Roberth Edberg writes "The Swedish birthday congratulationlist for Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) is increasing every minute. Will he have an world record in individual birthday congratulations? Even the Swedish Linux World site, made news about it. Why not follow the example and make lists for your own country?" Linus Torvalds is turning 30 on 28 December 1999, so start sending those greetings! Update by RM: I can be an idiot sometimes! I originally thought Linus's b-day was 10/28 & wished a "belated" congrats. 28 Oct. is um, *Bill Gates's* b-day. Thanks to all who spotted the error.

pants95 writes "It looks like Larry and the folks at Oracle are having another go at the world of Network Computers for $199 a pop. This time, they will run Linux and come with Navigator. Is it just me, or does the term `disposable' computer not sit right with you? I still get plenty of use out of a few old 486s!"

relaye writes "The performance clustering software and services announced today by Linux vendor TurboLinux Inc. and a cabal of partners including Unix vendor SCO Inc. takes the Linux market in an unusual and somewhat risky direction, analysts are saying. " The article cites risks of forking the kernel - not an incredibly probable risk, but a thought-provoking scenario. The danger comes if Linus decides not to incorporates TurboLinux's changes into the kernel.

_blueboy asks: "I work in IT at a medium-sized Life Sciences company, and we are in the process of developing an intranet. As one of the primary developers, I have been involved in evaluating both development and server software. We are currently using an all Microsoft setup but it has proven to be very finicky, unreliable, and unpredictable. Our director is currently evaluating Domino R5 but several of us would like to move to Linux and Apache. Our director likes the idea that Notes & Domino form a "complete package". I know that Lotus is planning to ship Notes & Domino for Linux soon. Does anyone have any experience with the Lotus software and how well would it likely run on Linux? Are there any similar packages for *nix/apache or any companies that might provide a similar custom built solution? It is essential that the software be able to provide us with easy and reliable document sharing/collaboration tools for a Windows network. "

So, little_bird sent in some information about the upcoming LinuxWorldExpo in February, talking about the program but also a "Linux Showdown". It's a feature panel consisting of "leading commercial Linux providers" with questions being field from a panel of experts, the audience and one another about Linux. My question - what would you want to ask these folks? What's on your mind?

Kazparr writes "This source code was posted earlier today at Livid. Derek Fawcus confirms that this is his decryption routine for the DVD css encoding scheme. Hopefully, LinuxDVD is one step closer. " So, now we've got some source - but how many of the keys do it actually have in there?

mulan writes "The E-Business and Internet Technology Network has acquired linuxcentral.com. This comes shortly after the recent aquisition of LinuxToday.com in a move to further Linux support for the Internet community. The article appears in today's Business Wire or you can read the official press release here. "

ColourCure asks: "Maybe this has already been asked (definitely not an original thought), but how much of an impact do you think Linux would have made as a non-open source operating system? There's definitely more to open sourcing than being able to peek at the code. Would the open source movement even be that big without Linux backing it up? " Ah, I expect this to generate some controversy, but my personal feeling is that the time for Open Source has come. Linux just accelerated the time table.

Ender_Stonebender writes "Yahoo's Internet Report news page has an interesting article on why why media attention could be bad for Linux development. They have a byline saying it's from salon.com, but I can't find it there. "

meni writes "The Linux Counter Project now has over 120,000 Linux users listed worldwide. And with their brand new AlphaServer machine, they're ready to get slashdotted. If you haven't registered yet, please go over there and do." Okay, I just tested it out. W-a-y faster than it was in the past. I'm registered, and you should be, too.

Jeff Gerhardt writes "The Linux Show is in the process of planning a live and interactive show, aka The Linux Scavenger Hunt Party. At 8:00PM, CST, on the 26th of October, the URL of the questions will be revealed on air." The general concept is to find answers to Linux and technology related trivia questions. They are looking for help with planning and would love any Q&A suggestions sent to: hunt@thelinuxshow.com

