Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin'

Linuxoutlaws' own Fab wrote about Skolelinux being deployed in German schools today. This reminded me that I wanted to write a few notes on SkoleLinux for a while now. SkoleLinux (also called debianEDU) is a Debian based distribution focussed on being deployed in School contexts.

One of the things that disappoints me is the lack of understanding of what's at stake with open source among some of the other open communities. For example, some in the world of open science seem to think it's OK to work with Microsoft, provided it furthers their own specific agenda. Here's a case in point...

Google will start rolling out its Linux desktop on netbooks. The company will begin there because netbooks are the only division of PC sales that's actually still growing.

One of the nagging problems for Linux is that the most popular laptops are still codesigned by Microsoft and its OEMs. It's not for nothing that laptops come with stickers on the bottom that say, “Windows Vista—Business OEM Software” or whatever. These are not white boxes. You can get Linux running on them, but the hermit crab approach isn't the swiftest route to market leadership.

...most (if not all) people making the decision to buy these notebook or netbook computers do it based on the price tag, and not because the machine runs Fedora-based Linpus Linux. The salesperson selling this product has no comprehension of the Linux operating system or any of the programs available, and therefore is incapable of influencing the buyer to do it for any other reason.

OpenSUSE downloads domain is down for a long time, Novell is not exactly helping

Although Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) continued to bleed market share last month, Apple Inc.'s Safari was an even bigger loser during February, an Internet metrics company said Monday.