EVER wondered what it would be like to create your own Linux distribution? I certainly have, but a lack of programming skill and technical cowardice have prevented me from doing little more than dreaming about the day Red Devil Linux boots up on my PC.. until now.

On paper, Linux seems to be the ideal workstation operating system for the corporate environment: highly configurable, free, secure, easily deployed in a network, extremely stable.... So why are medium and small businesses, the backbone of the US economy, not switching over to Linux?

An industry analyst forecast has Linux shipments slipping a bit more percentage-wise than Microsoft's Windows Server, but Microsoft is feeling the pain of the economy, too, said an analyst who worked on the report.

Recently, the Linux Foundation has apparently been pointing out that the struggling US economy may cause businesses that are looking to cut cost to switch to Linux. I completely agree, but there is potentially even more to it than just the struggling economy.

Whether the ailing economy is real or imagined, you might be looking for ways to shed some pounds off your bloated IT budget. You should seriously consider Linux and Open Source software to put your 2009 financial appetite on a diet. Here are 10 reasons to choose Linux in a bad economy and none of them have to do with the fact that Linux is free.

chrooting is a very important skill that any *nix administrator must know. It's essentially what allows one to repair an existing Linux environment by entering it from another environment. The process is actually relatively simple, and useful for doing tasks such as reinstalling GRUB, repairing a broken kernel, resetting the root password, etc.

Is using desktop Linux better for the environment than say, running Microsoft Windows or Apple's OS X?

One of Silicon Valley's last true characters has signed off - Sun founder Scott McNealy has sent a final goodbye memo to his staff. In his own words McNealy is "a big mouth who is always ready with a clever quip" and his swansong email does not disappoint. He said the last four years (since he left the company) had "not been without serious withdrawal".

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield broke a story on Microsoft selling a group of patents to a third party. The end result of this story is good for Linux, even though it doesn’t placate fears of ongoing attacks by Microsoft.