"I have to wonder whether all the leaps that Linux has made in recent history will wind up being compared against the slow, steady progress of the BSDs. The BSD-based OSes all look to be doing better and better at the moment, even without Linux's marketing fury behind them."

"Now incompatibilities are being introduced hand over fist, as distributions fight for a bigger and bigger piece of a diminishing pie, until oneday one will own all of nothing. Does this do anything useful for the distributions, users, Linux, anybody? Well, no. If Microsoft were to cook up a plan to cause Linux to disappear in a virtual Tower of Babel it could scarcely be more effective than that which has been adopted by distributions on their own, voluntarily," writes Dennis Powell

It's time to unearth another Linux hidden gem, overlooked open-source application that can help make Linux more useful once you get to know it. Simply called apt-get, this tool was developed to handle installations of the Debian Linux distribution. But, apt-get's capabilities go far beyond simplifying installation. Most notable is an option that updates your system by comparing the release levels of the software on your system to those of a remote benchmark site. This process can be automated as much or as little as you like.

As Linux matures, it's likely that more companies will consider it for business-wide applications. Linux has always been a highly reliable operating system -- an important attribute for enterprise-class applications -- but until recently, it has lacked key features for enterprise computing.

Caldera's Ransom Love defends himself against charges by free software advocate Richard Stallman. The truth is, he says, nothing is for free. "Someone must pay for it. All these small modifications in the code... all this does cost money. The only way to make Linux a successful business is to cash in. This is the other side of the medal. In the future, all Linux applications will have a price tag. That's the job of the movement's marketing department. You will have to pay for it, but of course less than you would pay for NT products..."

"My theory for this short release cycle is that SuSE was trying to sync its release versions with the new Itanium flavor that was scheduled to be released last week. In other words, they opted to use the SuSE Linux 7.2 number for the Itanium release, and wanted to avoid confusion with the Intel version numbers. If this is the case, then this makes more sense. But if we see SuSE 7.3 in a September/October timeframe, then we'll know its something else," writes Brian Proffitt as he takes a quick look at SuSE 7.2 and questions if its purchase is necessary for SuSE veterans.

The author talks of how Linux can succeed on the desktop. According to him Linux will not succeed on its own merits and that its only shot is attracting disaffected Windows users. "Is it ready for the consumer desktop? Well, unfortunately it's difficult to see where the demand would come from. Its geeky image will still be off-putting for consumers, despite the price advantage, and vendors will probably prefer the markup they get from bundling Windows with their systems, rather than Linux."

"Linux is more stable, about as fast, every bit as pretty, and almost as easy to install as anything Microsoft has produced. However, far fewer office productivity applications are written for Linux, and peripheral support is still furlongs behind that of Windows. And to be honest, Linux isn't quite as easy to use. But there's light at the end of the open-source tunnel. I give Linux a year or so before it closes the usability gap. Linux is definetly here to stay.

If you spend enough time in and around the personal computer industry, you will invariably get so jaded that very few things can evoke interest, enthusiasm, or even excitement. But it's worth crawling out of this trap of cynicism, since there are still plenty of smart people designing and creating cool stuff. Some of this neat stuff is evolutionary, some of it occasionally borders on, or even is, revolutionary. This column is about one of each

Intel chief executive, Craig Barrett, concedes that Linux has its uses, but doesn't see much of a future for it on the desktop until it can compete with Windows in the number of applications available.