Joe Brockmeier argues in his article that positive campaigning is much more successful in reaching more people, than negative campaigning. He especially criticise the FSF for its "Defective by Design" and "Windows 7 sins" campaigns. I fully agree with Joe's point that it is important to do positive campaigning. This is especially true in Europe.

Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere is a happy time. Lots of fresh Linux distribution releases coming out, all ready for plucking and testing. Mandriva 2010 is one of those. Debuting two weeks ago, it has drawn many, mainly positive reviews, sparking intrigue and a desire to take it for a spin.

In my blog yesterday, I shared how Michael Robertson had sold Linspire to Xandros without a shareholder meeting or any input from the 100 some-odd shareholders. Today, Xandros' CEO, Andy Typaldos, did a Q & A (spin) about this deal. I thought I'd add some additional "color" to some of his answers.

RMS: « A Dutch study concludes that P2P file sharing makes a positive contribution to society. Of course, we know this is true, but it is good to see it confirmed carefully. »

I guess a dedicated Microsoftie could spin this in a positive way (rah! rah! 100% growth in DOCX format in three months), but it is getting harder. In eight months since Office 2007 was released to th general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are under 2000 of these office documents posted on the web.

I believe in Synergy. One positive event feeds other positive events. The share of computer users who use Linux, GNU, and other Free Software is growing because people are actually starting to put some marketing muscle behind the concepts. Canonical is one of these companies. Red Hat is another. Google is also fighting the good fight.

I can't say that Xfce spin is slower or faster than the LXDE spin of Fedora 13. The thing to remember about both of these Fedora spins is that it's easy enough to add any or all of the applications from one spin to another.

Sure, Ubuntu Lucid is running OK on my aging 2002-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop. But I feel the strain of all that gwibber-service/desktop-couch activity in the Ubuntu LTS. So I've been looking around for my next distro. I'm running Fedora 13's LXDE spin from the live image right now, and I have the Xfce spin ready to test.

My first contact with PCLinuxOS was two years ago in January when the 2007 Test Releases were being rolled out. Although I was a happy Suse, then openSUSE user, I lost the connection, the good feel I used to have with their 9.3 and 10.0 releases once the 10.1 became available.