Two years ago, Linux was a technology with a following only among those living on the fringes of the development community; last year the operating system rocketed into the consciousness of mainstream development and user communities alike.

The software company Red Hat is offering its Linux operating system free to schools in the UK. BBC News Online has been told that it aims to develop a technical support network that will be much cheaper than schools typically pay now.

The new graphically-enhanced Linux-Mandrake 7.0 (Air) operating system has just been released and is now available as a free download from their website and from many mirrors across the Internet.

Corel has taken what it describes as a "strategic ownership stake" in Newlix, an Ottawa-based Linux start-up headed by John Hansen, who had 14 years at Intel, finishing up as technical sales manager for Canada and central USA. Newlix's first product is Omega, a Linux-based system for small-to-medium sized businesses for connecting up to about 50 PCs.

At the road show in Seattle this week, Anil Gadre, vice president and general manager of Solaris software, talked with TechWeb's Stuart Glascock about Sun and Linux, Windows 2000, Java, Jini, and more.

As you may have heard, more than a few people have become quite wealthy by selling free Linux software (or more specifically, selling Linux stock), and more than a few people caught on. And money is having its strange effect, hence the recent explosion of Linux distributions.

Secure Computing Corporation, announced that it has been awarded a sole source contract by the National Security Agency (NSA) to develop a Secure Linux Operating System. This contract calls for Secure Computing to apply its patented Type Enforcement technology, to develop a robust and secure Linux platform.

Matrox Graphics Inc. has contracted Precision Insight Inc. to develop the Matrox G400 XFree86 4.0 Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) driver.

It is now government policy in China to use the Linux operating system across all government ministries, according to Jon "Maddog" Hall, the executive director of Linux International.

SCO announced that at LinuxWorld Expo it will introduce a portfolio of server products for the Linux market. LinuxWorld Expo will be held at Jacob Javits Convention Center on February 1-4.