There was a time when you couldn't shut me up about the Linux desktop. I was a fanatic. In 2000, I made the switch to a full-time virus-free Linux desktop and weeks of crash-free computing. I was a zealot. However, I did suffer from a few of the alternative operating systems shortcomings. My preferred desktop vendor deemed my Linux laptop1 unsupported, so if I ever had a problem, I had to boot into Windows to receive assistance. When someone sent me a macro-laden spreadsheet, I was forced to run Excel within a virtualized Windows instance2 to read the document as intended. Finally, when it came to wireless, I suffered a multitude of connection problems. While I loved the speed, the stability, and the security, it lacked convenience.

These days, executives realize that there are 'new school' ways of acquiring a company with a software asset. For all of the immeasurable benefits it has brought to the development community, open source technology has added a complex variable to relevant parties calculating the M&A equation. Open source code, the general reuse of open source and proprietary software components in software development, have further complicated the process of acquiring a software asset.

I recently read an article in the 'mainstream' media that gave me pause. The author made an assertion that the current trend towards Open Source might just be a passing fad. I thought about this and looked critically at the software industry, thinking about whether there was merit in that statement. After all, we have seen plenty of high flyers peter out in a software industry riddled with buzzwords and acronyms-of-the-day. I just don't believe that open source is one of them.

Sometimes I worry that I sound like a broken record repeating the phrases Open Source, open standards, and virtualization over and over again like an obsessive parrot. I refuse to stray away from what I believe are some of the most important considerations for your IT decisions. However, one thing I think I may not mention quite enough is coexistence. In the last year I've been preaching about keeping your options open. Maybe I've spent a little too much time on my soapbox so let me step back and explain myself a little better.

The benefits of commodity hardware are well known. Competition among memory, storage, and chip providers has benefited the consumer and driven down PC prices. My belief is that the next big 'open opportunity' is for the Open Source commodity laptop. The consumer would be rewarded by applying to hardware, specifically laptops, the same principles that have made Open Source software a success. Desktop PCs are fairly easy to repair and your local electronics superstore likely has all the parts to repair them. There are also plenty of local repair shops competing to fix them. This isn't the case with laptops. As laptop sales surpass desktops, I believe there's growing demand for local vendors to not only sell but fully service laptops on-site.

Avocent Corporation was recognized by CMP Media's VARBusiness magazine as one of North America's top information-technology vendors in terms of the partnership programs it offers to solution providers that sell its products and services to end users. Avocent was certified as a Five-Star Partner for the fifth year in a row acknowledging its commitment and strength of its programs for IT integrators, resellers and consultants.

As time passes, the base of Linux users is growing in the data center, desktop, and even embedded electronic devices. Numbers from industry analysts point out that Linux server shipments have shown double-digit growth every quarter for over two years. In many cases these servers are being used for expansion or new projects. Inevitably they will be put into service to replace systems that once ran Unix or Windows.

As many of our readers already know, all the editors of LinuxWorld Magazine have day jobs where we use Linux and open source. Some like Paul Sterne of Open-Xchange (www.openexchange.com) and Jon Walker of Linux migration specialists, Versora (www.versora.com), work for vendors. Others are practitioners like Matt Frye who manages Solaris-to-Linux migrations for a telecom infrastructure company. That's what I like about LinuxWorld Magazine; you get the unique perspective of not just pundits who are reporting on technology but anecdotal stories about real-life successes (and failures) that benefit our readers.

I'm a poker junkie. Yes, the game that's been played at kitchen tables and on riverboats for the last 150 years. The game that American folk hero Wild Bill Hickok was playing in Deadwood when he was gunned down holding two pairs - aces and eights - since then know as the dead man's hand.

I have spent the last 10 years implementing, using, and advocating Linux for a variety of applications. During that time I have watched the steady progression of Linux, gaining success as a server, desktop, and embedded operating system. The facts are indisputable: Linux is a success and it more than adequately meets the needs of many enterprise class applications and open source operating systems, chalking up wins in both consumer electronics and on the desktop.

