Linux a force at Comdex

Among the trends made visible at the current Comdex is the increasing importance of Linux. The Linux Business Expo, a show within a show, has attracted seventy-four exhibiting companies in twice the floor space used last year. Attendance is expected to surpass the 60,000 attendees at the recent Toronto expo and a wide range of Linux applications, ranging from embedded systems in handheld devices to high-end servers, are represented. Of interest also is the fact that Comdex will host the formation of the so-called KDE League, which is dedicated to supporting the K Desktop Environment (KDE), which is often seen as a competitor with the GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) user interface. Last August, GNOME won the support of major corporations in the founding of the Gnome Foundation. Now, many of the same companies are announcing similar support for KDE.

For more information, read zdnn.com, eet.com and zdnet.co.uk.