Monday, December 28, 2009

Firing Steve Ballmer

IF you were a Microsoft stockholder, would you fire Steve Ballmer?  Newsweek predicts you will, just as Ballmer marks his 10th anniversary as chief executive at the software giant.

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Monday, December 21, 2009

A good year for desktop Linux

2010 is going to be a good year for Linux on the desktop. No, tens of millions of Windows users aren’t going to see the light and suddenly switch. Inertia and resistance to change make a massive migration highly unlikely. At the same time, Microsoft has managed to stem the erosion from its Vista-fueled disaster, first by extending the commercial life of Windows XP on netbooks, then by releasing Windows 7. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Linux will continue to make steady gains on the desktop next year, even though most estimates still put its market share at about only 2 percent. 

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Quick change artist

ONE of things that might disconcert Windows users after they’ve switched to Ubuntu Linux is the frequency with which the operating system is updated. There was a five-year wait between Windows XP and Windows Vista, and another two years until Windows 7 was released to fix all that was wrong with Vista. In contrast, Ubuntu, one of the most popular flavors of Linux, has pretty much followed a six-month release cycle since it was first introduced in 2004. This means that every April and October (except in 2006 when Dapper Drake was released in June instead), a new version becomes available. It’s only been a month since I installed the latest version, Karmic Koala, on my home PC and already, an early test version of the next release, Lucid Lynx, is available. The final version of Lucid isn’t due until April 2010 – but that’s not really too far away.

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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Browser of choice

A colleague recently tweeted that he was dumping Mozilla Firefox for Google Chrome. Half in jest, I said, “You’ll be back.” My prediction wasn’t based on any fierce brand loyalty. I too have gone through periods when I stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera, usually because of some annoying bug. After Google finally released a decent Linux version of its much-hyped browser, I dabbled with Chrome, too. Eventually, however, I would always return to Firefox as my browser of choice because a new version would fix the bug and throw in new features that were compelling.

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Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Firefox after five years

FIVE years ago last month, Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape’s crushing defeat at the hands of Microsoft in the first browser wars. In that first encounter, Microsoft used its monopoly in operating systems to clobber Netscape by bundling its own browser, Internet Explorer, with every copy of Windows. This strategy made IE the default browser for most Windows users and wiped out the early lead that Netscape enjoyed. As a result, Netscape’s share of the browser market plummeted from more than 80 percent in 1996 to less than 5 percent by 2003.

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