Startup Locks Down Mobile Linux
— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

JULY 26, 2007 | A Linux startup today will officially launch a new, secure version of its operating system for mobile phones.
A la Mobile's Convergent Linux Platform (CLP) comes with anti-malware, device-level tamper protection, application sandboxing, and encrypted file system features.
"One of the unique things we're doing is [adding] a root of trust in the device, so that every piece of software must be verified before it executes," says Dirk Sigurdson, senior software engineer at a la Mobile.
While Symbian and Windows today dominate the mobile handset market, Linux is emerging as an alternative: According to ABI Research , around 204 million mobile phones will run on Linux by 2010.... More

Comment in the Forums 

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet comments:

Over the weekend I came to the conclusion that the reason why more Windows users aren’t switching to Linux is the shortage of good information out there on the web for Linux newbies.  If there are sites hosting good information out there, they sure aren’t appearing on the first couple of Google results pages.

Over on the Ubuntu forums, a Linux user by the name of Mig5 paid a visit to the Microsoft Windows Update website, in an attempt to download "Windows Defender" from Microsoft, which requires users to go through the Windows Genuine Advantage authentication system to ensure that pirates are denied access to it.

 He used IE4Linux to get the site to play ball, and after that, used Wine to emulate the Microsoft Validation tool.  To everyone's surprise, the tool simply spat out a valid code, which when entered in the Microsoft website, promptly presented him with a download button for the Windows Defender.

 A video of Mig5's "Linux Genuine Advantage" job on the Microsoft website can be downloaded at AOAFiles.com here

 Forum thread here 

From CNet:

Dell said on Wednesday night it will begin selling three models of PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled on Thursday. 

Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user

 Why is it that the average computer user still chooses to spend hundreds of dollars on Windows or Mac when there are countless Linux alternatives that they could download, install and make use of completely free of charge?

More at ZDNet

Discuss in the forums