCs completely. It would excite people and bring the hype back to Everex.
4. Don’t make small, but important, mistakes that could easily be prevented. For example, don’t put a DVI port on a low-end PC. It is like saying here is a low-end computer that only works with an expensive monitor. It makes no sense.

Whatever Everex does, I hope they correct some of the problems they have had in the past and start producing great Linux PCs.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

The current Ubuntu homepage looks far too static and shows off very little of what Ubuntu can do and what Ubuntu is. A new homepage with news, applications, and links to the many various Ubuntu sites would both be more useful and helpful in promoting Ubuntu. It is important that the homepage remain professional, though.

Anyone that has attempted to use Gnash, the free Flash Player alternative, will know that is does not work for everything, but it does work for some sites. If you have to choose between one or the other, you are basically forced to use Flash Player, but if you could easily switch between the two, you could use Gnash whenever possible.

The Fedora team put a big push into not just with the boot screen but with the entire boot experience to make it look more professional and less confusing to new users. Although it may seem like a small thing, small things do matter, so it would be much better if Ubuntu too eliminated text screens at bootup.

Although this idea may be very difficult or impossible to implement in practice, part of the idea of brainstorming is to come up with lots of ideas, possible or not. Sometimes there is simply not a .deb file for a piece of software and if newbies (and anyone wanting to save time) were able to simply click on a source package and have it install, it would be great.

In the past, the configuration for Compiz Fusion was always amazingly complicated, but now that there is a much simpler configuration tool, Simple CCSM, it should be included.

There are really two reasons to use the cube desktop effect instead of the wall effect. First, the cube is the one that is demonstrated more often, and therefore people are more likely to be familiar with. Second, even though Linux had it first, the wall could be thought of as a Mac rip-off by someone who was unfamiliar with Linux.

While searching through the latest Linux news, I came across an article that clearly and concisely tackles the major FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) around Linux as well as covering some of the main reasons to use Linux.  While I see “Top 10 Reasons to Use Linux” articles all the time and complaints about FUD around Linux, I was impressed at how well this article explained each piece of FUD and each benefit of Linux, so I decided to share it here. The article is a PCMech piece titled “Why Use Linux?” (I have no relation to the site or the author.)

You may ask why I am posting about this article here, where almost everyone probably already knows everything in the article? The reason is that it is important that this information be spread to others and the article is a good example of how to explain the benfits of Linux clearly. If someone chooses Windows or Mac OS X knowing the advantages and disadvantages of each, fine. The goal here is not to convince people they have to use Linux, but to dispel the FUD and bad reputation that is often unfairly put upon Linux.  Because of this, I encourage you to spread this article and use it as a model in explaining what is so great about Linux or in dispessling Linux FUD.

With the iPhone SDK starting to appear, a Linux.com article summarizes the concerns of the free software community: the licensing you have to agree to in order to use the iPhone SDK essentially prevent open-source applications. Although I agree this is unacceptable, I see no reason to believe this is anything more than a mistake.

For one thing, what does Apple have to gain from not allowing open-source apps on the iPhone? I suppose that theoretically they could prevent people from seeing the power of open-source and therefor continuing the FUD around Linux… Seriously, you think that outweighs all the bad press they will get?

Another thing: in the past few weeks, we have seen not one but two cases of a bad EULA (end-user license agreement) being pointed out and the company apologizing for it. One was the Photoshop Express EULA that stated that Adobe could use pictures you uploaded for whatever they wanted without your permission. The other was Apple’s own EULA on Safari for Windows which said you could not use it on anything but a Mac. What we are seeing now is most likely nothing more than another instance of a company not thinking carefully enough about their EULA or reusing standard parts and accidentally messing things up.

This is not to say people should not talk about the issues around OSS on the iPhone. It is important that this is brought to the attention of Apple, but I am confident this is no more than a mistake. I just hope Apple does not ignore the open-source communtiy.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, just announced an online course intended for “corporate and home desktop users to get started with Ubuntu.” The course is available for $100 and covers the following topics, according to the announcement:

• Understand the concepts of open source and how they tie in with Ubuntu
• Customize the look and feel of the Ubuntu desktop
• Navigate through the file system and search for files
• Connect to and use the Internet
• Perform basic word-processing and spreadsheet functions using OpenOffice.org
• Install and play games
• Add, remove and update applications
• View, draw, manipulate and scan images
• Play, edit and organize music and video files
• Seek help on Ubuntu from free and commercial sources
• Create partitions and dual-boot options

To be honest, I can’t imagine any home user wanting to take a course in using Ubuntu, but I do think that offering this to businesses is a great idea. Here is why:

For a company planning on switching to Ubuntu, their IT people, who would probably not be familiar with Linux, would want to get some training in Linux, before deploying it to all the employees. With this course, they can not only learn how to use Ubuntu, but also how to teach other people at the company how to use it, all while only paying $100.

This is an advantage Ubuntu really needs to compete in the enterprise space. Right now, many people are probably tempted to go with Red Hat or Novell’s comercial Linux offerings, because of the support that comes with it.  By providing even this modest kind of support for commercial users, Canonical may be able to develop a bigger presence in that market to complement its leading position among non-commercial users.

