Microsoft and Google will participate in the prestigious Golden Penguin Bowl at LinuxWorld. The bowl, which will not be part of the college football BCS system this fall, to the relief of many, will instead be held in a quiz-show format and be hosted by Novell's Jeremy Allison.

In addition to participating in the Golden Penguin Bowl, Bill Hilf, Director of Platform Technology Strategy at Microsoft will also lead a conference session titled, "Managing Linux in a mixed environment...at Microsoft?: A look inside the Linux/Open Source Software lab at Microsoft." During his presentation, Hilf will discuss how because of the dynamic nature of the industry, corporate networks, including some test labs within Microsoft, are often comprised of mixed environments that run Unix, Linux and Windows technology.

Hilf will explain how lessons learned from interoperability testing and management infrastructure can be leveraged to manage assets from deployment to all stages of server administration. He will also discuss what the experiences have been of Microsoft's experts in this lab environment as well as Microsoft's viewpoint on the advantages and disadvantages of Open Source Software from a technical perspective.

Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, will also participate in a keynote panel on Tuesday, August 9 at 2:45 p.m. titled, "The Explosive Growth of Linux and Open Source: What does it all mean?" Moderated by Open Source Development Labs CEO, Stuart Cohen, this keynote panel will also include representatives from Novell, Red Hat and the Free Software Foundation. During this "State of the Open Source Union" keynote, the panel will shed some light on the explosive growth of this new paradigm in computing and will focus beyond what's already happened in the industry to what's happening next.