Linux clusters born in the world of academia are sprouting legs and appear ready to march right into the enterprise, despite the growing pains facing the emerging technology.
Information Week is reporting that GNU/Linux is heading for even more mainstream adoption in 2003. “Linux already is mainstream at Cendant Corp. The real-estate, travel-services, and hospitality holding company has 7,000 hotels, and there's nothing more mission critical than efficiently managing check-ins, departures, payments, and reservations. About 60% of the hotels use a property-management system from Hotel Software Systems Ltd. that runs on a Linux distribution from SCO Group, even though Cendant offers Windows-based property-management software.”
Every one sees them all the time and would probably miss them if they didn't exist. What are they? Icons! Torsten Rahn and Everaldo Coelho, the predominant icon duo in the KDE artist world, and creators of virtually all of the icons you see in KDE, spent some time with Open for Business' Timothy Butler discussing how the new Crystal icon theme came about, how it ended up replacing Mr. Rahn's HiColor theme, and the overall importance of icons to the enterprise desktop.
MandrakeSoft's new Multiple Network Firewall (“MNF”) specialty Linux distribution has been on the forefront of the computer news
for the last week, not so much because of its technical merits, but because of what appeared to be a reversal in
the company's policy on licensing. The distribution's creator and company co-founder, Gaël Duval, was kind enough to return to our hot seat and discuss both the licensing controversy as well as some other points about MNF.
InformationWeek reports on the exciting news that 8-year old RedHat Software of North Carolina has made a profit for the first time. ” Leading Linux provider Red Hat Inc. climbed into the black for the first time in its eight-year history during the quarter ended in November. The company says it had a profit of $305,000 on revenue of $24.3 million for the third quarter. A year ago, Red Hat lost $15.1 million on revenue of $20.1 million.”
eWeek has a nice interview with Linus Torvalds as well as an overview of the upcoming Linux 2.6/3.0 release. “Although I have a soft spot for Jan. 5 [for the freeze] … it will be exactly 12 years since I got the PC that was to become the first Linux PC.”
infoSync has the story on a new batch of Zaurus PDA's from Sharp Electronics. Zaurus handhelds offer form factors and features similar to PocketPC units, but include a special version of Linux and TrollTech Qtopia in lieu of Windows CE. “The SL-5600 will use the same general form factor as the current SL-5500 model. However, it will run on a 400 MHz Intel XScale PXA-250 CPU. Rather than using a split-RAM architecture like the Sl-5500 and Pocket PCs do, the SL-5600 will have 32 MB of RAM that is dedicated to just active memory.”
Linux and Main has full coverage of the Microsoft antitrust trial decision announced a few minutes ago. “'The court is satisfied that the parties have reached a settlement which comports with the public interest,' said Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee. The ruling flies in the face of thousands of public comments to the contrary, many filed by Linux users.”
DebianPlanet has a surprisingly negative review of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0, mostly highlighting the installation problems that keep the average user from enjoying Debian's unique advantages. “This is a critical review of Debian 3.0, but I want to say right from the start that I'm not trying to bait anyone. However I feel that reviewers often root for Debian as the open-source underdog, and give it marks which it doesn't deserve. If RedHat 8.0 came out with installation software like Debian 3.0 it would be savaged. I think it's time for an honest review, to spur the Debian developers into making the best possible distribution. I really want Debian to succeed. I want to use it daily, and recommend it to my friends. But I can't do that right now and I think it's important people understand why.”
eWeek has a story about a new product to be released by SuSE that will provide an affordable Microsoft Exchange alternative. “The Openexchange Server will combine the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system, an e-mail server and groupware functionalities in what a SuSE spokesman says is an 'innovative all-in-one communication and groupware solution for companies of all sizes at an unmatched price/performance ratio.'”