VA Linux skyrockets amid Linux euphoria
REUTERS

SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 12: Shares OF VA Linux SystemsInc., a maker of computers and servers that run the Linux operating system, skyrocketed over 700 per cent in its trading debut, as Wall Street was swept up in euphoria over anything related to the upstart Linux operating system.

The shares of the Sunnyvale, California-based company were on track Thursday to have the biggest first-day gain ever among intial public offerings, taking the lead from the globe.com, which soared 606 per cent in its first day of trading.

IPO analysts last week had predicted that VA Linux would do extremely well, amid an euphoria among investors for anything related to the Linux operating system, but few had predicted a walloping gain in the range of 700 per cent. "Thirty five years of IPO research down the toilet," joked Irv DeGraw, research director at Worldfinancenet.com in Sarasota, Fla. "It just shows that Linux fever has replaced the DOT com mania. A little bit of this is fad. The core of it is that Linux does represent anew direction of the future."

Linux, a free variation of the Unix operating system, was created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds and a group of far flung programmers around world.

Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.