For those of you who aren't aware, Bill Parish wrote a tantalizing article in which he advanced the startling conjecture that Microsoft is suffering massive losses of revenue.

LinuxPPC is a name very familiar to many linux enthusiasts running on Macintosh or other PowerPC hardware. They truly helped pioneer the linux effort for PowerPC machines in the beginning.

When I first started touting Linux as a soon-to-be superior alternative to Microsoft Windows, almost no one at my company had even heard of the product. Nearly two years later, it's difficult to find a computer magazine that does not extoll the virtues of Linux.

Corel is recruiting beta testers for the Linux version of its WordPerfect Office 2000 productivity suite.

San Francisco-based Penguin Computing announced the second generation of its eight-processor Pentium III Xeon enterprise server, the Penguin 8500. Directed at the most demanding applications from e-commerce to scientific computing, the 8500 offers virtually unlimited expansion and numerous high-availability features combined with the stability and cost-effectiveness of the Linux operating system.

Gates said: "In terms of Linux, in general, there's a lot of different versions of that out there. There's no sort of centralised control. But, it's definitely a competitor."

Al Albarracin, head of Dialtone Internet, announced today that it will give away up to 2,000 brand new, sub-$2000 Linux-based, internet servers to new customers who sign-up for a minimum 3 year collocation agreement.

Ontrack Data Recovery, the remote data recovery specialist, claims it is the first company to offer remote recovery of data for the Linux operating system.

A technicality in the installation process of package managers in several Linux distributions has highlighted a legal problem that could nullify liability disclaimers with some Linux software, according to Australian software house Bowerbird Computing.

The rapid proliferation of applications which now run on Linux is wonderful for anyone even thinking of running Linux. The first question most people ask me about Linux is, "Will it run this?", or "Does this application run on Linux?"