"Unfortunately, the bottom line for Linux and Netware is not good. The Netware server support that is available has not been updated in quite a while. Only the Linux-based Netware client support from the likes of Caldera is being supported."

More than a year after members of the French parliament first proposed that French government agencies be mandated to use open source software, Linbox announced that the French tax authority, is preparing to deploy 950 Linux-based application servers at sites all over France.

Itanium is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2001, but a new version of Windows tailored for the chip won't arrive until the second half, Intel and Microsoft representatives said. Meanwhile, compatible production versions of Linux from Red Hat, Turbolinux and Caldera Systems are scheduled to debut at the same time as the chip itself.

Red Hat has introduced the SID project, an open source hardware simulation framework for embedded developers. This package consists of software components interacting with each other to imitate the behavior of physical hardware before its actual creation.

Recent Unix/Linux desktop applications are composed of smallcomponents that could be utilized in several applications or wherever needed. KDE is now the first desktop system to be able to effectively integrate and provide transparent interoperabilitywith such software -- whether written in the KDE native component model (KParts), plain X Windows, or GTK.

Userlocal.com is reporting that the Slackware Linux port to SPARC is now available for download (ISO image and individual packages available).

While other vendors offer access to e-mail via WAP, the Sendmail deal makes it one of the first U.S. companies to offer i-mode, a proprietary wireless protocol from NTT DoCoMo.

BigStorage has successfully installed 10TB of its iRAID and nearline data storage at EMusic.com, an e-commerce music company that specializes in the distribution of MP3 audio files over the Web.

The Intel Pentium 4 is not getting along well with Linux these days. Unless you

run a patch on your distribution, or upgrade to the 2.2.18 kernel, Linux recognizes the Pentium 4 as an "unknown processor." The reason for this processor problem is an odd tale which has its roots in Microsoft Windows NT.

SteelEye claims that its LifeKeeper for Linux high availability clustering software monitors database, server, network and application health, maintains client

connectivity, and provides continuous data access.