"The source says that SuSE will use handheld computing as a springboard to reach other areas where software is embedded into hardware and used to power myriad devices. The source also says that SuSE is likely to look for help in getting into handheld computing."

Linux has a 24% market share of the server market and, according to industry analysts, that figure is set to increase. The rise in demand for Linux has a knock-on effect - it leads to an increase in demand for skilled Linux staff. Experience counts for much, but for professionals and their employers, if Linux experience is lacking, the solution is training and certification in the Open Source operating system.

The kernel has special needs for testing that require it to be done by a wide variety of people for several reasons including the highly configurable source code, which means that it needs to be tried out with lots of different options to try to find combinations that stimulate bugs, and also the fact that it supports a number of different instruction set architectures and few other reasons.

Linux’ openness is one of many factors keeping Microsoft from viewing Linux as a competitive threat in the large enterprise market, says Doug Miller, group product director for the Windows server market at Microsoft. But, Miller admits that Linux could cut into Microsoft’s market share for lower-end systems.

Evidence suggests that Linux is finding a niche -- and quite possibly a large one. A poll of 2,092 IT professionals by Survey.com reveals that more than 68 percent of companies have or intend to deploy at least one Linux system. And according to IDC, Linux was second in server operating environment by shipments last year with 24 percent of the market.

Two months ago, Linux creator Linus Torvalds thought he would finally be ready to release a long-delayed upgrade of the open-source operating system's kernel by the end of December. But on New Year's Eve, Torvalds abandoned his latest target date, posting a note on the Internet saying that the Linux 2.4 kernel is still not finished.

This year Linux became more mainstream and popular, while its community lost its innocence.

he Linux community may be eagerly awaiting the final release of the 2.4 kernel, but it is already putting together a wish list for the next major development kernel--version 2.5.

Phat Linux aims to provide an easy to install Linux distribution. The distribution has a Windows based install. You no longer need to repartition your hard drive to make room for Linux because Phat Linux will run off of your Windows 95/98 C-Drive!

"One of the reasons that Debian is such a cool and intuitive distribution is because of it's packaging system (*.deb). The installation uses a program called apt to download and install programs from cds, nfs, ftp, or http. Because of this, you can install an entirely current system from an old installation cd."