A free and simple piece of open source software is helping manage the spread of disease in developing countries.

I just read Louis Gray’s post titled “On the Web, If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying.” It gave me a chilling realization about web services. Like everything else, what goes up must come down. This must apply to Linux distributions too, right? So, what’s happening with Linux? Which distributions are growing? Like Louis Gray, I’m going to use data from Google Trends.

A private school in St. Louis, Mo. is increasingly choosing Linux for the computers it supplies to students and faculty, according to laptop supplier Lenovo. Students at the Whitfield School are using Linux about 86 percent of the time now, Lenovo says, up from 50 percent three years ago.

Whether for private users, small and midsize businesses, major corporations, or public institutions, Open Source software has in the past years become a reliable alternative to commercial solutions. And not just because it is less expensive. Businesses are becoming increasingly convinced of the quality of this free software.

We are reaching an exciting time for Open Source in UK education as government interest is increasing and many teachers, support and management staff are using Open Source to greater effect in schools, colleges and universities.

Being an avid fan of aircraft and flight (ref: extreme high performance flying), one of the things that has always caught my interest was the ever improving design of aircraft, engines and avionics...Linux has become quite the integral part of the aviation industry these days, so much so that in some respects, Tux has grown wings. Just how is this happening? Let me show you.

This riveting tale describes the development of a fairly amazing Linux device. Andrey Filippov's latest paper describes how at the behest of an unnamed client, his small Utah-based company fit GPS, DMA-enabled storage, and multi-camera synchronization into its Linux-powered camera, which has an open hardware design.