Tux Watch

The results of Linuxquestion.org’s Voting for its Members Choice Awards [here] have finally been announced [here] with Ubuntu taking the lead again on the Linux Distribution of the Year Choice by the website’s users with KDE being the dominant Desktop Environment. Knoppix still leads the show for Live Distros and Firefox continues to be the king of web browsers. Mysql continues to the bag Mr. Favorite choice while GIMP is the best Graphics App of the year. Cheers to Linuxquestion.org users, great going!

Here are the official results for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards:

• Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (26.44%)
• Live Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (26.22%)
• Browser of the Year - Firefox (74.61%)
• Database of the Year - MySQL (61.68%)
• Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (89.79%)
• Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (56.58%)
• Video Media Player Application of the Year - mplayer (41.93%)
• Video Authoring Application of the Year - Kino (27.81%)
• Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (57.07%)
• Audio Authoring Application of the Year - Audacity (67.07%)
• Multimedia Utility of the Year - K3b (69.51%)
• Messaging Application of the Year - Gaim (51.52%)
• Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (21.44%)
• IDE of the Year - Eclipse (34.47%)
• Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (52.74%)
• Text Editor of the Year - vi/vim (38.42%)
• Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (65.60%)
• Security Application of the Year - nmap (20.94%)
• Windows on Linux Application of the Year - Wine (50.10%)
• Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (36.34%)
• Shell of the Year - bash (89.45%)

Thanks to our friends from the UNDP-APDIP-IOSN International Open Source Network’s ASEAN+3 Node in the Philippines [here] who only recently organized the Asia Source 2 FOSS Camp in Indonesia [here] have produced a CD Package, filled with useful FOSS based free business applications titled SME-in-a-Box. I was lucky enough to be there and recieve a copy of the CD the content of which I will now be sharing through TuxWatch.org exclusively for our readers.

“SME-in-a-Box� is a toolkit designed to meet the specialized needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The aim is to provide a selection of peer-reviewed software and material, which help businesses to grow. SME-in-a-Box leverages the power of FOSS for social and economic development. The collection comprises of software and manuals for general use of SMEs in their daily operations and management. Online links for each application will be conveniently included on this website directing the end-user to relevant websites and thus, gaining quick access to both downloades and advanced technical documentations and case studies.

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How can you make money off of FOSS?
The easiest is selling FOSS. Be sure to explain to customers that it’s a matter of freedom, not price. Distributing this book with the software might be a good idea. Remember that if the software’s under the GGPL and you distribute binaries, you must include the source with the binaries and/or offer the source separate. You could also write free documentation and sell that. The same things in the above paragraph apply here.

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FreedomHEC is the hardware conference [here] where you’ll learn how easy it is to make your hardware compatible with free, open source operating systems such as Linux, and available to new markets such as servers, next-generation entertainment devices, and more.

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“FOSS A General Introduction” serves as an introduction to various aspects and dimensions of FOSS issues, including, FOSS in education, FOSS and government policy, localization, open standards and licensing. This book has been donated to Wikibooks by the International Open Source Network (IOSN) [here] and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) [here].

The Wikibook gives a detailed introduction to FOSS, presents various FOSS Success Stories, discusses Linux, Intellectual Property Rights and Licensing, covers Localization and Internationalization of software and has a Glossary and list of various FOSS Licenses in its annextures. Wikibooks [here] is an open-content textbooks collection initiative and contains information and knowledge on a number of other areas of great importance.

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One thing that has been constantly pinching me is the perception found in the industry that maybe Linux and Windows are at war or members of both camps are in competition with each other. This is one area where I would like to make a clarification that there is no war nor competition and there never was unless Microsoft camp perceives that on its own which is a very usual anticipation from that camp.

Linux was founded out of hobby by Linus Torvalds and Windows by a company for commercial purposes. Yes, when the Linux Kernel or GNU/Linux was picked up by various commercial vendors and corporations, a competition clearly emerged in the corporate world of business and industry globally between today’s giants like Red Hat, Novell, Microsoft etc.

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Do we really have to explain every time something that is very open and proven worldwide. The context of this question is actually Linux in the enterprise and the best examples we already have are enterprises of the Internet era including giants like Google and Yahoo. These organizations have long reaped the benefits improved efficiency, reliability and cost savings for years with their online. I believe “YES” we will have to continuously advocate the benefits of FOSS and Linux continuously as more and more people turn towards exploring the FOSS option.

Being biased to the fact that people should now know it because its all out there is not an appropriate perception. If this would have always been the case then why do we have to educate people to become Doctors, Engineers, Computer Scientists, Astronauts, Policemen etc.

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The Microsoft launch of its new operating system Vista could possibly loose its previously held Window’s market share due to the fact that Vista carries a whole new set of Graphical User Interface features and enhancements that will require the new end-users of Vista to first receive a significant amount of training to manage the new interfaces. Secondly, Vista may be trying to copy a number of features from products developed by the FOSS community including the Firefox browser.

Third, Vista will not be living up to its promise of including new ground breaking enhancements such as a new file system so people will be getting more of a resource hungry eater than a full of new features operating system. Fourth Vista is going to be one of the most resource hungry Operating Systems ever and you can say goodbye to all your old low-performing hardware equipment like Pentium-4 and below whereas Linux has the capability to even make such low-performance hardware become effectively useful.

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Part- 4. India Plays “IT” Big

Further adding to local FOSS Ecosystem development initiatives in India, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has been making headlines [here ] the world over as the state goes for FOSS due to concerns over security and the high costs that Microsoft offers for Windows. The Indian state is not new to FOSS as the local government been running Red Hat Linux on various backend servers coupled with JBoss application server and PostgreSQL databases.

Mr. C.Umashankar the Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot is a state-owned IT supplier) has clearly announced that

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Part- 3. India Plays “IT” Open

India has been very prominent on the FOSS world news bulletins due to the fact that with one of the largest populations in the world, the country has been on preference list for Information Technology and Software Business Process Outsourcing for the western or developed world. Adding to this, almost every major FOSS development corporation has either Research and Development center in India as well as country operations including giant brand names like Red Hat, Novell, IBM etc. In India, the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) [here ] has been leading FOSS initiatives in the country.

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Part- 2. Pakistan Brings Nation Closer To Realization

To take FOSS efforts to the next level in Pakistan, the Government initiated a project worth Rs29 million titled “Open Source Resource Center” (OSRC) [here] was established at the through the Ministry of IT’s [here] implementation arm the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) [here] in January 2004 in Islamabad to facilitates stake holders and investors in the software industry, should they decide to shift their businesses from vendor-dependent proprietary software to open source software technology. It aims to create a culture of open source software use in Pakistan through media awareness and training workshops, and act as a virtual community for experts in this field.

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Part- I. Realizing True Potential

Readers on this side of the world may not be aware of some very interesting ICT and FOSS developments taking place in the various regions of Asia. First of all, there are many FOSS initiatives that are very active within the overall region adding value to the global FOSS movement. These regional or country level initiatives include organizations and groups like:

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