Remember before the Eee PC appeared? It seems like it was forever ago, yet the news keeps flooding in day after day. Most recently, the Windows Eee PC seems to be the subject of discussion (quite literally, in some cases.) Today, there are three pieces of news, all from the world of the Windows Eee PC.

First, CNet has released their review of the Eee PC with Windows and they gave it a 7.3 (out of 10.) Not a bad review at all by CNet standards, but the Linux Eee PC did better, with a 7.5. (Both reviews are for the white 4G version. They are also both written and edited by the same people.) That may seem like a small, insignificant difference, but when you consider that 90% of these machines are the same and the only difference is the operating system, it becomes more significant.

This is not, however, the only evidence that Linux is the better OS for the Eee PC. Rafe Needleman, editor of CNet’s Webware.com, commented on a non-CNet site (see #111, around 22:40) that Windows XP on the Eee PC “is not a happy experience” and that “I pretty much guarantee it is going to be a dog.” Coming from an relatively unbiased source who has, presumably, been able to play with both the Windows and Linux Eee PC, it probably means a lot.

On a less positive side of things, it appears that the Windows and Linux Eee PCs do, in fact, cost the same price. According to the CNet review of the Windows Eee PC, “Windows XP for the same price as the Linux version.” I have already written about why pretending Windows is free on the Eee PC is absolutly unfair, so I will not get into it again here, but I encourge you to go back and read my earlier article.

EWeek is reporting on some unusual good news from Redmond, which is a rather nice change from the usual flow of negative Microsoft stories. Microsoft has released some ASP.net development tools for Linux. Although I can’t claim to understand all the technical details of exactly what they released, it appears that it is a development tool for Linux developers.

Although I suspect that not a whole lot of people will care about this particular piece of software, the precedent this potentially sets is great.

In the past, when Microsoft has said “cross-platform” what they meant was always “it runs on Windows and it at least sort of runs on the Mac.” Now that Microsoft has started releasing software for Linux, if only a small development tool, perhaps that definition will change to “it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.”

It is also possible that this is just an isolated incident of releasing something for Linux and it will not become regular, but I am glad to see some good news from Microsoft and I hope we see more in the future.

Brilliant Brainstorms is a weekly-ish summary of some of the best brainstorms from the Ubuntu Brainstorm site. In the beginning it may not always come exactly once a week or on the same day, but, if it becomes popular, it should become more regular.

Last week I mentioned that there was a new Brainstorm blog to enable better transparency between developers and users. Now we have seen the first real post on that blog. The post covers some recent ideas and suggestions and what the Brainstorm team intends to do about them as well as discussing how to enable other projects to create a Brainstorm-like site. I think the more open-source projects use a Brainstorm-like site the better. It enables the developers to communicate directly with users and there is clearly a need for it, since it is very common to see suggestions on Brainstorm that are really for other open-source projects, not Ubuntu.

As you can tell, I am very happy with how the blog is going so far and I like what Brainstorm is doing. I would still like to see more discussion on the blog about how Ubuntu, not Ubuntu Brainstorm, developers are reacting to the ideas.

Now on to this weeks ideas:

Anyone who frequently reads Brilliant Brainstorms or who watches the Brainstorm site will know that this is not the first of this type of idea, still it is worth bringing up, since it is a great idea. Basically, the idea is that there are lots of people who would be happy to help Ubuntu out, but are not sure how to get started developing. With a site to explain how to get started and what you need to know, more people would, hopefully, join the development team.

Again, this is an idea we have seen before, but it keeps  coming back. Backups are very important, since most people now keep their precious memories as well as their work on their hard drive, and so Ubuntu should have a good built in backup utility.

As new users transition to Ubuntu, they may want to be able to boot into Windows when they need to. To make this even easier, it is a great idea to have a GUI utility to let users configure what OSs are in their GRUB menu and which one is the default. This may not be something new users will use a lot, at least not without help, but it should be there in case it is needed.

If you especially like any of these ideas, click on the image at the left and vote for it!

Yesterday, Tom’s Hardware posted a review of the KPC, a $200 PC that runs Foresight Linux. ($99 refers to the barebones version, which means the version with not all the parts installed.) The interesting thing about the review was the amount of time they spent on the operating system, and the conclusions they reached (spoiler: mostly positive.)

Most reviews of inexpensive Linux PCs tend to view Linux as not as good as Windows without really appearing to have investigated Linux for more than a few minutes. You would not expect Tom’s Hardware to be much different, since their main audience is Windows gamers, so I would expect them to be biased towards Windows, if anything. Surprisingly, however, they spent three pages of their review discussing the operating system. There were some weird parts of the review, such as complaining about Firefox’s compatibility with some web pages but not about Open Office being incompatible with some Office files, but overall the review seemed very reasonable and concluded that Foresight Linux was quite good.

It is not fair to judge based on only one review, but it seems like this review might be a lesson to other reviewers. Don’t assume Linux is not as good as Windows, try it out and investigate for yourself before coming to any conclusion.