Two years ago, the small business where I work would never have considered selling Linux systems. When it comes to computers, the vast majority of our customers are only familiar with Windows. Trying to sell them an Ubuntu system would have been similar to what Sisyphus experiences with his boulder.

Times have changed, however, and now it's a bit easier - especially since I can demo a system and show that they'll be able to do many of the same things even with a different OS powering the computer.

Common Windows applications that are available for Linux
My average customer wants to do a few key things with their system and not much else - download music, chat, send email, store digital photos, and play some casual games. Many of their preferred Windows programs are also available for Linux.

Limewire - Just because you're switching operating systems doesn't mean you have to give up downloading music. Limewire is built on Java and is available for Linux.

Picasa - Most of us have digital cameras by now, and many of us have hundreds (if not thousands) of digital photos. You may have grown to love Picasa on Windows, but you won't have to give it up if you switch.

Skype - Keeping in touch with family members is important. Doing it for free? That's a bonus, and Skype will let you do that, even on your new OS.

Developers continue to push ahead with Moblin - the fast-booting Linux distribution aimed at providing a better instant-on experience. Today marks the official release of Beta 2, and it's taking shape rather nicely.

The user interface has been completely overhauled, transforming the Moblin experience from a stark, minimal Linux desktop into a more HP MIE-like experience. Hover at the top edge of your screen and the main menu appears, providing access to programs, settings, and files. There's even a built-in Twitter status updater and IM support for Jabber, GTalk, and Salut.

Moblin's web browser is built on Mozilla and tweaked with an Opera-style speed dial display for new tabs. And of course there's a media player included for browsing photos, listening to music, or checking out movies on your tiny portable.

The new M-Zone displays appointments, calendar entries, and tasks, and allows users to customize their start page with commonly used applications and URLs (speed dial entries automatically appear). The pasteboard is another nice touch, and makes gathering and managing snippets easy.

All in all, the project has come a long way in a short time span and it's starting to look like a solid Linux alternative for Intel-powered netbooks and notebooks. It ran extremely well on my 15.4" Toshiba guinea pig.

(check in later for more updates after the break)

Flock is a web browser that's based on Mozilla. But what really makes it stand out is the integration with social networking services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. Flock 2.5 is out today, and it adds enhanced features for Twitter and Facebook, including:

• Read Twitter replies (err... @mentions) in the Flock sidebar
• Save Twitter searches
• Take actions like replying or clicking on Twitter links from the sidebar
• Use Facebook chat from any web page
• Drag and drop web content into the Facebook chat box to share it

There's also a new feature called FlockCast so that when you post a tweet, set your MySpace status, write a blog post, or upload pictures to Flickr, you can click a button to automatically post those actions to Facebook as well.

It's official - just under a month after the official release of Jaunty Jackalope, Canonical is ready for users to test drive the first alpha of Karmic Koala. As Brad previously mentioned, Ubuntu v9.10 will focus on cloud computing and netbook systems. The alpha is built on kernel 2.6.30 and the latest Gnome dev release, version 2.27.1.

Canonical, of course, does not recommend running any alpha software on production machines. To play it safe, install the OS in a virtual machine or on some scrap metal you have lying around. Intrepid types, however, are welcome to boot the ISO and install away.

Torrent downloads for 9.10 area available for x86 alternative and amd64 (and as direct downloads), while you can download Xubuntu and Kubuntu from their respective pages.

The torrents are well seeded and downloading quickly, so fire up your client and go get Karmic now!

Update: will try to have some screenshots up soon. So far, Karmic is incredibly zippy. Well done, Ubuntu devs!
Update: screenshots after the break...

Earlier this year the Linux Foundation took over control of Linux.com, which had previously been maintained by SourceForge. This week the Linux Foundation unveiled the new face of Linux.com.

The new site features blog posts, forums, a list of popular Linux distributions, complete with download links, and news and information about software, hardware, and other topics of interest to the Linux community. The site is the product of input from community members who submitted and voted on ideas at IdeaForge.

[via OStatic]

Microsoft has Live Sync, Apple has MobileMe, and Canonical is now beta testing their own user data synchronization service called UbuntuOne.

The service works as you'd expect - set up your sync, access files anywhere, share your online items with anyone you choose. Currently lists two service levels - 2GB of storage is available free of charge, while an upgrade to 10GB will set you back $10 per month.

The service will likely provide a decent revenue stream for Canonical. As for me, I'll be sticking with DropBox on my Linux Mint laptop.

Not only does the DropBox pro account offer five times as much storage (50GB), there's also a $20 discount for paying annually - dropping the monthly fee to just over $8. On top of that, I can use DropBox to sync with my Windows desktop as well.

Perhaps the developers will amp things up a bit before UbuntuOne is finally released.

Popular open source media player VLC has almost hit version 1.0. The developers are in the process of pushing out a release candidate for version 1.0 of the cross-platform media player. There's little information about the latest version on the main VLC web site, but you can download the Windows version from FileHippo.

Here are just a few of the latest features:

• Instantaneous pausing
• Frame by frame playback
• Finer speed control
• New and fixed audio and video decoders
• On they fly zip file decompression and browsing
• On the fly gzip and bzip2 file decompression (ecept for on WIndows)
• Support for DVB-S and ATSC cards on Windows
• Experimental Blu-Ray disc and AVCHD folder support

There are also a number of interface improvements and other tweaks. And as always, VLC can open and play almost any multimedia file you care to throw at it.

VLC is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

First of all, I've read the Times nearly my whole life. I grew up in a NY-suburban Times household. I have fond memories of my father spreading out the Sunday edition on the floor, sitting on the carpet in his pajamas. He read that paper every day until he died. (No evidence that the Times hastened his death.)

