The LinuxWorld conference, which ends today in New York, has been dominated by business computing announcements from MandrakeSoft, Red Hat, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, but a few bones will also be thrown to consumers. HP said it planned to bring utility pricing - a pay-as-you-go leasing system - to the Linux server market, in addition to introducing more support services and teaming up with Linux developer MandrakeSoft to market MandrakeSoft's software with HP's desktop computers. Red Hat, which makes one of the most popular versions of Linux, is set to demonstrate a new high-end server product and services for managing Linux networks over the Internet. The show's keynote speakers - HP chief executive Carly Fiorina, William Zeitler from IBM's server group and Computer Associates chief executive Sanjay Kumar - indicate that Linux has become a mainstream business tool after starting out as an operating system that programmers worked on in their spare time. All the commercial versions of the operating system are based on a Unix kernel developed by Linus Torvalds and dozens of others. In many parts of the world Linux has emerged as a serious challenge to other operating systems for business servers, including Sun's Solaris, Microsoft's NT and earlier versions of Unix. On the desktop and consumer side, Linux has not made many inroads, and from the look of the agenda at LinuxWorld, this year will not see a breakthrough for the operating system. For the gadget fanatic, there will be a chance to look at the Zaurus personal digital assistant from Sharp, the Japanese electronics maker. The Zaurus will ship in March with a 206-megahertz Intel StrongARM processor, Lineo's Embedix version of Linux and the Opera browser for Internet surfing. Not all of the business services announced in New York will be available immediately in Hong Kong. Alvin Cheung, an HP product marketing manager, said that the utility pricing would not be available, in part because the market was at an infant stage. The company was in the process of completing its first large-scale Linux deployment in Hong Kong. Mr Cheung said the level of interest in Linux was high, especially for clustering systems that included back-up servers, though most of them still relied on other systems. The main reason for the interest was lower cost: 'If it does a good job as well, why not go for Linux?' Related story: Linux to get bigger role under new IBM chief
