Matt’s Blog of Truth

Web 2.0 Browser Desktop Toolkit…

Wow, now that is a mouthful.

First off, Web 2.0 is such a clique term, but really it can signify a greater movement of businesses that completely operate on the Internet, through a Web Browser. There are so many examples of this, I could fill a whole page. Here are a few, to jog your memory; Google, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

Next, did I say, a Browser Desktop? Or, did I mean to say, Desktop Browser? No, you heard me right. A Browser Desktop. Yes, a Desktop, sort of, that runs inside your browser. To call this a Desktop is a little over kill, but a great way to get readers attention. What it really boils down to is a Platform within a Web Browser.

Dojo, takes it a step further, by giving you a complete framework, for creating your own custom widgets, which you can easily modify beginning from the Built in ones, or start one from scratch. And, to add these dijits (Dojo widgets) to your web page, you simply type a dojoType=”your.dijit.here” attribute, to say a div tag, and Dojo will magically, via it’s powerful parser engine, turn that div tag, into a Rich Text Editor or maybe just a simple dialog box.

There are arguments over at WaSP, about Dojo seemingly, making up their own HTML attributes, like dojoType. You are free to read the interesting arguments, on the WaSP site, which Alex Russell, tactfully handles well to their Web Standards Concerns. Note: The page is actually focusing on the IBM sponsorship of Dojo, but in the comments area, you can read the leaders of WaSP and Alex, respectfully, duke it out about HTML semantics.

Now, you might be thinking, that this is great and all, but the size of the .js files, and time it must takes to render and process all this JavaScript, must make the experience slow and rendered useless. But, this is not the case. Remember, this is a JavaScript Toolkit. For included in Dojo, are facilities to create custom builds of your Dojo creation. This includes; compressing, excluding everything, but what your Dojo Web Application needs and bundling it all up for the Web Browsers consumption. The build system, is based on Rhino, and contains an army of option tweaks and preferences, in how you want to build your Dojo Application. It is almost as if we are building or compiling a C and C++ application. But, JavaScript is still an interpretable language. Dojo’s build system simply tries to package it all up and make it as small and easy to download and deploy as possible.

Finally, Dojo Toolkit, contains a complete test harness, allowing you to stress test your product.

Dojo is a JavaScript Toolkit, in every sense of the word, ‘Toolkit’.

Now, the Dojo Project is a bit spoiled. It is backed by a Commercial company, Sitepen, a not for profit foundation. What more could an Open Source Project ask for? Not, to mention, one of the founders of Dojo, Alex Russell, a very well spoken dude. You can Google his name, and find loads of Pod and Screen Casts of him ranting on, presenting Dojo.

One of the ‘cooler’ things, I just found, is the Site Pen sponsored, Adobe AIR application, that includes the Dojo API, Resource Collection of Links and a point and click Dojo Build Suite. If you are on Linux, you need to install Adobe AIR, than go get this must have, Dojo Toolbox.

Google releases their iPhone clone, Android this week. The blogosphere is a buzz with activity.

Google has long been planning the release of it’s gPhone or Android cell phone. It is very similar to the iPhone, in that it has a touch screen and fancy gyro’s and such that can flip the screen by simply rotating the device.

Android is offered on T-Mobile. Anyone that has used T-Mobile knows it does not have the best cell phone coverage in the world. AT and T, on the other hand, which the iPhone uses as their carrier has better coverage and stronger signal strength. However, T-Mobile has a much lower price point, than AT and Ts.

The good thing is that T-Mobile is upgrading their G1 networks, and they should. The Android phone poses a very competitive advantage over the iPhone for one simple reason.

Android is Open Platform, using Open Source. This means, developers are free to hack and create Applications for the phone.

The iPhone is very much a Closed Phone. Apple has been criticized as being too restrictive about which Apps can and can not be accepted and sold in Apple’s iPhone store. many Applications are rejects purely because they compete with Apples own Applications. This has ticked a lot of developers off. This will, by no doubt, bring loads of would be iPhone developers to the Open Android phone, where just about any non-malicious App will be accepted.

So, it will be very interesting to see how much Android will pick up stream and how Apple and their iPhone developer Application policies will change, if at all.

It has been reported that the iPhone is a bit more elegant. But, the biggest pain, is that on the Android phone, the headphone jack is not a standard jack and requires an adapter. I have no idea why Google would decide to design an Open phone to not include a standard head phone jack. Hopefully, future versions of the Android will fix the jack problem.

UPDATE: (Oct/14/08) 1.5 Million units sold out as pre-orders. In contrast, Apple iPhone G3 launch expect to sell 10 Million Units. It is clear that an unknown hardware and new OS software is clearly of interest and going to be in high demand! More power to Google Ads and Linux.

GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix — a recursive acronym — which aims to complete a 100% free Unix like operating system.

You can read the official announcement here.

Linux is running more of your electronics then we are aware of.

This includes, cable TV set top boxes, mp3 players, media center, cell phones, web servers, stock markets, NASA missions, toasters, embedded devices, automobiles and so much more.

Linux is everywhere, but no one cares to tell anyone. Manufactures only include the mention of Linux in their very fine print technical specs. There is no reason to mention Linux, because Linux is Free Open Source. Linux also uses Open Protocols.

There is no reason to mention that Linux is being used, unlike Microsoft and Apple’s requirement to include their names, purely for marketing and copyrights.

Linux is not concerned with anything other than the technical superiority it brings to technology. Commercial entities like Apple and Microsoft software is under lock and key within corporate walls.

This is why Linux is everywhere, but never heard, seen nor mentioned much.

So, those Linux advocates that think their hard work is not being put to use, are greatly mistaken.

Linux is the unsung hero of software, it’s running most things, but never mentioned. Maybe it’s better that way.

Read this article to get a detailed scoop on the why’s and how’s.

Eclipse has become the most complex IDE ever created. It is programmed in the Java Language, which makes it able to run on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Best of all, it is Open Source, which means it is Free of Charge to own and use! Just download it, install some plug ins, and off you go.

Today, in this article, I will show you how to install Eclipse, and a fully capable Web 2.0 IDE with remote editing through SSH. I will be using the Aptana plug ins, which currently support HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and Ajax Toolkits. Complete with code completion, code folding and of course syntax highlighting.

It used to be Zend’s PHP Studio IDE, that was top dawg. But, Eclipse and the arrival of Aptana, has changed all that.

From the snapshot above you will see my (poorly) drawn arrows pointing to the Code outline and the 4 languages, PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS all coexisting in a single editor page. Aptana Editor is smart enough to know when you are typing either of the four languages and supply code assist and completion! I do not known of another IDE that does all four in at once. Best of all, the code assist is FAST, so there is virtually no delay in it figuring out what to code assist you with.

Code folding is great too. You can auto fold functions or just classes on page load or not. All of this is in the editors preferences. Eclipse + Aptana + RSE truly is something to applaud.

Downloading the Correct Eclipse Package

You have a few choices in how you want to download and use Aptana.

• Aptana - Standalone Studio
• Aptana - Eclipse Community Plug in
• Aptana - Eclipse Commercial Plug in

Personally, I always go for the community edition, as this is Free and Open Source, right? However, Aptana’s commercial (Pay or Pro) Edition does have some addition features that the community edit does not. But, not many. Such as the sftp support, which we can get SSH by using the Free Open Source Eclipse RSE plug in. But, there are a few Aptana Commercial options, enough to give you some reason, to pay up for an enhanced edition. Also, you will be supporting the project, which so far, is giving Zend Studio a run for their money!

Also note, that the Aptana Standalone Studio version is just a rebuild of the Eclipse version. They just made the Tabs boxy instead of smooth and rounded, along with some other things. I do not know much more than that as I always use the Community Edition.

Here is a list of the differences from the Commercial (Pro) and Community Editions.

You will need the Classic or SDK version of Eclipse. Currently, at version 3.4 and called Ganymede.

