Among the announcements at LinuxWorld this week:

IBM's love affair with Linux and other stuff

IBM suggested it has nearly recouped its $1 billion investment in Linux, and one senior executive there said Linux has saved its server business.

Meanwhile, IBM teamed with MandrakeSoft and a couple of other companies, to pitch a small business server package in Europe, reported Bruce Tober for NewsForge. The official announcement is expected Monday. Also, IBM has expanded its relationship with SuSE, to work on the Linux company's server operating system.

Not related, but still interesting was the suggestion by one kernel hacker that Linux creator Linux Torvalds might be a bit overloaded. Rod Landley suggested the kernel hacker team go with a penguin patch lieutenant system to get patches integrated faster.

Gasperson reported on desktop company Ximian's shift away from the GNU GPL for some of the class libraries in its Mono project.

The Register reports that Linux is in the running to power the world's biggest computer, a huge server farm connected to three U.S. research centers.

The Agenda VR3, one of the first Linux-powered handhelds to market, is apparently not being marketed in the United States anymore. It received lukewarm reviews at best, even from Linux media outlets, when it was released last summer.

New releases

See the stock report below for a couple of releases from Red Hat and Caldera, but a new version of the Ximian Evolution email/calendar program was released this week. This version: 1.0.2.

New at NewsForge and Linux.com

Other stories that NewsForge and Linux.com reported first this week:

Stock news

The Nasdaq ended the week at 1,911.24, down from 1,937.70 January 27 and down 22.79 points on Friday. Our list of 11 Open Source-related stocks didn't get a boost from LinuxWorld, instead following a similar course as the Nasdaq, with only Apple and Borland rising for the week.

Several companies, including at least two on our list, used LinuxWorld to announce new products, however. Caldera shipped both Volution Manger 1.1, a Web-based management and administration tool, and OpenLinux 3.1.1, its workstation and server operating system.

Red Hat unveiled a new version of its Red Hat Network aimed at enterprise customers.

Here's how Open Source and related stocks ended this past week: