genixia noted that the BBC was the first to note that Linux has turned 10 today. Happy birthday and congrats to the hackers whose labor pains keep giving us new tarballs.

scenic writes "I was wondering what experience the /. community has had with ALSA vs the sound drivers that are part of the Kernel and the various other choices (such as the 4Front OSS packages). I've used the commercial OSS drivers as well as the "included" Linux drivers. I've started to look to ALSA for better sound response (for example, I've noticed with esd and the basic linux drivers, there is sometimes a lag when playing back video files through esd. I understand that esd is part of the issue, but it's sort of important to be able to multiplex sound). What have others' experiences been? What other solutions are there aside from things like esd?" Which sound systems do you find work for your system, and which don't? If specific hardware / software combinations can be endorsed or critiqued, it'll probably help a lot of people.

RedLeg wrote with this poser: "So, looking at the changelog for the 2.4.9 kernel release, I see a few '- Alan Cox: driver merges' entries. Intelligent consumers of (or those of us who modify them for our own uses) RedHat Kernel src.RPMs look at the patches in the RH kernel builds. Alan's (and other persistent RH) patches don't seem to be integrated into Linus' 'mainstream' kernel trees on any kind of a predictable basis, and this frequently causes projects like freeswan to have difficulty merging their patches (not intended for kernel inclusion) with kernels that appear 'in the wild' like the kernel RPMs from RedHat. Often, kernel patches for obviously older kernel versions continue to be applied (in the RPMs) to newer kernel versions. Alan is a RedHat-er, so he obviously has an inside track to RedHat kernel builds, but he's also Linus' Right-Hand man, but his patches are not (apparently) consistently making it into the 'mainstream' kernel. What am I missing?" Who better to answer this question than Alan Cox? Alan was kind enough to write an explanation of the (still complicated) process of merging -- and it's not as simple as who works for what distro maker ;)

mz001b writes "There is an interesting article from RH posted on LinuxToday discussing why they chose ext3 over the other available journaling filesystems (ReiserFS, xfs, jfs,...) for RH 7.2"

bc90021 writes: "CNET has this story about Hewlett Packard's new secure version of Linux. Using 2.4.2, it can supposedly detect attacks as they happen. (At $3,000, I think it should counter-attack, too.) It will be available on HP servers (duh), or on servers that pass the RedHat 7.1 server qualification tests."

Anderson Silva writes "LinuxToday has an article doing a pretty basic comparison on some of the major linux browsers. Although a nice article, and with a fair result, I still think Opera is the best browser available for Linux." I prefer knoqueror, although recent builds seem to have random hangs on images.google.com.

keegnotrub writes: "Mandrake just dumped 8.1 Beta on their servers. Along with updated software (KDE 2.2, kernel 2.4.8, etc) they have reworked their control center to include many new features." Word to the wise: there are some reactions to this beta -- as well as a list of known bugs and fixes -- at mandrakeforum.com. What I'd like to know is if a Wacom Intuos USB tablet will work out-of-the-box on 8.1, since I just bought a refurbed one ;)

waa asks: "I have a client who's system I remotely administer. This particular machine has been up performing its various duties 'problem-free' for 4 months (since last kernel patch/fix). The client has, on-site, a consultant who pretends to know things he certainly does not know; Linux systems administration for one, and they now have requested the root password. Since it is their system, I'd imagine they have every right to the root account, however I know for sure that as soon as this is handed over, things will start to mysteriously malfunction, and I will get an emergency call to get them back in service (or worse, I will be blamed; ie: back-stabbed). I'd rather not have to troubleshoot and fix a completely preventable, and possibly complex problem. What are peoples' experiences regarding this situation? How have you handled it? Is some form of 'release from responsibility' contract in order? I need some advice soon" In situations like this, communication with the client is important. If you ever run into a situation like this, talking to the client and informing them of the potential problems is always a good idea. If any problems happen afterward. Start documenting them, and pass them back to the actual client if things start to become a problem. Anyone else care to weigh in?

Traivor writes "Loki sent an email to all its customers about the chapter 11 filing. The most interesting bit is they claim to be making money." I've been rooting for Loki forever (and I've taken to buying all their releases even tho I don't have time to play them lately ;) Anyway, I've atached the email to this story so you can read it if you're curious.

Justin writes: "Linus is off to Finland for a week or so and released 2.4.9. " Here is the Changelog for those of you interested. Yeah, it's probably gonna be a little crowded for a bit. Please post mirrors in the comments.

j2brown writes: " Yahoo! News has this little article about IBM taking Linux to Hollywood. " It's not a very in-depth article, but it is interesting that Big Blue is saying that Hollywood will be moving their rendering stuffs to Linux in the next 12 to 18 months. Wonder how SGI feels about that.

yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.

rkischuk writes: "InformationWeek has an article about a group of ex-Cray engineers working on a new architecture for clustering Linux systems. 'It's not easy trying to build scalable systems from commodity hardware designed for assembling desktop computers and small servers.' Per the article, 'As the number of CPUs in a Beowulf-style cluster-a group of PCs linked via Ethernet-increases and memory is distributed instead of shared, the efficiency of each processor drops as more are added,' but 'Unlimited's solution involves tailoring Linux running on each node in a cluster, rather than treating all the nodes as peers.'" Looks like Cray engineers think about clustering even when they're not at Cray.

A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system.

alen writes "I've been working with NT for a year now, and I'm getting really tired of it. So I finally decided to learn Linux, after a year of putting it off. I've got an old P2 266 that I'm going to use. Now the next question is what distro do I get? What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little. " This question gets asked periodically - it's always good to hear have a lively discussion about it - I love my Debian but have heard that Mandrake is a good starter distro.

An AC sent in: "The IBM PC may be 20 years old, but they're not the only ones with a birthday coming up. Check out www.linux10.org for an invitation to a birthday party on August 25 for the Linux kernel. The big bash is in Sunnyvale, just down the peninsula from the San Francisco LinuxWorld Expo, but there are also links to local parties around the globe (or if there are none near you, plan your own and add it to the list)."

securitas writes "ZDNet is reporting that Korean Air has decided to move its flight-crew scheduling and daily accounting systems to Linux running on an IBM mainframe, and 5000 users will access this information through their browsers starting in September. "

Justin was the first to note that kernel 2.4.8 is out. Check the changelog, or just hit kernel.org, you know the drill.

rsd writes: "Conectiva Linux 7.0 is out. Here is the original announcement. And here is the babelfish translation. They are already shipping Portuguese box and will start the english soon. However the CDs (iso for what matter) are available in english already. Their main ftp server is overcrowded. Hoever, Rik VanRiel provided us with a really fast server. I will not describe every feature on it but the main change is the Synaptic tool, which in my opinion is the best APT frontend ever written."

Thanks to Dean Pannell (and Paul Ferris for the initial head's up) for pointing out the apology and statement of fact from Kevin Reichard, the Executive Editor of LinuxToday. I think the argument that people would know that "George Tirebiter" was merely a contrivance is weak, but whatever. You can read the previous stories in the astroturf ^[?] ing saga.