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Stop the Presses

Linux Grows Up

by Phil Hughes

Each month we allocate a page for this column. The space is reserved past the regular deadline to give us an extra week to find the right earth-shattering event to report--which sometimes doesn't happen. This month we missed the initial deadline and were left with about a day to find some earth-shattering news and write the column.

Back in the early days of Linux there was a new kernel almost every day, which produced a continuous stream of new topics. Linux has grown up--it's too stable, reliable and routine.

Or is it? I went to the comp.os.linux.announce newsgroup hoping to find an exciting event. I didn't. I read it again. Still no exciting event. Then, I realized I was so busy looking for one thing that I had missed an event of more significance than any single post.

Linux is being recognized as a serious OS with real commercial potential. It's not that we haven't had anything commercial posted before, it is that there were so many posted in the last week and the type of information posted. Here is a sample:

This is enough of a sample of what's out there to give you the idea. Being an old Unix hacker, I see this influx of postings as the tool box getting filled with new, fancy tools. For example, using Regulus and CCVS, you can quickly put together an ISP with automated credit-card billing. Use Web+, WebMagick and a Vipex server to build a web site.

Tie all of this together with a post about an article on Linux in the June 1997 issue of Business Computer World that concludes that ``Linux is very solid, widely used, and a real potential threat to Microsoft.'' It also states ``Linux is behind in the availability of applications, but is catching up.''

Maybe some day STP will cover NT being replaced with Linux.

Phil Hughes is the publisher of Linux Journal and can be reached via e-mail at phil@ssc.com.