Dave Whitinger, 24, currently works as Community Relations Director for Atipa Linux Solutions. Most members of the Linux community probably use a website on a daily basis that Dave Whitinger co-founded: Linux Today.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Everybody said the operating system of a computer would become irrelevant as computing moved to the Web. Applications would run on the Web so that, in effect, the browser would become the application. Then we wouldn't need operating systems.

Inprise Corp. has made official the spin-off of its InterBase database division into a separate company, which will open the database's source code in an upgrade planned for mid-year.

The Linux upgrade train keeps rollin', this time with SuSE 6.3. This souped-up Linux distribution sports a snazzy new graphical installer designed to ease the setup hassles of version 6.2. But SuSE's slicker installation routine, free phone-based support, more than 1,500 bundled apps, and additions to the manual don't necessarily add up to a surefire winner.

Kenwood runs day-to-day order entry, invoicing and credit processing applications over jBASE(tm) on an application server running Red Hat Linux. Red Hat Linux also powers Kenwood's DNS, mail relay, print servers and intranet functions.

News bubbled up from various media outlets late Thursday that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is willing to open the Windows source code to competitors if doing so would bring an end to the Justice Department's antitrust case against the company.

"First, you get their attention." In exploring Linux, it's easy to run into things that are not only extremely useful, but impress the heck out of people -- and even scare them with the utter impossibility of what you are in fact doing.

A start-up called Eazel is at work on a graphical user interface (GUI) for Linux that founders say will extend to every aspect of the Linux computing experience. The project is an extension of the Gnome user interface. With the current Gnome and the competing KDE user interfaces for Linux, it's still hard to avoid typing in commands, an activity notoriously unpalatable to average users. Though showing some signs of growth for desktop use, Linux still is used predominantly on servers.

Microsoft would be willing to open the source code for its Windows software to competitors in order to settle the antitrust case filed by the U.S. Justice Department, chairman Bill Gates said.

GartnerGroup, which has criticized Microsoft's pricing policy for years, said the "significant" new charges for Windows would affect 90 percent of large firms over the next two years, no matter what other software products they used.