• 1-800-MAGIC: Back to Microsoft - Sergey Solyanik writes about why he left Google to go back to Microsoft. Lots of interesting points, but this is amusing: “First, I love multiple aspects of the software development process. I like engineering, but I love the business aspects no less. I can’t write code for the sake of the technology alone - I need to know that the code is useful for others, and the only way to measure the usefulness is by the amount of money that the people are willing to part with to have access to my work [my emphasis]. Sorry open source fanatics, your world is not for me!”

• Q and A - Testing Linux With a Live CD - Question - NYTimes.com - NY Times mentions Ubuntu again.
• Gordon Mohr Takes Us Inside the Internet Archives - “…we’ve moved over the years from a Redhat version to a brief use of something that was a pure Debian to now using almost exclusively Ubuntu…”
• Open source is not a vertical | Open Source | ZDNet.com - “One of the first things Microsoft re-sellers learn, if they want to grow, is it’s no good just hanging a Microsoft sign on your front door. You need to specialize. You need to know an industry, a vertical, you need to have an angle…”

• [Phoronix] Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva Performance Compared - “Last week we released Phoronix Test Suite 1.0 and one of the article requests we received as a result was to do a side-by-side comparison between the popular desktop Linux distributions. Ask and you shall receive. Today we have up 28 test results from Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 9, and Mandriva 2008.1.”
• Vienna failed to migrate to GNU/Linux: why? - “The City of Vienna made several crucial mistakes. In this article, I will list the most prominent ones…”

• Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and OpenSolaris Community Managers — A Radio Free Software Interview - Barton, Fedora, Glynn Foster, Jono Bacon, Karsten Wade - “Barton moderates a discussion between Karsten Wade of Fedora, Jono Bacon of Ubuntu, Zonker Brockmeier of OpenSUSE and Glynn Foster of OpenSolaris. (44:08)”
• Ubuntu landed on Berlin metro system | Screenage - “The guys from “Berliner Fenster”, a company responsible for the content of the television system installed inside underground vehicles (more than 3.700 displays) were so kind (thank you!) providing us with a spot for our release party this Saturday for free. So just on time with the release starting from today there are small spots viewable by an audience of about 1.5 million people per day according to their web site.” See pictures of the ad.
• n00.be » Ubuntu in Vermist - “we present to you the Belgian movie Vermist where police detectives apparently use Ubuntu as their operating system of choice…”
• iTWire - Why we love Ubuntu Linux (or maybe we don’t) - “Ubuntu had all the signs of being the most unifying and popular Linux distro of all time, but on the other I kept finding people grumbling about it. On reflection, the grumbles may be because Ubuntu has been so massively hyped that the reality can be disappointing when compared to expectations. Perhaps Ubuntu has made itself a victim by virtue of its own marketing…”
• Why Brazil Loves Linux : Gustavo Duarte - “These markets are also friendly towards Linux and pose significant challenges for Microsoft. This post is my take on the reasons for Brazil’s fondness of Linux. I speak for Brazil since I was born and raised there, but I think much of this applies to the other BRIC countries and emerging markets in general.”

• Digg - Official Booze of the Ubuntu distro?
• Unixfication II | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com - “Can the Linux community get over its “not invented here” ideology which has often hindered its ability to adopt technological improvements from outside sources? I keep saying to myself, I hope so. But recent events have shown me that we have a long way to go until we become a culture of inclusion and not of exclusion and isolationism…”
• Development of Automatix has been discontinued - From the founder of AX, “Ubuntu as a distro has been faulty by design from the start. It was always a mediocre Debian fork…it failed to deliver in terms of public anticipation. Automatix was the one of the biggest reasons…why Ubuntu succeeded in its second and third years as a distribution…Folks like Matthew Garrett do not understand DPKG well enough to understand that Automatix was NEVER a replacement for dpkg, or apt or synaptic (do not read Add-Remove which is an extremely poor implementation in itself). We made Automatix and we made Ubuntu as popular as it is today [my emphasis]. If someone wants a more technical discussion, feel free to write. If I read the kind of trollish crap that Matthew Garrett wrote, I will not bother to reply. I do not have time for beginners and learners who try to sound important.” WOW. Matthew pipes in on the thread.

edit: getautomatix.com seems to be down. Here is an image of the post: http://img108.imageshack.us/my.php?image=axlivesty5.png

edit part II: getautomatix.com is back up.

