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Leader in Server-Centric Computing Delivers Most Advanced, High-Performance, Modular Thin Client Device Available With Linux

The growing normalcy of Linux in corporate computing realm will be on display this week at a show devoted to the open-source operating system.

Program harnesses power of the open source community to identify security vulnerabilities before they are exploited

Longtime Microsoft partner Unisys has begun offering Linux from Red Hat and Novell on its multiprocessor servers, a change of heart that reflects a new seriousness about the open-source operating system.

Sun Microsystems is toying with the idea of buying Linux seller Novell, saying that springing for the $2.64 billion company would hurt rival IBM.

Open Source Risk Management, who offers litigation insurance policies, has found nearly 300 patents that could theoretically be used against Linux. How risky are these patents? How much should you be concerned?

Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.

Following are some of the notable technology-related events scheduled for the week of Aug. 1.

The proposed operating-system migration of the City of Munich's 14,000 desktops from Microsoft to Linux was placed in jeopardy Friday, when a Munich alderman petitioned the Bavarian city's mayor to examine the status of software patents in the European Community.

In this Internet jungle, now, also Linux Netwosix has its own IRC Support Channel. After Netwosix-Bugzilla, created to improve the reliability of our OpenSource software, is now available the first official virtual community of Linux Netwosix. Join us today, we will be pleased to help you.

Linux on the desktop might mean freedom from software-licensing costs for some IT departments. But when it comes to evaluating desktop Linux’s TCO, it’s the human cost that is most important. According to industry research company IDC, the staff-related costs of system administration, support, development, and training typically amount to between 50 and 70 percent of the costs of the average enterprise application, when measured over a five-year period. By comparison, software costs for both client and server software total only 8 percent to 10 percent of TCO, IDC reports.

It’s one of the perennial questions facing the open source movement: Is Linux ready for the corporate desktop? Ready or not, Linux is coming.

The Oracle-IBM feud over Linux will ratchet a notch higher at LinuxWorld next week, what with the lethal anti-IBM weaponry Mike Rocha will be packing.

User experience, application availability, ease of maintenance, and stability are often chief concerns when deciding whether to deploy Linux on the desktop. For the Allied Irish Bank, however, the decision to move the 8,000 clients in the company’s U.K. retail banking network from Windows to Linux had more to do with the server than anything else.

OSCON, Portland, Ore -- Talk of a new type of software development community that spills into more traditional communities such as towns, churches and country clubs was matched with a new kind of pick-and-choose, componentized Linux distribution, and renewed efforts to push Gnome to desktop success at OSCON's second to last day.

Linus Torvalds has said that he thinks Linux on the desktop is at least five years, maybe 10 years, away. There are many folks who want to prove him wrong, and perhaps that was his impetus. Regardless, for desktop Linux to succeed in the corporate network, vendors must concentrate on management.

Gary McGraw is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking work on securing software, having co-authored the classic Building Secure Software (Addison-Wesley, 2002). More recently, he has co-written with Greg Hoglund a companion volume, Exploiting Software, which details software security from the vantage point of the other side, the attacker. He has graciously agreed to share some of his insights with all of us at LinuxSecurity.com.

One of the more divisive concepts in IT these days is Linux on the desktop. There are those who would prefer nothing else, pointing to myriad security and stability problems found in Microsoft operating systems, and there are those who would prefer it not at all, talking about wide disparities among Linux distributions, insufficient management tools, the lack of certain software, and esoteric hardware compatibility issues.

A major hurdle for any Linux desktop rollout is hardware compatibility, or lack thereof. Whether leveraging older hardware or rolling out new systems, ensuring that every component in the desktop works as it should is key.