Tony Maro, Linux Superhero

Tony Maro, CIO of EvriChart, a hospital records management and archiving business, successfully migrated his company’s Windows-based line of business document management extranet application and his employees’ 40-odd Windows-based desktops to a 100 percent Linux-based server and desktop infrastructure.

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You too can use the preferred OS of the maxi-zoom-dweebie

There are certainly ideal groups of people who are capable of moving towards a 100 percent Open Source or Linux environment in both their professional and personal lives. I’m not really interested in discussing the political and ideological aspects or why someone would want to make that choice.

The greater and more important question is, who CAN switch to Linux?

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I Love a Shiny New Reptile.

In my last reviews of openSUSE 11.1 and openSUSE 11, I had a number of stability issues with KDE 4.0 and 4.2 which led me to stick with the GNOME interface. However, there had been numerous reports on various mailing lists and community discussion forums that KDE 4.3 is now the fully “baked” version of 4.x, so I wanted to give KDE 4 a go again. I’m glad I did.

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That Bear is Seriously High on Eucalyptus

Koala looks like it’s going to be a nice release, I’m looking forward to the final version with all the various buglets and glitches I’ve encountered all cleaned up. For those of you who like to be on the bleeding edge, definitely give the beta a whirl.

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Best Buy: Dress all the sales reps up like Dumbledore!

My colleagues Mary Jo Foley and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote today about the plans that Microsoft has in place to train retail sales staff at Best Buy how to position PCs with Windows 7 for prospective systems buyers against Apple’s Macintosh systems and of all things, Linux.

This sort of grassroots negative campaigning against the Mac and Linux is really not the way Microsoft should address buyers in the upcoming year and holiday season. Just like negative political campaign advertising and grassroots door to door stomping, it often leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and comes off as completely without class. Worst case, it has even been known to even backfire as a campaign technique. From the perspective of effective sales and marketing tactics, at best I would classify this as bottom feeding.

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How to run Linux on Windows Server 2008 R2

It’s been a while since we’ve had a hardcore Geek Sheet installment, and I promise that this one will be a real winner.

Some of you may be aware that the updated Hyper-V bare-metal hypervisor virtualization layer in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 (Which is due to be released August 14th to MSDN and Technet customers) now has support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (RHEL). Additionally, Linux support and performance has greatly improved over the initial Hyper-V release. Microsoft also recently released it’s Hyper-V Linux Integration Components (LinuxIC) under the GPLv2 Open Source License.

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Summer Doldrums? Listen to the Frugal Tech Show!

While Off The Broiler is primarily focused on food, as many of you know, I also write technology articles for ZDNet, CBS’s technology news site. Over the last few months I have been teaming up with Linux Magazine and DaniWeb columnist Ken Hess, where we broadcast live on BlogTalkRadio every Friday at 6:30PM EST on leveraging technology to save you and your business money. The format of the show is news and commentary for the first half hour, with the second reserved for special guests from the technology industry. This summer we are going to be featuring a lot of Linux and Open Source guests, so be sure to tune in.

The replays of all the shows are available at www.frugaltechshow.com, just in case you miss them.

Cue “Eye of the Tiger” and the Jaunty Jackalope DVD

The fight of the century? GNOME vs. KDE , the two titans of the Linux desktop. Sure there are welter and lightweights that shouldn’t be ignored, such as XFCE, Enlightenment and GNUStep/WindowMaker, but let’s face it, it’s the two heavyweights that rule the roost on all of the desktop Linux distributions that are getting the lion’s share of attention, that being Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE.

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Novell produces its 2002 BMW 7-Series with SLED 11

At first glance, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) is virtually indistinguishable from the company’s Free/Open Source and community supported Linux distribution, openSUSE 11.1. But does SLED 11 have the extra polish and the value add to justify its position as Novell’s premier enterprise desktop OS?

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Think about that thumb drive the next time you format it

If you’ve been following the news in the Linux community, you’ve probably heard that Microsoft is currently in a lawsuit with Dutch GPS maker Tomtom over what is believed to be a refusal on Tomtom’s part to cross-license long file name support in Microsoft’s FAT32 technology.

FAT32 is most frequently used as a format to store data on USB thumb drives, flash memory cards for digital cameras and digital media players (such as Secure Digital, MMC, Sony MemoryStick and CompactFlash) as well as for storing for map information and Points Of Interest (POI) on portable GPS devices, such as the TomTom.

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