impaler writes: "Looks like Woody is frozen. LWN has a message from the Woody release manager, saying it is frozen. So, I guess it is finally frozen. Hopeful in less than a year Debian 2.3/3.0 will be out. Yay. Well, really lots of yay. Nice gui installer(even though I'm fine with the text one) and automatic hardware detection(something I like...especially when installing Debian on a box you know almost nothing about its hardware i.e. at an installfest)." And it looks like the Debian Release Manager has absolutely, positively staked his life on releasing Woody no later than July 8, 2001, so we can set our clocks now and hold him to his sworn word.

SquadBoy writes "The fine people at Debian have created a Telemetry Box Distribution this is what they have to say about it. "Version 1.0 of the Telemetry Box Distribution has finally been released. The Tbox distribution is a Debian GNU/Linux 'potato' based custom Linux version for remote monitoring and maintenance of networks. A telemetry box allows remote management and diagnostics. It uses a customized version of netsaint to gather data. Netsaint has been enhanced so that the configuration is possible via the Tbox Webinterface through SQL structures. Netsaint logs into a SQL table. Tools on the Tbox can then display the data in a variety of ways (graphs or reports)."" Storie's a bit old, but it's a cool little box.

A reader writes: "C|Net has a small interview with Red Hat's CTO Michael Tiemann rebutting the remarks Jim Allchin made about Open Source being bad for innovation. It's in Windows Media or Real media." It's a pop-up window on the right side - and this is continuation of the Allchin story.

A reader writes "Dave Wreski finished an article for linuxsecurity.com on the security improvements available in the new 2.4 kernel packet mangling/filtering" This is a fairly basic level newbie type article (assuming you at least have a pocketfull of networking experience) and is worth reading to bring you up to speed on whats new and exciting.

Denial writes "Wichert Akkerman, the outgoing Debian Project Leader, has been interviewed on DebianPlanet. After two terms as the leader of the debian project, Wichert has decided to call it quits. He talks about how the election for a leader works, his plans for the future (VA Linux) and about the future of Debian. Interesting stuff."

algorithm_x asks: "I visit regularly and read everything that comes down the pipe. But I rarely ever see anything about Linux education. In an Microsoft ruled world we have classes on how to use every piece of software there is. So why not a Linux literacy class? I did just this thing! I am a PC Repair, and Networking Instructor at the Continuing Education Center here in Conway. My problem is that there is no set precedent and know of no one who has ever done such a thing. What curriculum should I use? Which distro should we use as a base? I start with the shell (bash) and work from there to installation, to X11 (KDE, GNOME, FVWM) but are there things I am missing? I want to end it with compiling a custom kernel, but I am not sure these guys are advanced enough. You can find the site for our program here."

OldBen writes: "This arose out of a thread that bounced between the OpenOffice and Evolution mailing lists. Looks like the folks that brought us phpGroupWare are looking to establish an open standard for communication between groupware components. A site has been established at http://www.ogsproject.org. Right now it looks like it's nothing more than a mailing list, but this is a critical step in the development of products that can once and for all replace Exchange/Outlook/Project, and therefore MS Office." Maybe I'm boring and have accountant-style glasses, but OpenOffice and phpGroupWare are two of my favorite projects, because I can taunt the very nice IT guy at the Microsoft-heavy office I used to work in with some tempting, flexible answers to the "what about Outlook?" question.

iJosh asks: "Recently I decided to be hip and cool and update to the latest Linux Kernel (v2.4.1). Since this decision I've downloaded and tried to compile the offical source from Linus and crew on my PowerMac 7300 only to run into errors for the PowerMac PCI controller. I took this up with Paul Mackerras maintainer of the PPC kernel and his response was quite interesting to say the least and it got me thinking. He basically says that Linus is ignoring the patches from the people working on the PPC side of the kernel, and that they are keeping their own tree so people are not stranded out in the dust with kernels that will not work. My question really comes down to this: Is the linux kernel forking away from PowerPPC? Is this happening because of issues regarding OS X and the possibility of many users jumping ship, away from LinuxPPC upon release? Or is this some kind of quiet platform war from the major kernel developers?"

horst writes: "Subject says it all -- IBM has released first GPL winmodem driver. Link found at LWN" I'll be even more excited when they release the code that works with my T20 ... I've never even dialed my modem *sniff*, but if you've got an MWave (600, 600E, 770) then you should be golden. But props to IBM for making a cool move. Hopefully it's not an isolated one.

