This child of Sun Microsystems is ubiquitous on just about every Linux or UNIX distribution you can think of. NFS stands for "Network File System", and you can even get it for that other OS, which makes it an ideal first choice for exploration of file sharing.

For Linux to be a player in the realm of television and motion picture production it must have stunning graphics capabilities, high-performance disk I/O with support for the very large file sizes video needs, integration with analog and digital video input/output devices, and the actual video applications themselves.

A bevy of devices that run Linux have already reached the marketplace, and many more are expected soon. There are personal digital assistants (PDAs) that run Linux, as well as computing tablets, electronic book readers, and more.

EVAS is the latest exciting development in the Linux window manager world. EVAS provides the possibility to build a whole slew of features into the up and coming Enlightenment 0.17, as well as demonstrating just how powerful XFree86 can be when integrated well with the OpenGL libraries. EVAS will bring anti-aliased text, hardware accelerated image scaling and Alpha blending to the Linux desktop.

Caldera Systems, last week, launched its first major Linux application built on proprietary code, at the same time announcing plans to charge licence fees more commonly seen with traditional software. The move reflects a growing trend among Linux distributors to develop proprietary code to differentiate themselves.

Corel will, on Tuesday, detail its plan to restore profitability.But pundits are divided over whether it has decided to dispose of its Linux interests.

"The 2.4 kernel integrates USB support. But having USB support isn't enough. Linux needs broad support for the USB peripherals themselves. For example, I have two USB-enabled digital cameras, and neither of them works with Linux. They both work fine with my copy of Windows 98SE."

Weiss, a Gartner Group analyst, says the company [IBM] is making its own gamble, betting that GNU/Linux will continue to infiltrate the mainstream enterprise market. Like all gambles, it could fail, especially if IBM's success scares away the volunteer development community that has made the Linux kernel a model for other open source projects.

With a new $15 million investment to play with, the Gnome services company formerly known as Helix Code has more resources to convert non-believers to the Open Source/Free Software desktop and to give those potential converts even more reason to make the switch.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories are teaming up with Compaq Computer Corp. and a biotechnology company to develop a $150 million Linux-based supercomputer that's supposed to be capable of processing at least 100 trillion operations per second.