Some of the reasons Microsoft has not cracked into the embedded software market as much as might be expected are peculiar to the software giant, and some pertain to the market as a whole. Initially, the conditions of the "new" appliance market will tend to favor Linux. As the appliance market matures and moves upstream, Windows will capture more opportunities.

According to a Wired report, Adore and Lion are the crowbars in political defacement campaigns by Chinese "hacktivists" protesting revisionist Japanese textbooks and the recent death of a Chinese pilot. Adore and Lion both target exploits most Linux distributors patched well before their advent.

Last week a pack of lawyers set upon Red Hat Inc., as earlier they had infested VA Linux. Soon other publicly traded Linux companies will be targeted. Prepare for the litigious rape of the Linux companies. Class-action law firms have very little concern for right and wrong. The rest of us get to pay for it, and it's something the Linux community can ill afford.

This file system, which draws its inspiration mainly from the Minix file system of the older days written by Andrew Tanenbaum, was the only file system that was available with a free operating system called “Minix”. It was later modified to be used with the Linux system and was called the Extended File System. The Linux file system being used now, called ext2 (Second Extended File System), is a newer version of the Extended file system that also supports the Access Control Lists (ACL).

Lineo's SecureEdgeTM Network Attached Storage (NAS) platform is designed to provide OEMs with storage solutions for secure Internet appliances and SecureEdge Firewall, a low-cost network access platform that provides a router, firewall and secure PPTP and IPSec VPN capabilities in a single compact enclosure. These are new additions to the OEM development platform for Linux-based appliances and devices.

"Rekall uses KDE-DB to access whatever database is needed. So instead of supplying a native database format, we've supplied a default database format that is meant to be light weight, easy to use and require no RDBMS experience. This uses common dBase format via an interface which provides SQL functionality."

Hard Hat Linux 2.0 focuses on cross development capability, with tools available on 8 host environments, including Red Hat Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Suse, Mandrake, TurboLinux, Solaris, native/hosted Hard Hat Linux, as well as under VMWare on Windows NT/2000. The Hard Hat Linux host-target matrix boasts over 420 fully tested and supported combinations!

Microsoft is developing the operating system, called Windows XP Embedded, in partnership with Bally's video casino-game organization, Fujitsu-Siemens' set-top box group and Siemens' factory robot group. The upcoming version of its Windows software is designed to be stuffed into all sorts of nontraditional computing gadgets.

IBM is leveraging its technical expertise in Linux by providing free educational tools via its developerWorks site. IBM has added a free tutorial on desktop basics, known as "K Desktop Environment or KDE", to its growing collection on the developerWorks Linux Zone. This tutorial will teach Linux users of ever level to customize their own KDE GUI.

For programmers who need to develop sophisticated, high-performance code where the user interface is only a small part of the project, Kylix may not be the right way to go. But, for a corporate developer writing vertical applications -- especially for in-house use in an environment where many such applications are needed in a short time -- Kylix is a splendid choice.