Kevin Remhof has submitted us a piece on an area of Linux that a lot of you might not be familiar with, but may wish to be: Linux and X-Ray Astronomy. Talks about some of the things you can do, as well as common applications to do them with. Check it out.

Threnody writes " Great article about Windows 2000 delay. Apparently Linux has grown from negligible in the '97 poll to 13% today. This is the latest results from IDC, the pre-eminent measuring company. They were measuring business usage. They also talk about the fact that many major organizations are not interested in rolling out Win2k right away, because of being burned before.Update: 08/19 02:08 by H :I've also been informed by a number of people that DevX is currently running a poll along much the same lines.

josepha48 writes "I just found out that SuSE 6.2 is released. Check out the latest details in English It has X 3.3.4 and kernel 2.2.10. " Release schedule looks like 18th for English, tomorrow for French, and Italian/Spanish on the 24th of August.

Lilly Tao writes "Here's an Atlantic Unbound essay which takes the concept of open source as an art form (prompted by Linux having won an art prize, Prix Ars Electronica) to partly answer and mostly pose the question "How far can the open source model go?" " I've long since abandoned the idea of Programming as Engineering and taken up the idea of Programming as Art. That theory explains why Slashdot is pretty, but slow anyway (rimshot).

Lawrence_Bird writes "Reuters put a piece out overnite commenting on the use of Linux in web appliances. It has a few quotes from Linus and comments specifically on TiVo Inc. " Comments on the RH IPO, Linux on Merced, and a few other bits.

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below.

Bill Clarke wrote to us about WholeLinux system they unveiled at LinuxWorld. From a "cheap" CD-ROM even, they can install Red Hat Linux in 4 minutes, plus another 2 for things like Apache, Sendmail etc. Heh-run around with one of these things at your office/school. See how long it takes for the NT people to reinstall. *grin*

Wired News has an enjoyable report of the Linuxbierwanderung (Linux Beer Hike). It sounds like it was a wonderful event, and you can't beat the admission (free)! I almost feel stupid for missing out on this, even if I don't drink. As a bonus, they even got to see the eclipse.

m0nkyman writes "I went into my local magazine store today, and the woman behind the counter asked me if I would be interested in this new magazine. She showed me a flyer for a magazine called 'Maximum Linux'. I naturally said "Yes!", but when I got home I couldn't find out anything about it on the net. What's the scoop? The illustration looked like a MaximumPC clone." Another Linux magazine in print is never a bad thing. Has anyone heard anything else about this?

SuperID asks: "I just attended a very long, mostly boring briefing smattered with zillions of animated color power point slides touting "messaging middleware" as the salvation of scalable architectures. While the buzzword density was extremely high ( "Data Mining" and "OLAP for the Information Warrior" *shudder* ) I can at least recognize a trend when it smacks me in the face. So, are there Opensource equivalents to products like IBM MQSeries or Microsoft Message Queing Server? Are there open standards that define how these types of servers operate? Maybe an Internet RFC?"

Blip asks: "Last time I visited the Linux SNA Homepage, it was still there. But now it seems that some commercial guy has taken over. What happened to the GPLed code? Is it all Commerceware now?"

Here is some more info about the live penguins which appeared at Linux World. Some participants complained about the penguins' small cage and stress due to the number of people around.

BlueVelvet writes "The crack.linuxppc.org contest is over. Due to a waste of bandwith, illegal activities, and other reasons." Get the full story here. Seems some people were trying to crack other machines on their ISP. The folks at LinuxPPC say that if you send in a workable method to get into one configured like theirs, you can still win, but please stop eating up their ISP's bandwidth with crack attempts now, okay?

Just a fast note: if you're one of the Linux developers who got left out of the "give back to the community" chance to get in on Red Hat's IPO yesterday, you have a second chance. We have heard, and I have called E*Trade and confirmed, that you now have until 3 p.m. EDT tomorrow (Friday) to get in on the deal. Clarification - From an E*Trade VP who called me at 6:10 p.m. EDT: You must have already met the offer requirements, and have already submitted your conditional offer if you're still going to get in on the deal. If you have, please call 650-331-5856 to reconfirm by the Friday 3 p.m. deadline. I personally believe everyone's heart is and was always in the right place on this whole thing, but, as they like to say in government, "mistakes were made." Update: Red Hat CEO Robert Young is now worth $472 million, according to this Globe & Mail story.

Daniel Stone writes "Linux Mandrake won the best product of the year award at LinuxWorld. It's bound to be a contentious discussion about what deserves the awards-but Nick Petrely's comments speak for themselves.

Most small company IPOs have at least a little disorganization and hype surrounding them, but Red Hat's was over the edge. We're not even going to try to sort out the claims and counter-claims, the complaints and counter-complaints, and all the rest, just point you to a selection of stories on the subject, not all of which agree 100% about exactly what happened, when it happened -- or to whom.

After digging through three horrible voice-mail menus I finally got through to an E*Trade customer service representative named Jehnon Johnson who gave me the latest official skinny on the Red Hat IPO (as of 10:45 a.m. EDT) for "affinity" customers. If that's you, please read on. Update: 08/11 05:22 (5:22 p.m. PDT) by H : It's up and running-it's around 45$ per share, a three+ fold increase.

Lotus Domino R5 was finally released by Lotus. It's a "sneak preview" version-so be prepared to deal with bugs methinks. But it's cool to see that they done what they said they'd do.

saurus wrote in to tell us that an announcement has appearedon E*trade proclaiming that the IPO share price for Red Hat will now be $12-$14. Everyone's getting really anxious to see what happens. Brace yourself. Update: 08/11 12:32 by H : It looks like the info was pulled-anyone have more details? Post below.

Anonymous Coward writes "I've heard that Linus will grace the cover of the next Upside. Their site posted the interview today. It's one of those huge, future-speak filled, all-encompassing pieces. Pretty good stuff." This may be the *longest* Linus interview ever posted online. But there's enough new information in it (besides the sushi comment; I didn't make that up) that it's probably worth reading.