The netbook ought to have been the domain of Linux. It certainly started that way. Then Windows XP came back into vogue and the vendors backed away. Both ASUS and Dell confirmed today that Linux features little in their future plans.

At the beginning of 2008, the landmark Eee PC netbook running Xandros Linux left an unprepared red faced Microsoft with 0% share of a burgeoning new market. Nine months later, recent reports suggest that Linux on netbooks is down to single digits and heading south.

With a small team and a massive workload, Ian Ralph leans heavily on open source technologies within his IT department to help him meet his obligations.

The public administration of the city of Boom is using Ubuntu for ten new publicly accessible desktop PCs in its public library. The Boom library is not the only public library in Belgium using this GNU/Linux distribution.

As I alluded to earlier, I am out of the office this week. With me to Italy I took a Samsung NC10 that is loaded with an Intel Atom processor, Intel integrated graphics, an OCZ solid-state drive, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM. Prior to leaving I loaded it up with a clean install of the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, but what a mistake that was.

Satel announced a "smart radio modem" for long-distance industrial radio communications networks, combining TCP/IP functionality with a Linux development platform. The Satellar Digital System is based on an ARM9 processor, offers a modular design, and has a range of over 10 to 20 kilometers, says Satel.

Clearly, the underlying technology of cloud computing will be based on open source software--that is, if the three cloud infrastructure hopefuls addressing a standing room-only crowd of more than 350 venture capital firms, large company CTOS and CIOs, and other cloud hopefuls--are as successful in their efforts as the show’s judges and audience anticipated.