At the end of May, IDC released a thorough report on server sales in the first quarter of 2004. Linux servers came in at more than $900 million for the quarter, up 56.9% from last year.

At that growth rate, the best of any server OS, we're soon due for the first billion-dollar quarter for the Linux server business. So let's plan to celebrate it.

Even if servers aren't your bag, it's important to recognize milestones in this mature, successful area of the Linux business. The smart choices that made for Linux server success—including a commitment to GPL-licensed device drivers instead of problematic binary-only ones—will be a recipe for success in other fields too. Generic and hackable beats restrictive and specialized.

On the embedded hardware side, there's more good news—you can get a generic, hackable platform at your favorite computer store. Get a Linksys wireless access point with Linux onboard, and you can run your custom firewall, traffic control or any application you want on a platform that's well under a hundred dollars.

“Linux on Linksys Wi-Fi Routers” by James Ewing (page 50) gets you started in embedded Linux with hardware that fits your budget and beginner projects that get some real work done.

We've quietly made a change in our Resources sections at the ends of articles. Instead of a list of links, we point you at one jump page per article. Not only does that save you typing some long URLs, it also saves us some space in print, and now we can check our logs to find out which articles got you interested enough to take the next step.

So, are you looking to reorganize your servers for easier management with serial consoles (page 66)? Are you planning to develop Linux support for a new USB device, and want to follow along step-by-step as the Linux USB master does it (page 36)? Or, are you planning to speed up your database application with Memcached (page 72)? We want to know.

So, congratulations to all the great people doing support, engineering, sales and everything else in the Linux server business. And whatever you use Linux for, you'll find something in this issue.