HP lands US$5.6bn NASA contract, May 24, 2007

The pact allows NASA's procurement department to select from HP desktops, workstations, blade PCs with Linux and Unix capabilities, servers, and printers, among other offerings.

There may be plenty of options for businesses looking to migrate to Linux but consumers aren't so lucky

Thinking about buying a new Linux-based home PC? Happy hunting.

Despite their best attempts, Linux software companies say they are still having a hard time luring average consumers away from the Windows environment--but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

But analysts suggest Sun's other motivation is that it is losing some of its government accounts to IT managers who have turned to Linux on cheap x86 servers over the last few years.

MontaVista Software unleashed a new embedded operating system designed to make smartphone players like Microsoft and Symbian sit up and take note.

The man who maintains the Linux kernel says he's quite confident that the latest versions of the operating system are the best and most stable. For now.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds defended the open source movement against critics who say that the so-called "community of communities" should band together or risk ending up like Unix.

Two software vendors announced a new partnership that pairs an embedded Linux distribution with a Java solution for next-generation mobile phones.

Sun Microsystems has apparently backed away from its efforts to acquire a Linux software distribution -- for now.

The Santa Clara, Calif., network computer maker had been looking to augment its enterprise portfolio, sources told internetnews.com this week.

Sun Microsystems is in talks to purchase a profitable Linux distributor, sources have told internetnews.com.

Sources close to the discussions said they expected that company to be embedded Linux player MontaVista, but cautioned that the deal wasn't finalized and talks could still break down.

Orion Multisystems, a new company founded by former Transmeta executives, debuted a family of workstations Monday that think and act like a cluster of servers.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company introduced two Linux systems based on Transmeta's Efficeon processors -- a desktop and a mini tower. Officials said its desktop model is a single-system board consisting of 12 nodes that can scale up to 96 nodes using eight interconnected boards. Unlike traditional backroom clusters that require setting up huge banks of servers, minimal configuration is required to immediately run all cluster applications.

Based on server operating systems, Linux continued to show strong double-digit growth in both revenue and shipments. Linux revenue grew 54.6 percent in the second quarter, and its unit shipments increased 61.6 percent. Linux represented 9.5 percent of the overall server OS revenue.

A new operating system filesystem is expected to inject new life into Linux's ability to search files, documents, e-mails and contacts more efficiently.

Oakland, Calif.-based Namesys (short for Naming System Venture) took the wraps off the latest version of its ReiserFS for licensing this week. Dubbed Reiser4, the so-called "Atomic Filesystem for Linux" posted benchmarks Monday showing it is 2 to 5 five times faster than the previous versions.

Sun Microsystems is slowly whittling away at Microsoft's dominance on the desktop.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based network computer maker has inked a government contract with a the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) to replace Windows systems with Sun desktop products.

The partnership with the state's Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) includes the city of Sydney and is among the largest open standards-based software rollouts in the area, Sun said. Financial details were not disclosed.

Like a scene straight out of Sally Fields' 1985 Oscar acceptance speech, Microsoft is awed with the response it is getting to its contributions to the open source community.

"You like me, you really like me."

The proof lies within the latest download numbers from SourceForge.net, a repository of open source code and applications. The subsidiary of VA Software released a statement Thursday saying that Microsoft's two (and only) contributions are in the top five percent of the more than 80,000 active projects at the site.

Dell is jumping on Intel's Extended Memory 64-bit Technology (EM64T) bandwagon pretty hard these days, but it is really moving product with the help of Linux.

The Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker listed two new workstations at its online store Wednesday. The Dell Precision 470n and 670n workstations run on Intel's latest Xeon Nocona processors with its coordinating Tumwater chipset.

A popular resource site for open source developers is preparing for a major contribution from Microsoft, internetnews.com has learned.

SourceForge.net Director Pat McGovern said Microsoft is in discussions with OSDN (Open Source Development Network) and is planning on submitting an unidentified amount of software code. It would be Microsoft's third collaboration project with the subsidiary of VA Software. Previously, Microsoft donated parts of its Windows Installer Software and a C++ Template Library.