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SEATTLE, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- TUX Magazine, the first and only magazine for the new Linux user, today announced the winners of its first-annual Readers' Choice Awards. TUX has soared in popularity, gaining over 50,000 readers in its first six months of publication. "We were amazed by both the quantity and quality of the choices that were available for TUX's inaugural Readers' Choice Awards," commented Carlie Fairchild, SSC Publications' VP of Marketing and Sales. "Not only are the most popular applications getting ever more, but many new entrants keep arriving to push the market forward by leaps and bounds. It's clear that desktop Linux has arrived."

Two research reports sponsored by IBM argue that Linux is less expensive to buy and operate than Windows or Unix.

The principles and philosophy of the Open Source community are being leveraged by global vendors. But the politics of Open Source continues to rage. While customers use Open Source products to beat vendors down on prices, vendors are divided into two political camps, one adapting principles of Open Source to protect its turf while the second fights the onslaught. Indian companies, on the other hand, are yet to get a handle on the issue.

If LinuxWorld Expo has become the place for the suits, and OSCON has become a developer's haven, then where does the average Linux user get to go? In the Midwest, one event that seems to be answering this need is the Ohio LinuxFest--an event that promises to meet the technical and social needs of the Linux user.

Can open-source software crack into ultra-competitive business intelligence marketplace by offering packages that include more than a reporting tool? Our reviewer takes you on a tour of two that try.

Like many companies, National Semiconductor Corp. is looking for ways to cut costs and has Linux and open-source high on its list. While the Santa Clara, Calif., company already is making the move to Linux, the big project this year is to take a close look at open-source databases to figure out where less-expensive data management products could fit in its infrastructure.

The second beta version of OpenOffice.org 2.0, featuring the OASIS-approved XML file format, is being released for testing, but is not ready for production use.

If you think the manufacturer's sticker gave you a reliable estimate of the city mileage for that new car of yours, you should try negotiating traffic on the hills of San Francisco. You'll discover pretty quickly that in my town, the old adage "Your mileage may vary" has never been truer.

The recent launch of the Synapse project to create an open source web mediation framework for web services will highlight the growing importance of open source middleware, industry experts have predicted.

Linux has always made one hell of a server operating system. Anyone who's ever administered a server (or many of them) can tell you why. It really needs no explanation here, as most of our readers already know this for law. The more interesting news, in my opinion anyway, has been that over the past several years Linux has made some serious inroads on the desktop platform. As Linux becomes a more viable contender for the consumer desktop market (and it is... slowly), the need to make it stand out from the competition just gets greater and greater. Some might see this as functionality, others look and feel, still others might see it as a bit of both.

TimeSys this week launched a new subscription-based service allowing embedded developers to "roll their own Linux." The LinuxLink subscription service targets processor architectures from Intel, Freescale, ARM and MIPS. TimeSys said it offers on-demand access to components relevant to embedded developers' design requirements and target processor. This is different, the company said, from traditional Linux distros that determine feature sets of applications and components.

When you're on the road and need to connect to the Internet, sometimes the only way to do it is through a cellular GPRS or GSM connection. Wi-Fi wireless access points are not always readily available, and sometimes are not secure enough for private communications. Why not hook up your GSM/GPRS-capable cell phone to your GNU/Linux-based computer and connect that way? The free GPRS Easy Connect utility makes it easier for you to do just that.

Neoware is shipping a ruggedized thin client designed to support industrial applications such as retail distribution centers, transportation hubs, and manufacturing shop floors. The e900 comes stock with a Neoware's custom embedded Linux OS, but can be modified to run other OSes, the company says.

The announcement of a new Forensic File System led into another discussion of kernel tainting and the legality of binary-only kernel modules.

The third stable major Linux Kernel update of the year, v. 2.6.13 was released this week. The new kernel includes a long list of updates, a few enhancements and even an odd regression. Among the new enhancements to the Linux kernel is "Kexec," which allows for a fast reboot without the need to go through a bootloader.

Plans for an Eclipse Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) will open up new opportunities for open source developers and systems integrators, executives said at EclipseWorld. At the New York conference this week, Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich said the evolution of the Eclipse Java IDE into a full-fledged application lifecycle management (ALM) platform will spur more commercial activity on the open source development environment over the next 12 months.

Eager to promote the"Linux point of view," IBM sponsored a research report praising the low TCO, and other advantages, of Linux.

IBM is kicking some total cost of ownership (TCO) dirt in Microsoft's face, releasing a numbers survey that claims Linux is cheaper to deploy and manage than Windows. An IBM-sponsored Robert Frances Group study found it is 40 per cent cheaper to buy, implement and run an application server on an x86 server running Linux than on a similar server running Windows. Robert Frances polled IT executives at 20 mid-sized and large companies with 250 or more employees. Click Here

At first, looking for free and open source software (FOSS) tools to generate Windows Help files seems an oxymoron. "Most open source projects are intended to help people break out of Microsoft's grip, rather than break in," one poster responded when I queried about the topic on the technical writers' mailing list. Yet, surprisingly, free Help Authoring Tools (HAT) do exist. The trouble is that some require expertise beyond that of those most likely to use them, and none can match the features or ease of use of major proprietary programs. As a result, none of the three applications I unearthed -- AurigaDoc, export from DocBook, and HelpMaker -- is completely satisfactory.

Many people are already convinced that the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) development model is superior to proprietary methods. Others see strong ethical and philosophical reasons to prefer it. But what's less clear is how to make money from it -- not to Bill Gates scope but by building a strong company or making a decent living. How can you make any money when you give away your work for free?