Don't tell the boss but the programmers' pet, Linux, is running the shop. And it seems Windows 2000 will be the loser.

Linux has found its place among those of us that went for the gold and now regret dancing with the devil. Now it's up to all the penguin headed programmers to bring it up to speed so that we can sell it to our companies.

Compaq's recent announcement of the Open Handheld Program marks an important step toward bringing open-source operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD to handheld devices, beginning with Compaq's recently released iPaq H3600.

Compaq sees Linux being very important in a number of markets. It is a key component for customers needing low cost but highly effective webservers. It is absolutely critical in the high performance technical computing arena, thanks to the

excellent price performance value of Beowulf clusters.

XFree86 4.0.1 is available and can be obtained either directly from the public CVS server, or from the ftp site as source tarballs or source patches relative to the 4.0 release.

Many ASPs and other companies in the new economy are turning to Linux for their

Internet infrastructure even though, when it comes to achieving high availability in enterprise computing, Linux is not quite there yet.

Value Added Resellers looking to integrate computers into traditionally computer-free environments will love Linux. If you want to add a new feature you have the code, you can fix an existing device driver, write a new one or even hire someone to do it for you.

I saw a Usenet posting from Linus along the lines of "I've thrown together this Minix-like system to teach myself about the i86 architecture. You guys might want to check it out ...".

If you've got an older, unused computer lying around, you can build a stand-alone firewall/router which will provide long and reliable service at very little cost.

This fully functioning prototype, designed and built by Steve Mann in 1998, was demonstrated in 1999 and later used to deliver a videoconference at ISSCC 2000.