In such a large exhibition which you just cant cover completely without having sore feet, Linux is playing its role too. But you literally have to go and look for it with a microscope. That what I did and what I found were some interesting products. There were several appliances and products on display. Most of them run either Linux or FreeBSD which isn´t very promintent unless you go and ask the vendor, which operating system does this run. There were also a few PDAs which were also running Linux but didn´t see any desktops. Here is a list of Linux products or Linux based products at Cebit. This is in no way comprehensive enough but covers most of the things that I could gather after going through all the halls over the past 6 days and having sore feet. So finally I decided to sit down, give some rest to my feet and write an article.

Suse 8.0 - Suse, one of the best Linux distributions around, has said that their latest version will hit the market in a months time. Version 8 is based on Kernel 2.4.18 bundles more than 1,200 drivers. It also has XFree86 4.2 which provides support of the 3D graphics cards. The other updates includes the Web server Apache 1.3.23 and the file and print server for Windows networks, Samba 2.2.3a. For the desktop user Suse has updated to KDE 3 and has the latest stable release of Koffice as well as an enhanced version of Suse Personal Firewall 2.

Sharp had its Linux PDA Zaurus on display which is slated to be launched on March 22. The PDA has the best design in terms of engineering and the display is spectacular. It is based on Qutopia platform which makes it very easy to use the powerful underlying Linux system.

The Linux Professional Institute was conducting certification exams for its Level 1. This certification covers fundamental system administration activities that are common across all flavors of Linux.

Linux International was busy drumming up support by having John Hall (Mad Dog) in their boot as well as giving a few talks.