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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.

Now as you have most likely surmised from the title, this article is intended to spoof the plethora of articles proclaiming that 'Linux is NOT, has NOT, and NEVER will be ready for the desktop', but the content of this article is also intended to be both factual and informative for those that have been schnookered by the anti-Linux hype.

Novell plans to release a new version of its flagship server Linux product on Tuesday, built around a recent update to the core of the open-source operating system, sources said.

The final day at OSCON kicked off with an encouraging and standing ovation-evoking keynote from Cartography Associates President David Rumsey, who laid out how open source principles may be applied to an emerging "digital library world." That was followed by a Novell talk about the success of switching from proprietary to open source, a discussion of some "nonsense" economic theory, and a call for open source to step up and help feed a big, bad gorilla known as King Kong. Earlier OSCON stories: Day one, day two, day three, day four.

Xandros Inc. has released a new version of its business Linux desktop with upgraded Windows integration features. The OS is an evolution of Corel Corp.'s Debian-based distribution, acquired in August 2001, and the company is one of the few Linux distributors with the desktop as their primary focus. Unlike the consumer-oriented Linspire (formerly Lindows), the Xandros Desktop OS is made to work with Windows networks, supporting Windows network file sharing, network authentication on Windows NT Primary Domain Controllers and Active Directory networks, NT log-on scripts, SAP and Citrix thin clients and IBM Terminal Emulators.

Raising its stakes in open-source software, IBM plans to create an open source project around Cloudscape, a specialized Java database, CNET News.com has learned.

Red Hat will grow beyond its Linux roots next week and sell a subscription service supporting an open-source Java application server, according to people familiar with the company's plans.

Since its inception five years ago, the show has gone from a gathering of aficionados to a place to talk business about a mature technology.

Microsoft's war on Linux isn't about to let up. The Redmond software vendor plans to step up its "Get the Facts" anti-open-source campaign in the coming year by adding more evidence, in the form of customer case studies and analyst reports, to its arsenal.