Linux, not Microsoft Windows, remains the most-attacked operating system, a British security company reports. During August, 67 per cent of all successful and verifiable digital attacks against on-line servers targeted Linux, followed by Microsoft Windows at 23.2 per cent. A total of 12,892 Linux on-line servers running e-business and information sites were successfully breached in that month, followed by 4,626 Windows servers, according to the report.

I'm puzzled by Microsoft's apparent confusion over the release date for Longhorn. Many stories over the last two weeks have discussed potential repercussions and conspiracy theories. The leading one being that they want to wait until the anti-trust consent order runs out so they can keep the document apis secret. I don't buy that at all.

A article over at NewMobileComputing asks whether 2003 is the "year of the laptop." It seems that the tide has turned, and laptops are powerful and cheap enough to be most people's main computers, and wireless networking is certainly a killer app. Also at NMC, a look at GSM vs. CDMA, wearable computing influencing fashion, and a 3D laptop.

The BeOSJournal spent some time with Michael Phipps, who is the Project Leader of OpenBeOS, and orchestrates the entire direction of the project. On other OpenBeOS news, their latest newsletter is out.

A recent Gartner study (which unlike the Forrester one from this week was not commissioned by Microsoft) finds that while some businesses can save money by migrating desktop systems to Linux, others would do better to stick with Windows. Companies that have held off upgrading for quite some time and use a limited number of applications on the desktop may save money with Linux, but those that have already spent the time and effort to upgrade to recent Windows versions and those that depend on a wide range of apps should stay with Windows.

Back in the 80's when the PC world made its change from 16 to 32 bit processors, people were excited. They were probably most excited about what the hot new 32 bit OS (IBM/Microsoft's OS/2) promised to do on the new 386 class of processors from Intel. But the jump to 32 bits scratched some real itches, like a need for advanced multitasking and vivid graphics. Now that we're on the cusp of moving to 64 bits, the incentive for making the switch isn't there. A ZDNet article has more.

The GNOME 2.4 Desktop & Developer Platform is the latest release of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment. GNOME 2.4 includes 11 new applications and more than 100 user-requested enhancements. You can use a script like Garnome, CVSGnome or (if on Slackware) Dropline to build. Update: Ximian releases beta of its upcoming Ximian Desktop 3 product, currently losely based on Gnome 2.4, but targeting 2.6 for its final release.

The end of an era for BSD/OS: Yesterday, on the bsdi-users mailing list, it was reported that Wind River Japan had announced that they will be discontinuing BSD/OS Internet Server Edition (ISE) on Dec. 13, 2003. The final version of BSD/OS, BSD/OS 5.1 ISE, will be available as an upgrade for 5.0 ISE customers in October with sales ending on December 31, 2003. This will be available in binary and binary with source code, as with previous releases.

If there's one trend that exemplifies the entire state of the application-development world, it's the transformation of Linux from a curiosity to a core competency. And in the process, Linux has gone from an open-systems destination to a solution providers' competitive operating-system weapon of choice with which to design, build and deploy applications and solutions. Read the article at VARBusiness.

Every tier-one computer company has a core of individuals who act as the company's Big Brains. At IBM and Novell, they are known as "fellows." Same for Microsoft. More often than not, company Big Brains hole up in labs and rarely make public appearances. Not Jonathan Schwartz, one of the Big Brains at Sun Microsystems. Recently, VARBusiness senior executive editor T.C. Doyle caught up with Schwartz to learn more about his dual mission. Also, Sun Microsystems may add a provision to some of its Java licenses to protect consumers from Linux-related lawsuits filed by the SCO Group. "You license Java--we will indemnify you on Linux," says Sun's Jonathan Schwartz.

Microsoft launched on Wednesday the Windows Storage Server 2003 operating system, accompanied by support from companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Veritas Software.

Jono Bacon has published his articles he wrote for LinuxMagazine.UK: "Getting started with Qt", "Qt Designer and KDevelop for beginners", "Using Qt Designer", "Getting to Know Debian" and other articles. Jono recently gave us his opinion in the current... non-competiveness between Gnome & KDE.

Warpstock 2003 will be at the Doubletree Airport Hotel in San Francisco, California, the weekend of October 18 and 19. So far, there are several great presentations scheduled on, read about it here.

Tonight we had a quick chat with YellowTAB's Bernd Korz over the Zeta OS. The German engineer, manager and spokesperson of YellowTAB is speaking of the release date, the changing goals of Zeta and more. Read more for the interesting transcript.