Stories by: Rebecca Reid

Novell insists it is not abandoning its NetWare install base with the upcoming release of its Open Enterprise Server (OES), but its message was greeted with both enthusiasm and skepticism when the firm stopped in Toronto on Thursday as part of a North American tour.

Two former Red Hat employees have started their own Linux company, dubbed SpecifixT, marketing a Red Hat-compatible version of Linux that users can modify to fit their business-specific needs -- but still retain support.

Continuing its strategy of moving into the enterprise desktop space, Sun Microsystems has updated its Java Desktop System (JDS) to include central management capabilities, Sun announced Tuesday.

Bob Young is no stranger to open source. In fact, he has one of the most recognizable names in the industry, alongside movement gurus such as Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and Jon "maddog" Hall. After all, Young co-founded Red Hat, arguably the most successful Linux vendor in the world. While Young still sits on Red Hat's board of directors, he is also CEO of a digital content creation company, Lulu.com, which is to authors what Apple Computer's iTunes is to musicians.

Lower acquisition costs, lower total cost of ownership and greater flexibility in choosing hardware and software are the top reasons companies are deploying open source software, according to a recent survey.

A C$48-million (US$36-million) project to unite four supercomputing installations at four universities in western Canada has been completed, WestGrid announced this week.

Montreal-based Linuxant last week released DriverLoader 1.6, a compatibility-wrapper allowing Linux users to use the wireless capabilities of Intel's Centrino chip.

Sun Microsystems is experimenting with a three-dimensional (3D) desktop interface that could alter the way users see their screens -- without the dorky glasses.

While Microsoft Corp. continues to dominate the database market with its SQL server and Access application, use of the open source MySQL database rose by more than 30 percent in 2003, according to a worldwide study released Monday by research firm Evans Data Corp.

Red Hat is offering a new hands-on course designed for advanced users of its Red Hat Enterprise products -- enabling users to go directly to the company, instead of the open source community, to learn new skills.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on Tuesday announced the addition of two Opteron processors to its roster that will allow users to migrate from 32-bit applications to 64-bit applications as needed.