Mark R. Hinkle

Last Monday at the Desktop Linux Consortium Conference at Boston University’s Tyngsboro, Massachusetts Campus there was a lot of talk about a “UserLinux” distribution. The topic was sparked by remarks by Bruce Perens who voiced a need for a distribution that was designed to meet community needs for a desktop operating system based on the Linux community favorite Debian distribution. I contacted Bruce who has been kind enough to interject some comments to my own text. They are marked [thus]. The thought of UserLinux sparked my thinking. The thing I like about Linux is that it’s infinitely customizable to meet the needs of almost any situation. However, for it to be a viable desktop for the masses there seems to me that there has to be some common features that a large nu... (more)

The Future's So Bright For Open Source I've Got to Wear Shades

I recently broke my glasses though I admit I don't wear them much and I started to notice that I was squinting more. Sometimes I could make out what was going on on my Linux desktop, which is set to a whopping 1920 x 1200 resolution, but I couldn't quite make out some items without closer inspection. That's like the way I think businesses and government agencies have come to view Linux ... (more)

CPUBuilders by Stratitec Linux Computer System

Colleagues and friends often ask me about Linux since they see it referenced everywhere from Business Week to quirky IBM and Dell commercials during football games. I am always eager to share my experiences - I say that it takes a bit of time to get up to speed, but it's worth it in the end, especially for those people who have been victims of the latest computer virus. The biggest hurdl... (more)

The LAMP "Cooperative"

In an April 2005 Netcraft survey of over 62 million Web sites, Apache was far and away the market leader for Web server software with 69.19% of the total market share, followed by Microsoft with 20.55% and Sun a distant third with 3.04% (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/04/01/ april_2005_web_server_survey.html). Looking back to September 2001, Netcraft also reported that Linux owned... (more)

Alternative Ways to Download Files with Linux

Fedora Core (http://fedora.redhat.com) is one of the world's most popular Linux distributions in part from support by Red Hat and a strong community of users. It also has been a proving ground for Red Hat to develop technologies that will eventually make their way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Recently Red Hat has spun off the Fedora Core Project into its own organization in much the sam... (more)