Follow the instructions from Aptana’s Web Site, as they outline everything, complete with graphics. I suggest downloading the Eclipse using wget from the command line, if you on Linux or the Mac, with the resume option. wget is very aggressive, and will try on connection hick-ups and auto resume partial downloads.

wget -c http://eclipse.mirror…

Note: The Eclipse download link on Aptana’s site is for the Macintosh. If you are on Windows or Linux you will need to get your platforms compressed Eclipse package. Just a heads up, as Aptana does not bother to mention that!

After you have followed all the steps on Aptana’s instruction list, you will have Eclipse SDK installed along with the Aptana Perspective plug in.

Goto the Aptana Perspective and you will see a start page. Aptana has nicely outlined everything they offer for a developer to download, right from this Start Page.

You want to click on the PHP download, now. Check the box for installing Aptana PHP and click next, while in Eclipse. Choose Install All and restart Eclipse.

Now, you have the most powerful Web 2.0 (PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML) IDE, arguable, in existence!

Remote File editing using SSH in Eclipse

The great thing about setting up remote editing is that you can develop directly on your Production machine, while at the same time saving a local copy of all your files to your local machine. No need to fiddle around with FTP or uploading files, you edit them directly.

Although it is not recommend by most people, and if you in a corporate development environment, they may not allow this. But, I personally, code, operate and own all my sites and projects, so I make all the rules. I like to apply my file edits to the live site. This note only eliminates downtime, but I get to see my changes right away. It also forces you to code cautiously.

To set up SSH remote editing, in Eclipse you need the RSE plug in. RSE stands for Remote System Explorer. You can set up RSE to use FTP, SSH or whatever protocol you want. Since, developer should be using SSH to move files across the network, that is what we will set up.

Installing the Eclipse RSE plug in from Updater

Install RSE using Eclipse Software Update Manager, by going to help, software updates, available software(tab), Add site(button) and enter: http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm/updates/ and Hit OK.

Choose RSE core and the SSH options. You can choose to install it all, if you like. We will be focusing on creating an SSH connection, only, as it will be a secure one, so on one can eaves drop on our code, while loading it to our remote site.

After accepting the Licensing Agreement and restarting Eclipse, we now have the RSE perspective available to us.

Creating an SSH connection account for Remote Editing and Browsing

Choose Remote System Explorer from the Perspectives list. On the left side of Eclipse you will see section called, Remote Systems.

Right click within this section and Create a New Connection. Choose Linux. Enter in the Host or IP address of the remote site along with a label for the connection. You can click Finish to complete the action or use the Next button to view details about how it is setting up the SSH Protocol connection.

Either way, after finishing you will see your new connection in the Remote Systems tab!

From here you click on the arrows under Sftp and follow the directory paths you want to explorer and locating files you want to load into Eclipse. At the point it needs authentication, enter in your SSH username and password, as if you were logging in under an SSH account.

Once you locate a file you can right click it and choose Open with Aptana PHP. The great thing about our Aptana setup is that for the first time, all HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and PHP are all highlighted and code completion enabled for all four languages, all in a single file!

Aptana is smart enough to know when you are in PHP code verse HTML or the others! It truly is powerful code editing.

When I make a title of an Article, I try to grab your interest. When I refer to, ‘The Unknown’, I am referring to the future of Vista, Linux, Apple, Windows 7 (aka Vista 2) and even API’s like Direct X and OpenGL and The Web.

The situation has become very interesting, to say the least, regarding 3 giants, in the Computer Industry.

• Microsoft
• Linux
• Apple

All of them are fighting on all battle fronts. The battle fronts include;

• Desktops
• Servers
• Mobile Devices
• Laptops / Netbooks
• HPC - High Performance Computing
• Data centers and Cloud Computing
• Web Browsers
• Internet Standards and Protocols
• Developer Mind share
• Media Formats
• Social Networks
• Search Engines (Ad Networks)

and on and on and on…

To sanely attempt to grasp all of this, I will describe each of the 3 giant tech companies, in relation to the listed areas of computer, above. This is going to be quite a load of information draw, so grab a cup ‘o joe.

Apple

Apple has a very strong platform. It has a stable Desktop and even Servers based off a striped down Desktop. Macintosh was reinvented when Steve Jobs decided to go drastic and switch from RISC chips to Intel based CISC chips. But, more balls to the wall, was his accomplishment of taking an existing Operating system called BSD, a direct descendant of AT and T’s Unix Operating system, and slapping a GUI shell on top, calling it Darwin.

Needless to say, this was a brillant move, because now Apple is aligned with Linux, an up and coming Desktop, leveraging software already designed, stable and secure. OS X is a master piece mixture of beautiful Desktop integration, that just works, using a proven solid as a rock core, called Unix.

However, Apple does not seem to have let this get to it’s head, because Steve Job’s is clearly thinking in other areas of consumer electronics that no one else was, and apparently still is.

First came the iMac. Perfectly, in time to save Apple Computer from going bankrupt, by leveraging the Internet and delivering a Computer that was easy to use as 1 - 2 - 3, literally. Plugin the power, Plug in the Internet cable and turn the damn iMac on. How brain dead, yet brillantly simple is that? Sheer genius, which has always been a trademark of Steve Job’s thought process. Add in a splash of colors, bright as a happy go lucky gay rainbow and you have yourself a product posed to sell in the millions, which it did. You dont, see the iMac much any more, because of the G’s serious of Computers, which is just a serious player in the Video and Audio Media markets.

Get yourself a G5 running Pro tools for digital music multi track editing and Final Cut Pro for full blown professional video editing. Not to mention iLife for all out multimedia publishing on a professional level, unmatched by Microsoft or Linux. All major movie and music studios use Apple as their only choice for this type of Multimedia Publishing, hands down.

Next, Steve Jobs, comes up with the iPod, that catches the hair on fire of every teenager in America and the world. Multicolors and essentially just a cool, hip mp3 player at first, then evolving into playing small videos, downloaded from Youtube. To add firepower to the iPod, Apple opened a fully Web Based Internet Music Download store called iTunes. For .99 cents a song, you could have it, without having to buy the entire album. This little wonder from Apple again, kept Apple in the mainstream, regardless of a convicted Monopolist, which happen to be stealing every Desktop feature Apple came up with.

At this point Apple Computer, changed to just Apple. Sure, Apple had a kick ass Desktop running Unix under the hood, but it was far more successful selling iPods, iMacs, Pro Software for serious Movie and Music Industries and the best was yet to come.

Enter, the iPhone. Before, everyone was running around on a Blackberry, which was a very cool hand held PC, essentially, Internet ready. But, the iPhone, in Apple’s own style, did away with any buttons on the device, about the size of a Blackberry and made it appear HIP, by making everything touch screen enabled.

It is no surprise why Apple, years before, released their very own Web Browser, called Safari. Safari would than be installed on the up and coming iPhone. Safari, is essentially, took the same approach as OS X, there by, using KHTML — an Open Source HTML Render Engine — which they retooled and called WebKit. Apple then took WebKit and wrapped a decent GUI around it and Apple’s first Web Browser was born. Seemingly, out of the blue.

With the success of the iPhone, Apple opened the iStore to sell applications that would run on the iPhone. It is a huge success.

Apple is also working on something called Apple TV, which I do not know much about, but is sure to be just as a hit as everything else ‘i’Steve ‘i’Jobs has thought up. Not, one of his ideas has flopped. yet, each one a major risk in heavy investment, which if at anytime failed, would put the already treading deep water, that Apple was in. Yet, Apple management to execute each one, in rapid succession, with utter success to phone home about.

Simply amazing, the turn around that Apple has achieved, since the return of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1999.

Apples Achilles heel.

Steve Jobs is Apple. Apple is Steve Jobs. Therefore, if something were to happen to Steve Jobs, you can assume Apple, as a company, would be in serious trouble. All the gadgets and toys Apple has come up with was a direct result of one man’s main driving force, Steve Jobs. In fact, Steve did leave Apple for a long time, only to return in 1999 to save the company. It is rumored, that Steve Jobs knows how important he is to Apple, that many view him as a major a**hole. This is not good, if you think about it.

