Linux Solutions

Linux had a good week last week with the announcement of Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux, and Wikimedia Foundation’s move to Ubuntu from the Ubuntu/Red Hat combination of the past.

Undoubtedly the more exciting of the two was the release of Adobe Flash Player 10 – now available in variety of packaging formats for Linux.

“It is great to see Adobe taking this step, which should make it easier on new Linux users,” wrote Thomas Teisberg on the Linux Loop.

“This is Adobe’s concession and nod to Linux - Linux is important and worth porting commercial applications to,” Slashdot blogger yagu said. “Many open source and Linux advocates - I’ll refrain from calling them zealots - shudder at the prospect of proprietary products like Flash in their universe, but it’s mainstream products like these that are just as important to Linux’s success as Linux itself. I thank Adobe for their contribution, late or not. Good for them.”

The other big story was that Wikimedia decided to move their 400 web servers over from and Ubuntu/Red Hat selection of products to Ubuntu 8.04 exclusively.

“We still have a tiny technical staff, and re-organization of things that got thrown together in a hurry long ago is an ongoing task,” wrote Wikimedia staff member Brion Vibber on Slashdot.

Linus has been gaining publicity each and every week and it invariably led to the question: What can Linux do to help the world? Blog Action day’s theme this year was how can Linux reduce poverty?

It has been noted that advances made in Brazil, Russia and India – among others – is working towards ending the global problem. But some people don’t know if an operating system has the power to change the world.

“I don’t think there’s anything Linux, or technology in general, can do to reduce poverty,” said one blogger – Mhall119. “Certainly the poor are not poor because of the cost of proprietary software. That said, while Linux can’t reduce poverty, it can still help those who are in poverty.”

OpenOffice.org is an example, he added. “If someone is trying to improve their lot by getting an education, and they don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on MS Office to do their school work, that’s a bonus for them,” he explained.

“The response I got back on that, from the teachers and the toddlers, has been amazing — so amazing, in fact, that I’ve started a charitable organization that takes donated hardware, puts Linux and Linux games on them, and donates them to kids in need,” Mhall119 added.

“We’re just getting it started, but already we’ve had almost 50 computers donated to us,” he said. “We couldn’t do this with proprietary software - the licensing costs of the software would make it impossible. But because of the GPL, BSD, MIT and other open source licenses, I can.”