Lately, I've been feeling a little nostalgic about what I call the 'golden age' of consumer software innovation in the late '80s and early '90s. Back then I was cutting my teeth at a medium-sized Mac software publisher called Silicon Beach Software that had a few early successes and that also saw a fair number of applications plied by smaller developers wanting Silicon Beach to publish their software.

I recently broke my glasses though I admit I don't wear them much and I started to notice that I was squinting more. Sometimes I could make out what was going on on my Linux desktop, which is set to a whopping 1920 x 1200 resolution, but I couldn't quite make out some items without closer inspection.

With the U.S. economy and IT spending finally appearing to be making a comeback and China and India adopting IT faster than you can say symmetric multiprocessing, why am I predicting layoffs?

I recently attended a concert with a friend and one of his clients. My friend runs a storage practice for a systems integrator and his client works as an IT manager for a pharmaceutical company. During the introductions my friend mentioned to his client that I was 'an expert' in Linux and Open Source. The IT manager made the comment, 'We have a few boxes around but we really haven't gotten into Linux yet.' I smiled and we continued to talk about kids, cars, home improvements, the typical topics that thirtysomething professionals in the suburbs gravitate to when socializing. However, the question remained with me, 'Why was it that they have a few Linux servers lying around but hadn't gotten into Linux?'

I've always been fond of the saying 'There are no absolutes' because I find the irony appealing. You see, despite being the editor-in-chief of a leading Linux magazine, I don't believe there's a best choice in operating systems other than the one that works best for you. Before you brand me a heretic let me state my bias by saying I think Linux is an excellent choice in many cases, in fact more than is actually used - Web Services or point-of-sale anyone? Furthermore I subscribe to the same logic for software and think there's seldom if ever a piece of software that serves every situation. Enterprises have many architecture choices these days; problems arise when you have no choice.

SpikeSource, a starry Redwood City, California, start-up providing Open Source software testing services, wants to embolden enterprises to use the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Python/Perl (LAMP) stack (www.spikesource.com). Their goal is to certify the LAMP stack and the applications that use it. At the heart of its value proposition is an automated testing bed, which lets software vendors and Open Source projects upload their applications and verify that there are no conflicts with the stack.

Recently I have had a number of conversations with people who make their living in open source, and every one of them talked to some degree about the idea that they were starting to address a market that has, in the parlance of Geoffrey Moore, crossed the chasm.

Linux has built its reputation as a server operating system as a premier platform for the Web servers that power the Internet and a key building block in grid computing. But does it have a prominent place in the future of mobile computing?

In an April 2005 Netcraft survey of over 62 million Web sites, Apache was far and away the market leader for Web server software with 69.19% of the total market share, followed by Microsoft with 20.55% and Sun a distant third with 3.04%.

The editorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine would like to set the record straight on our efforts and intentions with regards to what we publish on LinuxWorld.com and LinuxWorld Magazine. Due to an unfortunate series of events, we recently advised our publisher to remove content from a sister Web site of another title that does not adhere to the company's publishing guidelines. The management promptly agreed with our decision on this subject and removed this article.

When I was younger I used to love to watch Star Trek. My favorite part of the show was the transporter. I was in awe of the idea that the crew of the Enterprise could just transport anywhere they wanted to go.

Once you have Linux in your enterprise you obviously are aware of the value that it brings in terms of stability, security, and total cost of ownership, but you may be left with one final obstacle: the management of your Linux infrastructure.

What it means to be the best is a relative thing. In the sports world it's the score at the end of the game, the winning record that indicates who beat whom. In the world of Linux, it's more subjective to the goals of the end user.

This will be my last column as editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld Magazine. It's been a lot of fun and a great ride, but I guess all good things must come to an end. The new editor-in-chief will be Mark Hinkle. Regular readers know Mark from his ongoing 'Dr. Migration' column. Mark was the very first member of the editorial team after myself, so it's fitting that he's able to step in and take my place now that I'm moving on - not that I'll be 'moving on' very far: I'll be staying on with the magazine as open source editor, which will allow me to focus on an area that I think is really interesting while giving me a break from the responsibilities of being editor-in-chief.

