What good is a Band-Aid if you don't use it? Although software makers routinely release "fixes" designed to plug secutiry holes, the antidotes are often ignored.

One of the first two projects is a scalability project designed to enhance the Linux kernel to support 16 64-bit processors with near-linear performance improvement. The other, identified with the Jabber open source instant messaging project, is focused on increasing Linux TCP/IP concurrent connection support from 20,000 to greater than 64,000.

Given its dramatic momentum, Linux seems all but certain to play a role in corporate life. Despite its high profile, however, Linux remains a minority OS, and it's still not clear just what will have to happen before Linux becomes a corporate mainstay.

Overall, if you know what you're doing, installing an office full of Linux-operated computers running Nautilus and StarOffice is extremely economical and not all that difficult to do. Figure on allowing three hours per workstation to get them up and running.

The first new products released by Cobalt since its acquisition by Sun are still running Linux, but that may not be the end of the story. IBM thinks Sun's actions have "let the Linux genie out of the bottle" and Sun won't be able to put it back in, or control it. And at least one IBM exec thinks that IBM's Linux strategy is starting to pay off.

"The network stack in the 2.4 kernel handles massive amounts of client connections better than anything we have tried. 38000+ users on a $500 box is pretty impressive to me! Also, its handling of denial of service attacks has shown itself to be better than other operating systems."

Stateful firewalls represent a major technological jump in the intelligence of a firewall and are present in all serious Enterprise firewalling products. Among many enhancements, this "statefulness" allows Netfilter to block/detect many stealth scans that were previously undetected on Linux firewalls.

With industry heavyweights putting some muscle behind Linux on mainframes, those touting a Unix server-based future could face a storm on the horizon.

A bevy of devices that run Linux have already reached the marketplace, and many more are expected soon. There are personal digital assistants (PDAs) that run Linux, as well as computing tablets, electronic book readers, and more.

The stock prices of companies that market the operating system have taken a nine-month-long tumble. But at the same time, Linux has caught the eye of established computer companies and corporate executives looking for an inexpensive yet flexible operating system.