The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the user-driven Wikipedia project, is in the process of migrating its servers to the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Wikimedia’s move to Ubuntu is part of an effort to simplify administration of the organization’s 400 servers, which previously ran a mix of various versions of Red Hat and Fedora.
NEC announced two new POS (point-of-sales/service) computers that run Linux. The TwinPOS 5500 and 3500 feature integrated flat panel touchscreens, resistance against dust and liquids, and optional MSRs (magnetic stripe readers) and customer-facing displays, says the company.
” People typically don’t care what operating system is on the netbooks, because they don’t buy them to run a suite of applications like Microsoft Office, but to be on the Web using a Web browser,” Nat Friedman said in an interview with IDG Applications Service. Novell’s SUSE Linux is already being pre-loaded with laptops from vendors including Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. The company is now in negotiations with Lenovo and HP to start offering its Linux distribution on their netbooks as well, he added.
Netbooks Will Boost Adoption of Linux, Says Novell CTO - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership.
The Linux Foundation has leapt at the opportunity and, according to its executive director, Jim Zemlin, will be holding an event by mid-October to tell the denizens of Wall Street all about the virtues of Linux and other free and open source software.
Zemlin’s focus will be on economics. No doubt that is a necessity - free and open source software is not merely up to the job technically, it costs a fraction of what proprietary software does.
Canonical’s marketing manager Gerry Carr, admits that there are more Linux-based netbooks being returned. But not because Linux is worse, at least not in any objective sense, but because users are being sucked in by what Carr calls “unclear selling”.