• The heron has landed: a review of Ubuntu 8.04: Page 1 - “This release is disappointing because it falls short of what was promised, but it still delivers a lot of value for experienced users who will be able to work around the weaknesses…”
• Moving to Ubuntu | A Wor[l]d of Mentations - “My overall experience in these past days using Ubuntu has been really incredible and I would suggest each and every Windows user to atleast try Ubuntu using Wubi..”
• LinuxDevCenter.com — Meet The Hardy Heron: What’s New in Ubuntu 8.04 - Background on Ubuntu and its development and the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo gets a plug.
• Why many MCSEs won’t learn Linux | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com - “Basically, to learn Unix you learn to understand and apply a small set of key ideas and achieve expertise by expanding both the set of ideas and your ability to apply them - but you learn Windows by working with the functionality available in a specific release.”

• VIA unveils open source driver development portal - vnunet.com - “The first offering is graphics drivers for the VIA CN896 digital media IGP chipset for the new Ubuntu 8.04 LTS distribution…”

• 451 CAOS Theory » Red Hat-Ubuntu pairing would have potential - “I’m starting to see some big potential for symbiosis between two Linux and open source leaders: Red Hat and Ubuntu. Red Hat’s departure from the consumer desktop Linux market comes at the same time Ubuntu continues rolling in the same market with the release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron this week…”
• BlissPoint Blog: Five Reasons why the Ubuntu Server Revolution will never happen - “I have complete respect for the VAR Guy, so I am writing out a response to his post Five Reasons Ubuntu Server Revolution Begins Today that allows me to explain my position and how it differs from him. It isn’t criticism of the VAR Guy, it is a difference of opinion. I hope he sees it that way…”
• [Phoronix] Ubuntu 8.04 vs. Windows Vista Power Usage - “Without a doubt, however, Linux has been improving when it comes to power management in large part thanks to Intel and their various projects such as PowerTOP and LessWatts…”
• FOSSwire » Interview: Kenneth Wimer of the Ubuntu Art Team
• InformIT: Interview with Donald Knuth - Donald Knuth, author of The Art of Programming series is an Ubuntu user.

• FOSSwire » Ubuntu Cheat Sheet - Command line cheat sheet for controlling common apps and utilities.
• Ubuntu man Shuttleworth dissects Hardy Heron’s arrival | The Register - “We would be quite willing to revisit the elements of our release schedule in order to make that synchronicity possible, if the fact that we happen to do April and October wouldn’t work for the majority of the distros. We would be flexible in that regard…” Martin Owens, the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo leader also pipes in and discusses issues with PulseAudio and bug reports. He also asks if Canonical’s focus on virtualization and support for enterprise solutions is moving away from goals of pushing Ubuntu into the mainstream.
• Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron is here | The Pervasive Datacenter - CNET Blogs - “Canonical says that they have relationships with more than 30 PC manufacturers (many of them regional) as well as dozens of commercial ISVs, Open Source and otherwise (IBM Lotus Notes, Parallels, VMware, Alfresco, Zimbra, etc.)…”
• Hardy Heron reflects Ubuntu Linux ambitions - “The desktop contributes more to Canonical’s bottom line than the server…The server business is still Canonical’s primary focus for support revenue. But the company has been getting paid for desktop and consumer-electronics work…”

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Ubuntu ‘reaping Linux dividend’ - “There are other versions of Linux that are better for a particular purpose - but Ubuntu strives to be a general platform that is secure and self-maintained…”
• Ubuntu Linux takes on enterprise server market with new OS - “So now that Ubuntu has an enterprise-ready server operating system, will the company begin following the model of other Linux vendors, such as Red Hat Inc., and create an offering for enterprise applications as well?”
• Atheros hires ath5k developer - Maybe there will be native wifi drivers for the Asus Eee soon. “Luis R. Rodriguez has been hired by Atheros to to get every device of Atheros supported upstream in the Linux kernel…”
• IMHO: Ray Ozzie “Gets” Open Source - O’Reilly ONLamp Blog - “But the bottom line is we believe very much in the quality of Microsoft products. We are an IP-based business. But we live in a world together with Open Source, and we have to make it possible for you to build solutions and for customers to build solution…”
• BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | Is it lift off for Linux? - “[Mark Shuttleworth's] main point was that Linux, and use of Ubuntu, was on the rise. He also had lots of interesting things to say about open source more broadly, the Microsoft-Yahoo deal etc, which I thought I’d detail here as a Q&A…”
• An Apple User Tries Ubuntu - “I never thought I’d say this, but the command line is a plus, not a minus. Personally I’d never want to use it – all my passwords are enough memorization – but I see it as a valuable tool for power users…”