If there's one area where Linux distributions miserably fail, it's in how services are configured right out of the box upon installation. Experienced users know enough to plug the many security holes present in a default Linux installation, but many Linux newbies -- and those experienced system administrators coming from the UNIX and NT worlds -- don't.

"Right now, Linux is the buzz, some even call it "Windows killer". I hope the "demise of Windows" soothsayers are talking about the server market and not the desktop, because Linux has a long way to go on this one."

Apparently PR types think that Red Hat Linux has become a separate and distinct operating system. The question is, are they right? And is it a problem? What is an operating system in Linux? Or are there several? Or is there even such a thing?

"Specifically, I want to focus on Linux, which might be the best example of a truly disruptive technology that we've seen since the advent of the Internet. The Innovator's Dilemma theory gives us a guide to understand how established software firms risk missing the boat with respect to Linux, just as brick-and-mortar retailers were overtaken on the Net by smaller, more daring startups."

"The milestone I'm waiting for is the release of the first commercial distributions to combine production-quality releases of the 2.4 kernel, glibc 2.2.1, gcc 2.95 (maybe 3.0 if we're really lucky), XFree86 4.0.2, KDE 2.1 (and probably the next release of GNOME). With a little luck, all that should come together by mid-summer. Then it will be time to celebrate because that will truly be a stellar combination of software."

"Applications drive the market, and until there's a compelling reason to use Linux on the desktop, it will remain a fringe desktop OS. Linux's future as a server OS remains solid thanks to the many splendid server applications, but if we want to see Linux break through as a viable desktop OS, the Open Source world needs to realize that commercial software is not an evil thing to be derided or ignored ... in the absence of a killer application, it doesn't matter whether an OS like OS/2 is certifiably better than the status-quo Windows."

"In early January 2000 I wrote about my decision to use Windows NT in the creation of a new network. I detailed why I chose Windows NT, after performing an evaluation between it and Linux. I'm here today to tell you why I reversed that decision, and how I used Linux to give me the functionality I required."

"But what if the apps don't work across platforms? What happens when a distro maker starts to do things that prevent cross platform/cross-distro compatibility in the name of distribution feature enhancement? The answer is that organizations become pinned to using a specific distro."

"Go for broke this year and invest heavily in open source. Specifically, devote as many resources as possible for tuning optimizations in the GNU compilers to produce code that runs best with your chips. I'm not talking about bolstering generic 686 optimizations. I'm talking about chip-specific optimizations that a developer would activate with a compilation flag such as -O Athlon, -O Duron, -O Thunderbird, or -O PentiumWhatever."

"You've heard about Linux for quite a while now and wondered about all the excitement. You've listened to that nerdy guy at work rave about it. You've looked at the screen shots and thought, "It doesn't look too bad. It looks kind of cool, actually." Still, why go through all the trouble? Perhaps it's the price; perhaps it's all the software that comes with it. Maybe it's just the challenge, the intellectual allure."