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Regardless of how fast, stable, and geek-chic desktop GNU/Linux has become, we still live in a Windows world. Many vendors, either through lack of vision or funding, will produce only a Windows version of their software or drivers. If you're a gadget geek like me, you likely end up in the same old quandary of "I want that gadget, but it only has Windows drivers." If you're even more like me, you'll elect not to take the high road and search for ways to run that bad boy on your desktop GNU/Linux box.

There are a handful of products that will enable Windows applications to run on GNU/Linux, all with varying degrees of success. Regardless of which products are on the market, they'll fall into two categories: those that require you to have a licensed copy of Windows, and those that don't. Win4Lin and VMware fit into the first category, which I affectionately call "virtual machine-type" applications. The second category is where products like Wine, CrossOver Office, and Cedega fall. These products don't require Windows, rather they attempt to fool Windows applications into thinking they're running on Windows by performing varying types of tricks at the binary level. I call this class of application "windows emulators" (quite wrongly, I admit).

It only seems fair to compare apples to apples and so this article is a comparison of the two virtual machine-type applications Win4Lin 2.7 and VMware Workstation 5.5.1. The test emphasizes desktop GNU/Linux and the test platform is a suitably powerful Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop with 512MB of RAM, a 30GB hard drive, a 2.2GHz processor running Kubuntu "Breezy Badger" 5.10 with kernel 2.6.12-10-386.

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According to a recent IDC study, open source is becoming a fundamental aspect of services portfolios for IBM Global Services, HP Services (HPS), Unisys, Novell, and other major services providers. The study also reveals that open source is moving up on the investment agenda of companies worldwide, as services providers (mostly services arms of technology companies) have formalized support, training, and certification services to encourage adoption of open source (principally Linux) on their products. As open source software goes mainstream, IDC finds that services vendors must further develop open source capabilities in order to meet their clients' needs and attract new customers. >>>>

Lumen Software, a leader in Portal technology, announced the release of their Lumenation v6.0 Portal with unlimited User Licensing. The Portal can be downloaded from the company's website, www.lumensoftware.com. Organizations can immediately begin providing key information to users appropriately based upon who the user is and what role they play in the organization regardless of the underlying OS (Microsoft, Mac, Linux, Unix). -Novell Cool Solutions

Microsoft stunned LinuxWorld attendees last week by pledging to support Linux virtual machines on its Virtual Server and revealing free virtual machine additions for Red Hat Linux and Novell SUSE Linux. It wasn't the only dogs-playing-with-cats kind of moment last week: Apple offered up software to let Windows run on Intel-based Macs.What's going on here? The answer is virtualization, the ability to much more easily carve up servers and PCs into compartments that can run multiple applications under different operating systems at the same time. Business interest in virtualization–particularly of servers–is picking up quickly, and vendors are racing to stake out this emerging market. The result could blur some of the hard-and-fast lines drawn between operating systems. >>>>

An expert in deploying open source throughout the enterprise tells us how to wean ourselves off the Microsoft drug forever.

I've been tracking desktop Linux uptake for around a decade. In that time, the platform has moved from an environment suited only to the technorati and those well versed in Unix windowing systems, to something which now has the polish and familiarity for the mainstream.

In fact, desktop Linux has matured so well that you could deploy it in a greenfields scenario, i.e, one where there were no computers used previously, and the users would take to it as quickly as they would acclimatise to Windows.

That doesn't mean that migrating to Linux is a quick or painless process, however. Unfortunately, Windows is an extremely difficult platform to move away from. This has nothing to do with the qualities or inherent capabilities of Linux mind you. Migrating from Windows to the Mac would be about as painful. And the Mac is considered to be the most polished and easiest to use of desktops.

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It has been over a year since UTI Bank set up its call center that handles over 7,000 calls per day. The bank was looking for a robust platform that could guarantee it "high availability of services and uninterrupted call traffic". It had options but finally decided on Linux for its core business applications."Today, we are really happy with Linux that has delivered 99.99 per cent uptime so far," says Pritesh Thaker, AVP, IT, UTI Bank. The bank, in fact, is now planning to base its credit card-based system on Linux too.

Back in 2000, India was primarily a Unix market in the enterprise. With the entry of certified and supported Linux solutions, Unix users in India found Linux an attractive proposition to migrate to. IDC has consistently reported Linux as the fastest growing OS in the world and predicts that the overall market revenue for Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. >>>>