Two open-source leaders joined Linux founder Linus Torvalds in disparaging software patents Tuesday, the newest volley in a battle that pits the cooperative programming philosophy against Microsoft.

The year of the penguin, some people hailed 2004 at the turn of the year. And in many ways it was.

Time for a shocker. Device support under Linux is excellent.

Yeah, why? Your typical modern Mac comes with all the Unixy goodness you could ever need, right? But there are a bunch of Linux PPC distributions that you can, if you feel the need, install on your Apple hardware.

Struggling with its HP-UX business, Hewlett Packard is now eyeing the Linux space with its 'Linux for the Real World' strategy showcased at the Linux Bangalore/2004 event.

According to a report by analysts IDC, quarterly sales of servers running the Linux operating system topped $1bn (£533m) for the first time during the third quarter of 2004.

In part two of this ever-expanding MIDI series, a look at various sequencers, from Rosegarden to seq24.

Several new distributions make communicating with a Windows network more difficult than it should be.

Intel has begun an effort to make it easier for sales partners in China and India to sell desktop computers running Linux, starting a more active phase in the company's help with the open-source operating system.

CRN has placed Linus Torvalds on the top, for his contributions to Linux, which became an undeniable force over the past year.