There's been a proliferation of handheld Linux projects in the past several months. It's still early days for this part of the embedded Linux community, but what is shown indicates that there's a good chance Linux will provide polished and

usable handheld environments.

The iRobot has a built-in Apache web server running Red Hat Linux and is powered by an AMD K6 chip. Its 'head' contains sensors and a webcam so that it can navigate around objects and relay pictures of what it 'sees' via the web.

Dell predicted that within five years, there will be 20 times the number of servers in operation in the world as there are now. He also praised the potential of Linux, emphasised Dell's support for it, and warned that pressure would mount on proprietary software as Linux continued to gain momentum.

Contrary to earlier reports, Borland/Inprise will not release its anticipated Kylix IDE under an open source software license. Rather, CLX, the underlying component library, will be released under a dual license, allowing open source developers to code under the GPL or commercial developers to purchase a commercial license.

Corporate IT has fully embraced Linux and other open-source products as standard elements in its Internet infrastructure, but most information technology managers haven't deployed Linux inside the data center and say they are unlikely to do so in the coming year.

Compaq, Corel, IBM, and various Linux vendors are expected to unveil at Comdex/Fall a group aimed at furthering the penetration of the KDE Linux desktop.

When Microsoft Windows 2000 was released in February, many predicted that it would gain marketshare at the expense of Linux and other advanced 32-bit operating systems. But, according to a study to be released by WebSideStory, growth for Windows 2000 seems to have come from other Microsoft operating systems.

Turbolinux's peer-to-peer distributed processing software, EnFuzion, demonstrated its power by cracking five-character NT passwords in less than a minute.

Toshiba will enter the hot but crowded server appliance market in the first quarter of 2001, the Japanese electronics giant will announce at the Comdex trade show. The machine will use Red Hat's version of Linux.

There is an indescribable sense of surrealism in contemplating the next sentence: they're using Linux to make movies. Surely Linus didn't predict this back in 1991 when he started tinkering with Minix. And yet, given the increasing use of computers in film production and the growing use of Linux on computers, perhaps this outcome wasn't so far-fetched.