Day job at VA Linux Systems, a top Linux software firm that rose a record 700% the day it went public in December.

FORBES: Proving their net worth

Next up, according to Soni, will be the applications and database software that run on top of Linux.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Let's start with the basic premise of Firefox OS. Like Chrome OS, there's little more here than a web browser running on top of Linux.

ENGADGET: Firefox OS is repeating the mistakes of others and hoping for a different outcome

"We'll take the framework and the applications and the ease of use, and will put that on top of the Linux kernel, " says Limp.

FORBES: PalmSource Embraces Linux Through China Buy

The Jolla team consists of a substantial number of MeeGo's core engineers and directors, and is aggressively hiring the top MeeGo and Linux talent to contribute to the next generation smartphone production.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar

It is the most widely used Linux on the top 1000 websites by traffic, the reference platform for OpenStack deployments, the most popular guest OS on public clouds, and ships on PCs from Dell, Lenovo, HP and other brands.

ENGADGET: Touch-based Ubuntu preview coming February 21st, will work on Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4

Called Croquet, it runs on top of operating systems like Windows, Linux and Apple.

FORBES: Croquet, Everyone?

Behemoths such as IBM ( IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) say Linux products and services have added billions to their top lines.

FORBES: Magazine Article

By contrast the legion of unco-ordinated contributions to Linux, made in the bazaar, has created an operating system that gets top marks for reliability and performance.

ECONOMIST: Computer programming