Thunderbirds Are... Synched!

I'm a big fan of Thunderbird, so details of how to synch up its emerging Lightning calendar extension to Google Calendar is big news for me. Here's a handy step-by-step guide.

IBM's Open Client Solution: Blue FOOGL

Here's an interesting move by IBM, what it calls a "flexible software stack":

IBM today unveiled a new Open Client Solution for customers of any size or industry so they can help their employees better collaborate, improve productivity, and lower the total cost of information technology ownership.

The solution addresses customer demand to improve interoperability and provide more choice to run different vendors' products that work together. Customers will now have the opportunity to run a mix of Lotus, open source, and other commercial software products - - running on either Linux, Microsoft Windows, or planned for later this year, Macintosh - - on PCs, desktops and other devices.

One of the key points seems strangely familiar:

Customers can benefit from the opportunity to make one investment in the single, flexible Open Client Solution, a more efficient alternative to vendor lock-in because only minor changes are typically required to run on different operating system platforms.

...

Further advancing the company's open standards push beyond Linux, customers will be afforded the freedom to choose from a variety of IBM technologies or Business Partner applications including: IBM Productivity tools that support the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF), the Firefox Web browser, Lotus Notes & Lotus Domino, Lotus Sametime and IBM WebSphere Portal v6 on Red Hat Desktop Linux suite, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

Yup, it's the rare, Lesser Spotted Blue Foogl. (Via LXer.)

GNU/Linux on the Desktop: Get the Facts

Some say that 2007 is the year GNU/Linux is going to make its breakthrough on the desktop - just like last year, and the year before that. So instead of looking forward at what might happen, why not look back at what did happen?

Linux on the desktop grew and matured in 2006. While some analysts reported a slowing of Linux penetration on the desktop in 2006, a number of significant milestones were reached that promise to continue to move the Linux desktop ahead in 2007. As Gerry Riveros, Red Hat product marketing manager for client solutions put it, "What I think was most important [in 2006] were all of the 'under the hood' incremental improvements that took place around printing, plug-and-play support, laptop enablement and the arrival of the compositing manager that allows for modern graphics."

These and other improvements are setting the next stage of growth for the Linux desktop. A number of projects and teams have moved beyond alpha positioning and ownership to focus on how their efforts contribute to overall desktop Linux objectives. "In 2006, it appeared that developers were aware of how each other's projects help to accomplish the shared goals of all the projects," said John Terpstra, Advanced Micro Devices Linux Evangelist. Over 70 of the key desktop architects have met three times this year to agree on focus areas that would make desktop Linux "just work."

Will Lightning Strike OpenOffice.org?

I've written elsewhere about what I call the FOOGL concept - Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux. Basically, the idea is that once everyone is using Firefox and OpenOffice.org on Windows, it's much easier to slip them across to GNU/Linux, because nobody really cares about platforms if the apps are the same.

The only fly in the ointment in this argument is that you need a good email client. Thunderbird, I here you say: to which I reply, OK, but what about the calendaring? If you're going to replace Outlook, you need to match its basic functionality, and for businesses that means calendaring.

Enter Lightning, an add-in to Thunderbird that brings it up (down?) to Outlook's level. Here's an interesting interview with the Engineering Director at Sun Microsystems, Michael Bemmer, on this very subject. What's particularly significant is that it hints at a day when Lightning will be more closely integrated with OpenOffice.org too.

Now that would be seriously fooglicious.