"But what if the apps don't work across platforms? What happens when a distro maker starts to do things that prevent cross platform/cross-distro compatibility in the name of distribution feature enhancement? The answer is that organizations become pinned to using a specific distro."

A cool thing about Nokia's media terminal, though, is that it was built to be easy to use, while leaving the door open for Nokia to suddenly, with minor modifications to hardware and software, turn it into a fully functioning Linux-based personal computer.

The Linux Professional Institute has plans for three levels of certification, with each level consisting of two exams that you must pass. This article focuses on exam 102, the second exam in the first level.

Kylix is Borland's code name for a project that ports their highly acclaimed Delphi and C++ Builder to Linux. Perhaps the coolest part of Kylix is how close the syntax is to the Windows version of Delphi. At BorCon 2000 reps demonstrated Kylix to a crowd of drooling computer jocks. Right there, live, they created a Windows program using Delphi. Then they simply recompiled the same code in Kylix to produce virtually identical applications on Windows and Linux.

What's happening, at least in the US, is the traditional Linux model for penetrating a large bureaucracy. Linux enters at the bottom, with early adoptions by individuals scattered throughout the organization. They install Linux to do standalone jobs, such as Web serving, handling email, or doing specific kinds of calculations. Unless it is a high-profile application like a Beowulf supercomputer, even people using the services may be unaware that they are using Linux.

"Go for broke this year and invest heavily in open source. Specifically, devote as many resources as possible for tuning optimizations in the GNU compilers to produce code that runs best with your chips. I'm not talking about bolstering generic 686 optimizations. I'm talking about chip-specific optimizations that a developer would activate with a compilation flag such as -O Athlon, -O Duron, -O Thunderbird, or -O PentiumWhatever."

If you've been using Linux for any length of time, you've surely heard of Perl; probably even run a number of scripts, perhaps without even knowing it. Perl allows you to do object-oriented programming. It also handles networking, is highly portable, and has a very short write/debug cycle - since there's no compilation required, you just write the changes and run the script.

This article presents and describes the tools used in converting audio off a tape, on to a CD. Also explained is how you can turn your computer into a powerful audio CD mastering machine, using only free and open-source Linux software.

This paper describes the evolution of the Linux operating system, and studies dynamics of socio-technical change using Linux as a case example. The paper analyses the growth and development of Linux and its development community, and shows how the development community evolves into an ecology of community-centered practices.

"You've heard about Linux for quite a while now and wondered about all the excitement. You've listened to that nerdy guy at work rave about it. You've looked at the screen shots and thought, "It doesn't look too bad. It looks kind of cool, actually." Still, why go through all the trouble? Perhaps it's the price; perhaps it's all the software that comes with it. Maybe it's just the challenge, the intellectual allure."