Novell, the network software giant, is taking a plunge into open source. The company is putting the finishing touches on a new open source license -- dubbed the Novell Cooperative License -- and reportedly is close to receiving the approval of the open source community.

As a small contribution to the free source movement, allow me to assemble some motley "Rules" of user friendliness, as I step on a few land mines in the Red Hat Linux 6.1 installation and operation. I hear Windows and Linux can run on the same computer with a "dual boot." So let's try that.

After reading the various reports from Comdex two things came to mind: 1. The Linux community is poised to blow itself up. The Tao says there is the Earth, the Heavens, and the 10,000 Things. In the Real World we have the Computer, the User, and the 10,000 Distributions.

The amount of available software in the Linux community continues to move forward at an amazing pace. This week, I want to talk about some of the new software that is included in various Linux distributions and also talk about Zope, a web publishing system.

Turbolinux Inc.'s TurboCluster 4.0 is an inexpensive, fault-tolerant, Linux-based load balancer that will help Web administrators on tight budgets, but it can't replace hardware at large Web sites.

All of us in the Linux community have a lot of reasons to be thankful this year. This week I'm going to list the things I'm personally thankful for as a Linux user.

SuSE Linux AG, one of the leading suppliers of Linux worldwide, announced that it is receiving equity funding from two investors. Subject to shareholder agreement, funds advised by the internationally renowned venture capital group Apax Partners (Apax Europe IV and Patricof/USA) and Intel will invest 12 million Euro in the Linux specialist.

Oracle Corp. Japan announced that it will further develop its Linux operating-system business. As a first step, the leading software developer will encourage existing Windows NT users to migrate their environments to the Linux operating system from the Microsoft NT environment.

SGI has again changed its strategy for workstation computers based on Intel microprocessors, reversing a decision to transfer the division to another company. SGI also will try to take advantage of the Linux movement with its new Intel-based workstations.

Over the next few months, according to IBM officials, the company will increase the number of its SPCs from two to 14, to be spread over five different continents. These centers will offer developers free technical support as they port, test, and market their applications on all IBM platforms, particularly the company's PC-based Netfinity line of servers.