Tom Adelstein became an author in 1985 and has published and written non-fiction books, journalistic investigative reports, novels and screen plays prolifically ever since. As a journalist, he was a member of the Computer Press Association. Tom's last book,"Linux System Administration" hit number seven (7) on Amazon's Technical Best Seller list in 2007. He also won the "Linux Journal Reader's Choice Award" in 2008. Currently, Linux System Administration has been published in 14 languages including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, French, Turkish, German, Croatian and, of course, English.

Tom has been an activist for Linux since the late 1990's. He began an advocacy group to bring Linux into government. He initiated legislation for Open Source Software in Texas, for example, including Senate Bill 1579 filed by State Senator John Carona in November 2002 and pressed for the Global Justice Data Model and a broad-based Amber Alert Sharing System based on the FBI's Emergency Response Network.

He is considered an important figure in the adoption of the Linux operating system and was named one of the world’s 20 global Linux Luminaries. In 1999, he founded Bynari, Inc. and helped bring IBM into the world of Open Source operating systems by delivering their first international sale on a mainframe. He also broke the wire-line protocol to Microsoft’s Outlook and Exchange Server, which allowed IBM to port a Linux server to its line of mainframe computers. Dr. Donald K. Rosenberg wrote: “Tom Adelstein of Bynari Systems, Inc. has found the missing piece to enable corporate migration from Windows to Linux systems.” Tom has worked as a writer for hire (ghost writer) and has published over 200 magazine articles for well-known and smaller publishers.