This week, HP will announce a plan to unveil Linux versions of key network operations programs commonly used by large corporations to oversee multiple networks. These programs were long considered too complex and mission-critical to be run on Linux. Not anymore.

Opera Software hasn't yet put the finishing touches on its forthcoming Mac and Linux browser releases. But the software maker plans to announce shortly that it will make free versions of Opera 5.0 for both of these operating systems available later this year.

Under Windows, through network neighborhood, you can browse through available shares on other machines, run applications and of course transfer data. NFS is somewhat similar, but much more flexible. We've got diskless machines on our network that access their root filesystem using NFS. You can centralize the location of user home directories which users access via NFS. Since Linux uses a unified filesystem, it is completely transparent to the user. You can run an application off another machine as though it was installed on your own machine simply by mounting that directory using NFS.

Dell will use the facility, which is scheduled to open in the spring, to test and tune Oracle databases running on Intel-based systems running Linux. Oracle also agreed to use Dell's servers and storage products for building the Oracle 9i database on Linux, the companies said.

Chastened Linux executives pledged to stop their "crazy dreaming" and disband their efforts Wednesday after an executive from Microsoft proclaimed Linux was doomed, and openly questioned whether the free, rival operating system should exist.

Without an official announcement, kernel 2.4.1 has been uploaded to kernel.org.

Where there is a neglected portion of the market, there will always be a newcomer to the game ready and willing to tend to it. In July of 1999 that's exactly what Pogo Linux, Inc. set out to do, and they did it in a very peculiar way, with the sub $300 Linux PC.

Continuing to toot its Linux horn, IBM will start the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Wednesday morning with a slew of hardware and software announcements supporting the open-source operating system.

"I think commercial enterprise will take a wait-and-see attitude on 2.4," says David Sifry, CTO of Linuxcare in this searchEnterpriseLinux.com Q&A. On the plus side for Linux, Sifry thinks "there will soon be a lot of pick-up in vertical industries. Financial services, oil and gas, and scientific computing companies are interested in Linux."

BigStorage Inc. CEO Sam Bogoch tells the story of his company's big win. BigStorage won the biggest Linux storage deal to date, a deal with with online music distributor Emusic.