Nicholas Petreley

This story originally appeared in LinuxWorld print edition in May 2003. My comments in last week's column about KDE and Qt being superior to GNOME and GTK generated fewer gripes and flames than I expected. That's a good thing, because there's no reason for the comparison to be con... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — When it comes to opera in the traditional sense of the word, I prefer Boris Badenov to Boris Godounov. When it comes to Opera the Web browser, however, I've been avid fan for years. For quite a long stretch, Opera was the fastest browser I could find. I'm not sure ... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — The SCO vs. IBM lawsuit gives off a subtle, unpleasant odor I couldn't quite place. When SCO set its sights on Linux distributors and even Linux itself, the source of the stench became unmistakable — Redmond. It was too early to make an accusation when the suit was... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — I discovered recently I cannot yet commit to being 100 percent Microsoft free. When Evans Data contracted with me to do the Linux developer survey report, they sent me a Microsoft Word document with the statistics and graphs. None of the word processors I use on Li... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — A relatively new distribution called Gentoo Linux is gaining a rapidly increasing, rabidly loyal group of users. The increasing popularity of Gentoo is almost difficult to explain, given that it's clearly a distribution by geeks, for geeks and for nobody but geeks.... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — It is finally that time in the series to formulate changes and new approaches to software installation on Linux. Let's first summarize what we have learned, as well as the important factors and goals. Administration and troubleshooting are very expensiveAny given ap... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — It is finally that time in the series to formulate changes and new approaches to software installation on Linux. Let's first summarize what we have learned, as well as the important factors and goals. Administration and troubleshooting are very expensive Any given ... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — This is the third article in a series calling for a new installation paradigm for Linux. We have a few more technical issues to address, but it should be useful to start by summarizing the goals so we can keep them in mind as we study the problems. Software install... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — This is Part 2 in a series calling for a radically new approach to Linux software-installation. Part 1 examined many (though not all) of the problems with the current approaches to software-installation. This time, we'll take a closer look at the technological cons... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — It is time for a radically new approach to software installation for Linux. Starting with this article, I will examine the problems with existing approaches to software installation, look at the technical issues, look at some of the alternatives, and propose a fram... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — To each his own, but I like eye candy. For all their benefits and power, X11 and X Window System managers have been among the most drab and poorly rendered graphical environments for years. Recent versions of XFree86 began to support anti-aliased fonts, which helpe... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — Evans Data Corporation hired me to help out with a research report focused on Linux developers. They surveyed a broad range of developers, including VARs, consultants, developers working for ISVs and IT-developers for companies of every imaginable size. It tu... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — Judging from the comments about my article last week, many readers seem to have missed the point. I used installation experience to draw attention to both the negative and positive consequences of the different designs in GNOME and KDE. What should have tipp... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — Believe it or not, it is not my intention to rekindle the KDE vs. GNOME desktop wars. I suspect the only way to avoid it, however, is to pretend that I like both equally. I don't. However, I don't want to leave you with the impression that these are the only ... (more)

I believe I have stumbled upon two of Microsoft's most-startling and best-kept secrets, the ramifications of which for Linux and open source are profound. The revelation began when I realized that I had been mistaken in thinking that the lack of a well-funded marketing department... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — When I ran into Slava Pestov, the core developer of Jedit, on IRC, I asked him what he thought of some of the increasingly popular Java-based Integrated Development Environments such as Eclipse and NetBeans. To paraphrase his opinion, IDEs are just bloated ed... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — Mono, which is Ximian's open source implementation of some of the Microsoft .Net development framework, seems to be a hot button for both fans and critics of .Net. Just bringing up the topic of Mono also seems to generate a surprising degree of animosity towa... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — I just spent the last few days rediscovering why I like Mandrake Linux and why I don't use it anymore. I downloaded the iso images for Mandrake 9.0 and burned a couple of CDs. About a half-hour later, I had Mandrake 9.0 up and running on my 1-GHz Athlon, base... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — The depressed IT economy may not have made us rich in dollars, but the events of the past year or two have certainly been rich with the kind of material that makes one want to sing Christmas songs with joy. I've prepared this year's round of IT Christmas caro... (more)

(LinuxWorld) — One of my non-profit Web sites, VarLinux.org, ran on my modified version of the PHP-Nuke weblog package from the site's inception in March 2001 until late November 2002. I chose PHP-Nuke as a starting point because I was very impressed with it. However, the m... (more)