Steve Ballmer has a hard job. Being the CEO of a company the size of Microsoft is brutal and exhausting. Against his nature, Ballmer has been trying to change his own persona and the company culture. So far, he appears to have made progress. In my mind, Microsoft is a more mature corporate entity that it used to be. The startup mentality is important to hold on to, but isn't functional as the core value of a $30 billion company. What Ballmer needs to do is hold on to the best of the existing culture, while transforming it into something new. Tough job. I couldn't do it.

In a keynote speech Wednesday at the Enterprise Linux Forum, Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann bluntly stated that today the company's "focus is on the enterprise."

Users are asking for better support for things such as third-party drivers, printer management and graphic interfaces, says NWFusion. Read their top10 requested features. Elsewhere, "Mthe adoption of Linux on the desktop is progressing, but there won't be a "David and Goliath" single blow that suddenly slays the dominance of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, Linux advocates said at an enterprise Linux conference Wednesday.". Read that article at IDG.

Japan's Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems Inc have agreed to combine their server businesses, with high-end models to be made by a Fujitsu unit, a newspaper reported on Thursday. On other Sun news, they are ready to link Solaris x86 boxes into the SAN.

"Servers need what free desktop applications needed before KDE came: a common framework. A common way of configuration, a common way of being configured using GUI tools, a unified view to monitor them… there are also options that many server have in common, like a IP to listen to or the allowed IP ranges." Read the editorial here.

"SUSE unwraps a must-have desktop distribution for power-hungry power users wanting more than the latest and greatest in 32 bits." Read the review at Open Mag.

My first experience with Linux on a PPC machine was Pegasos PPC and Debian. Last weekend I upgraded my Cube G4 450 Mhz and with a blazingly fast 120 GB 7200 RPM WD drive (for just $58!) to replace the default (and extremely slow) 20 GB Maxtor IDE drive. In this vast drive space, there is enough room for more than one operating system, so I decided to install Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 (and then upgrade to 3.0.1 via APT) as an addition to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Read more for my impressions of YDL 3.0.1 and check some screenshots too.

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday will announce that it is giving its Most Valued Professionals access to the more than 100 million aggregate lines of Windows source code, which includes all versions, service packs and betas of the Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 products.

Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.4.2_02, containing many bug fixes on all the supported platforms, is released. Check out the release notes and download.

The New York Times has an update on the progress of the Mac G5-based supercomputer at Virginia Tech University. The cluster, made up of 1,100 G5s with 2,200 processors has been successfuly tested in recent days, but final performance numbers will not be released until next month at a supercomputer industry event. Update: Even more news about it.

Dominant Linux seller Red Hat will begin offering the newest incarnation of its product for business customers on Wednesday, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, a version that opens several new markets for the company. Read the rest of the report at News.com and "read more" for the full press release.

The new OS, still a couple of years away, will change the way developers write business applications.

Ever since Apple introduced G5's towers, many have asked if the company would eventually release an XServe based on the fast new processor. Although Apple hasn't said anything officially, it would appear that the company made them available to select individuals for testing purposes. A support message posted on the new XGrid mailing list is very telling. A brief osViews post has all the details.

Today, Microsoft Corp. launched Exchange Server 2003, the next edition of its messaging and collaboration server, as part of the Microsoft Office System. Novell also issued a press release stating that Novell's Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange enables users of Ximian Evolution groupware suite on Linux and UNIX desktops to function as full Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003 clients.