Linux

Linux is something you can look at in awe and sheer wonder, mostly as to, how in the hell could something like Linux even happen? Linux is truely a weird evolutionary human experiment, that seems to defy all preconceived notions of Traditional Business, Models of Software Development and managing to find itself creeping into every little nook and cranny imaginable.

Linux is really a symbol of many larger ideas. Ideas like Free Software, Open Source, Copy Left, Open Collaboration, unrestricted and almost hippy like in it’s Revolutionary way of working with Computers. It is almost impossible to know where to begin with this monster called The Linux Free and Open Source Movement. When I say movement and revolutionary, I really do mean what those words deeply mean.

Software, everywhere was closed, private and proprietary. The only way to get any market share was to have a business plan built to support it. Yet, the creation of Linux the Kernel and Operating Systems renaming themselves as a Distribution is the beginnings of me attempting to describe something unique, unexpected, yet obvious all at the same time.

A quick note about 2 men that seeded the Revolution. Keep in mind, these two men are really just symbols of a movement that actually includes millions of other people, almost cult like as followers.

Richard M. Stallman, or RMS as he liked to be called is a long haired, bearded hippy, obviously still recoving from Woodstock and all that happened in the 60’s. (Well, not exactly, but this is what I am reminded of, when I see him speak.) He is essentially, a programmer that became fed up with how Software, in particular Operating Systems were being locked down by a company called A T and T. He decided, to start his own software company, but in his own way. Instead of going down to your town hall and applying for Copy Rights and Business Licenses, RMS, decides to do everything backwards and opposite to what you would normally expect a Business man to do.

• In 1985, RMS founded the Free Software Foundation.
• Wrote the first draft, of the General Public License or GPLv1.
• Invented a new copyright methodology, called copyleft.

He then set out to gain followers of his movement be called GNU. Which stands for Gnu is Not Unix. His mission was to completely rewrite Unix from scratch, including the compiler, editors, linker, kernel and all the software programs necessary to built an Operating system. The GNU Operating system, would be free as in Free to use and modify it’s source code, as outlined by its copyleft License called the GPL.

The GPL would ensure that anyone entering into the GNU project, gave up all rights to any code contributed to the project and that it would all be software not for profit. Building Software for Software’s sake. Mind you, all of this was before Microsoft took over the world with Windows.

Richard M. Stallman, is a brilliant software programmer. He write the GCC or Gnu C Compiler, which is the standard compiler that Linux Kernel and all of it’s software is built with. He wrote his own text editing software, called Emacs, which gained a cult like following of programmers to use to write the software and libraries needed to construct the GNU Operating System.

Things where going well, with a major snag to over come. Stallman’s Software Foundation could not come up with some of the final pieces to the GNU Operating System, called a Kernel. They also needed drivers for the floppy and hard disks and networking.

Linus Torvalds in 1991 sent an email to the Minix Kernel Usenet Group that he was working on a Unix like Operating system. He already had the beginnings of a kernel and drivers for the disk drives. Linus decided to adopt the FSF’s GPL and GNU Tool chain and was able to get a shell terminal up and running called bash.

Linus uploaded his software, all as free software so that others could look at the code and he could than get user feedback on what they wanted to see added or made better. Originally, Linus called his Operating System Freax, but was later renamed by the FTP Admin, calling it Linux instead.

After the integration of Stallman’s software and GPL, Uploading of the source code with instructions on how to get it working for would be users and finally posted the Email of where people could get the code, Linux as a project, simply exploded with interest from all around the world.

Kernel developers began to submit patches while Linus Torvalds managed the process, while attending his Helsinki College Education in Computer Science. His college allowed him to work there as an assistant in the computer lab, at the same time manage his new pet project, called Linux.

By, 1993 Linux was making headlines in the Computer Industry. Just as the Internet was also taking off. The timing could not have been perfect. The pieces just seemed to all fall into place. Linux and GNU are the two foundations of what would eventually become Linux Distributions like Slackware, Debian, Red hat, Caldara, SUSE and many more.

With each new Linux Distribution, came improvements which all the other existing Distributions could implement. The reason, was because the GPL requires all derived works that originate under the GPL, inherited those same Licensing rules. The GPL is simple. Keep the Source Code Open, make it available for download by anyone and allow anyone interested the rights to modify to than submit patches to Linus for inclusion into Linux.

Linus became the maintainer of Linux and is still so today. Just as there were maintainers for the GCC compiler, and all the other drivers and programs that were actively being developed.

What set Linux apart from all previous Unix or Unix like operatinh systems before than, was that there was always some License that got in the way of further development. AT and T are classic examples of trying to soly own the rights to the code, which only caused programmers grief when trying to submit patches to improve the damn thing. Linux adopted the FSF’s GPL from the get go so, this prevented anyone from trying to take the project and dictate what to do with it.

Linus Torvalds is the perfect man for the job as Maintainer of the Linux Kernel. The way he dealt with issues both technically and socially was used as a base for how all the other GPL’ed software projects should conduct themselves. If you had good code to contribute, most likely it would get excepted into the project’s, of which there were many.

Keep in mind that thousands of Free Software Projects Licensed under this Revolutionary way of writing software among thousands of programmers, where all happening at once. In one area, a group was tackling the issue of Linux Drivers, in another a sendmail system, still in another Networking code and so on. The number of projects was enormous.

To facilitate a way to centrally host and manage all the thousands of Free Software Projects, SourceForge, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNUX), formerly VA Software Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and VA Research, is the provider of the SourceForge Development Intelligence application.

SourceForge, Inc. owns several well-known websites, including ThinkGeek and Slashdot.

VA Software is notable because of its IPO on December 9, 1999. The shares for the IPO were offered at $30, but the traders held back the opening trade until the offers hit $299. LNUX later popped up to $320, and closed their first day of trading at $239.25, a 698% return. However, this high-flying success was short-lived, and within a year the stock was selling at well below the initial offer price. As of 2005, this is still the most “successful” IPO of all time. The stock price reached an intra-day nadir of 54 cents on July 24, 2002. It then soared more than 1000% to an intra-day high of $6.38 on September 11, 2003. As of November 26, 2006, the stock closed at $4.64.

As, we get deeper and deeper into this incredible story of how a group of programmers could build their own Platform, under their own terms, in such a way as to never stiffle software innovation in favor of profit and greed. The whole movements intentions were created by geeks for geeks to be able to control their own destiny, to never repeat the A T and T disaster that happened to the original Unix.

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are considered the inventors of Unix. Stallman and Torvalds just created a Unix like system they called GNU/Linux.

Today, the FSF — Free Software Foundation — was over run, so to speak, by a new term for the Movement they dubbed, Open Source. To Eric S. Raymond, the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Free Software had the word Free in there that can confused the Business World, wanting to leverage Free Software. Was it Free as in Free Beer? Or Free as in Freedom’s and rights to do with the code what once wished, as long as it adhered to the GPL, now at version 2. — GPLv2 —

So, a new foundation was formed in 1999, spear headed by Eric S. Raymond, called the OSI or Open Source Initiative. Or simply, Open Source Software. This created many disagreements between the FSF.org and OSI, so many call the movement Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) or Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Yet another argument is whether to call the Open Source Operating System, Linux or GNU/Linux. Since, GNU represents the compiler and core server software tools created by the GNU Foundation under the FSF, Stallman insists Linux include this rather tacky add on to what can be simply called Linux.

Either way, is correct and in the end, does not matter a terrible amount. But, to RMS is does.

So, what has happened now that it is September 2008, to this Revolutionary Software Movement? Well an absolute crap load, which I have written many an article about. You are free to read those which I will list as references at the end of this article.

But, essentially, Linux now has a dominate Distribution called Ubuntu, based on Debian Distribution, that aims to be a Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, competitor. Linux has grown up a lot ever since a man by the name of Mark Shuttleworth decided to fork Debian Linux, to allow a 6 month release and update cycle, called Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, is what I am running right now to write this article. Ubuntu is marketed as Linux for Human Beings. It has fixed a lot of interoperability problems that plagued the Free and Open Source Software model for years. The challenge is this.