Jón Ragnarsson asks: "I develop Oracle applicatons for a living. And they are usually internet-related. Right now I'm developing on a Oracle 8i / Windows NT4 machine. But I have more and more become aware that NT is very limiting compared to un*x when it comes to selection of tools and servers for Internet development. I have installed Apache, perl, php and other stuff on the NT, but with much difficulty. So now I'm planning to switch my development environment to Linux (RedHat, Debian or SuSE). The thing I would miss most is the SQL Navigator, a tool I don't know how I could live without it before I started to use it. :) I know there are some utilities available for postgres and mysql in KDE, but AFAIK, they don't work on Oracle databases. Any ideas what I could replace SQL Navigator with? Or should I start writing my own database front end?" Hey! I develop Oracle apps on Solaris and could use something like this myself!

cd-w writes "Alan Cox has written a column for osOpinion regarding the risks of using closed source computing. A sample quote: 'No company now would commit to a closed hardware strategy. It would cost them more than using commodity components. Just as importantly, it would commit them to a single source for support and parts. Why then do they commit to a single software supplier? A closed source strategy exposes the company to serious business risk. As many telephony companies have discovered, your OS supplier might suddenly decide to be your competitor.' " As always, Alan writes well and explains why the commodization of information has critical bearing on the success of the open source movement.

randombit wrote in to say that Google has a new specialized Linux search. As an aside, I keep getting conspiracy emails about Google having banner ads. Never ceases to amaze me how worked up people can get about some things. Anyhoo, I did several searches with mixed success, but it seems to do a pretty good job of searching for Linux stuff.

Kelly McNeill writes "The media is nutso for bigness. All you hear about in the tech press these days is that Linux is attracting big partners like IBM, finding big users like Deja.com, and making big IPO money like RedHat. That's all good, and I'm sincerely grateful for anything that helps me make a living without using Visual Interdev -- but to me, small and raw is where it's all at." The quote's from the article, which is big and cooked - and full of graphical comparisons between NT and Linux as useful development environments for small Web businesses.

xipe asks: "Has anyone made a driver for the internal (pci) DSL modems that have come out in the last few months? (Cisco, Alcatel and others have started marketing them online.) I have used the external with great success ( with Linux BTW), but since I moved outside of Bellsouths ADSL service area, I have yet to get a good connection again. I noticed that these modems have drivers for MS and Mac, but no Linux-- is someone working on these or are they going to go the way of the winmodem? I certainly hope not..... " Neither do I.

David A. Madore asks: "Every once in a while, I decide to try out IPv6 (on my local PC network that isn't connected to the Internet). And every time I'm disappointed. Now that the kernel supports it, and libc (glibc 2.2.1) supports it, and that I've recompiled the net-tools with inet6 support (why doesn't RedHat do that by default, I'd like to know), I would expect to be able to type 'telnet ::1' and get a connection to localhost, prompto! Instead, I get '::1: Unknown host.' Isn't the whole point of' IPv6 support of the libc to make program support completely transparent? And isn't the whole point of dynamically linked libraries so that we get it without even having to recompile anything? Or am I being incomparably naïve here? Will we have to rewrite and recompile any network-aware program so as to get IPv6 support? By the way: How will X11 DISPLAY strings work with IPv6 ':0' is kindda confusing in relation with IPv6 addresses)? Can anyone clarify the matter?"

dooling asks: "How would one go about building a Linux cluster from the ground up? I read a lot about Linux clusters on /. and have been able to find some information on configuring the cluster, but have found little on how to assemble the hardware, i.e., what is necessary, how they should be connected, etc. So does anyone have reliable information on hardware assembly and configuration? Also, (if you've never done this before) is it worth building your own, or is it better to just buy one prebuilt and preconfigured? If you want specifics: 20-40 machines, Linux (probably RedHat 6.x), disk or diskless?, do not need video cards (but should we have them?), switch or hub (best way to hook them up). We will be doing pretty straightforward scientific computing (floating point number crunching). "

srl writes "Fast Company, a magazine that talks a lot about the "new world of work" and how the Net is changing business, has a long interview with ESR in this month's issue. The interview talks about how open-source is changing people's ideas about *why* we should work. " If you've been looking for a magazine to further educate your PHB ^[?] , grab this issue. They can read on dead trees about open-source and believe you, because it's in Fast Company, and everyone know dead trees don't lie. *sarcastic grin*

Mads-Martin was one of the many folks to point out that 2.2.13 has made the mirrors. The patch is also up on kernel.org. You know the routine - download, compile, etc.