LibreOffice: Check And Mate

Intel is now on board supporting LibreOffice, the freeware answer to Microsoft Office. While LibreOffice has many supporters, including Google, every major supporting act is a nail in the coffin of Microsoft domination. Microsoft Office has long been the common choice for businesses, with Excel and Word creating an industry standard that locked out competition. Then the freeware community began chipping away at the compatibility issues and sneaky Microsoft tricks to keep the .doc file format protected.

What this means for both businesses and common folks is that there is an acceptable and completely free office suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office and has a similar look and feel. For the most part, the same shortcuts and options exist and an average user can hop on and find their way around with minimum digging. It also means Microsoft is going to struggle to find a niche in this brave new world. Their attempt to enter the mobile phone market has been an epic fail, their software domination is at an end, and their bad PR among customers and the geek community has left them in the cold.

The long-term problem has been Power Point compatibility and performance. I have heard rumors of drastic improvement on the way, but I have yet to test that out. However, according to the site over 80% of readers felt LibreOffice has everything they need in an office suite. Based on the site and the geeky audience, that is pretty compelling. As more businesses adopt LibreOffice and save on licensing fees, that will become the last point of competition between the two. If LibreOffice follows their own trend, they will come out strong and give users what they want.

Microsoft Plays Dirty Again

This is from techrights.org:

MICROSOFT loves blocking or suppressing GNU/Linux installations, typically using a process it keeps describing as a feature. Microsoft has been sabotaging the MBR using the excuses that it is hard to support it (funny how one or two GRUB developers can handle it just fine). There is antitrust evidence about it going decades back and there there is the war on fast booting systems and battles against Linux using VM restrictions (fighting Linux with a Windows EULA). We have covered many such examples, even those that extend to ACPI.

This has existed for a while, what may be changing is that Microsoft wants in enabled on every computer that is pre-loaded with Windows 8.  It is sure to draw fierce opposition, and may actually backfire in a loss of sales from customers who would run a multi-OS setup.  I'm not worried yet, because a lot of things would have to pass before this becomes a reality, and Microsoft has been shot down by anti-trust measures in the past.  It's no less aggravating that to promote a supposedly optional feature they would try to choke all competition.

This is the type of asshattery that Microsoft is famous for, and is likely to be their undoing in the end.  Taking measures like this is like a press release saying the growth of other operating systems has them concerned, and in the end their concern for customers has forced them to remove all other choices.  They have no facts or reasons outside of their own interests, but they'll kill competition so they can look out for the ignorant who rely on them.

Holy cow.  Sounding an awful lot like Tea Party bullshit to me.

Another Microsoft Blow

It's been a bad year for Microsoft.  It's actually been a bad few years.  The giant has become hated by many, and has had to compete against loyal Appleites and Linuxbies.  Open source is a mighty lure and cloud computing delivers a death blow to their monopoly.  Developers are the backbone that produces the miracles, and developers are flocking to the competition.  Some previous employees are also heading up projects, like the one below:

LAS VEGAS--VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz is racing to turn VMware's products into a platform for Web applications and services. To succeed, Maritz, who once served as the third-highest ranking executive at Microsoft, is pulling pages from his former employer's playbook to fight the battle.

Though deep in the weeds of technical infrastructure, VMware's lead in virtualization puts it in a position to create a new platform for cloud computing. Its software sits between a computer's hardware and its operating system. VMware wants to take advantage of that layer of technology it's providing to build a new foundation for computer programming.

But just as Windows couldn't have thrived on its own, neither will VMware's platform. So Maritz added a developer piece to VMware's business two years ago, paying $420 million to acquire SpringSource, which makes enterprise and Web application development tools. And he moved to bolster the company's developer evangelism business, hiring his one-time Microsoft lieutenant Tod Nielsen, as chief operating officer in 2009. Nielsen, who ran developer relations for Microsoft in the late 1990s, now has the task of recruiting developers to build applications for VMware's platform.

The idea is to give developers tools they can use to build Web-based applications without having to deal with the mundane plumbing. And it launched Cloud Foundry as an open-source effort in order to appeal to developers.

To build up that muscle, Nielsen brought in another old Microsoft hand, Mark Lucovsky, who the Microsoft brass once thought so highly of that they named him one of the company's 16 Distinguished Engineers. He also gained some notoriety later, declaring in a sworn legal document that Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer threw a chair and cursed then-Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt when Lucovsky said he was leaving the company for a job at Google.

Microsoft is bleeding out. They are trying to remain competitive, but their bloat and arrogance may have made them wait too long. Many times, they gouged the consumer and thumbed their noses at the competition. They made mighty enemies, and in their time of need the support looks mighty thin.

That's why Microsoft has been playing hardball with VMware. Microsoft bundles its virtual machine inside its server software, a move that's helped cut into VMware's market lead. And it's spending money on marketing to lure customers away, launching a clever ad campaign this week that mocks VMware's pricing, featuring a 1970s era sales executive from VMlimited, complete with Fu Manchu mustache, selling virtualization technology from the back of his tricked out van.

Even now they don't get it. In the end, it isn't all about the buck, it's about the freedom. Microsoft is throwing their weight for one final huzzah, but in the end freedom and choice is going to win. For how long, it's hard to say, but growth and evolution demanded the longstanding monopoly fall. They will always be around, but in a much smaller capacity. Good riddance, says this particular geek.

Arrrr, Here There Be Pirates (Linux Style)

Poseidon Linux is developed and maintained by scientists from the Rio Grande Federal University Foundation in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil and other supporters all over the globe. It was named Poseidon because its development was driven by a school of oceanologists.

Poseidon was originally a derivative of Kurumin Linux. Kurumin is no more as it has been discontinued since 2008, but in its time it was a big deal that generated a lot of excitement and interest in Linux. Kurumin was a stripped-down Knoppix that fit on a mini-CD, with excellent hardware detection, a hard drive installation option (which the early Knoppix releases did not have), a beautiful appearance, and comprehensive documentation written in Brazilian Portuguese. Linux and FOSS are very popular in Brazil thanks to projects like Kurumin.

First, let's just cover the spiffiness of this. We have Linux getting mainstream and then specializing. This is the fruition of years of hard work... Linux has finally arrived. The Ubuntu connection is awesome as well. It had to overcome harsh criticism for being too pretty and has now struck the perfect balance between pretty and functional. Even hardcore Slackware users have to give it the nod for its progress. I have stayed with Mint, and enjoyed the Ubuntu base.  We also have a global success as Linux and Ubuntu in particular become more popular overseas.

Click here to see the English site.

Also welcome our new friend the Linux tag.  I wasn't sure how much I would discuss it here, but I think it deserves a place.