Now imagine you're a lone Linux hacker trying to get Linux to run on a device that can fit in your shirt pocket. And the device manufacturer actively hides any technical data you might need to make the port work. In fact, they designed it to run Windows CE, and only Windows CE.

I was walking through our local mega-mall the other day when I saw something new. Where the old food court with the Papa Ginos and the McDonalds had once stood, there was now a brand new and somewhat bizarre-looking setup with a big bright banner strung across the center. 'OPEN SOURCE ...

Recently, I spent some time trying out various Linux distributions on my late model Toshiba laptop. Since that article came out, several new releases have come out and I've tried a couple of new distros. So here's a brief update.

***After mail-in rebate. Must purchase product between 11:57 p.m. on 1/1/05 and 2:17 a.m. on 1/2/05, at the CompUSA in East Lansing, MI, from a salesman named Bob who has between three and five children. Rebate must be postmarked by 3:53 a.m. on 1/2/05, and received by our processing c...

New Year's Day, and as with most holidays, I found myself at my in-laws' house for the entire day. Now, I actually like my mother- and father-in-law, but spending eight hours at a house without cable or any kind of Internet connection would try the patience of Gandhi.

I've been thinking about why it's so hard to communicate the benefits of open source and Linux to the general public, and have come to the conclusion that it's because the general public has been conditioned by movies and TV to only understand simplistic plots with clearly defined good...

The knock at my office door came as a surprise. I didn't have any appointments for the day and, as it was a Saturday, the rest of the floor was deserted. 'Come in,' I called curiously.

First things first. This is a tale of addiction. It isn't pretty. If you have small children, you should probably keep this out of their hands until they're ready to deal with the frankly mature material involved.

It seems as if every day a new Linux distribution emerges into the world. True, it can lead to some confusion in the marketplace and fragmentation of the Linux brand name, but open source is all about confusing the end user by having five equally good products that do the same thing, s...

SYS-CON Radio interviews Cheryl Traverse, Chairman and CEO of Immunix, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about the fast-growing Secure Linux and Software Appliance markets.

SYS-CON interviews Jeremy White, CEO of Codeweavers, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco.

'Open standards, not just open source,' says Sam Greenblatt, Senior VP and Chief Architect of the Linux Technology Group for Computer Associates. He is as bullish about open source in the enterprise, in governments, and in the world at large as he has ever been - and so is CA's new man...

SYS-CON Radio interviews Bob Corrigan, Product Manager for InstallShield's setup authoring tools, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about the dramatic year-to-year growth that InstallShield is seeing in its cross-platform sales...including Linux.

SYS-CON Radio interviews John Fanelli, Sun's senior director of marketing, Network Systems Group, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about the exact nature of Sun's engagement with Linux and open source, including the question of whether and when Sun will op...

SYS-CON Radio interviews Tim Lee, CEO of Pogo Linux, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about Linux hardware and compatability, including dual-boot systems and Pogo's newly launched AMD 64-bit 'Linux laptop.'

SYS-CON Radio interviews Anthony Johnson, El Presidente of Storix, winner of the LinuxWorld Product Excellence award for data back-up and storage solution, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco.

SYS-CON interviews Russ Shelton, VP of Marketing, SteelEye Technology, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about the company's latest announcements.

SYS-CON interviews Mike Ruane, President and CEO of Revelation Software, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco about the company's latest announcements.

SYS-CON interviews Todd Johnson, President of Jamcracker, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco.

SYS-CON interviews Martin Buckley, 'Evil Zen Scientist' and Director of Product Management for Novell's ZENworks product line, live at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2004 in San Francisco.

'Every good evil genius needs capable henchmen,' argues James Turner in this week's dose of Monday morning whimsy: some cold hard advice on some of the niceties of successful world domination, from Turner to Gates with best regards.

A funny thing has happened to the computer industry over the last few years. The traditional wisdom was that there were two types of companies. At one extreme, there were small, fast startups that could maneuver nimbly and rapidly gain market share. On the other end of the spectrum wer...

At this point, Linux has gone a long way toward totally infiltrating Microsoft's server business. For databases, Web servers, and file servers, Linux competes on an equal footing, if not a superior one. There's only one missing link left - a replacement for Microsoft's business-ubi...

The reasons people prefer open source products are often very different from those cited by critics unsympathetic to OSS. James Turner nails some of the common misapphrehensions about open source users and flags up some contemporary abuses of those using of commercial software.

'Java is a great language being destroyed by Rampaging Computer Science,' writes James Turner, who knows his way around a polymorphism or two, in his latest - and characteristically combative - Viewpoint.

Sometimes a story is so good, writes LinuxWorld Senior Editor James Turner, that you almost don't want to know if it's true or not. Such is the case with the widely reported discovery by UK firm Netcraft that the Nevada District Court, which will hear one of the two SCO lawsuits, ...

'Now that millions of lines of code to Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 are readily available to anyone with a modem,' writes James Turner, 'Get ready for your twice-daily mandatory security patches, folks.'

SYS-CON Radio interviews Mark Bucciarelli, Developer for KDE

SYS-CON Radio Interviews Frederic Renard, Director of Marketing for Arkeia

SYS-CON Radio Interviews David Fraser, Group Vice President and General Manager, Product Business for Wind River

SYS-CON Radio Interviews Julie Hanna Farris, President and CEO of Scalix

SYS-CON Radio Interviews Paul Lundquist, Vice President of Sales for Open Systems, Inc.

SYS-CON Radio Interviews Nick Collins, Manager, Worldwide Linux Marketing, HP

SYS-CON Radio Interviews Doug Levin, CEO of Black Duck Software

There's no question that the open source community has a lot going for it. Besides a staggering amount of developer power that can be turned against important problems, the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies.

How goes it with Turner's quest to get a 802.11g PCMCIA card and DVD playback working reliably on his Toshiba 1805-S204 Celeron laptop running under Linux? Which distro will come to his rescue? Did Xandros and/or Lindows help? Read on.

For several hours each day, Rob Malda has the power to send tens of thousands of Web surfers hurtling toward sometimes unprepared Web sites. No, he's not some shady Eastern European extortionist; he's one of the founders and current editors of Slashdot, the blog of choice for the geek ...

Thursday 03.22 AM EST: In the early hours of this morning, EST, the 2.6 kernel - almost two full years in the making, with improvements to scheduling, disk management and file systems, better networking and IPSec support, as well as countless bug fixes and minor improvements - has just...

To his rue and regret, James Turner is abandoning his longtime loyalty to Palm and 'defecting' not to a Linux PDA...but to a Pocket PC. Find out why he is taking such a dramatic step.

Just as, in the Java world, there are many competing MVC frameworks for JSP development, so many Open Source developers - says LinuxWorld senior editor James Turner - 'scratch the same itch.' In this week's installment of our 'Point-Counterpoint' series, LinuxWorld editors James Turner...