On the Net, the notion that Microsoft is predatory and monopolistic is old news, but this was sure a stunner to most Americans, who've been reading all those adoring profiles for more than a decade. Judge Jackson's findings of fact drew big headlines and flooded the talk shows all weekend. Microsoft's fat stockholders won't have a happy day today either, as brokers and analysts weigh in after a busy weekend of reading. As one said on CNN yesterday: the judge's report isn't pretty.

Anonymous Coward writes "For those of you out there with Alpha hardware, it seems that Compaq is now offering its Tru64 UNIX to 'technology enthusiasts' for a mere $99." A heavily restricted (VERY non-GPL) license is attached to the deal, but it looks like it would be a nice combination toy and "teach yourself commercial UNIX at home" tool.

cshirky writes "There's an article in AsiaBizTech about Japanese PC manufacturers bundling Linux. The article concludes that 'Because Japan's main vendors are starting to offer Linux products and services, the Linux OS is likely to become a viable alternative for corporate customers.'" They're talking about big companies, too, like Compaq, IBM Japan, Hitachi, and Fujitsu. Sweet!

Can Savas writes "After Toshiba's $2.1 Billion settlement of the lawsuit on the "probably" faulty floppy controller, others have filed lawsuits against Compaq, HP, Packard Bell/NEC and eMachines. I wonder where these lawsuits are heading but I guess some will strike it rich (having suffered nothing at all to boot). These lawsuits show how unsufficient the jury system is for cases like this where the jury is likely to be clueless. If any of these manufacturers end up settling or losing the suit, then there might be some real problems for the entire industry. "

z@ph0d writes "This article tells how Dell, Compaq, and Gateway could announce soon they will be shipping low cost PC's without Windows. No word yet on what they'll ship with, but who knows? "

Pedro Vazquez wrote in point out that Compaq's test drive programme now supports FreeBSD on Alpha and x86 platforms. The Alpha server is a 500MHz EV5.6 (21164) system, the x86 server is a Dual 450MHz box (no mention of processor, probably a PII). You have to register for an account, and then you can go and play. Compaq x86 boxes used to be particularly hostile when installing FreeBSD, so this is a very welcome development.

With the 3rd quarter results in, it appears that Dell has beaten Compaq in sales, at least in the United States. Compaq continues to be ahead worldwide, however, they are expected to be overtaken by Dell in that realm as well, according to IDC. The article also has some rates of growth information on other computer retailers, which clearly demarcates the difference between direct sales vs. the traditional method.

Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft have gotten together to form the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. So far it's a lot of talk and few details, but it looks like they've agreed to develop some standard crypto hardware and an API to use it. Is this thanks to the new export rules?

O'Reilly's Running Linux is something of an established textbook on learning Linux from the beginning to getting deeper in the innards. The latest version is written by Lar Kaufman, Matt Welsh and Kalle Dalheimer. Click below to read the review of the newest edition of the book.

Joseph DiLascio has written up a recent speech/interview with a Compaq engineer, dicussing their Linux plans. Given recent news about what's going over there, very interesting read.

Ron Rangel writes " This website gives you quick, open, online access to simply run your applications on Linux. Or at least thats what they say." I tried it and it was kind of fun. You sign up (moderately intrusive questions), then Telnet (no ssh) into servers running several flavors of Unix and several Linux distros on different (Compaq) hardware platforms. Want to play with SuSE Linux on an Alpha (or whatever)? Here's your chance!

Pivo writes "Sure I'd rather use Linux, and sure, "Tru64" is a cheezy name for a Unix variant, but for some reason I'm not happy to hear that Compaq may not release Tru64 for Merced after all. Nothing has been confirmed by Compaq however." But, according to the article, Compaq will keep supporting Unix on Alphas.

Greg Lindahl writes "The Forecast Systems Laboratory, a divison of NOAA, selected HPTi, a Linux cluster integrator, to provide a $15 million supercomputing system during the next 5 years. The computational core of this system is a cluster of Compaq Alphas running Linux, using Myrinet interconnect. Check outwww.hpti.com for information on the company. "

ansible writes " Saw this story on Techweb.com: Compaq has announced thin client hardware, including one that runs Linux. " The most interesting thing is the fact that the thin clients have a PCMCIA port and 2 USB ports. USB? Wouldn't it be swell if Compaq had some code for us? (he says eyeing the unusable USB port on his desktop and laptop)

Compaq has announced a public beta test for Linux Alpha C compiler (along with fortran). Press release (thanks to Linux PR) is available here, and here is the link for the software. It's good to see Compaq developing compilers and other applications for Linux. Keep up the good work, compaq!

Lots of readers pointed us to this Microsoft.com page that says MS has stopped trying to make NT run on 64-bit Alphas and isn't even going to release any new 32-bit Alpha products. For more info on the subject, check this Netcape Netcenter article and the Ixnay WinNT on Alphastory we ran last Friday. Meanwhile, according to a short blurb in The Register, Intel has finally prototyped Merced in silicon - and it runs Linux fine but won't run Win64 at all. It looks like Microsoft simply can't deal with 64-bit architecture. Please try not to say "I told you so" too loudly to your MS-boosting coworkers, okay? ;-)

ESR has written a piece about the re-unification of the fragmented Unix world, as seen in the growing position of Linux. Click below to get the full read.

Hernan Ochoa asks: "Hi. I'm in the process of buying a palm-size computer. I was all set and ready to buy a palm III/IIIx, but I've just seen the Palm-Size PC Aero 2130LA from Compaq. It costs about $400USD and it has a color screen, 16MB RAM, RISC, WinCE (ugh), audio, infrared, serial port, hotsync, voice recording, etc. So any comments about this? I'm very tempted to buy this one!" Looks good. Has anyone taken one of these for a spin yet?

Thanks to Jason Perlow for sending us the story that Compaq has laid off roughly 100 engineers responsible for WinNT on the Alpha platform, and will be not be doing more development on it. It's an interesting development, especially taken in light of Compaq's recent push with Linux, True64, and OpenVMS as the OSes (OSi?) of choice with the Alpha platform.

Anonymous Coward writes "Compaq is suing eMachines for patent infringement, but the real reason might be that eMachines is invading their sub-$1000 market. Sounds too similar to the Packard Bell story. " (The Packard Bell reference is explained in the linked-to article in case you don't remember Compaq's similar suit against Packard Bell back in 1994.)