rekt writes "The Debian crew has just announced the release of debian-installer RC1. You can find versions of it for 11 different architectures at the d-i page. This is one of the most flexible, modular installer architectures out there. As we near the release of sarge (debian 3.1) next month, it's important that we find and work out any bugs in the installer. Grab a copy and give it a shot!"

Quirk writes "Wired News has a blurb celebrating the 10th birthday of the Beowulf cluster. Attendees recalled the initial fear and loathing the Beowulf project had to overcome. The Beowulf project takes its name from an epic poem penned circa 1000 A.D."

Theanswriz42 writes "MandrakeSoft has announced the release of Mandrake Linux 10.1 Beta1 which is available from one of the many mirrors or from bittorrent. xorg is now the standard and there are many other changes from the previous version of Mandrake Linux. Screenshots are available here."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports on the world's first Linux computer to fit inside a CompactFlash card. The 'Compact Flash Computer' (CFC) can be mixed and matched with third-party CF cards to instantly create minuscule Linux systems based entirely on CF cards. A wide variety of third-party CF peripheral cards can be used with the CFC, including RS232/485, Ethernet, Bluetooth, USB, 802.11, GSM, GPRS, GPS, and more. A combination power supply / bus expander module on a separate CF card, as well as a tiny 8-slot CF card backplane, are available as options." An anonymous reader adds "The card is based on a Freescale MPC5272 system-on-chip processor and contains 32MB of SDRAM and 8MB of Flash memory, and it comes with a uClinux based operating system and GNU development/debug tools."

Socrate76 writes "Linux Terminal Server Project just announced the latest 4.1 version. Among new features: local CD-ROM and floppy support using supermount and samba, sound support with esd and nasd by default, new kernel based on 2.4.26. And a question for other ./-ers: is it possible to watch movies (mplayer | xine) using LTSP over a 100-BaseT Ethernet? Is that possible, or must the movie player be run locally?"

ChaosTangent writes "BBC News reports that NASA is to boost its computing by 10 times with a new supercomputer that is Linux based. The articles claims it to be the "biggest" Linux based supercomputer with over 500 terabytes of storage and 1000 gigabytes of memory per Altix node. Dubbed 'Project Columbia', the new supercomputer will allow NASA to model complex scenarios (such as gravity simulations) more accurately than before." We had another story about this a week or so ago.

Doc Ruby writes "LinuxJournal has an intro to uCLinux by David McCullough, one of the project developers. Specific techniques are discussed for Linux programming on this version, that runs on devices without the MMU that the Linux VM usually requires. Developers can make Linux apps run on uCLinux devices, including PDAs like a Palm IIIx, routers, DVD players, and even a FPGA."

Krafty Koder writes "Over at Newsforge (Part of OSTG, Slashdot's Parent) there's an interesting article that attempts to dispells the myth that Linux isn't ready for the desktop or that Windows still beats Linux. Three myths are explored - that Linux is harder to use, difficult to install and that there's not enough apps ."

joestar writes "Just announced on Mandrakelinux.com: 'At last something to make your summer hotter, far better than all these linux unaware suntanned chicks and chaps you would like to get along with on the beach. Forget them and go back home, full up your fridge with soya drinks (or your favorite one, but remember that fast assimilated sugar shorten your life expectancy). It is time to test your new air conditionner limits, switching on all the computers sitting arround to test this new Mandrakelinux 10.1 beta! '. Software packages include: Linux 2.6.8 rc2, Glibc 2.3.3, Xorg 6.7.0, KDE 3.2.3 and GNOME 2.6.0."

bendelo writes "In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same. This comes following an independent study by insurance firm OSRM who revealed this week that the Linux kernel might use up to 283 patented methods. This seems a smart move by the Big Blue to help counter the FUD going around." A zdnet.com.com story has a response from Bruce Perens, who basically says he wants to see it in writing. :)

sloopy writes "Terra Soft Solutions has released the long awaited and overdue next version of Yellow Dog Linux - version 4.0, for ydl.net enhanced subscribers and pre-installed on new machines, with full release to hopefully soon follow in the coming weeks. With this new release, they finally include native support for the new G5s (32-bit kernel/toolchain currently, full 64-bit soon) and continued support for the G4s and newer G3s."

