"Is Linux starting to converge on a desktop standard, and if so, is that

necessarily a good thing? I've been pondering these issues for quite some

time, and some recent market survey information that's come to my attention

has shed at least a few stray photons in their general direction."

Eazel has been developing software called Nautilus that lets Linux users

manage their computer files, view documents, browse the Web, and tap into

Eazel's online services. On Monday, Sun said it will use Eazel for its own

computers, which use the Solaris operating system instead of Linux.

Through separate efforts, MontaVista and Lineo seem to have come to the same conclusion: education is the key to pushing Linux in the embedded market. To that end both have announced a variety of educational services designed to help students preparing for a career in embedded development and existing developers better understand and work with Linux as an embedded platform.

In a recent "One Linux Day Conference" sponsored by the Development Academy

of the Philippines and the Bluepoint Institute of Higher Technology

Foundation (BIHTP), Linux was showcased as a viable computing solution for

the government, academic sector and the enterprise.

Why are some organizations slow to embrace OSS? Although the criticisms

contain kernels of truth, they are often overstated and should not present

an absolute barrier to tackling an enterprise project.

Trolltech is proud to present the release of version 1.1 of the Qt Palmtop

Environment, the leading GUI software package for embedded Linux released

under the GPL.

dsniff 2.3 has been released. Why is this important, you ask? dsniff 2.3

allows you to exploit several fundamental flaws in two extremely popular

encryption protocols, SSL and SSH.

Linux evangelist Jeff Davis' "small is beautiful" approach to pitching Linux is a winner, as this success story shows.

Freeware, shareware will play key role in bringing Indian non-profit

organizations online

Can the Internet help empower people - or does it actually reinforce

existing inequities in society? Can the non-profit, academic, government

and private sectors together address, analyze and assess the

socio-economic consequences of IT diffusion in urban and rural societies?

Close to a hundred delegates debated these issues in Bangalore recently at

the two-day conference provocatively titled "IT and Empowerment: The

Greater the Access, The More the Divide?"

The increasing popularity of Linux has fashioned a reversal in the fortunes of Red Hat, a front-runner in packaged Linux systems. The company, which has drastically cut down on its losses, is confident of achieving profitability by 2002.