The desktop Linux market got a big boost earlier this month at LinuxWorld, where Lenovo unveiled plans to soon begin selling ThinkPads preloaded with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. The deal makes Novell the second major vendor to support Linux on its consumer PCs, following the trail Dell blazed in May with its decision to offer machines loaded with Ubuntu Linux.

Novell is a company that has run out of ideas. That's not to say it doesn't have some good software, or that there aren't some very good people working there. But the fact is that despite having SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and much else to offer, Novell is a company going nowhere fast.

Many people now believe that Linux represents a viable alternative. Today, with mainstream hardware vendors like Dell offering Linux installations and some folks thinking a major shift is about to happen, it's time to take another look at Linux on the desktop.

The agreement that Red Hat and Microsoft signed last week is something like a royal wedding - we all like the idea but we'd like to know a bit more about the demands made by the bride.

There's been much fanfare about Linux replacing Windows on desktops but we've yet to see any major adoptions take place -- this may have something to do with the fact that in Australia, none of the major PC manufacturers have offered Linux as a pre-installed option.

Vyatta has achieved a major new release of its community-supported, Debian-based Linux distribution aimed at turning commodity x86 hardware into enterprise routers, firewalls, and VPN appliances. New features in Vyatta Community Edition 3 (VC3) include IPSec VPN, multilink PPP, and BGP scaling and security, the vendor says.

Newsflash people. There is no “Year of the Linux Desktop”. There will never be one. Before you start looking for sharp rocks to throw at me, let me start by saying I am a Linux user. I worked with all major distributions, roamed in Slackware land for about two years, tried to get accustomed to Red Hat’s RPM hell in a time when Linux was a wasteland and there were only a bunch of people that were using it.

Among the three major operating systems, you may know that Linux has the lowest market share on the desktop but is leading the server market. However, Linux on the desktop is slowly but surely going mainstream that's enough to scare the crap out of Microsoft.

With all the hoopla that has been surrounding KDE 4, I’d almost forget there’s another major piece of software working on a milestone release. Okay, maybe not as major as KDE, but Amarok is arguably the best and most popular media player on the linux desktop.