When most people think about Linux, they just think about running it on an x86 machine. But, there's whole other world out there with PowerPCs, Sparcs, and Alphas. While I don't see the Sparc or Alpha reaching a point where you see them in every home on the street, the PowerPC is much more likely to end up there.

Selecting an operating system - whether for a startup operation or an existing company - can be a drawn-out process. The considerations are far-ranging, including your computing platform, your required applications, the logistics of porting existing data and matter of taste.

The most famous clock in the world? It might be Big Ben in London -- unless you're a longtime Unix computer user. In that case, the most famous clock might be the one that comes with every X Window system, XClock.

Linux runs on not one, but two desktop environments, the German-born K Desktop Environment, or KDE, and the GNU Project's GNU Network Object Model Environment, or Gnome. Both are making rapid progress, but both have a way to go to meet ease-of-use demands.

The following column is based on the hurtful (but true) assumption that most users want to stay away of the command-line, and that Linux will never reach World Domination unless its geek-friendly face is hidden from Joe Public.

Open source software has taken up residence on enterprise networks despite initial concerns that its unconventional version control and support structure would make it a risky bet for corporate IS.

Is Windows 2000 becoming a serious challenge for IBM? How does Linux fit into the IBM strategy? What does the future hold for Lotus and Tivoli? How successful is IBM's software business? At the beginning of December in Somers, New York, c't discussed these subjects with John M. Thompson, Senior Vice President and Group Executive of the IBM Software Group.

To provide additional vehicles for pre-silicon validation and post-silicon debug of the Intel Itanium processor, we ported two operating system kernels to the IA-64 architecture. The Mach3 microkernel was ported first, followed by the Linux 2.2.0 kernel, and these have helped track the overall health of the Itanium RTL model for the last two years.

It's tough. It's fast. It's free. It's Linux -- the most hyped operating system since OS/2. Tech heads love it, but does Linux really mean business? There's only one person who can answer that question: you.

WHEN YOU talk about the free operating system the first thing that comes to mind is Linux. Linux, however, is not the first to offer a free operating system and source code. A lesser known operating system developed in 1970 at the University of California, Berkeley, called the BSD (Berkeley Software Design) is, in fact, the oldest free operating system.