Yep, there is a new sheriff in town. I am pleased to be writing this editorial as the new editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld Magazine. Before I start prophesying about the bright future of the magazine, I would like to reflect on our accomplishments, thanking former editor-in-chief, Kevin Bedell, who will continue to provide his talents as our editor of open source.

In programmer heaven, all software is open source software. Solving problems is as easy as downloading the code you need - none of which comes with any nasty copyright baggage - and the only part you need to write for yourself is the coolest, most interesting algorithm, which compiles, runs, and works on the first try.

As the Linux and open source communities continue to expand, there's a lot of discussion happening around the ideas of open source and open standards. It's not enough, people say, to just have the software code be open source - the standards themselves need to be open too.

I was introduced to Linux in 1992, when the first version was available. At the time I was visiting Poland and my company was building an inventory control system. One of our partners had decided to use Linux to run their inventory system. What led them to use this little-known operating system for a critical task such as inventory control?

There are some people who are passionate about the differences between 'free software' and 'open source.' I'm beginning to wonder if the difference matters. The term 'free software' came into use at about the same time that Richard Stallman quit his job at MIT, launched the GNU Project, and began writing the software that would eventually become the core of the free software community: emacs, the GNU 'C' compile (gcc), the 'C' libraries, and a few others.

Hello, and thanks for reading LinuxWorld Magazine! Welcome to our one-year anniversary issue! It seems like only yesterday that we were launching this magazine; so much has happened since then.

In today's proprietary-dominated software marketplace, companies large and small must live with the fact that their own priorities can and do diverge from those of their key suppliers. IT departments and other software and hardware consumers constantly face capability gaps from product end-of-life, features and functionality missing from product releases, and limited hosting options.

Hello and welcome to another edition of LinuxWorld Magazine! As usual, we're excited about the great material we've been able to put together for you. Looking back over the last month, I was really struck by how the visibility and adoption of Linux and Open Source software have been accelerating. There were some pretty big announcements this month.

We received some great news this past month. Our own Dee-Ann LeBlanc, known to regular readers as the Gaming Industry editor of LinuxWorld Magazine, was selected a winner of the 2003 Excellence in Technology Journalism by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Dee-Ann won for her LWM article from last December on the Linux kernel team and the dynamics of how they work together...

I'm waiting for Linux's Steve Jobs to arrive. You know what I mean? A person who can take this technology and turn it into some amazing consumer products. 'Insanely Great' products.

The benefits and market opportunities provided by open standards far outweigh those derived from open source. While the software development market has certainly benefited remarkably from open source, open standards and protocols such as TCP, HTTP, and XML have made it possible for developers and software vendors to participate in the most rapid technological progression of humanity in the history of the world.

Linux is among the most popular applications known as 'free software' or 'open source.' Among other things, 'open source' means that the source code for these applications is available to those who are interested in seeing (or modifying) it. This is unlike commercial applications such as Windows where all the source code is a tightly guarded secret.

While Microsoft continues its aggressive anti-Linux campaign, independent software vendors and businesses around the world are turning their heads, choosing to pursue greater interoperability through open standards. It's a fact that Windows is the incumbent operating system with years of dominance as the platform of choice at many organizations.

If you're like me, one of the most interesting things about following Linux is being constantly amazed at how many radically different directions you can see it going in. For example, in the last 30 days I've talked to people about Linux applications running on platforms ranging from a massive cluster to a small, embedded system on a circuit board about the size of a stick of chewing gum.

Welcome to the Free Software/Open Source focus issue of LinuxWorld Magazine! In this issue our goal is to give you a perspective and understanding of the amazing reach and accomplishments of what is becoming known as the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) social movement.

Linuxcare recently announced the release of their Levanta 2.0 software, which configures and updates virtual Linux servers on the IBM eServer zSeries mainframe.