An anonymous reader writes "Computer Associates, on the heels of their announcement that they were moving to the service and support model, hence open sourcing Ingres, is set to announce a $1 million bounty for Ingres conversion tools [the idea being, obviously, to convert to Ingres, rather than away from it]. The bounty announcement coincides with the official announcement of the downloadability of the new, open-source Ingres. An earlier Information Week article rues the passing of Jasmine, which was a great idea, and, although perhaps a few years [maybe a decade?] ahead of its time, still the sort of thing that people like me could sure benefit from. Hint, hint..."

prostoalex writes "Technology Review has a feature story on Miguel de Icaza, currently Novell VP of Product Technology, but more known as the leader of Gnome and Mono projects. Miguel is the man Don Box would like to see joining Microsoft for his "amazing amount of raw energy". If you read through the Technology review article, you will see that de Icaza was actually turned down by Microsoft at some point."

TheMMaster writes "According to Novell, they will be using their own flavour of Linux (SUSE) on the desktops of their 6000+ workers. While this was already known for quite some time, what wasn't quite so known was why and how they did it. Novell is moving from Microsoft to Linux and OpenOffice. Here's how it's being done."

querencia writes "Sun has announced that Solaris 10 will comply with the Linux Standard Base specification, thus allowing Linux apps to run unchanged on Solaris. This isn't emulation -- they claim that it is 'kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature.' While I appreciate the benefits of the Solaris OS, I've considered them on the losing end of the battle until now. Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?" Update: 08/04 15:50 GMT by J : At OSCON, Sun reaffirmed that Solaris 10 will be open-sourced. They said it would be one of the OSI licenses, not sure which yet; that this was approved at the highest levels of the company; and (with the expected "we're just guessing" language), it could happen as soon as year's end.

Jan0815 writes "Yesterday I received disturbing news from the CTO of Munich, Wilhelm Hoegner. As previously mentioned, there is a rising concern that software patents could stifle development of open source worldwide. FFII has complete coverage of what is going on in Europe." (FFII stands for Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure.) Reader jmt(tm) writes "The call for bids was supposed to be published in late July, but the Munich Green Party had pointed out about 50 possible patent conflicts which the city wants to evaluate before moving on."

SteamyMobile writes "As the article says, 'In a sign the Linux operating system may be gaining traction beyond server and other back-room systems, HP said Tuesday it will be the first major PC maker to ship a business notebook computer pre-installed' with Linux. This is great news because, as anyone who has ever tried to run Linux (or even Windows XP) on a laptop knows, laptops come with all kinds of funky hardware, and it's often a mess trying to find and configure the right kernel modules to make things like software suspend work correctly. Having it shipped pre-loaded, and with support, makes it easy for me to decide where I'm getting my next laptop. Linux has been ready for the desktop for a while now, but it is good to see companies like HP acknowledging that."

Gentu writes "Here are the first reports from the first day of LinuxWorldExpo's showfloor: NewsForge discusses a few interesting 'off-the-record' tidbits among the announced news, while OSNews offers a report, too, accompanied by a number of pictures from the Expo."

Barondude writes "For the SUSE lovers out there... SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 was released today. Evaluation versions of SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 for x86, AMD64 and Intel EM64T are available as free downloads from novell.com."

thephotoman writes "Well, Darl McBride gave an interview to IDG News Services in which he said that SCO is not going to sue any more customers. They do bring up the issue of the SCOsource Linux licensing, and how much of a failure it has been. Instead, they plan to start marketing their flavor of Unix. However, as he's not dropping the current lawsuits, there's no good reason to believe him on this change in strategy."