If you’ve been involved in IT over the past few decades, you know that the flame of war has always burned strong. It’s like the best rivalries in sports, with camps residing on opposite sides of the field. Chances are, you’ve been in at least one of these flame wars over the years.

Do you know why Unix failed to take off as a mainstream operating system? It wasn't because it was too hard to use. Mac OS X, the universally acclaimed 'easy' operating system is built on top of BSD Unix. It's certainly not because Windows is better. It wasn't and it isn't. No, I put most of the blame for Unix's failure on its internal wars.

Everyone knows about the infamous internet wars. Ranging from operating systems to text editors to code indentation style, these wars have wreaked havoc on the web for years. The topics range from serious topics like religion to serious geek topics like operating systems to just plain stupid topics like code indentation style.

Us Linux users are very passionate about our operating system. We get into flame wars with others, push it down other’s throats (which we don’t condone,) blog about, work feverishly in converting, and finally “vandalize” our cities.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the long-awaited title by id Software and Splash Damage, launched today in North America. While a Linux-native client of this game isn't available today, it will be available shortly.

Welcome to the seventh Linux gaming compilation. The long-awaited Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is finally here. Then, there's the masterpiece UFO: Alien Invasion, a remake of the legendary UFO: Enemy Unknown. Fans of board games, including 3D board games, will also like today's choices. Racing fans won't be left in the dry, either.

Forget the browser wars, the operating system wars and the mobile phone wars. The one to watch now is the battle over video formats.

"The Linux kernel (the core of the Linux operating system) The kernel package contains the Linux kernel (vmlinuz), the core of any Linux operating system. The kernel handles the basic functions of the operating system: memory allocation, process allocation, device input and output, etc."

A few weeks ago, Jack Wallen published a comparison of recent GNOME and KDE releases in which he claims that the desktop flame wars in GNU/Linux were about to reignite, and that KDE would emerge as the loser. It was not the most technically accurate of articles, and the claim of renewed desktop wars was news to me.