How do we get all the little pieces of Open Source Software to communicate, in order to work together to create a unified, stable and user friendly Linux Desktop?

The challenge has taken 4 years to get to it’s current release, dubbed, Ubuntu Hardy Heroin version 8.04. And I have to say that it is a beautiful piece of software engineering. It truly is stable, immune from all known Internet Viruses and as point and click ably easy to use as Microsoft Windows XP or Apple OS X.

Linux, however, started as a headless server, meaning no GUI anything. This meant everything was done using shell commands. Linux has a stack called the LAMP stack, standing for, Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP, which has become the #1 solution for Web Servers, Mail, File and Print Servers. Linux has been ported to more hardware architectures there any other Operating System.

Linux runs the NYSE - New York Stock Exchange –, commands the Mars Rovers and can also be found in microwaves and refrigerators. It is also entering into the mobile space of cell phones, PDAs and an iPhone clone called Android.

Linux powers French parliment using Ubuntu as it’s Desktop of choice. Did I mention Linux was used to build 97% of all the currently top rated Super Computers, known as HPC or High Performance Computing?

The list goes on and on. Linux also includes programming languages like Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl and more, as I better stop before my head explodes.

To top all this off, the user applications number in the ten’s of thousands. Ranging from Audio, Video, Image editors, to Games Free and Commercial. Endless server utilities and a powerful shell scripting language called bash. Linux also leads the way in super innovative Desktop Effects like the 3D Cubed Desktop and compositing FX to make your Windows wobble and contort, for the art of it all.

Linux, also commands the choice of up to over 500 different Distribution choices. All of them can be reviewed and downloaded from the well organized site called DistroWatch. The sheer amount of choices is mind boggling, but there is a top 10 list to keep you sane, until you get brave enough to try the others.

Linus is so viral in the way it spreads into every area of computing that most of the software that runs on Linux will also run on Windows and the Mac. And if that were not enough, it is possible to install and execute native Windows binary programs, like Adobe Photoshop to run on Linux using the amazing Wine project.

Let’s not forget that Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Flickr, Twitter and so many more endless web sites run Linux Servers and Services like Apache and Postfix for Mail. My god can I go on?

Yes, IBM sponsored and released Eclipse, which is an IDE framework to build any type of IDE by using its revolutionary plug in system. All build using the now Open Sourced Java Virtual Machine, which allows Eclipse to run on the Mac and Windows as well. Making Eclipse, fast becoming the programmers IDE of choice for every programming language Eclipse has a plug in for, of which, just about no language is left out!

Linux and Open Sources Achilles heel.

There is none. If Linus were to get hit by a Bus, there are plenty of programmers waiting in line to take his place. Even, if multiple Linus replacements were to step forward, natural selection would find the right one. This is the nature of all Open Free Software Projects. If Open Free Software runs out of money, well, is irrelevant. Open Source is not funded by any one. There are corporations that leverage Open Source to turn a profit from, but this does not mean money or any business sustains Open Source. The community sustains Open Source and Linux. The only way for Open Free Software to die, is if the entire community loses interest. Therefore, I think the biggest threat to Open Source Software is something like Global Warming, a killer Comet or Asteroid or a major natural or unnatural disaster, such as a nuclear war, resulting in the death of most the human race. Even then, I think geeks would find some way to keep coding and their passion alive, even in a nuclear fallout.

Microsoft

Now, I save the best (or worse, in some people’s view) for last.

Microsoft, I like to think of as a Mix between Apple and Linux. On the Apple side MS just seems to take every idea, innovation, GUI tweak, OS feature and anything else they thought looked cool from Apple OS X and changed it a little to look like the MS way. Let’s just say Apple hates MS with a passion, and for good reason.

The same thing goes for MS steal (sorry, borrowing) innovations and ideas from Linux and the Open Source world, including Unix. In fact, every OS has taken something, usually asbolutely fundementally core about how a computer works. Unfortunately, MS decided to not borrow key security features of Unix, which Apple and Linux did, which has now rendered MS powerless to stop the floods of viruses coming from all directions via Email and Web Sites.

Now, that is not a very good way to start off with MS. We do have to give credit for a lot of MS innovations. But, most of those innovations were taken from Apple or Linux and extended to work a little better. This is how I view MS as a whole. MS is a company that watches the Industry, like a hawk, appearing to seem more interested in other companies ideas, at the same time finding ways to integrate them into their own MS way to end up with something that is just one step ahead of the companies they, borrowed from. This method of innovation is certainly not illegal, and is common, but MS takes the idea to a whole new level.

Here is a short list of innovations MS did contribute that really are key:

• Ajax was a MS technology first used in 1999, called HTTPXMLRequest.

Sorry, that is really all I have! Just about everything else, from GUI Windows that over lap, instead of tile, mouse and GUIs to click and manipulate a menu system, and core fundamentals how how a Kernel and shell works, are all taken from either Apple or Linux / Unix.

What MS is truely credited with was pulling through the mess that was computer hardware compatibility, or lack there of, and still making MS-DOS and Windows 1.0-3.1 able to run on these IBM-PC Compatibles. They were smart enough to build their platform on commoditized hardware, which allowed OEMs to build similar enough computers to run MS software. This in comparison to Apple strictly sticking to their own custom hardware, which locked out OEMs from partnering and distributing Apple computers. Sun Microsoft systems did the same thing with their SPARC hardware.

Microsoft exploded as the primary OS, was directly attributed to using hardware that was becoming more and more compatible and distributable on a mass scale. But, all is not rosy. Microsoft, in this process of making these OEM deals did do illegal things. like force all OEM’s to only preinstall Windows and no other OS, else MS would cut the OEM’s contract to distribute MS Operating Systems.

After MS secure the ports, so to speak, effectively blocking any other software company from using IBM-PC hardware as a platform, that was literally run by MS based on extortionist tactics. All MS has to do now, was sit back, observe what Apple and Linux / Unix were doing, and simply coping those same ideas, adding MS marketing logos and twists, to be easily digestable by the mass market.

MS had it make, and to this day, still has contracts with all the major OEM’s (Dell, HP and Acer to name a few) based on the scare tactics MS uses to ensure only Windows ever gets majority distribution percentages. Why the government has yet to step up and put an end to this illegal Monopolist way? Is anyone’s guess.

My guess, is that these contracts as under strict company confidentiality and therefore the bigger governments, like the Supreme Court, does not have juristition to obtain anytype of warrant for investigations to obtain and review MS / OEM contract agreements. But, I will stop there, before I get into too deep of water.

OK, the nasty mean stuff aside, lets begin to look at what MS is doing, on the battle fronts of the computer industry.

Internet Explorer, which Microsoft built as a direct result of Netscape. Now this is another long and nasty story, in itself. Here is what happened.

• netscape released the first commrecial Web Browser, to take 90+% marketshare.
• Netscape partnered with Sun to include Java built into Netscape.
• Netscape was building a Web Platform, independant of Mac, Linux or MS.
• MS released Internet Explorer, cloning Netscape, feature for feature.
• After a few rounds, IE version 4, MS decides to Integrate IE into Windows.
• Netscape goes bankrupt within months of IE and MS inegration.
• MS is sues by the U.S. Government for using it’s monopoly to undermine Netscape.
• MS is ordered to break the company into 2 parts, one for Applications the other for Windows.
• Bill Gates and lawyers appealed and the split was over turned, MS was saved, but fined millions.

That is the story of the first browser war, in a nut shell. But, in 1999 Mozilla, company befind Netscape, decides to do something revolutionary. They Open Source Netscape, ultimately re branding and rewriting the code base and calling it Firefox 1.0. Since, this is about MS technology, I will leave this final note. Now in 2008, Firefox 3.1 has 45+% market share and Internet Explorer 8.0 only 50+% and losing ground month after month. Also, with the entrance of Google’s Chromium Browser, IE’s days are numbered.

