LinuxWorld Expo kicks off for the first time in Boston this week, as the show moves north from its usual New York digs. Per usual, a slew of product announcements for enterprise Linux users, as well as Linux generalists and hobbyists, will be on hand.

Maybe the show organizers thought Boston in February would be a bit warmer than New York in January. Maybe a World Series bet was involved. Whatever the reason for the show's change of venue, attendees should expect the same interesting mix of corporate Linux hype (watch for oblivious, business-suited salespeople on cell phones) and open source community wisdom ("count the beards and ponytails" is a fun game to play).

Among the announcements coming out at the show are:

* BMC Software will announce a tool for cloning images of Linux servers for running as instances on the IBM zSeries mainframe. The software will also let users control and provision Linux server instances from a central application interface.

* Start-up Aurema will debut software for helping Linux servers manage workloads and optimize hardware resources, such as memory and CPU power, for specific Linux server tasks.

* Emic will have the latest version of its Application Cluster suite at the show.  The suite also provides server workload balancing intelligence for Linux server clusters.

* Xandros will have a new version of its Linux-based desktop operating system on hand at the show. The version features improved usability and security features.

* Komodo will launch Version 3.1 of its ActiveState integrated development environment for coders who write scripts and programs in multiple, open source languages. The Linux-based desktop software provides code and version tracking, editing and debugging tools for projects written in Perl, PHP, Python, TCL and other environments.

* For developers of Linux-based appliances, Tall Maple Systems will have its Samara 2.0 product on hand. The product provides a hardened Linux operating system and development tools for creating customized Linux-based appliances, such as firewalls, gateways and real-time applications-specific servers.

* Also on the software development front, Black Duck Software will have the latest version of its compliance checking product, which allows open source developers to check for licensing conflicts when developing code for multiple platforms, such as Apache, Linux, MySQL and others.