Start-up Transmeta, which plans to take on Intel with a new chip for mobile devices, has big plans for the Linux operating system as well.

In the first of this series we look at using Linux for embedded devices. We ask whether it is a viable platform, and whether it will have any success in the market.

At Sun's earnings briefing yesterday Scott McNealy allegedly said the he didn't see the company making a large Linux push, preferring instead to stick with Solaris.

When the discussion comes around to Linux, it's often about Linux vs. Windows or NetWare, or another more established operating system. But what about Linux vs. Linux?

Until now, Adobe's DTP (desktop publishing) software, FrameMaker, was available only for Mac OS, Windows, and Solaris, which meant that you had to run it either on expensive hardware or an unreliable operating system. But the advent of FrameMaker on Linux it possible to run this proven and widely used software cheaply and on a stable OS.

German enterprise resource planning software giant SAP AG has made SAP R/3, a major component of the company's mySAP.com site, available for the Linux operating system, the company announced.

A day after Transmeta unveiled the long-awaited Crusoe processor series, S3 on Thursday stepped up to the plate and announced it will design and produce Crusoe-powered Internet appliances based on the open-source Linux operating system.

American applications server software vendor, Citrix Systems, has announced plans to give Unix applications similar deployment capabilities across networks as Windows-based systems.

The Linux operating system has been getting a lot of publicity lately, and a growing number of companies, impressed by its reliability, are using Linux as the foundation for some of their computer systems.

IBM said last week it would be pushing harder than ever to promote upstart operating system Linux.