To this day, technology in the translation industry has been largely dominated by a handful of proprietary applications.
Linguas OS is a Linux distribution created specifically for professionals in the translation industry, including Free Open Source Software tools to perform all of the tasks that professional translators must do every day in their work.

The tools Linguas OS provides include:

* OpenOffice office suite for creation and manipulation of all major office file formats (including those generated by MSOffice products),
* OmegaT, a Computer Aided Translation (CAT) program for creation of translation memories.
* and other basic tools for creation and manipulation of pdf, html, xml, po, and other files that translators and localizers deal with on a daily basis. (More about OmegaT right here on Linux.com)
* Planner, project management application based on the Gantt project.
* the usual tools for internet communications and research so necessary to the trade, chat software, ftp software and related networking tools.

Linguas OS is built upon PCFluxboxOS, but comes configured with the translation tools mentioned above, and additional documentation and scripts to facilitate use of the system for those experimenting with Linux for the first time. In order to keep the system small enough to fit on one live cd, while including the industry specific translation tools, Linguas OS does not include multimedia software and other extras on the live cd system. Of course, such software can be easily added to the system, once installed to the hard drive, with the synaptic package manager. Linguas OS, being based on PCLinuxOS, has access to thousands of applications currently available in the PCLOS repositories.
What makes Linguas OS notable:

Sure, there are already translators using Linux who have found the solutions to enable them to compete and work in the industry (the author is one of them), but, until now, there hasn't been a distribution specifically tailored to the translators's needs. Linguas OS, as such, comes pre-packaged with the translator's most needed tools, most notably, CAT software. Said software is maintained in the distro's packages via synaptic, so the user does not have to seek it out and install from source, etc., thus facilitating the translator's use of a linux operating system, enabling the user to focus on his work, and not maintaining his software.

Additionally, Linguas OS was created, and is maintained by a successful translator and translation agency owner who is intimately familiar with the needs of professionals in the translation trade.
Advantages / Disadvantages:

The advantages of both FOSS and gnu/linux, in general, have been adequately discussed elsewhere.
The advantages of FOSS and gnu/linux to professionals in the translation industry are no different, the two most notable advantages being the reduction of overhead for software licenses and increased efficiency and productivity for use of a more stable and secure system.

The advantages of Linguas OS, specifically, to those working in the translation trade, are that it is a prepackaged distro with all of the tools a translator needs pre-installed and easily maintainable. Also, from a technology perspective, Linguas OS is a small, quick system, using fluxbox as it's default window manager. The .iso for the distro includes the most needed translation software applications and office applications, but comes packed with little else. The download is light, at 412 mb, and the system will run as a Live CD, enabling the user to download it quickly, fire off a CD and load it up for trial purposes. Installation to the hard drive, even along side another OS, is made simple with the drak-live installer. Once installed, the synaptic package manager puts thousands of additional applications at the user's fingertips, with only a few clicks of the mouse. Also, Linguas OS has created a community of professional translators experienced with the tools Linguas OS offers, and seasoned Linux users, to provide support for those new to these tools.

Linguas OS doesn't claim to be the flame that will cleanse the translation industry of the proprietary software disease. Essentially, Linguas OS: a) attempts to give translators a platform for experimenting with the tools that are available in FOSS for the trade, in a quick and light Live CD distribution, as well as, b) provide an easily maintained, preconfigured OS for translators that are already using, or wish to begin using Linux for their work. There are some potential drawbacks for those coming from a Windows background, which would include the vast majority of professionals working in the translation industry. In order to include the software most needed by translators, and still keep the distro on a live-cd, Linguas OS uses fluxbox as its default window manager, which is not exactly an intuitive environment for a first-time Linux user. KDE or Gnome would seem to be much more viable options for a system aimed at introducing Linux to professionals in an industry already dominated by other, proprietary operating systems. The Linguas OS community, however, is in the process of creating documentation, even for included packages that already have documentation, to make the use of the included software, wm, package management system, etc., as easy as possible for those new to Linux. This documentation is progressively becoming available on the Linguas OS wiki, and will be incuded in the next release. Additionally, of course, the user can easily add KDE, Gnome, or XFCE with only a few clicks, which is explained in the Linguas OS documentation. Also, although the industry is hungry for alternatives to the costly proprietary tools that have until now dominated it, there is resistance within the industry to change, as is the case in many other industries.
Learn more about Linguas OS as http://www.linguasos.org

Linux has proven itself as a server platform - no one really questions it. A large chunk (the majority?) of nonprofits already use Linux server-side - either in-house, or if not, their web host usually does. But can it really be a desktop platform for nonprofit organizations?

