paRcat writes "Broadcast 2000 Final has been released. To those that are into realtime 640x480 video editing, this is good. It's an awesome package, and all free! Here's the link." Has anybody out there tried this yet? It sounds great, but so far we haven't been able to dig up anyone who's actually worked with this software to get their take on it.

Rick Sharp asks: "At my firm we use a pretty good mix of Linux, BSD and Novell solutions for our networking needs. We don't have any NT servers, and don't intend to start either. However, I was told today by the vendor of our accounting software package (Harper and Schuman) that our program would require MS-SQL 7.0 after the next upgrade cycle, which is only a few months off. Does anyone know if it is possible to use this package with a Linux SQL database. We currently are using PostgreSQL on Linux for some other projects, and I would not like to get sucked into an MS-SQL only solution."

We all heard about the extraordinarily successful VA Linux Systems IPO. And, of course, there was an SEC-mandated "quiet period" after that IPO during which VA executives and employees could hardly open their mouths. That quiet period is over. This is one of the first "post-IPO" interviews anywhere with CEO Larry M. Augustin and Linux Evangelist (his official title) Chris DiBona. Ask away!

SPI3LB3RG writes "Dell now supports Linux for it's laptops. Down at the bottom of the page is a listing of Drivers by OS." My old Inspiron basically fell apart. But it was running Linux for years before I wore out the keyboard, broke the CD-ROM drive, and the hard drive started failing ;)

RuntimeError writes "It says here in Times of India that a gentleman in Bangalore, India has created the country's first commercial supercomputer based on the Linux operating system."

D3 wrote to us with a story from Federal Computer Weekly that details the plans of GTSI (Government Technology Service Inc.) to team with Red Hat. They plan to team up to offer "enterprise level" for the federal government contracts.

Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo reports Red Hat is buying this e-commerce company. Their product (credit card verification system) appears to be closed-sourced." I called Melissa London at Red Hat to find out the scoop; it's all open source above the API. Below that, the verification system makes use of the financial institution's proprietary protocols, which are made available to HKS under NDA. It's not perfect, but until the banks get clueful, it's the best we can hope for.

Anonymous Coward writes "Check out the recent LinuxOne news release. LinuxOne reports a $500,000 software order from Power Source. Its interesting how Power Source seems to be only a recursive add link without any substance. I couldn't quite figure out, beyond self proclamation, how LinuxOne is one of the fastest growing software distributors in the world. Go figure." At least the LinuxOne Web site is a little more fleshed-out than it was when we first saw it. And they're hiring, too. Check it out!

The article's been up for only a little bit, but a huge number people have e-mailed that Playboy's Gillan has done a column on Linux. It's a typical media piece, explaining Linux but being featured in Playboy, I think, means that we've conquered the media. And I have, of course, no comment on what the sheer number of submissions must mean about our readers. *grin*

So everyone and their unkle wrote in to tell us that Linux 2.2.14 has officially been released. If your uptime isn't to sacred to ya, it may be worth upgrading. You know where to get the good stuff if ya need it.

Johan Jonasson writes "Alan Cox has posted the first draft of the 2.3.x "Things to fix" list. Also known as "the stuff that has to be taken care of before 2.4 can come out". "

Anonymous Coward writes "The ROX desktop aims to provide a RISC OS style GUI on Unix/Linux machines. Currently the filer is mostly finished and the desktop already supports drag-and-drop loading and saving, application directories and an iconbar. The desktop is stable and fully usable - I have been using it as my only desktop for several months now without problems."

Jon "maddog" Hall is the head honcho at Linux International. Monday we asked him questions about the future of Linux, his beer preferences, and other burning issues. Today, as our premier interview guest in the last year of the 20th century, maddog answers with his usual wit and candor.

This is an interesting one: 3ilinux is working on a sort of generic embeddable Linux box. Basically, they've handled much of the engineering, and they'll help vendors who want to make low cost Embedded Linux routers and what have you's. The hardware is 386 or 486 based, and can have ether, modems, buttons, and LCD displays. And of course it runs Linux from 4MB of flash memory.

Kwikymart writes "A poll on Deja News of network operating system rates Linux dead last in all catagories. Funny thing is it rates the same number (1.7) in all the catagories (Scalability, Reliability, Administration and Cost). Looks like somebody that doesn't like Linux sure likes to write perl scripts!" That "somebody" also seems to like GNU Hurd a whole bunch; it was the top-rated network OS. ;-)

sirch wrote to us with the latest research from Forrester Reports. The report alleges that this year's massive hyping of Linux will fade in 2000, as well as stating that it's not probable that CIOs will be switching over in massive numbers to Linux. However, the report than goes on to say that Linux will probably see continued growth, through "dominating new application segments." Not really that surprising of a report. One of the interesting points is the prediction that by 2004, the other Unices and Linux will have converged to the point that binaries for any one will probably run on all the others.

Thanks to Sensei^ for sending us a link to a piece about dealing with new Linux users. Given the gigantic growth of Linux over the last year, this is an issue within the community: How do we deal with this influx of population? Everyone recognizes the need for more documentation, but what's the best way to do it? If you've got an opinion about the whole schmeal, click below and add to the conversation.

Rendus writes "Just saw this over at Linux Today, a request for people to sign the Linux drivers petition. Their goal is 2 million signatures. When I signed, I was number 20." Well I've never heard of libranet, but hopefully they'll be successful in convincing a few manufacturers to either release drivers for Linux, or the specs so we can do it.

marshall writes "I was reading the Debian Weekly News and was happy to see that Jan 2 will be the no new packages freeze for potato and Jan 15-16 will be the final freeze date with any new packages going into a new dist called woody. Then after some test cycles it looks like they are planning for a release at the end of Feb. The e-mail is here "

China, in the news more recently for sentencing hackers to death, now looks set to encourage them. In this article from the South China Morning Post, Red Hat says it will establish a beach head in the rapidly industrialising sleeping giant to push Linux before Microsoft makes its move. We reported in November that Linux was to be China's official OS. I can see Red Hat stock jumping skyward if a billion communists suddenly decide Linux is their desktop and server platform of choice.