Zune, is Microsoft’s clone of the iPod. To make this one short and easy. Zune is a complete failure, commanding little to no market interest. The iPod is simply too hip to compete with.

Xbox gaming console. Now, I was surprised when MS decided to enter the Gaming Console Industry. After all, Sony, Nintendo and a few others had this market under control. But, the XBox inspired gamers, particularly with one of Microsoft’s biggest success stories, Halo. Halo is a first person shooter, but taking the genre to a whole new level. Halo is action packed, uses realistic physicals and actually has a deep and engaging story line. Microsoft did well with Halo, releasing the final installment of Halo 3, which was better than the previous two, In turn, Halo 2 was better than Halo 1 and the original Halo was amazing in itself, to begin with.

Halo cemented the XBox as a console to easily be valued by gamers and many were sold.

Xbox 360, on the other hand, has mixed results. Xbox 360 is Xbox v2. Yes, the 360 was awesome, in terms of more graphics and better sound and more CPU power. But, it had one major flaw, it over heated, to the point you could smell the burning solder as it melted from the heat the console generated. Xbox 360’s red ring of death was a set of circular led lights that gave status indications about the health of the console. Millions of units had to be shipped back to Microsoft for repair. MS did a great job at accommodating the customers, but it cost MS all the revenue’s the Xbox generated, in order to fix all the recalled over heated 360’s.

The reason this happened, was because MS decided to built the entire Xbox, from the hardware chassis, motherboard, power supply and controllers and games, at Microsoft’s campus. MS is a software company, not an experienced hardware company, and they had to learn this the hard way. As of now, you can attach an external fan to the 360, along with the repairs MS did, and his fixed the over heating problem. But, like I said, at a huge cost to MS. Not, to mention the unit is very loud and easily generates enough heat to warm a master bedroom, on it’s own.

Mobile Windows CE, has been around for a long time. But, it has never really taken off, not because of MS, but because of how fragmented the cell phone industry is. I don’t know many details about Windows Mobile CE, so you will have to Google this on your own. But, I do know, the iPhone, Blackberries and up and coming Google Android are clearly winning the battle on the mobile front.

Now I want to get into MS Servers. This battle front can be divided into two parts. One which is the Small Business Server and the other are Server’s used by Corporations to centrally manage ten’s of thousands of Workstations, within a companies Corporate Intranet.

Small Business Server from Microsoft for use on the Internet, was created to compete with Linux’s overwhelming encroachment of Servers built for Web, Mail, File and Database facilities. However, SBS is reported to be very limited in terms of customization, scalability and price point. Linux has what is known as their LAMP stack, which is highly stable, configurable to do Web, Mail, File, Print and Database Serving on the Internet. And Linux has no License fee, unlimited user seats and no restrictions on how many Linux LAMP servers you want to have on your Network. MS SBS on the other hand is restrictive in every way possible. This is because MS wants to sell their full blown Windows Server 2003 / 2008 Servers, costing into the ten’s of thousands of dollars.

Windows Server 2000-2008 are designed as the best of what MS has to offer, to compete with Linux LAMP and friends server lines. Windows 2008, boasts a few interesting changes. MS traditioanlly, tried to keep out of the command line as much as possible, instead opting to use GUI tools to do all the server configurations. This is highly inefficent, because you have to have a good way to compress the graphics to be responsive enough for remote adminitration. GUI controls add a lot of over head, in terms of, CPU, RAM and Disk usage.

The headless version of Windows 2008, in which everything is configured via the command line, just like Linux has always done. They did this due to customer demands. It is ironic that MS do a backward two step, back into the command line and away from the GUI. Windows 2008 also boasts a powerful shell called PowerShell.

PowerShell is essentially .NET all wrapped up and accessible via PowerShell. It has been reviewed as being very powerful. However, the move to a headless server, only solidifies the fact that Linux / Unix had it right all along. So, if I am now going to be working in the Command line shell anyways, companies might as well choice Linux servers, which has no limited on anything. Linux also boasts more tools and options and Server applications.

Databases available to a Linux Server. Postgre, MySQL, SQLite, Berkeley Database, LDAP and more. Microsoft, boasts MS SQL 2000-2008, which is not nearly as configurable, scalable and faster as the Linux choices.

Mail Servers, that Linux offers include; Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, Qmail and many more. The choice of IMAP and POP mail management software are numerous. What MS has going for it’s Server is MS Exchange, which is a full blown Enterprise level application using Active Directory to centrally manage user accounts, their mail and policies for each user.

Alternative Linux options that try to integrate with MS Exchange Server, are still not 100% compatible. MS Exchange and Active Directory is a very strong selling point. Also, 90% of Corporations, already have MS Exchange installed, which means MS Exchange is deeply entrenched in that aspect of Corporate Business. Migrating away means downtime, cost to ensure the migration goes smoothly and retraining staff to use the Linux Alternative. I believe, in the long run, it will be worth it.

Windows Desktop and Workstations are Microsoft’s number one cash cow. With 90+% market share in both the corporate and home markets, Microsoft definitely has a massive advantage. Owning the platform, also means being able to dictate what can run on that Platform and dictate which communication Protocols and API’s Independent Software Vendors to use, like messaging between Exchange and Domain Controllers. file system network sharing, printer sharing and authentication and encryption protocols like IPsec.

Proprietary protocols, usually overly complex and in binary format, makes it very hard to reverse engineer, and enables MS Windows Platform to easily lock out competitors. An example of Protocol Lock out/in, is if another company wants to offer an alternative to MS Exchange Server, Microsoft can simply prohibit the use of Exchange’s Proprietary Protocol and if they do decide to make an agreement, would enable MS complete control over Licensing fees or any other fine print. In many cases, MS makes the fee is so huge, that the company trying to arrange an agreement simply backs out and made a laughing stock.

In recent news, the European Commission has ordered Microsoft to share the specifications of key MS proprietary protocols, but only a very small group is allowed to review. This was ordered, as a result, of many anti-trust law suit convictions. In the past MS was punished by having to pay Millions or even Billions in fines, which MS simply considered pocket change.

Search Engines called Live Search is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Google, Yahoo, Ask and all other Search Engines. A Search Engine is very expensive to set up and maintain. They require enourmous data centers comprising of thousands of servers, raid arrays and network switches. All this computer power is required to do the following;

• Visit as many Web Sites as possible.
• Index all Web site data and store it in a Database.
• Have some kind of page rank system to make search results relavant as possible.
• Create a way to track user behavior using browser cookies.

A search engine is a bit deceptive, in that, in order to support the enormous data centers required to crawl the Internet, store the Peta bytes or more of data and servers with massive processing power to process the collected data, sort it all and make presentable for human consumption. Finally, if the Search Engine is popular, it will need to query the Indexed Search data and serve it up using Web servers.

In order to pay the bills for all this hardware and rack space + bandwidth required to run a successful Search engine needs to come from somewhere. The way Google does it, is by providing a responsive and effective Ad Network, called Ad Sense and Ad Words. Microsoft Live follows this same Business model as well as Yahoo! Search.

Let’s just say that Microsoft’s Search Engine market share is dismally small compared to Google and Yahoo!. Yet, Microsoft can easily afford to maintain the data centers necessary to make it all run. Microsoft, got into the Search Game too late in the game.

Social Networks, Windows Live Spaces (formerly known as MSN Spaces). Microsoft does not appear in any top 10 Social Network Lists. While other Top 100 Social Network Sites, rank MS Live Spaces as number 3. So, you may need to do some specific reason on this yourself.

Social Networks are much like Search Engines, in that they are created as a place to than make money by Advertising to the users of the Social Network. Unlike Search Engines, a Social Network requires much much less data center server power.

Media Codecs that are under MS patent control include; WMV3, WMVA and WVC1. The good news, is that there are all alternatives to these formats which are Open Source.

