Virtually Speaking: As more enterprises buy into virtualization technology, the biggest performance hit may be coming from the applications themselves.

OS Roundup: A New York hedge fund has made an offer to buy Novell. Is it paying $2 billion just for the Linux OS, or is there more to it? And, more importantly, will the offer bring other players to the fore? Perhaps Microsoft will end up the white knight in this strange tale.

Tip of the Trade: Finding a way to ignore files or directories in Subversion so they are not included in svn status output is easy; figuring out the exact syntax is not. Here's are way to simplify this Linux server management quagmire.

OS Roundup: So says the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a group of trade bodies that includes the MPAA and the RIAA. In its eyes, countries that encourage the use of open-source software are in the same league as those with rampant copyright piracy.

Tip of the Trade: VNC makes it easy to log into a full desktop on a remote server. Follow these steps, and your Debian Linux server will be up and running in no time.

Frugal Server Admin: Accelerate your testing and development efforts with the agile nature of virtual machine management.

Virtually Speaking: With an acquisition, a maintenance release and a significant upgrade planned for later this year, VMware is gunning full throttle for the desktop virtualization market. But it's not the only vendor with desktop virtualization in its cross-hairs.

OS Roundup: When it comes to Linux server management, if your Red Hat Enterprise Linux distro isn't supported by Red Hat, is it still Red Hat Linux, or is it 'Frankenstein Linux'?

Tip of the Trade: Anyone who has encountered the Perl @INC array in the context of a 'cannot find module' error knows the value of being able to see a list of directories on you Linux server. Here's how to access @INC and find obscurely located modules before they are lost.

Virtually Speaking: A torrent of products are being unleashed to meet the challenges of backing up virtual machines. From cloud storage to golden image management, virtualization technologies for storage are on the move.

OS Round Up: Despite the strength of backers Intel and Nokia, Meego has already fallen prey to a common open-source software pitfall -- a moronic name. Can it overcome its nomenclature handicap and help make Linux the OS of choice for mobile computing?

Tip of the Trade: Tired of stretching your fingers to hit the ESC key on your Mac? There's a simple way to fix that.

Server consolidation might have a bigger financial impact than virtualization for those who make the effort.

Virtually Speaking: VMware is taking its virtualization message to the streets with its partners, while Red Hat is taking a quieter and more traditional approach.

OS Roundup: The UNIX server market is steadily shrinking, yet the three top heavyweights are about to launch new products. It's a dog-eat-dog market, and IBM has already nibbled at Solaris. Is HP-UX the next course for this seemingly large and aggressive mutt?

Tip of the Trade: Readline is the library that handles Linux command-line input as well as input for applications. Most of the default settings work perfectly well, but some change the way tab-completion behaves and thus require modification.

Sure, Intel is inside the box, but did you know sometimes Intel is the box? Here are five servers that the company best known for its chips sells to OEMs and other resellers. Is one of these right for you?

Virtually Speaking: CommVault's latest offering aims to bring storage into the cloud. Will it be a bridge to nowhere or the connection enterprises crave?

OS Roundup: Supersizing is out of style in the restaurant world, but Apple's iPad announcement last week and Microsoft's commercial launch of its cloud platform Azure yesterday prove it is very much alive in the tech industry.

Tip of the Trade: The default values in /etc/hosts used in several Linux distributions have long been known to cause issues. Here's how to fix them in Apache 2.

Frugal Server Admin: Are blade servers a panacea or just a pain? Here's what to expect when you're expecting blade servers in your datacenter.

Virtually Speaking: With Oracle's acquisition of Sun complete, will it be lights out for VirtualBox and other Sun virtualization technology?

OS Roundup: The contrast couldn't be any starker: On Wednesday, Oracle will tell the world why it means business, and Apple will likely show off some new playthings.

Tip of the Trade: A here document, or heredoc, is one way to get text input into a script without feeding it from a separate file. If the data or script is complicated, however, keeping the two separate is generally a better idea.

Two new single-socket servers from Fujitsu are aimed at two very different markets.