Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik will be joined in the opening keynote at LinuxWorld next week by Chris Hjelm, CIO of top online travel site Orbitz. Orbitz, which announced its move to Linux in 2003, has used Apache as part of its search engine since that time.

The company initially had no maintenance or service contracts with any Linux vendor, handling its deployment in-house, citing cost as the primary reason for the switch from Solaris.

"Our low fare search engine runs on literally hundreds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers, and that technology allows us to return more results," says Hjelm. "The depth and breadth of our offerings are facilitated by the technology we've put in place."

Following the Orbitz CIO case study, Red Hat's Szulik will deliver a talk about how choice empowers customers and can transform industries.

The keynote will take place on Tuesday, August 3 at 9:15 a.m. in Moscone Center.

Open source developer and noted skatepark advocate Mark Stosberg has posted a collection of "real world" migrations to Linux. These quick testimonals offer great case studies for how "Joe and Jane Sixpax" can use Linux and offer a great snapshot of all the ways Linux is meeting, and oftentimes surpasssing, user expectations.

Stosberg's friends and colleagues that have successfully moved to Linux all report that open source affords them the ability to do all -- or more than -- they could using more expensive operating systems. New Linux users profiled include the "demanding Mac user," and users who just needed low cost, easy to use, and no maintence systems. The case studies all address unique challenges and explore solutions available using open source.

Common to all the profiles are scenarios that address users' fear of moving to Linux. We have the user who "needed" Microsoft Money, the gamer who could not live without "The Sims," and the user who had to use specialized programs for accessing a credit union and running a business. Both of these proprietary programs worked under WINE and are now listed as programs "known" to work with the popular open source bridge technology that provides Windows capabilities natively on Linux systems.

Jason Brooks of eWeek offers a primer for integrating Linux and Windows on the network using Samba and Fedora Core. Says Brooks, by integrating Linux clients among the Windows desktops, users can use Microsoft's Active Directory to administer Linux desktops, but notes it does not come easily. Armed with the Samba HowTO, Google searches, and John Terpstra's Samba By Example, here is how you can do it too .

Demand for Linux-related training is, growing according to many reports. Last spring, UK-based international technology training group Azlan annnounced the addition of Novell-related courses in response to market demand in Europe.

Samba training, led by John Terpstra is being offered through the Freedom Technology Center. The non-profit recently added four additional Samba training workshops across the US through the end of the year. The organization has added 4-Day hands-on workshops with top Samba instructor John Terpstra. The new courses will be held in San Jose (Calif.) on August 16-19, in Los Angeles on September 20-23, in Boston on October 25-28, and in Atlanta on November 15-18.

SCO has essentially lost its lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler, one of two the financially ailing Unix vendor filed against high-profile Linux users in an effort to discredit the open source operating system and the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which it is distributed. SCO's other case against Linux user Autozone has been postponed, and SCO is also struggling in an earlier case against Linux powerhouse IBM, according to Bruce Perens, an expert on open source legal issues.

SCO has had all claims against DaimlerChrysler dismissed, except one involving the speed with which DaimlerChrysler responded. However, this minor claim carries no risk for DaimlerChrysler of having to pay damages, according to Perens.

SCO's concurrent lawsuit against Autozone has been stopped pending the resolution of SCO's earlier suit against IBM. The Autozone case may be subject to further delay, should the company move to have the case moved to Tennessee.

Some watchers of the SCO cases give the company little chance of success against IBM. "I don't think there's any question that IBM will win. I think SCO is on an extremely shakey legal basis. SCO's case is running on vapors," said Perens.

Perens adds that he doesn't expect the SCO vs. IBM case to test the legal value of the GNU General Public License (GPL), the "viral" software-sharing mandate under which the Linux operating system is licensed. "Nothing about SCO vs. IBM is ever going to test the GPL legally," Perens said. "If anyone ever felt the SCO case would be a test of the GPL, no, it's not going to be. You'd need a copyright case. It would have to be a simpler case. SCO tried to make their case as complex as possible so that it would drag out as long as possible. But I think that if anyone was expecting any substantive decision that could be used as precedent, sorry, we're not going to hear that. It's going to end up like the Daimler thing. The judge will say 'you do not have the evidence to support your claim,' and it will close at that point."

The quick and painless resolution of SCO's case against DaimerChrysler should increase the rate of Linux adoption.

IntelliReach has used SuSE Linux in a spam-, virus-, and image-filtering network appliance supporting Notes, GroupWise, and Microsoft mail servers.

The MessageScreen blocks 98 percent of spam, the company says, with "virtually zero" false positives. It targets companies wishing to create and enforce effective email policies.

MessageScreen uses deep scanning technology that examines message headers, body, and attachments, applying as many as 8,000 available filtering rules based on Real-Time Block Lists (RBLs), Sender Server Verification, lexical intelligence, predictive analysis, advanced heuristic scoring, and anti-virus and image scanning. In addition to filtering, the MessageScreen supports secure email, provides email storage and archiving, enforces email policy compliance, and monitors and reports on email systems.

Find out more about the MessageScreen appliance, and why IntelliReach predicts Linux will dominate the network appliance market, in LinuxDevice's Device Profile.