Service fees from corporate customers accounted for 30 percent of Mandriva's US$5.5 million in revenue for the fiscal year that ended Oct. 31, up from 10 percent in the prior year. In September, NEC Computers International BV, a Netherlands-based unit of NEC Corp., said it would bundle Mandriva Linux on the PCs and servers it sells in Europe.

And Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon said this month that the company will release Version 4.0 of its Corporate Server software by mid-2006, about 18 months after predecessor Mandrakesoft SA shipped the initial 3.0 release. He declined to comment about the upgrade's new features.

Paris-based Mandriva was formed earlier this year through the mergers of Mandrakesoft and two other Linux vendors: Brazil-based Conectiva SA and Maple Valley, Wash.-based Lycoris Inc.

Secure upgrade

Dan McDonald, network infrastructure manager at Austin Energy, the electric utility owned by the city of Austin, primarily runs an older Mandrakesoft version of Linux on 20 servers. But he said he's about to upgrade to Mandriva 2006, an update that was released in October and is aimed at home users and small and midsize companies.