Ghidra asks: "I work for an ISP and we now have UIDs greater than 65535. I thought by upgrading to Linux 2.4 (and having fairly current utilities) that I would be able to support these UIDs. Unfortunately, it doesn't look that easy. It also doesn't look like there is much help on the Internet on how to accomplish this. Things like ls, ps, chown, and the like just don't want to recognize these high numbered UIDs. So what kind of steps do I need to take to upgrade my system (Slackware-current) to support 32 bit UIDs?" What other Unix variants can benefit from this information, as I don't think Linux is the only Unix-clone that still uses 16-bit UIDs. Are there any flavors of Unix that have already solved this problem?

srhuston asks: "After quite a bit of searching, I found a few genealogy programs for Linux that are still vaporware, but nothing that looked quite good and/or recent. Ideally I'd like to find something with a MySQL backend, and various frontends (Web-based, X11, console). Does anyone know of a software package that maybe I missed, or is this something I should attempt to write myself (with a little help from my friends)?" While there are a few programs available on Freshmeat I don't see one that offers operation using various front ends like the poster requested. How difficult would it be to modify one of the existing offerings to satisfy this requirement?

Bryan Andersen asks: "I'm needing to replace my color printer; mine has died and isn't worth repairing. I'm heavily into digital photography and wish to be able to produce high quality prints for display without having to use Windows or send the printing out. I realize I could either go to copy centers or online photo printing services, but I'd like to be able to tune my colors, etc. I'm quite knowlegable in photographic technique from both the camera and darkroom ends. From what I've read so far I can either spend many dollars on a color Postscript printer and have almost garanteed support through its internal PS support and lose a bit in output quality or I can spend less and use Ghostscript but deciphering which printers are supported well is next to impossible. I'd find a printer that uses archive quality inks with separate ink tanks for each color if possible. I'd also prefer to get a 6 or 7 color printer. What are known working setups? How good is the print quality? Are any of the larger format printers supported? Being able to print an 11"x14" image or larger would be nice."

Newsforge ^[?] has a story about Turbolinux laying off a substantial portion of its staff in preparation for its planned merger with Linuxcare. We've gotten a few anonymous submissions about this as well; perhaps some Turbolinux staff - or former Turbolinux staff - who know what's going on can comment.

Silent Node asks: "I am currently working for a ski and backpacking shop in Jasper, Alberta Canada (Everest Outdoor Stores). Right now all the inventory, sales system, rentals, etc. is being done the 'old fashioned' way (read: paper ledgers, circa 1980 cash register w/cryptically translated manual and 50 bytes of memory). This store is planning to computerize their POS (point-of-sale) system in the near future. I would like to advocate a Linux based solution, but don't really know what's out there." Quite a few people have been submitting questions about Linux-based point-of-sale systems, and we did touch on those waaay back in April, however now it's 2001 and to my knowledge at least one more vendor of Unix based POS systems has popped up on the radar. Are there any more options? And how have the systems mentioned in the previous article kept up with the times?"

porkrind writes: "Linux International is launching a program designed to show all the different areas where Linux is used. It's the case study project. We figure this is a good place to start on our road to marketing Linux. What do you guys think about Linux vendors pooling resources via LI to launch marketing campaigns for Linux? In the end, whatever we come up with, we want to be used by all Linux communities: business, development, advocacy, et al."

assbarn writes: "The title pretty much says it all, but LWN daily is reporting that SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. What does this mean for their English distribution? The details are short (and sketchy), but the link is at LWN. " I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. Update: 02/08 12:03 AM by H :A couple people have sent in the LinuxToday piece. SuSE's PR agency has denied it, but LWN is standing by it, and several other readers have substantiated it to LinuxToday and LWN, including the original source on LWN. As well, SuSE did say that a number of positions were being relocated. We'll keep the story updated. Update: 02/08 04:38 AM by T : LinuxGram has some great information -- with real details! Skeleton crew of 12 to remain in the U.S. What's also interesting is that it confirms that the PR agency had "bad communication," which is an interesting statement to say the least.

Dave Sifry writes: "Rusty Russell has posted the scripts that render a function call graph of all of the .c files in the Linux kernel. Each file is graphically represented and named, and function calls are graphically represented inside of each source file. The end result is a 180MB vector PostScript file. You can get the source code and then render it yourself, or if you just want to get the big finished poster, send an e-mail to Linuxcare or contact EverythingLinux if you live down under. BTW, it took us about 5 hours to get that file to print at a print shop down at LWE - that much vector PostScript really tested the limits of their big printers!"

vattervi writes: "Salon has an interesting article on the the work ethics of sysadmins, heavily citing the book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age and telling the story of Salon's sysadmin as he plays with the 2.4 kernel."

Cyron Green asks: "I travel quite a bit with my laptop (it keeps me company). I hate having to change my NIC settings everytime I stop somewhere or I go from work to home. Is there any type of Location Managment software out there for Linux or FreeBSD?"

Random Q. Hacker asks: "Alt-SysReq has saved me from filesystem damage and runaway processes more than once. Unfortunately, several of the machines I admin are thousands of miles away in data centers, and it takes 15 minutes for data center personnel to go to our cage, hook up a monitor to the right system, and call back for interactive troubleshooting. I have played with snmpd, but it's a userspace daemon, and most of its functionality involves executing external programs and accessing files. Sometimes a system gets hung so bad (say, on root becoming unavailable, or memory becoming completely full) that the only thing still working is the kernel itself. Is there a kernel backdoor (as in a patch) that could let me have (secure, authenticated) SysReq functionality through the network?"