In perhaps the most significant alliance for any of the dozen or so Linux software companies, IBM announced it will offer the Red Hat Linux operating system on all of its new server and mainframe computers.

The company will announce the availability of Design Compiler and other popular chip design tools for the open-source operating system, a move that opens the door for the widespread adoption of Linux as the No. 2 EDA platform and very possibly writes the epitaph for Windows NT in chip design.

The news indicates that Linux, increasingly going head to head with Windows NT and 2000, is just as prone to feature creep and delays as any Microsoft OS.

This year IBM seems determined to dislodge its rivals from their by now incumbent positions. And with that in mind IBM has gone absolutely Linux-tastic. Every server that comes out of the big blue doors over at the big blue HQ are coming packed with Linux.

Providing an easy upgrade to the soon-to-be-available Linux 2.4 kernel, a wide array of improvements, including USB support for keyboards and mice, and new encryption capabilities, Red Hat Linux 7 is an evolutionary upgrade of the operating system but is hardly a showstopper.

In the same box, you get support for both Intel and Alpha platforms, along with English and Japanese language versions of the OS. Right now, Kondara is more bilingual than multilingual, but as additional languages become available, Kondara MNU/Linux 2000 will likely carve its own niche in the Linux marketplace.

For enterprise network professionals looking at Linux-based storage products, two recent industry happenings should be of interest: Sun's purchase of Cobalt Networks, and VA Linux's entrance into the storage arena.

The level of ire towards the company has reached new heights with the flaming thread on the linux-kernel mailing list and an actual bug submission to Bugzilla asking for the recall of Red Hat 7.0. Throw in a report on Slashdot about 2,500 bugs found on the currently shipping Red Hat 7.0, and you get the kind of week that makes a Red Hat executive reach for the aspirin.

There was a reaction to the announcements by the OpenBSD developer team about the exploits that surprised me. The reaction was to imply that the developers had been hiding the truth about the exploits so as to not tarnish the reputation of OpenBSD.

Compaq last week admitted that Linux needs to establish more enterprise deployments and must gain additional software vendor support if it is to become more than a niche operating system.