Hewlett Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina said she is backing the open source movement, challenging the chief executives of Microsoft and Sun Microsystems to clarify their strategy in this area.

Part 2 of this series covers the reassignment of the services provided by the old firewall the authors replaced. This week the authors configure mail, FTP, and Web service -- all with the proper level of paranoia.

Open Source systems aren't inherently more secure than propriety systems -- unless the designers make security a priority, according to several security experts.

Lineo has wooed three new executives from better-established companies in its effort to hasten the adoption of Linux in non-PC computing devices.

The little-operating-system-that-could still is not running its tracks into Microsoft's vast base of installed users in the enterprise computing, server and desktop marketplaces. And Linux holds little threat of derailing Windows anytime soon.

Unix and Linux will fight each other for supremacy over the next 18 months but only one can survive, according to Caldera Systems.

The statement follows the Linux distributor's decision to acquire SCO's Unix business which includes rights to SCO's Unix SVR5 source code and the UnixWare and OpenServer operating systems.

Linux is on a "slope of disillusionment" but it will become one of the three primary server environments by 2005, said industry researcher Gartner.

According to Ken Dulaney, research area director at Gartner, Handspring has already taken 25 per cent of Palm's share of the personal digital assistant market and would be an even stronger force if it created a cult following, based on Linux.

Part of the neatness of UNIX is that you can just about do everything programmatically in the same way that you do it by hand. For example, you ever wonder why chmod() is called such? This article explores various aspects of system calls.

Windows based machines use the SMB protocol to share files, printers and

communicate. This is a proprietary protocol and Windows doesn't integrate

as well with non-Windows networks using other protocols. It is possible to

share files between PC's running Linux and Windows using FTP or HTTP but

it isn't as transparent a process. Print services are also a problem.

Samba is a terrific software that bridges the gap between Linux and

Windows PC's on the network. File sharing and print services are a lot

more transparent though it's a lot easier from the Windows end.