The Tao Of Linux

Free of the hustle of the daily work life, Nat Friedman meditated in a Californian Buddhist monastery, clearing his mind of worldly clutter. For 10 days, he opened his consciousness to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new realms of possibility. No code. No e-mails. No meetings. No deadlines or work orders. Just simple serenity.

"Buddha was essentially a brain-hacker," Friedman says. "He developed techniques for manipulating the human mind, ways of creating happiness and removing worries."

The computer prodigy, who is still not even 30 years old and was recently promoted to the title of chief technology and strategy officer for open source at Novell, may have done the same kind of Buddhist mind-cleansing for the Linux world.

Friedman is the man behind SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10, the first practical graphical interface and integrated application for the popular open-source operating system. His creation has revolutionized the Linux OS with the look and feel of the familiar Windows environment.

For his vision and effort in creating SLED and bringing it to the channel, VARBusiness honors Friedman with its first-ever Technologist of the Year award. He tops a field of nearly 100 highly qualified nominees and the top 10 finalists who advanced the state of the art and pushed the bounds of innovation.

In addition to Friedman, VARBusiness honored vendor innovations in 13 technology categories, as well as an Innovative Company of the Year award. Each of the winners is profiled in the following pages. This was the most intense competition in the four-year history of the Tech Innovators Awards, with nearly 850 product nominations from more than 300 vendors.

A humble Friedman was surprised by the honor. At XChange Tech Innovators in Huntington Beach, Calif., he remarked how he was just having fun building an application that could open the Linux world to the masses.

NEXT: What Friedman was doing when his pals were watching Sesame Street.