This month LinuxGO brings to you Mr. Phil Hughes, publisher of LinuxJournal and founder of SSC.

After calling off its initial public offering and replacing its chief executive officer on the same day last month, Linux services provider Linuxcare is still not in any rush to jump back in line to go public.

Independent software vendor (ISV) enthusiasm for Linux is not uniform. ISVs are

warming to the future prospects of Linux, but many key ISVs still harbor reservations

and do not yet see sufficient enterprise demand according to a recent Gartner Group

Study.

While the so-called "Linux Hysteria" seemed to fade long before the Nasdaq started to sputter, the open-source platform capitalized on Microsoft's antitrust troubles by moving steadily into the server arena and grabbing the attention of Internet-centric operations.

Barely a day goes by in the high-tech arena without the announcement of a multimillion-dollar funding deal for a Linux start-up. The latest example is OpenSales, an open-source e-commerce software company, which today received $10 million in financing.

Joe Barr tries out WhatIfLinux, a subscription-based tool for helping system administrators keep their Linux boxes current with the ever-changing application landscape.

Metrowerks announced it is a founding member of the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC). The ELC, formed at the recent Embedded Systems Conference in Chicago, is a coalition of embedded software companies and engineers with the shared mission of promoting and implementing the Linux operating system in embedded applications.

Prompting Dutch electronics superpower Philips into the Open Source arena is one thing. Convincing it to give would-be Linux developers a chance to bring its products up-to-speed with the Linux Community without signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is quite another.

Lineo, an embedded Linux firm, has received a $37 million investment from a slew of Asian manufacturers, close on the heels of a similar investment in a major competitor.

MontaVista Software has launched an initiative to make the Linux operating system work better in small devices that must respond to commands immediately, in "real time." Real-time operating systems are used to control devices such as a car engine's fuel mixture or assembly line robots.