Microsoft developers are very well equipped. Since MS is a Closed Source Platform, MS API’s are very important, and MS has done an excellent job at providing them, as well as, Documenting them. It is a well known fact, that if not for Microsoft’s extensive support promotion of it’s API’s would render MS a useless Platform. Without an API, it would be impossible to create software on a Closed Source Platform. But, this also includes an Open Source Platform like Linux.

A complete list of Active and depreciate MS APIs.

.NET Framework. Microsoft, may not have invented the idea of a cross platform language. Java is famous for that. But, that does not stop MS from cloning the idea and calling it something different. Microsoft’s .NET Framework really is cool. It is a framework, in that, it allows any .NET language or API the ability to allow the Programmer to easily integrate code from one type of .NET language and including it. In other words, it is possible to base your Application on C#, than easily link to a VB Library to access those function available in the VB library. This includes any .NET language, of which there are many.

The idea of a cross platform language is not new. Sun Microsystems, invented Java and it’s Virtual Runtime Machine to allow the programmer to write a Java program on Windows that will also execute on a Mac or Linux, with no code modifications required. MS took this concept a step further by making the runtime, Cross Language as well as cross platform.

Microsoft’s Achilles Heel.

Money and reputation. Microsoft needs capitol and loads of it. MS is being sued left and right. MS is in court, currently fighting multiple court battles. And the law suits do not appear to be slowing down, but instead, picking up steam. If you can believe that. MS has more than 70,000+ employees to feed and a massive campus to sustain. Clearly, money is Microsoft’s, bottom line. Reputation is just as important and tied directly with profits. Vista, for instance, was deemed a failure. People are losing faith in MS and it’s products. As a result, alternative methods of computing are being sought after, not only by other businesses, but also by entire governments. Microsoft, I would say has a lot at stake, therefore, a lot to loss. But, unlike Apple, Bill Gates is not a major influence anymore. MS has a massive talent pool of employees it can tap into. MS is also very deverse and able to adapt and play hardball if they have to. Microsoft may have seen it’s glory years and will decrease in size, unless they figure out a way to fix the Vista OS mess. But, MS has seemingly unbreakable sales teams will to do anything to keep Microsoft the #1 software company in the world, for decades to come.

If you did not get the news yet, about Google unexpectedly releasing their very own web browser, called Chrome. You can read my post about it.

I do want to inform all Firefox users out there, that happen to like the look and feel of Chrome’s soft blue theme and the position of the Tabs being above the Address Bar! Nothing terribly innovative here, Opera had their browser tabs above their Address Bar for quite some time now.

Use these instructions, to easily create the Chrome effect and apply a new Chrome theme to your Firefox 3. I did, and have not run into any issues with it yet.

Enjoy.

If it wasn’t for Microsoft putting a PC on every Desktop where possible, the Internet would not have exploded into the size it is today. In turn, the Internet sold more PC’s, because more and more people wanted to get on the Internet. The two technological concepts really are meant for each other.

So, in essence, your Desktop PC is really an Internet PC. Apple knew this soon enough with it’s release of their iMac’s, which literally saved Apple from going under, to a large degree.

Imagine not having your Internet Connection up and running when you sit down at your computer! Most would not want to use it, until the Internet Connection was up again. Sure, your PC would still function, but not being able to check Email, Chat, Blog and Surf the Web for the latest News and Gossip, literally makes your PC feel different. A sort of loneliness sets in, for those that have become dependent on the Internet, for Work and Play. This is exactly my case, with my Computer. When my Internet is lost, for whatever reason, priority one is to get it back up, asap.

The marriage of all these Computers with the Internet, has also changed the way software is created, sold and distributed. Traditionally, we would take a trip over to your local computer shop, and buy a box that contained the software we needed. Then, huge outlet stores emerged like CompUSA, Circuit City and Best Buy to fill the demands of the PC and Internet Age. Software companies make Billions and Billions of dollars annually in software sales. The sale of proprietary software like Microsoft Windows, Adobe Photoshop and Games, to name just a fraction, of what is on the selves of these huge stores.

But, as time marches on, things began to slowly, but drastically change. It was suddenly hip to be a geek and no longer looked upon as something you didn’t want to become known for, in fear of becoming socially ridiculed. The geek, became cool. Geek Squad, a computer tech support company, is proud to wear their pocket protectors and thick black glasses, running around in white shirts and black ties first made popular at IBM.

With this new attitude towards computers, teenagers and old a like, began to embrace the Computer age. They turned this lifeless and dry piece of machinery, which was connected to the Internet, into a deep, broad and far reaching set of Social Networks on a Global Scale.

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, WordPress, Twitter, del.ico.us, Ning, Hi5, Match, eHarmony, Millionaire Match and countless other Social Sites began to spring up everywhere.

Along with them, came personal Web Pages made by the, now hip geeks, proudly displaying their coding tricks and solutions to technical problems, in the form of HowTo’s and Tutorials or just quick and dirty instructions to show invisible peers, what they could do with their Computers. A sort of bragging rights.

Scratching your Own Itch

Instead of waiting for some Corporation or Business to bring the geeks the software they urned for, decided to band together and create it for themselves. Often times, merely to scratch an itch and other times out of necessity either for a small business or from programmers working in a large Corporation.

A new way of creating complex software was born, called Free and Open Source. This new way of making computer programs, threw established software companies into a frenzy. No longer did titan software Corporations, like Microsoft, have absolute control of what we could do with our Computer Hardware. In fact, many disagreed with how these mammoth Software Companies were conducting themselves, by abusing their power, in ways that would put enormous cost on it’s End Users.

The Geeks, now considered Hip, were forming the next Computer Revolution, since the release of the Personal Computer itself. It was the geeks that formed the Committees and Foundations, that created the standards that all Internet based technology is based on. These Foundations were assembled on a volunteer basis to create standards like HTTP, TCP/IP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and all the things that make the Internet work, as it existed today. This meant that the technology was not controlled by for profit organizations, but rather, to address the challenges of making the Internet easy to use.

These Open Standards are the hallmarks of what made the Internet and Computer Revolution become accessible to many non geeks. Had these same standards been formed under a single Corporation, would certainly have certainly been formulated with the selfish interest for that Corporation.

That is why HTML, HTTP and all the Protocols, that make the Internet work, are all plain text Protocols, making them very easy to read and understand. There are no special software tools required to examine Web Pages, for example. Anyone, can easily View the Source from a Web Browser and inspect the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that make the Web Site work!

Traditional Software vs Revolutionary Software

As mentioned previously, software was traditionally created by for profit corporations, like Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks, Apple and many more. This type of software was most always created in house, and under tight lock and key, in order to keep trade secrets from falling into the hands of competitors. This type of Software creation model is known as, Closed Source Software, in that, the human readable code is kept as intellectual property and out of the public domain. The only entity capable of benefiting from this approach to software development is the Business that created it. This allowed the owners to dictate the Licenses, prices and all terms, regarding the use of their software, which is always delivered in Binary format. Binary software, is software that is not in it’s human readable state.

On the flip side, is the Revolutionary Software Model. Created by the same individuals that formed the standards that the Internet uses. This also includes, just about anyone with the skills to participate. These programmers, known as Open Source Programmers, initially grew out of hobbyist groups, dating way back in the 60’s.

In other words, Open Source is simply a way for programmers to collaborate, and form Software Projects. Some projects are as simple as a text based calculator, maintained by a single individual. While other Software Projects, like Gnome or KDE, which are Desktop Environments can include thousands of participating programmers, all doing various tasks, like Documentation, creating artwork like icons and desktop themes to programming the code.

What are the motivations of Open Source Programmers?

Essentially, being a programmer and having the ability to instruct a machine to do exactly what you want it to do, is empowering and rewarding and motivating. Other motivations come from being able to work with other like minded people on a common mission, which is the project. Many times, it is hard for other programmers to locate one another, but the Internet erases all barriers and allows the programmers to build their own communication methods, either using Email, Live Chat or Web Page Forums.
The motivation to connect with others and compete as friendly peers to see who can come up with a solution to a problem.

