Intel's enthusiasm for open source is gathering speed: now it is endorsing professional Linux certifications, snubbing the old Microsoft certification program.

It’s a sure thing that you can sit for a range of Microsoft certifications at almost any event where two or more ‘Softies are gathered together in Bill’s name. Now Intel is leveraging its own developer muscle by organising Linux certification exams for attendees of the Intel Developer Forum held late August in San Francisco.

Attendees at the annual techfest can land a substantial discount sitting for any of three open-source exams held by the Linux Professional Institute, the world’s premier Linux certification organisation. However, there’s been no word on any similar arrangement for Microsoft certification, despite Redmond once again paying top dollar to be listed among IDF’s Gold Sponsors.

Several tracks of the San Francisco IDF are predictably dedicated to mini-notes, which Intel calls ‘netbooks’, and their desktop equivalents, clumsily tagged as ‘net-tops’, along with mobile Internet devices and the Atom processor family which runs all three types of devices.

Intel has been steadily ramping up its support of Linux for several years. It’s partly recognition of the open source wave sweeping through governments and commercial organisations alike. More crucial, however, is the nascent market that Intel calls “the next billion computers”, which comprises the classrooms and homes, village centres and even business of third-world countries.

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