When Yodlee.com was looking for an operating system to power its Web site, the company -- founded by former Microsoft and Amazon executives -- bypassed Windows NT and turned instead to Linux. The start-up, which aggregates and manages online accounts for Web surfers, needed tough, reliable software that could serve up information from a multitude of sites. And they needed it on the cheap.

Corel Corp. Chief Executive Michael Cowpland reassured jittery shareholders at the firm's annual general meeting on Wednesday that he is confident a merger with Inprise/Borland Corp. will succeed despite the resignation of a key executive from the California software developer's board.

Created in 1991 by Andrew Tridgell, Samba 2.0.6 edged out Compaq's Advanced Server for Unix on the basis of platform support, performance, ease of configuration and ease of debugging. Its support for login control and a WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) client and server also put it ahead of the competition.

Two years ago, most IT folks would have been hard-pressed to find a basic Linux operating-system course for the taking, and the concept of certification wasn't even discussed in Linux user groups. Today, Linux courseware is a growing field, and the first classes of Linux certified system and network administrators are taking home their diplomas.

There's been a lot of fooferaw about UNIX viruses recently, and more specifically Linux viruses. A lot of it is complete garbage. Many of these articles seem to have gotten a hold of virus experts, which is good, but it seems these virus experts generally have little knowledge of UNIX, which isn't surprising as most viruses and anti-virus software is written for Windows.

Using computers for composing music has traditionally been the realm of Windows and Macintosh users. While the popular commercial sound tools aren't available for Linux, quite a few free music software projects have cropped up. Most of them are under heavy development, and features are being added to them constantly. There may not be many fully released music tools for Linux, but the future looks encouraging.

More than half of Australia's corporate IT departments are now making some use of the Linux operating system, but mainly in servers - and few have any plans for Linux on the desktop, according to a survey by trade journal Corporate IT.

In another step toward "mainstreaming" Linux, RealNetworks said it will bundle its streaming media server and player with the Red Hat version of the operating system to increase its use among online content providers, including news and business organizations.

Red Hat, Inc. and Oracle Corporation announced the availability of the Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition product line that has been optimized for Oracle8i to support high-volume e-business and enterprise applications.

Efforts are under way to make Linux more secure for e-business, now that it's making inroads as an enterprise server platform. Three leading suppliers of Linux systems-Caldera, Red Hat and SGI-last week said they will integrate Tripwire Inc.'s intrusion detection and prevention software into their offerings.