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Linux show no longer a Geek-fest

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CIOL Bureau
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Last week's LinuxWorld Expo & Conference in New York showed the upstart

operating system (OS) quickly moving into the third stage of development as a

broad range of powerful business application programs written to run on various

Linux OS, including the much anticipated WordPerfect Office 2000 suite from

Corel were introduced at the event, where more than 20,000 visitors reviewed

products from over 200 exhibiting firms.

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Until 1997, Linux was popular mostly among techno-hobbyists, hackers and

college students. Last year, Linux became a major force in the server market as

half a dozen companies, including Red Hat, TurboLinux, SuSE, and Caldera,

brought professional OS packages to the market that could reliably host Web

sites and perform functions such as e-mail server, and file server.

During 1999 all of the major computer companies, from IBM to HP, Dell, and

Compaq, began supporting Linux and offer serves and workstations pre-loaded with

the OS. Now the software application community is responding by releasing Linux

versions of popular business programs, most costing a fraction of competing

Windows software Corel, for example, said it its releasing the WordPerfect

Office 2000 for Linux in Standard and Deluxe version ($109 and $159

respectively). The suite includes Corel Linux (based on the Debian 2.2 Kernel),

WordPerfect 9, the Quattro Pro 9 spreadsheet applications, Corel Presentations 9

and the CorelCentral 9 communications toolset. An entertainment pack is also

provided.

"We are very excited to unveil our full office suite for Linux to the

world," said Corel Corp. president and chief executive officer Dr. Michael

Copland. "The availability of applications like WordPerfect Office 2000 on

the Linux platform will provide users with an end-to-end desktop solution and

will accelerate the deployment of Linux for mainstream use."

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The Corel suite will compete with a similar Applixware offering from Applix,

and the StarOffice suite, which is available free from Sun Microsystems. Dozens

of other vendors at the LinuxWorld Expo demonstrated a broad variety of other

applications from Web design, 3-D Modeling and business fax and accounting

software. In a key development that will let Windows application developers port

their software tot he Linux platform, Mainsoft of San Jose announced MainWin 3.4

for Linux. Analysts said it is clear the Linux community is moving into position

to pose a serious competitive threat to the Windows world. The combination of a

low-cost OS that runs on industry standard hardware, the high up-time

reliability of Linux vs Windows, and availability of powerful business

applications will make Linux a highly viable alternative.

Still, even Linux founder Linus Torvalds readily conceded that much work

remains to be done on the Linux source code to make the software more robust in

order to handle larger tasks at mid-to-large diversified enterprises. In his

keynote address, Torvalds also poked some fun at Microsoft's crash-prone Windows

OS "The thing about Linux is that it actually tries to move software from

being witchcraft to being a science. A lot of the programs you see today are

actually put together by shamans, and you just take it and if the computer

crashes you walk around it three times...and maybe it's OK. That's how it works.

It's not how it should work. Actually changing the way you work without having

to beg for it from some, uh, unnamed company, is important."

Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said Microsoft will not stray from its strategy

of keeping the source code to itself and develop the platform on which business

applications can be developed. "I'm not going to get into a tit-for-tat

with Linus. He's looking for headlines and he's more than welcome to do

so."

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