In recent months, as Linux has suddenly appeared in the commercial computing world's rear-view mirror (warning: Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear), many journalists have been forwarding the idea that Linux will inevitably fragment as Unix in general has done in years past, to the detriment of anyone foolish to leave the Microsoft fold and adopt it.

The explosion of Linux onto the personal computer marketplace has everyone in the computer community all abuzz. It seems like there are new implementations every month that repackage Linux under still another brand/distribution.

As Linux has gained in popularity, the number of commercial (and free) applications have risen dramatically. A growing number of these applications were not born on Linux but rather on some other, lesser known operating systems.

Linux distributor Red Hat plans to open an Asia Pacific headquarters and make major inroads into the region's consumer market in the New Year.

J.D., or as he's more commonly known, 'Illiad,' is the artist and writer of a daily comic strip called 'User Friendly,' which chronicles the lives and employees at Columbia Internet, a fictitious Internet Service Provider in Canada.

What a year. We went into 1999 expecting Linux to do incredible things, and were still amazed. Linux is truly on a roll. In the same spirit as our popular 1998 Linux Timeline, here is our attempt to summarize what has happened in the Linux world over the last year.

Merging e-commerce, open-source software, and Linux may be one of the shrewdest moves of this year and next, as these are the three areas currently monopolizing the attention of venture capitalists, stock-market investors, and the general computing public.

While government regulators are hoping to break up his mighty empire and expecting that a judge will rule in their favour in an anti-trust case against Microsoft, a bunch of new software giants has suddenly emerged to challenge his monopoly in computer operating systems.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has retained a Linux consultancy to ensure the increasingly popular software runs on its advanced, 64-bit PA-RISC chips by the first half of next year, according to HP executives.

Network Associates, Inc. announced the industry's first solution to enable third party developers and service providers to easily embed the market-leading McAfee VirusScan engine into Linux-based e-business applications, Internet appliances, and managed service offerings.