To show the robustness of the Linux platform, I decided to create a list of different devices/users that are running Linux .. the diversity should be rather interesting to some of you. 
[] DreamWorks - In their new animated film, “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”, to be released in late May, will be the first animated movie that used Linux for both the design and rendering of the piece. Other movies such as Shrek and Lord of the Rings have used Linux server farms for rendering the animation.
[] Industrial Light & Magic - Cool .. yet another studio using Linux for their production work — this article doesn’t talk about it, but does make reference to an upcoming issue.
[] IBM & Sage bring Linux to Small Businesses - IBM is making a big push to get Linux running small business applications. On the flip side, the place I use to work used Linux to power its centralized accounting system for close to 5 years.
[] Foreign banks switching to Linux - good read on how the financial industry is using linux — of interesting note, IBM moved 841 internal servers to Linux in 2001 — the reason? “to lower cost in a reliable, structured low-service way. We do this because it works, we don’t do this because it is a fashion statement.” — I like that last phrase a lot.
[] Linux working well for Kachingo - 1700 POS terminals across 500 remote servers at retail premises — the goal? No on-site maintenance for three years.
[] Extremaudra Measures: Linux - The poorest region of Spain adopted Linux as the official operating system of public schools and offices with the hopes of improving the area’s vast technological and economic lag. This includes 670 schools, 32 technology centers, 1,478 government offices and schools in all.
[] Sharp aims Linux-based PDA at UK corporations - the Sharp Zaurus, which I have written about previously, is being targeted toward corporations. This is an EXCELLENT place for these units.
Of course, there are lots of other things that are using Linux:
[[ cellphones & webphones ]]: telepong mobile phone, GITWiT mobile phone, Aplio/PRO IP Phone, Ericsson cordless webpad/phone, SK Telecom IMT2000 Webphone, Galleo “Mobile Multimedia Communicator”
[[ tv set-top boxes/devices ]]: Motorola DCT5000, JCC iBOX 2, Sylvania Internet/TV, Nokia Media terminal, indrema entertainment system, TiVO Personal TV ..
[[ web pads ]]: SonicBlue ProGear, FIC AquaPad, Gateway Connected Touch Pad, Screen Media FreePad, LG Digital iPAD…
[[ internet radios & audio systems ]]: Bokks portable media player, ZapMedia ZapStation, HP Digital Entertainment Center, Hi-Muse music appliance, empeg car audio player, PhatNoise PhatBox, Kerbango Internet Radio ..
[[ other devices ]]: emWare DeviceGate-E, Servio Personal Server, Aries integrated server, Filanet intelligent Internet service appliance, briQ, Dodge Super8 Hemi concept car, Rymic ruggedize computer, Sony Video network station, Square D power management device, axis 2120 network camera, IBM linux wrist watch, citizen and ibm linux watchpad, Ericsson bluetooth blip, axis bluetooth hotspot, Bluelan, Isamu, Fujitsu HOAP-1, yada yada yada ..
This entry is going to outline various Microsoft related security problems that I have run across — I’ll date it and keep it updated. Should make you feel secure about running Microsoft software.
April 22, 2002 - Microsoft Security Tool Leaves Holes — alrighty.. this is REALLY cool .. The microsoft security tool DEINSTALLS security patches and basically allows viruses to reinfect a system (server, workstation, desktop, you name it..) hahah…
April 18 2002 - Flaw Threatens SQL Server - Buffer overrun vulnerability in Microsoft’s enterprise level database system — allows attackers to execute code on vulnerable systems .. I can see the message now “From CEO - sorry, but our company has gone out of business due to the fact we ran Microsoft software and all of our data was compromised.”
April 17 2002 - Another Big MS Browser Hole Found - Check it out — Microsoft bypasses your security settings in IE and allows automatic execution of malicious code — this could well umm.. delete all your data for one thing.
April 16 2002 - Microsoft Products Leave Macs Vulnerable - Yet another buffer overflow issue in Macintosh versions of Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Entourage, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word… (that just about names all the software Microsoft makes for the Macintosh platform)
April 12 2002 - Microsoft’s Flaw-Finding Tool Has Its Own Flaw - So you run their flaw-finding program, and it says “everythings ok .. ” .. then you run it again, and find the same problems? Yikes.
April 10 2002 - Microsoft Warns of 10 IIS (Internet Information Server) Flaws - Alrighty, yet some more flaws that allow attackers to gain total control over a vulnerable system. And guess what? Its over multiple versions of the product (4.0, 5.0, 5.1) — they consist of 5 separate buffer overruns, 2 overruns in data transfer mechanism of ASP, 3 other buffer overruns affecting the processing of HTTP headers, improper safety check during SSIs, HTR ISAPI extensions … fantastic. So lets see — they have flaws in pretty much EVERY major portion of the server.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US DOE) signed a $24.5 million dollar contract with HP for a Linux supercomputer. This will be one of the top ten fastest computers in the world. Some cool features: 8.3 Trillion Floating Point Operations per Second, 1.8 Terabytes of RAM, 170 Terabytes of disk, (including a 53 TB SAN), and 1400 Intel McKinley and Madison Processors. Nice quote: ‘Today’s announcement shows how HP has worked to help accelerate the shift from proprietary platforms to open architectures, which provide increased scalability, speed and functionality at a lower cost,’ said Rich DeMillo, vice president and chief technology officer at HP. Read Details of the announcement here or here.
So Linux used in the most expandable PDA’s, used in high end supercomputers, used for running Internet servers and corporate networks.. Apache 2.0 considered the best and most secure web server by many sources, KDE 3.0 coming out to make the desktop fast, responsive and very elegant… go LINUX!
Check out this article from MSNBC titled “Linux for the masses” — Its interesting to see that Linux is promoted in such a positive light on a site heavily invested/owned by Microsoft. What the REALLY cool part about it is the simple fact that Lycoris Linux (The version they talk about in the article) is running KDE 2.2, not the new and much better KDE 3.0 — far nicer and easier to use. hurray!
Need a huge close to 2TB data store for your network? On a tight budget? No Problemo! Here is the solution!!!
Motherboard: ABIT AT7 MAX $ 173
Processor: AMD Athlon 2000+ $ 176
RAM: 512MB DDR $ 121
Hard Drive: Maxtor 160GB IDE (12) $2700
Network Card: Dlink 10/100/1000 (2) $ 90
Video: ATI XPERT 98 8MB $ 19
Case: Enermax FS-710B w/500W PS $ 145
OS: Red Hat Linux 7.2 -FREE-
Total Cost: $3424
Of course, if you want to really make it cool, you could put it in a nice case, beef up the memory to 1GB or 2GB and your system would be screaming. Basically for well under $4000, you can have a system that has the capacity to store the equivalent of 3000 CD-R disks on it.