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Microsoft has warned Asian governments they could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux operating system instead of its Windows software.

CURACAO, NETHERLANDS ANTILLES -- When I agreed to speak at this island's first-ever free/open source conference last Wednesday, I was warned that Linux and open source were not well-known here. This was not true, but most of Curacao's Linux and open source software users thought they were alone. Indeed, it turns out that almost every major IT-related business here was already using Linux, and that most plan to use it more in the future. This saddened Microsoft employee Edwin Marchan, who also spoke to the approximately 75 local IT leaders who came to learn about Linux and open source, but everyone else went away happy.

In part one of this interview, Linspire CEO Michael Robertson discussed how Linux is going to effectively rip the tablecloth out from under Microsoft's enterprise market share. In part two, he describes how his company hopes to achieve success in laying out its own buffet of Linux offerings.

Microsoft Tuesday came as close at it may ever get to supporting UNIX and Linux when it took a minority stake in integration vendor Vintela. The Lindon, Utah-based Vintela has been cranking out software over the past few months to extend Windows-based authentication, management, and monitoring capabilities to UNIX, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems.

Taken from a White Paper published on http://www.ibm.com, this article summarises the benefits of Linux and Intel-based servers in cutting the cost of enterprise computing according to an IDC study for IBM and Red Hat.

In the past week at OSDir we took some time to install and built screenshot tours for Tao Linux 3.0 Update 3, Kurumin Linux 4.0 Alpha 1, Fedora Core 3, and Kaella 1.2 Beta 2. Be sure to check it out.

A complete listing of our Linux and Open Source screenshot tours is here.

Enterprises previously sceptical about open-source alternatives to commercial software have opened up to the concept, an SDForum conference in California heard yesterday.

Enterprises that in the past may have been leery of open source alternatives to commercial software have opened up to the concept, panelists said here Tuesday at an SDForum conference entitled "Open Source – Entering the Mainstream.”

Four major Linux companies are bonding together to create a united Linux core distribution around the Linux Standard Base with broad industry support.

The OpenBSD team earlier this month released version 3.6 of the free operating system, with support for more hardware, updated application software, and bug fixes included. This time around OpenBSD has added support for multi-CPU systems, a number of drivers for new peripheral hardware, and about 200 more applications to the Ports tree. We took the new version for a spin, and liked what we found.

Taking its cue from Linus Torvalds' goal of "total world domination" by Linux, Sun Microsystems works to pave a path away from its declining market share by focusing on the promising platform. But where are the details?

It's an insurance company's dream: Sell policies for something so unlikely to occur that you'll get to scoop up premiums and never have to pay out. That's pretty much what's going on with companies selling antivirus products for Linux. Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which asks the question, "Are buyers of Linux antivirus software wasting their money?"

MicroWorld Software Services, developers of anti-virus and content security software, eScan and MailScan, announced today that MailScan for Linux has joined the Novell Ready Program. This status establishes that MicroWorld's products are now compatible with Novell Enterprise Linux. The product was awarded Novell Ready status for SuSE Linux desktop, Enterprise Server 8, 9 and the SuSE Linux Standard server.

Imagine a computer network for small businesses that costs less than half as much as most companies now spend on their desktops and servers, never needs expensive on-site service calls, and always has the latest software and security patches without the business owner even thinking about it. This has been technically feasible with Linux for at least five years, but no one has gone to the trouble of marketing it. I hope someone decides to build and sell a true "plug-and-play" Linux office computer system soon. It would revolutionize the way small businesses buy and use computers.

Next month, Linux server and storage specialist Pogo Linux will become the first server maker to stop messing around and actually deliver an eight-way server based on the Opteron 800 series processors.

Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Bruce Perens has written an article on software patents in standards and explains how they hinder software development. It seems that the memory consumption problem in SpamAssassin 3 is finally fixed, so the package may be able to migrate into sarge.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday a program that will pay some transition costs for companies that want to move from Novell's NetWare operating system onto servers running Windows.

We're very pleased to announce that Connectiva, Mandrakesoft, Progeny and Turbolinux today announce the creation of a common implementation of the LSB 2.0 which will serve as the base for future products. The project, called "Linux Core Consortium" (LCC), is backed by Linux supporters such as Computer Associates, HP, Novell, Red Hat, Sun, OSDL, and the Free Standards Group.

Mark Angeli is leading the Linux faithful to a new place: Foo. LinuxFoo.org is a community site that provides Linux users with a place to ask advice, share wisdom, rant about flaky software, and chit-chat about the latest distribution release.

This summer I had the pleasure of being the editor for the new O'Reilly book Knoppix Hacks. Though I had futzed with Knoppix before, and even created a customized version of it for an O'Reilly event, I was not a regular user of the live CD.