SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) is perhaps best known as the distro whose owner Novell, in 2005, signed an extremely unpopular patent-protection deal with Microsoft. From that moment on, Novell was essentially dead to those that prize the free software aspects of Linux.
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Open-source pioneer and Novell Vice President Miguel de Icaza Thursday for the first time publicly slammed his company's cross-patent licensing agreement with Microsoft as he defended himself against lack of patent protection for third parties that distribute his company's Moonlight project, which ports Microsoft's Silverlight technology to Linux.

There has been so much talk in the last two weeks that Microsoft has changed with regard to its patent policy toward Free Software. We fool ourselves if we trust any of the window-dressing that Microsoft has put forward to convince us that we can trust them in this regard.

Desktop environments like KDE and GNOME offer a popular interface to computing. Unfortunately they are also often heavy on resource usage. By contrast, the Equinox Desktop Environment (EDE) is the fastest desktop environment I know of -- but its lack of standards support and a few missing features may be troubling to some users.

Coming on the heels of its April 28, 2009 release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 ("SP 2"), Microsoft has added several versions of the OpenDocument Format standard ("ODF")to its list of specifications covered by the Microsoft Open Specification Promise ("MOSP").

"...The announcement confirmed that Microsoft was planning to use its software patent portfolio against interoperating products by requiring a patent license for all commercial activity [...] Microsoft's patent licences are incompatible with Free Software [...] Free Software's freedoms to use, study, share and improve software without additional restrictions are key to the success and utility of Free Software in both commercial and non-commercial ICT infrastructure. They are also the basis for many of today's working examples of interoperability and competition..."

"Solution Linux" has Microsoft "injecting Microsoft content"; OSBC features a software patents proponent from the corrupt Gartner Group; Microsoft's patent troll seems prepared to sue/extort the mobile phones industry

Dell presents a dual-O/S solution, but it uses Novell's SLED, which is not free

Patent news about Free software, Microsoft, and Microsoft-affiliated patent trolls