Linux has long been held in mystique as an operating system for hard-core techies or hackers. Yet, this is far from true for today’s distros. A modern version of Linux is as easy to setup and use as the Macintosh is legendary for. Here’s reasons why people stick to Windows and how those factors can be solved in what we like to call a ‘gentle’ approach to Linux.

Blue GNU has launched a simple poll aimed at understanding whether and how FOSS projects market themselves. The 4-week project is an effort to help the community understand marketing and its impact on the progress of various projects.

Ubuntu is known as Linux for Human Beings...PC-BSD, on the other hand, "has been designed with the casual computer user in mind.

India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents. In a tense meeting at Delhi’s Manak Bhawan, the 21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a ‘no’ against Microsoft’s Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the ISO.

Russian Linux software developers have created an alliance to jointly participate in tenders to supply schools with open source software. The total number of specialist entering the alliance has exceeded the given number in Mandriva and Ubuntu Canonical producer, all in all.

Standards New Zealand will host forums this week that could determine New Zealand’s position on Microsoft’s controversial Open XML file format in a crucial international vote on September 2.

Open source is always friend to the No. 2 player in a market and always the enemy of the top dog. That appears to be the big lesson after connecting a few dots on various items popping up around the Web.

It's almost funny (almost) to see how out-of-context my words can be taken. On one side, I can have Microsoft calling me to ask me to not criticize the company as I so often do (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and....you get the point).