No More Solaris

The future of Solaris is looking to be bleak at best. Is this really going to have any impact on the open source community? There are countless free operating systems available. Good ones too.

Chrome OS

There is a lot of hype around the new Google Chrome OS as of late as the source code has been released. There should be lots of hype around this new operating system because it is a new concept. Sure, there are net-books you can use for your light-weight web browsing purposes. But that doesn't really cut it if you have stuff to do.

The approach behind the Chrome OS is that it is a web browser that grew up into a light-weight operating system. The OS isn't concerned with running local desktop applications and can optimize for the web. I find this concept both interesting and frightening.

The idea of having a computer that I cannot use, in the conventional sense will most likely turn many people off. It is a little scary that none of your data is in your hands. With a conventional laptop, you can at least store whatever you want and carry it around with you. I wonder what Google will do if people don't like that idea of all their data being out of their hands. Not likely to happen.

Presto

The Presto operating system looks to be a good alternative for Windows users. It is basically a slimmed down Linux distribution that comes with commonly used applications that Windows users would be familiar with. By commonly used applications, I mean what the good majority of office employees would use on a day-to-day basis.

The Presto operating system looks like it would be quite painless to install and is very reasonably priced.

The main reason I'm interested in Presto is not to use the software myself, but at the prospect of more open source users. I'm already using 100% open source software every day. But I only reached this point after years of lost data and experimentation to see how open source components fit together. I think this could be one of those jumping off points for many folks who hear a lot about open source and would like to try it out.

Something else I find interesting is in the slashdot entry about the operating system. Presto doesn't mention the fact that it is based on a Linux distribution. Is this a clever marketing-ploy? Marketing-ploy? Yes. Clever? Absolutely yes.

I think that hiding the intimidation of "Linux" may be a good thing for their target audience.