The world of desktop Linux is often portrayed these days as a battle primarily between longstanding leader Ubuntu and up-and-coming challenger Linux Mint, frequently with the suggestion that Mint is winning.
As Ubuntu Linux continues to grow in popularity, most discussions of it tend to focus on the basics of the operating system itself, including especially details about its desktop environment and user interface.
Hard on the heels of the release earlier this week of Firefox 8, Mozilla on Thursday released the beta versions of the next Firefox in line.
As more and more companies turn to Linux for mission-critical operations, making sure IT staff have the necessary skills is becoming more important than ever.
We've known for some time now that Linux Mint would be embracing GNOME 3 in some fashion, but last month it sounded like the controversial desktop interface would appear only in a separate, dedicated version.
Google's Chrome browser is slowly but surely creeping up on Firefox in terms of market share, according to the latest Net Applications data, but Mozilla continues to tweak and polish Firefox with an ongoing series of new improvements.
Given the growing ubiquity of tablets in the business world as well as among consumers, it's a pretty safe bet that there are numerous IT decision-makers shopping online for the mobile devices at any given time.
Canonical certainly delivered some exciting news this week when it announced that its Ubuntu Linux distribution is on the way to tablets, smartphones, and TVs.
If ever there was a year to demonstrate why open source software is a smart choice for businesses, 2011 has surely been it.
It was exactly seven years ago that the very first version of Ubuntu Linux--dubbed "Warty Warthog"--was released, kicking off a long line of increasingly popular versions of the free and open source operating system.
Now that Ubuntu Linux has chosen Unity as its default desktop environment, Linux Mint stands out as perhaps the most user-friendly distribution offering a non-Unity default alternative, as I've noted before.
In the world of Linux desktops, Ubuntu's Unity and GNOME have tended to dominate the headlines in recent months, but there's another contender that many consider an even better choice.
It was just about a year ago that I was writing about the launch of LibreOffice, and now here we are today, marking the free productivity software suite's first year.
It may not compare with the hype that comes out of Cupertino or Redmond, but there's no denying that the new This Is the Countdown” website launched in the past few days adds a considerable dose of excitement to the upcoming launch of Ubuntu 11.10, or Oneiric Ocelot.
There are free and open source alternatives to just about every proprietary software package available today--the trick is just finding the right ones for your business.