With the upcoming release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron, it’s likely there will be an influx of complete Linux newbies that are trying the operating system (in its shiny, new Ubuntu incarnation) for the first time. Just under a year ago, I put together a Linux terminology jargon buster, designed to explain some of these new Linux terms to those who are just starting out.

LAST week's LinuxWorld talkfest in San Francisco, which brought together 10,000 vendors and users of the open source operating system, offered yet another indicator of its growing popularity across enterprise IT groups and among developers.

For many computer users, the desire to find something more cost effective than Windows has been growing from a low growl to a loud roar. Obviously not everyone is a great candidate to make the switch to the open source operating system. Once you are able to better understand some of the strengths of using the Linux desktop, however, you too might find that migrating makes a lot sense.

Last week, in part one we looked at how you could use a version of the Linux operating system, called Puppy Linux, to revive a dead Windows PC, access your files and hopefully carry on working; this week we're going to do the deed and download and burn Puppy onto a 'Live CD'.

An attempt to explain an awk program, with a nested if statement within a for loop, in plain English.

In the name of defining jargon, Forbes this week tries a complete rewrite of open source history.

To outsiders, software whose source code is freely distributable is open source software. However, as soon as you become involved with the community that centers around such code, you quickly find that it is also called free software -- and that the two terms are far from synonymous. Which term you choose to use can quickly associate you with a whole spectrum of political and philosophical beliefs, and can make the difference between receiving cooperation and being ostracized. As a newcomer, you might easily imagine that you have stumbled out of the woods and into the target end of a rifle range, all because of your innocent choice of jargon.

Someone asked me “should I install Ubuntu or Linux?”, I replied “Ubuntu is Linux” but this didn’t help a lot. There’s a lot of terminology we take for granted. It can put people off and I want to demystify some of it if I can.

Let’s get right to it: considering the popularity of open source applications and utilities, why hasn’t the open source flagship - the Linux operating system - caught on with mainstream PC users?