Small business mail server/router runs embedded Linux, Dec 23, 2003

Internet appliance and industrial computer manufacturer ICP Electronics Inc. (IEI) has launched a sub-$1,000 web mail server, router, and firewall based on embedded Linux and targeting the small business market. The WMS-2208R boots embedded Linux firmware from Flash memory, and a configuration reset switch restores state.

The city of Austin, Texas, is evaluating Linux and OpenOffice.org for desktop computers, the newest indication that open-source software has become a serious alternative to Microsoft products.

The city is about three months into a "nonemotional Linux pilot" project to test the operating system for desktop computers and servers, Pete Collins, director of the city's communications and technology management department, said in an interview on Friday. In addition, the city is testing OpenOffice on Windows.

Linux on the desktop - I understand the arguments, I understand the availability of it, but it's not in this organisation and I suspect it would be some time before you would see it at scale and I don't think you'd ever see it, certainly not in my perspective, on the desktop," he said.

Barclays itself signed a £210m seven-year desktop services deal for 41,700 PCs in the organisation earlier this year as part of plans for the bank to standardise as an early on adopter on Microsoft's Windows and Office 2003 software products.

[NY Times requires free registration]

Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux computer operating system, defended his work yesterday as not always lovely but original - and certainly not copied, as a Utah company has contended.

The Utah company, the SCO Group, has begun sending out a round of warning letters to large corporate users of Linux, which is distributed free. The letters, dated Friday, assert that Linux, a variant of the Unix operating system, violates an SCO license and copyright. SCO, based in Lindon, Utah, owns the rights to the Unix operating system.

Linus has taken a quick look at the files and has given permission for us to publish his first analysis. There will be more to say later, but the bottom line is that SCO appears to have made a copyright claim to some files that Linus wrote himself. I'll let him tell you about it, by reproducing his initial email to me from earlier today.

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