Linux on the desktop has come quite far, in just a few years. And recently, there is increasing evidence to suggest that it can, indeed in large part, replace Windows on the desktop. Why should it? Linux is more secure, more stable, and can be used on older hardware.

Walmart was selling $200 PCs running gOS (no, that doesn't stand for googleOS, but greenOS, based on Ubuntu 7.10,) and they sold out. If you read the reviews (most of which were quite positive,) the people who liked it were looking at the real functionality (it could edit their documents, it could surf the web, read email, etc.) and those who didn't, seemed not to like it mostly because it doesn't run Windows (although one could install Windows on it - but it's going to be pokey - it's not a well powered machine, but more than enough for Linux.)

So, if students and Grandma can use Linux, can nonprofits?

There is a good whitepaper that was released this fall from Novell, which has a section which talks about what to think about with enterprise migration to Linux on the desktop. It basically echos what I would suggest when thinking about a mass migration:

• Planning is key
• Do a software inventory - figure out:
  • What has a version that runs on Linux
  • What can be replaced by software that runs on Linux
  • What can be run in an emulator such as VMWare
• Identifying types of users (by what they need to do)
• Choose a distribution that makes sense (I wrote up a review of Linux distros recently.)
• Figuring out a clear migration strategy that takes all of this into consideration.

My colleague Ben Melançon has already cross-posted this twice: you can find his full post on his own Agaric blog or on the PBS MediaShift Idea Lab.

Microsoft made tech news in the past week with reports that schools in Nigeria would use Windows XP rather than the Mandriva Linux on 17,000 computers ordered from Mandriva, a French GNU-Linux vendor. Public statements from Mandriva officials suggested foul play, but not many details were reported. Now, the Nigerian government has overruled the switch, Jeremy Kirk of IDG News Service reported, and his article published online yesterday by Computerworld UK has a lot more information on what actually happened.

[...] Ben goes on to say [...]

Everything a student learns about Windows and every program that is built for Windows are in a sense owned and controlled by Microsoft, because Microsoft decides what happens to Windows next (and what happens will usually involve your wallet).

Everything a student learns about GNU-Linux, especially every program she makes or contributes to is both truly belongs to her and belongs to the whole world at the same time.

This distinction is not limited to Windows versus GNU-Linux; it holds true for every proprietary versus free software choice.

Nigeria has started on a path of building knowledge and technical resources that can't be held hostage. We probably have not seen the end of what Microsoft will do to try to jump Nigeria's claim on the future.

I find that people I talk to who aren't already sold on software purism have a hard time with this line of reasoning, but I think Melançon is absolutely right. This is why our software choices matter, not because open source software is cheaper to use right now, but because the long term impact of the communities we build is a broad and lasting impact.

According to an interesting article in Computer Business Review Online, for-profit companies spend 75% of their investments on Linux, leaving 25% for other open source projects such as Firefox, OpenOffice, MySql, and others.

"If vendors were altruistically motivated to contribute to OSS projects, we would expect to see an even distribution of investments across projects," noted the reports authors: Marco Iansiti, professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, and Gregory Richards, managing director of Keystone Strategy Inc.

Their research indicates that most investments in open source software are driven by economic motives and are complementary to proprietary software, hardware and service portfolios, something that many industry watchers would have predicted to be the case.

Here are some tidbits from the open source world that might be of interest...

• Sun makes Java open source. This is a big one. A few components (like the compiler javac, and others) have been open sourced under the GPL, with the rest of the SDK to follow next year. Find details at the Open JDK Project.
• Make has a kit for an open source mp3 player. Yes, open source hardware. Cool!
• This is old news, but I'm finally getting to understand it. Some really big 800-pound gorillas (Microsoft and Oracle) are bullying their way into the open source sandbox. The Oracle issue is much more straightforward - Oracle unveils "unbreakable Linux" - providing support for Linux that severely undercuts Red Hat's support prices. There are some interesting theories afloat about this one (a ploy to then do a hostile takeover of Red Hat?) The second was the deal with Microsoft and Novell. Basically, they have agreed to collaborate on technologies and support. Here's the kicker. Novell is paying Microsoft basically protection money. Microsoft agrees to give Novell customers indemnity against any patent or IP challenges. Eben Moglen thinks that this deal will be dead in the water because of the GPL 3.0. I'm not so sure, since no software project has to choose to adopt 3.0. It does mean that there will be a lot to watch in the next year or so.
• After you camp out, and fend off the violent hordes to get your Sony Playstation 3 - you can boot linux on it.
• Watch this documetary on Net Neutrality