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A buzz of activity in the SCO-Linux legal saga probably is not distracting Linux developers from their work, according to a survey by Evans Data Corporation that indicates more than 90 percent of those developers believe SCO's claim to own source code used in Linux has no merit. SCO Group, a Utah so...

The diversity of operating systems and hardware in the datacenter is greater than ever before, while data software specifically designed to manage the different types of systems is becoming more widespread and popular. With a firsthand view of the evolution of Linux and its increasing role in today'...

One of the unfortunate realities of the Wintel monoculture is that expectations are set mainly by ads, the Sunday supplements and stereotypes like TV character Marshall, the supertech on the show Alias. But delivery is constrained by reality. As a result, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engin...

Microsoft's Get the Facts site, which I discussed in my LinuxInsider column last week, "Getting the Facts About Windows and Linux," makes the case that Windows is cheaper than Linux. The site includes a contribution from Meta Group dedicated to the proposition that the combination of Linux plus a da...

Open-source developer the Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of its next-generation browser, dubbed Firefox after a name change and the addition of new features that bring the browser, according to the group, to "the bleeding edge of Internet technology." The browser was formerly known as...

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has released a set of guidelines aimed at helping users deploy Linux in corporate data centers. Following a process that mirrors the open, ongoing development of Linux software itself, OSDL is inviting feedback on the Data Center Linux Technical Capabilities 1...

In a somewhat uncharacteristic announcement about Linux, Hewlett-Packard said its revenue from the open-source operating system and connected products and services hit record levels in 2003, earning the Palo Alto, California-based company $2.5 billion, an increase of about a half-billion dollars fro...

The publication in the Harvard Business Review of an article by Nicholas Carr titled "IT Doesn't Matter" raised much controversy. Carr's fundamental argument is that every widely used business technology conferred significant strategic advantage on early adopters but lost that potency as it m...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of computing -- and that, of course, has to include Microsoft's future. Microsoft's own vision of its future seems clear. The company sees a transition to a secure Windows OS environment, continuing strength in Office and server applications, and deve...

Promising marked performance and reliability improvements and further demonstrating that Linux is ready for prime-time enterprise use, open-source developers led by Linux creator Linus Torvalds and production kernel maintainer Andrew Morton have released version 2.6 of the operating system kernel. T...

Asia is emerging as a key battleground for the open-source movement. The Japan-China-Korea partnership, announced last month in Osaka, is the latest in a string of initiatives to promote Linux. Two weeks earlier, Singapore hosted the second annual Asia Open Source Symposium, where 20 Asian countries...

One of the bigger risks facing Linux is that explosive growth can destroy it because people who don't understand what it's for often install it simply as a Windows substitute, then discover that it isn't Windows and denounce it. The underlying issue here is that people can easily become captive to w...

Wind River, one of the world's top embedded systems suppliers, has joined two key Linux proponent groups and solidified its intention to coexist rather than compete with the open-source operating system. As a supporter of Unix and its own proprietary VxWorks embedded operating system, Wind River sai...

I've been trying to imagine what the computing universe will look like in late 2008. The exercise not only highlighted the degree to which Linux has become the focal point for anti-Microsoft feeling, but also underscored the risk that the Linux community now faces from commercialization. My belief i...

Australia. Down under. Oz. For most of us, those words conjure up images of kangaroos and coral reefs, of red deserts and a landmark opera house. But behind those icons lies another reality -- that of a sophisticated, technologically advanced society; an economy that has outperformed the rest of the...

In its first move since being acquired by Novell, SuSE Linux announced its enterprise Linux software will be sold and supported by Gateway in a partnership aimed at seizing more of the U.S. server market, particularly small- to medium-size businesses. Novell's purchase of SuSE Linux earlier this mon...

The desktop may be the final frontier for Linux, but one company is using a combination of Windows interface strategy, Wal-Mart sales and a wide selection of software to try to match the inroads Linux has made in the corporate datacenter. That company is Lindows.com. There was much open-source hoop...

In what is being viewed as the maturation of both the company and the Linux operating system, Red Hat has announced it will no longer produce or support its free, consumer version of Linux. Industry analysts praised Red Hat's move to ride a building wave of Linux adoption by exclusively selling Ente...

What is the world's most widely used operating system? It's not Windows, Unix or Linux, but ITRON, a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems. ITRON runs on mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and countless other electronic devices. The T-Engine Forum, a project that counts ...

Both VeriTest on Microsoft's behalf and IBM have recently issued reports on running Ziff Davis Media's NetBench performance benchmark on mainframe Linux. Overall, it appears that Microsoft reports better mainframe performance than IBM does. These results might seem surprising enough to those unfamil...