There are many motivations as to why Open Source Programers work together, but probably the number one reason can be considered a self one. Scratching ones own Itch. If you are someone that wants a program or some way to get your computer to do a task, be it simple or complex, drives that programmer to see if they can create it. This simple little quirk of human nature is probably at the heart of anything that results completely free from monetary influence.

Much like why artists paint, or musicians write songs. Programmers fall in this same group, because there are near limitless angles a person can tackle a programming challenge, means that it is up to the creativity of the programmer to choose how they go about making a solution to the challenge. There by, scratching their own Itch and then moving on to the next annoying Itch!

The DRY Principle

The DRY principle stands for Don’t Repeat Yourself.

It is also considered redundant to constantly reinvent things that are already exist. Reinventing the wheel, is a common analogy. Why do it? Same thing applies to building software. However, the only way to properly use the DRY principle, is to make all Source Code Open for anyone that wishes to review and perhaps contribute. In fact, Open Source programmers often start a project on their own, only later to Open Source it, in order to gain some peer review, gain ideas and expand their own project. All programmers know that there are smarter programmers out there, willing to review your work and contribute a better solution. To Open Source programmers, if you build something and hide it away in some folder, where no one will ever see it, let alone use it, voids most the reasoning for creating the program, in the first place.

In other words, Programmers are not complete isolationists. They want others to see what they are up to and therefore share their projects, often times, including code from others, that may have found a better way to do it. It feels good and is normal human behavior to want to share and be open.

What is an Operating System?

Each and every piece of software created can, in some way, contribute to the creation of the ultimate software project, known as an Operating System.

An Operating System is a program in itself, that manages other programs, allowing them to be managed by a Human User. An Operating System is really just a collection of thousands of smaller programs, all working in unison or on standby, to in turned allow Human Beings to benefit, by using the computational power that a computer can deliver, in a way Human Beings can understand and make useful.

How could a mostly Volunteer Process Produce a High Quality Operating System?

Traditional Software companies like Apple and Microsoft never dreamed, in a thousands years, that a purely volunteer based Operating System, such as Linux and Ubuntu, could ever become a real possibility. It was always assumed, that the sheer complexity of organizing all the little programs needed to form an Operating System, was simply not possible, without direct supervision that only a Business under Management, could provide.

The reason an Operating System like Linux and Ubuntu became a reality, has to do with the idea, that software does not degrade or spoil as time passes. Once a piece of software is written, it stays that way, until someone changes it, in most cases for the better. Software, given enough time and quality contributions no matter how small, can only get better and more useful. It may take a longer for an Open Source Operating System to become as easy to use as a Proprietary, Closed Source Operating System, like Apple or Windows. But, give it enough time and attention, eventually it will be built.

Software does not spoil or degrade, as time passes.

Closed Source and Open Source Software is Merging

First, software was built under the crack of the corporate whip and everything had a strict deadline for mission accomplished. At the same time, programmers that felt unchallenged, under a Corporate whip, worked at home, with other programmers in an Open and Revolutionary way.

Since, a Corporation’s sole foundation is trying to achieve a the bottom line in terms of profits, is met with a flip side to that, with the idea that Open Source Software is Free of Charge and Free to utilize.

Companies like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have had to take a hard look at the direction Open Source or this Revolutionary way of building software is effecting their Industry. It has changed to rules of business, forever.

In order to stay in business, closed source software companies, once completely under lock and key, have begun to Open Source their software in hopes they can sell support or additional features. It is either that, or consumers will simply not buy anything and use what is available for free from the Open Source Community.

At first, Software Companies did not know what to do. They were literally scared, that one day, bankruptcy was a real possibility. Open Source was considered a cancer to Microsoft, as an example. But, what Open Source forces all of the Software Industry Leaders to do, is to become honest. The playing field is beginning to level out. And companies like Microsoft, are forced to take a new approach to their Business practices.

Open Source empowers anyone willing to learn the Open Source platform. Software that costs nothing, in terms of Money, and complete freedom to personalize Open Source, because it is highly customizable.

Only 15 years ago, there were very few options, a new small business could turn to, for their computer technology needs. The shortage of choices lead to unfair and exaggerated price points for software and hardware. Need a Web, Mail, Print or File Server? In the past this could cost you ten’s of thousands of dollars. Why? Because, the only businesses capable of providing these extremely complex programs, had little to no competition. No competition means, the sole provider can set any price they want, resulting in them getting very very rich and all others left to pay the high prices.

Why Sustained Monopolies are Bad for Everyone

There is nothing wrong with pricing your products and services really high, if you are the only kid on the block capable of producing the products and services others need. The problem with a sustained Monopoly situation, is that, the Monopolist is much like a dictator over seeing a country. A single, all powerful Monopoly, can easily choose to abuse this power, by practicing unfair business, that only kills everything, but the Monopoly.

I believe, that to become a sustained Monopoly, is a direct indication of some sort of malpractice going on. Otherwise, how could the Monopoly, sustain it’s position for a long period of time? In order for a Monopoly to sustain itself for an unnatural amount of time, is to use it’s established power to undermine any attempts for competitive forces to emerge, and take that initial, yet crucial first foot hold, it needs in order to allow time for the competitor to grow.

A monopoly that is playing fair, can only sustain it’s position for a limited amount of time, before another competitor decides they too wish to join the same or similar lucrative business. This results in creating a healthy competitive business model that aides in the evolution of the products and services. It also results in lower and competitive prices and makes the resulting products and services more accessible to a large consumer base.

That is why the Open Source Software Model is often referred to as a Revolutionary Model. A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. This describes, exactly, what Open Source means. If software corporations insist on trampling on would be competitors, by using their already entrenched Monopolies money, marketing and man power, to make it impossible for competitors to keep a foot hold in long enough to grow and become competitive, are in fact, committing anti-trust laws.

Getting a Foot Hold in a Software Monopoly

First, make the Source Code Open, because the Monopoly operates on a Closed Source model.

Second, make the product and services Free of Charge, because the Monopoly depends on continuous revenue to continue to be organized.

Finally, create Licenses that effectively make obsolete any current ones, because the Monopoly will then become burdened by their own License model.

Results of the Dispersion of a Monolithic Monopoly Within a Market

Once, the Monopoly has been penetrated and begins to disperse, will allow the new models to begin to compete in the same arena the Monopolist once had complete control of over. This forces the Monopoly to adapt or risk becoming obsoleted. The customers of the Monopoly benefit, in the case of Software, with drastically lower prices, more flexibility and choice in how the software is configured to behave, allowing a more innovative economy to evolve.

Many other benefits result after a Monopoly is forced to adapt or risk becoming obsoleted like, patching once unnoticed security holes that made vulnerable the entire market the Monopoly once controlled. If the Monopoly decides not to patch these massive security holes, risk losing customers to businesses that do patch the security holes.

More competition means more choices, lower prices and expanded possibilities, in that particular market. Some examples include; Smaller Businesses, relative to the mammoth Monopoly business can now utilize competitor software, which may be more configurable and flexable than what the Monopoly was offering. This results in these Smaller Businesses to customize servers to suit their particular needs and making the price competitive therefore with in the means of the smaller businesses.

Once the Monopoly has been forced to allow cheaper, more customizable server technology and server tools, will result in untold variety, some becoming niche markets to form. These variety and niche markets, could generate unmeasurable economic gains to the market as a whole, at the same time, allowing Freedom to Innovate and evolve, due to competition, as of yet, unknown technologies.

Conclusive Thoughts

Open Source and Closed Source will — and currently are — mixing together, to find ways to coexist. After all, programmers do not want to put themselves out of business, by writing all the software imaginable and releasing it Free of Charge. But, there is software that should become commoditized and accessible to everyone, to allow common services to flurish.

Closed Software has it’s place and will not become obsoleted. Closed Software is a form of privacy that must exist, just like our basic rights to privacy in our homes.

