Linux on USB drive

Recently installed Linux Mandriva on USB hard drive. I didn’t want to compromise my system hard drive for a Linux partition. Two things that needs to be kept in mind before installing Linux on USB hard drive:

• 1. Make sure your have selected the first boot option as USB drive in BIOS settings. This change is required when you are done with the installation procedure. Most of the systems these days provide this option. Well, atleast my Dell Inspiron does :).
• 2. You might want to partition your hard drive and may install Linux on one of the drives. Please make sure that you install the Boot loader in the first partition irrespective of Linux installation. You will be provided with an option during the installation procedure.
  
• 3. For detailed installation procedure for Linux please refer Google. You will find many links.

A snapshot of KDE with transparent console (sorry, Konsol as they call it) is attached here. It is convenient have Linux on a USB drive, trust me. Try and let me know how it goes. Well, that's all for now. Take care and God bless!!

Microsoft’s hollow blow to open source community.

“Microsoft claims that Linux and other open source products violate about 235 of its patents.” This news it been circulated around lately. Several questions come to mind when you read this caption. Is this Microsoft’s new corporate tactic to get even with the open source community? Do Open source products really violate Microsoft patents? If yes, then what was Microsoft doing all these years?

I think this is more of a corporate tactic and the accusation is baseless. The MNC has not yet come up with the list of patents which are violated as claimed. Linus Torvalds has come up with a retaliating response to the accusation. He says that Microsoft violates more patents than anyone does (I somehow feel that this accusation is true :) ) and has challenged the corporation to come up the list of patents which are violated.

These days many corporations are turning towards open source products. Use of such products do not require procuring of licenses, you need not pay any hefty amount as part of procurement. Last but not the least, the source code will be available (under GPL license of course :) ). Thus, the support extended to the open source products makes sense in this context :). IBM is a supporter of Linux. All these factors have proved as a threat to anti-open source organization like Microsoft.

Summarizing the entire issue, one could say that Microsoft is trying to create a storm out of nothing.

Ps: Microsoft has decided not to sue Linux users.

The following links will provide more info :

Microsoft’s claim

Linus Torvalds’s response