But that's not reason enough to fork over $15 bucks a month for the latest digital format.

The NYTimes web site is persistently in my "most visited" lineup on my computers. I have multiple Times RSS feeds neatly sorted in Google Reader. I subscribe to the Times on my Kindle. Oops ... as of five minutes ago, not so much with the Kindle. I ditched that subscription, and replaced it with TimesReader 2.0.

In doing so, I violated my own dictum (and we all know how much that hurts) that convenience always trumps quality. The Kindle subscription takes the convenience prize, especially when traveling. But oh my -- the quality of that interface would leave Samuel Pepys aghast. Fun fact about Pepys: he had 10 brothers and sisters. He had to fight for his share of the family Kindle.

Dictum death occurs when quality zooms upward, but convenience gets nudged down just a little. That's what happened here. Bad news for Amazon. I'm suddenly willing to dig out my laptop on a plane for a vastly improved reading experience plus updates from just before the machine exited WiFi range. I used to keep the Kindle on my bedside table so I could start reading the OpEd page in the morning before my eyes were fully open. Now I'll haul over a laptop. We'll see how that goes, but at the moment, the tradeoff seems more than worth it for the full-color, wide-angle experience.

Is any of this reason enough to subscribe in any fashion, when I spend all day and half the night in front of computer screens and can get Times content free of charge? I just hope my wife doesn't start asking that question. In the meantime, I am loving this thing. The NYTimes might and might not survive the newspaper crash, but some of the digital solutions it comes up with definitely rock.

TimesReader is a desktop application for reading the New York Times without a web browser. While this may not sound like a service you need, since you can read most Times articles online, the latest version of TimesReader provides a pretty compelling interface for reading the paper. TimesReader 2.0 also happens to be built on Adobe AIR, which mean that unlike earlier versions of the program, it runs well on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.

When you first load TimesReader, you'll see a list of articles from the front page of that day's paper. You can click any article to read the full text and see any pictures. You can also change the date to see any issues from the last week, enter a query in the search box, or flip to a different section of the paper using the sidebar navigation. You can even do the crossword puzzle for each day.

Once you're reading an article you can either go back by hitting the navigation buttons on the top or left of the screen, or you can hit a button to spread out the "pages" of the day's newspaper as if you were flipping through them on your table, helping to re-create the experience of reading the print edition.

There is a bit of a catch though. While you can read all of the articles from selected sections of the paper for free, if you want unlimited access you'll need to pony up $3.45/week for a subscription. Or fire up a web browser and go read the same articles for free on the web.

[via GottaBeMobile]

You'd never know it from looking at your RSS reader right now, but there are operating systems other than Windows 7 pushing out new releases. One of my favorite Linux distributions, Linux Mint, has just made a release candidate of their seventh version available for download.

Not familiar with the distro? It's based on Ubuntu - the Mint v7 core is Jaunty Jackalope, which Canonical recently freed from its cage. Apart from providing a solid foundation, that also means you can install Mint from within Windows using Mint4Win (Wubi, modified) (quick update: this is not working in the RC, but will be ready to go in the stable release).

For Windows users looking to try out a Linux distribution, Mint is a nice choice. The Gnome interface is set up Windows-style, with a taskbar along the bottom and menu button in the left-hand corner.

Apart from the obvious visual updates, Mint has introduced a few core features that have improved ease-of-use. The MintMenu system now offers a more intuitive search box (similar to the one in Vista and Windows 7). If Mint can't find an exact match for your query, it will provide suggestions. Results appear in an flash, and sugegstions are generally spot-on.

Mint Install and Update have also been improved, and they make adding applications and keeping your system current a breeze. Screenshots offer a welcome visual preview before you download - especially handy if you want to check out some the dozens of available games - including great ones like Wormux, FreeCiv, Nexuiz, and Warzone 2100.

Mint is a great distro, and the version 7RC is very enjoyable to use. Don't want to install it? Mint plays well with VirtualBox and VMware, and you can also run it as a LiveCD.

I'm enjoying the new release so far, and look forward to seeing it evolve into its final form.

At first glance, Statuzer looks like just another Twitter client built on Adobe AIR. But it has a few awesome features that set it apart from competitors like Twhirl and Tweetdeck. First, Statuzer comes with a built in music player that lets you stream MP3s shared through song.ly and tra.kz. But you can also use Statuzer as a search engine for Jamendo to find and play free and legal music. In fact, even if you didn't want to use the application as a Twitter client, Statuzer would be worth checking out as a Jamendo desktop client.

The program also has a few other bells and whistles, including the ability to display images from Twitpic directly in your stream. It also supports the following features:

• YouTube thumbnaiils
• Hashtags
• Contact groups
• Multiple accounts
• Search filters
• URL shortening
• Customizable color scheme

Statuzer is still in beta, but it seems pretty stable. It's definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a new Twitter desktop client for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

[via Go2Web20]

A few months back, Adobe announced the availability of a 64-bit version of the Flash plugin on Labs - for Linux only. Now they've released a 64-bit alpha version of Air, and once again it's just for Linux users.

If you're running a 64-bit Linux distribution on your system and can pitch in with bug reports and devote some serious time to testing you can email Adobe with your particulars. While I haven't received word back from Adobe as to why Linux is their testbed of choice, it surely has something to do with the number of Linux users running x64 distributions and their willingness to experiment with pre-release software.

Update: Adobe's Matt Rozen has just emailed me a response. He says "We have seen much stronger interest from the Linux community for a 64-bit version of Adobe Air, so that has been the focus of our efforts."

Windows users will have to wait patiently. There's no news at all yet about Air and the official line on Flash is that 64-bit support won't come until the next major release.