At the Geek Ranch we recently made a decision to implement some software in Python. Or, more accurately, I decided and there was no disagreement. Then Python gets picked as the best scripting language in the LJ Readers' Choice survey. That inspired me to write this article (and get ready for Perl and Ruby fans to start yelling at me).

This week's "Linux Product Insider" features Myah OS, Intalio's user conference, Movial's IXS Toolkit, the book Blender 3D Architecture, Buildings and Scenery, PIKA's telephony appliances and ACT/Technico's SATA PMCDisk.

This summer, I'm changing our entire 250+ workstation infrastructure from Fedora to Edubuntu. Under the hood, our computers will be very, very different. Not a single one of my users, however, will notice.

What is interactive fiction? It all started in 1975 with a man named Will Crowther who wanted to create something for his daughters that tied together two of his loves: role playing games and cave exploration. The result was a game called "Adventure" (also sometimes called "Colossal Cave"). He wrote the game on the mainframe he used at work and while his daughters loved it, others who discovered the game did to, and they shared it far and wide. Stanford student Don Woods discovered the program on one of the university computers in 1976 and with Crowther's permission extended the Fortran original, adding more rooms and treasure. This expanded version was later ported to C and from there to countless platforms and languages. You can still download various versions of it today.

If you've been an Open Source advocate for any significant amount of time, you've no doubt heard someone say, with a sneer in their voice, "You get what you pay for". Let it be noted, I really hate that cliche. It does make me think, however, about what you really get when you purchase the license to use a commercial operating system like Windows or OSX.

This week's "Linux Product Insider" features California as CeBIT partner 'country', Sangoma's analog-digital telephony solution, Medsphere's open-source health record system, Super Talent's DDR3 SO-DIMM and Wrox's new book Code Leader.

In this final installment to the series I'll double your reading pleasure by presenting two new Linux softsynths. Such a deal, two reviews for the price of one!

T-shirts, back issues, archive CDs, stickers, buttons, "Linux Rules" rulers and more are all 40% off in the Linux Journal Store now through Sunday, June 1.

Every so often, you read on Slashdot, Digg, or some other techie news site that Linux is finally ready for the desktop. It's finally to the point that any end user could sit down at a computer and happily compute away. The applications are sufficiently sanitized and Windows-like that even Grandma can use them.

This week's "Linux Product Insider" features Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2, Astaro Security Gateway 7.2, SugarCRM Data Center Edition, Struts 2 in Action, NAG Toolbox for MATLAB and eXtremeDB Fusion powers DIRECTV.