But, the point of software is to allow the creation of services. Anyone is free to create any type of computer program from scratch. No one should own the rights to any ideas made possible by writing software. Trademarking names, logos and such should be legally protected, but not a common idea like Software compression or encryption. Anything too broad in terms of it’s usage scope should not be possible to patent, else it makes it impossible for bigger more important ideas to come about, known as innovation.

Hybrid Software to Rule the World

Finally, I come to the point of this article.

The two worlds, Closed and Open, Proprietary and Free will continue to morph and mix themselves into a new entity. It is already happening. Companies like Sun Microsystems have Open Sourced nearly every technology they have invented. They now consider themselves an Open Source Software Company.

The reason for doing this is, because Linux was taking all their business away. Sun demanded enormous sums of cash from their customers to License their products and services. Linux is just as stable as Sun’s Servers and more customizable, and Free of Charge. In order for Sun to compete, they Opened their technology, which allowed others to modify and expand, resulting in a better Sun offering in terms of fixed bugs and optimized performance. Sun makes it’s money by selling support to those that need it as well as Licensing useful and Proprietary Software they have not Open Sourced that they feel will add value to key areas of services.

Microsoft, is a big fish. And that word monopoly we have been using throughout this article was directly referring to Microsoft. They are approaching Open Source very cautiously. Like a terrified diver slowly working his/her way into shark infested water, fully dawning a chain mail shark suit, spears and all. Microsoft, can not simply Open Source everything they have created, like Sun Microsystems has. Microsoft has a very unique Kernel, which has some heritage to Unix, but not like Sun’s Solaris — openSolaris now — as well as Microsoft’s Office Suite and Visual Studio IDE tools. They also have their own Database (MS SQL), Web Server (IIS) and a myriad of programming languages and run times which include; C++, C#, JScript, VBScript, VB and all .NET and finally the entire .NET frame work itself.

It does’nt stop there. The Xbox and all their games, Direct X, Silverlight — Adobe Flash Clone — as well as an iPod clone, complete with a music store like iTunes. How about Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange Mail Server, Internet Explorer, their own search engine called live.com. Finally, the entire family of Desktop, Workstation and Servers ranging from MS-DOS to Vista and NT 3.5 to Windows server 2008.

The list goes on and on. Microsoft, truly has built an empire, based on software plus services. They are their own Universe of software. Huge amounts of stocks, that their shareholders would not think twice about suing Microsoft over, had Microsoft done anything drastic. — Remember, what happen to Yahoo! when they did not sell out to Microsoft? –

Instead of Open Sourcing much of anything, they instead apply for their own OSI Licenses two of which have been approved to be Open Source compatible Licenses, which they have not used yet. They invent their own term for Open Source, called Shared Source, which isn’t much like Open Source. They try to appear to create and utilize their version of an open Protocol, called Open XML, which to so, weaseled their way in by paying off many countries to vote it in as an Open Standard.

The most controversial thing they have done, in reaction to Open Source, is threaten the entire Open Source Community with 280 some patents, which they have yet to clarify what those patents violate. This was purely done to scare businesses from using Open Source or any business providing Support for it. To a some degree it worked, but not by much, and a specially with what I am about to describe, on top of Linux Red hat’s year over year increased annual profits selling Linux Servers and Support packages and Linux training.

Then in 2006, after annoying their 280 plus patent violation claims, forced Novell (SUSE Linux), Linspire Linux and Xandros Linux to sign into a very controversial agreement. The agreement was essentially, they have to buy Microsoft Certifications for each Linux they roll out, which ensures to those Linux Companies and their customers Microsoft will not sue them. This has been referred to as a form of extortion.

What makes these controversial deals a confirmed extortionist plan, was when Microsoft decided to support the Apache Foundation, by becoming an Official partner, by paying a $100,000 membership fee. Microsoft also released their very first small bits of Open Source code. Microsoft clearly benefits from this Apache deal far more than the Open Source side does, because the software technology Microsoft released, known as ADO database integration with Apache, is basically useless, because Open Source alreay has their own superior versions called the LAMP stack. — Linux Apache MySQL (Postgre and SQLite) Perl, Python PHP — Not to mention a myriad of other technologies, all of which work natively on the Windows Platform.

Now back to the Novell Patent law suit threats. It would seem that they would then void them, since Microsoft is clearing support Open Source Foundations now, no less. However, Novell just extended their agreement with Microsoft for a few more years! Also note that Mandriva Linux — a French Linux Company — the famous Red hat Enterprise Linux, Canonical and Ubuntu have all, turned their heads, to signing any such deal with Microsoft. This includes big blue, IBM, which invested the historic, 1 Billion dollars, in Linux research, years past.

The situation has yet to resolve itself, this Open vs Closed Source thing.

My prediction is that Microsoft will be forced into working with, and not against, Open Source and what it stands for. It will reveal many of Microsoft’s anti-laws to more and more businesses, which is already open and available in detail at Groklaw’s Web site. This may not bee good for Microsoft, because many of the things it did as a Corporation were against the law, particularly with ISV’s and OEM’s to stifle any incoming competition from forming, which Microsoft always look at as an unhealthy threat, rather than healthy competition, which always results in better products and fair prices for the End User.

The future look bright for Open Source as well as Microsoft, if they would only see that supporting their customers is better than trying to force feed them.

Linux has a plethora of software, all at the finger tips of anyone running a Linux Distro. The software offered is nothing less than staggering. Also, the software presented here is only, best of breed. This does not include hundreds of other programs that are in the works, perhaps not as good or simply not known yet.

We have compiled a list, for you, of the Best of the Best arranged into categories. The categories include; Games (Free and Commercial), Audio, Video, Email, Scientific and Text Editors.

Admittedly, we did not compile these lists ourselves. But, we did compile all the links into one web page — this page– for everyone to access and enjoy. Feel free to Book Mark this post.

There are literally hundreds of hours of fun exploration waiting for you, all — or mostly — free of charge. The software that is commercial may be good enough for you to want to buy. This supports the Linux Gaming Industry, which I am sure you know needs a good boost.

We recommend Ubuntu Desktop, as your Linux Distribution, because Ubuntu is based off Debian and Debian has the most packages available of all the Distributions. Also, if you can not find the software listed in the Ubuntu repositories, many software programs come with .deb packages, which almost always install just fine on your Ubuntu. Some even go as far, as to make Ubuntu specific packages, because of the sheer popularity of Ubuntu.

So, without further ado… below are the Software Programs, organized by Category. Feel free to pass around this post to your Linux friends, as well. I am sure the creators, of these wonderful programs, would love knowing others are, at least, checking their hard work!

• 42 of the Best Commercial Linux Games
• 42 More of the Best Free Linux Games
• 42 of the Best Free Linux Games
• 42 of the Best Free Linux Audio Software
• 42 of the Best Free Linux Video Software
• 42 of the Best Free Linux Email Software
• 42 of the Best Free Linux Scientific Software
• 21 of the Best Free Linux Text Editors
• 80 of the Best Linux Security Applications

Entering a new Era in Internet Web Browser design. Google, once again, produces something quite amazing. It is free of charge, Open Source, meaning anyone can enhance it and will change the way we all use the Internet.

Chrome is essentially trying to bring your Desktop directly to your Browser. More and more these days, we are not buying software in a box and installing it on our machines, but rather loading it directly into the Web Browser as if it were a Web Page. These webpages I am referring to are of the likes; Yahoo Mail!, Gmail, Google Docs and so much more.

In fact, Web Sites morphing into Web Apps is going to be a theme that we will continue to see more and more off. The days of downloading programs and installing them will soon be a thing of the past.

What this also means is that it will not matter if you are on a Mac. Windows or Linux Desktop computer, because the web browser doesn’t care, as long as it can run.

You really just have to take some time, get something to drink and view this video, presented by Google that professionally and to the point shows you all the awesome features this amazing browser can do.

You can go ahead and download it and try it. They are still working on a Mac and Linux version, but the Microsoft Windows version of Chrome is ready for download.

Firefox will no doubt be using Chrome as inspiration and add some of it’s features to Firefox itself.