Kurt Gray sent a review of Beginning Linux Programming, by Neil Matthew & Richard Stones. Click here to learn how to contribute more code.

Several readers have written in with a great rebuttal at ZDNet, adddressing the recent Metcalfe articles attacking Linux. Calling this change the Post-FUD Era, it does a great job of dissecting the new attacks on Linux.

An anonymous bastard writes "I'll be covering LWCE next week, and so I'm on a list of e-mail addresses for "the press" who get invited to interview "Linux People" for their publications. One of the e-mails was from the PR firm for VA Linux Systems (formerly VA Research) asking if I'd want to interview Larry Augustin. Interesting to note was this phrase: "Larry is one of the keynote speakers at the show, and has a lot of VA-related news and annct's to brief you on before VA goes into its quiet period." Apparently they've got a quiet period coming up, which means Linux IPO Number Two is coming. " Well, I've had a nice conversation with the press person at VA-they wanted to assure me that they are not headed directly into the quiet period post-LWCE. It'll be sometime soon, but don't hold your breath waiting for it-at least for the next couple weeks. *grin* Bottom line: Still waiting.

Jefe wrote in to point us to a nice Story about Linux that is currently appearing over at The Atlantic Monthly. Its definitely YALA but its one of the better ones. A good bookmark for the "What is Linux" FAQ.

JimMcc asks: "We are planning a new network installation with a Linux server running Samba and WinTel clients. One of the issues yet to be resolved is providing the users the ability to fax directly. We would like to offer a solution which provides shared fax modem(s) accessed through the network instead of a fax modem / analog line per user. The customer is a non-profit and is cost sensitive. Has anybody heard of a possible solution? Thank you for any pointers/ideas you may have. "

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that earlier this morning, discussions about the Red Hat IPO fiasco started appearing on the E*Trade stock board at Yahoo. E*Trade stock holders are worried about class action suits, complaints to the SEC, and even cracking of E*Trade's servers. I've heard many things (nothing official yet) that all the major outstanding issues will be resolved on monday. I still don't know if I'm eligible, although I did get the letter.

jho writes "This C|Net article talks about how the Linux 2.4 kernel, armed with Firewire, PnP and USB support, will be better equiped to tackle the desktop market. It's a intresting read as far as how Linux is being pushed to the mainstream. Have a look. "

CodeShark writes "With all of the current comparisons between IIOP and the NAS Servers out there, I recently saw information on /. regarding the Zope application server. I am wondering about other /. reader's experiencing using this framework in terms of reliability, stability, and ease of use. "

A couple of folks have submitted questions about Palmtops (not PalmPilots) and getting them to work with Linux. Now I'm not exactly sure how well Linux works with the variety of these units, but I would be interested to know which ones you all think work the best. If a specific model isn't supported under Linux, what would be involved in getting it supported? Click below for the actual questions.

Definitely the hot topic this week. Salon is running a quite passionate article written by a hacker who was rejected by E*Trade to participate in the RH IPO in august. his story reads like many of the emails I've got in the last couple days. Hacks don't have liquid net worth, so they're being rejected on that grounds? Its a good piece.

A reader sent us the latest story from Joe Pranevich regarding the Linux 2.4 Kernel. Much like his original article on 2.2, he takes a look at what's changing, and what's coming. (Hopefully by this fall. Hopefully).

Rewd asks: "I'm looking at implementing a large scale email server (cluster) to handle POP3 and IMAP4 for about 25000 people, including a lot of attachments. I'd like to go for an Open Source solution, but a lot of people around here want to go for Microsoft Exchange on NT. Has anyone here successfully built anything like this? Can you recommend any combinations and components which are particularly efficent, capable, secure and reliable?"

A person known as "Barry the Suit" wrote in to tell us that he has seen the Red Hat Road Show (eg, the time when the top dogs go try to convince guys with mega bucks to buy lots of their stock when the IPO happens). He wrote a summary of the event which is actually quite interesting- tends towards the financial side, but since Red Hat is the first Linux company to make this lonely journey, its really interesting to follow it. Hit the link to read the report.

Non-Newtonian Fluid writes "The Register has an interesting article which explains exactly how Linux could rise up and defeat M$ by taking advantage of the Easy PC specification and Micro$oft's own inability to keep pace with the demands of new hardware. " The article also mentions BeOS and other possible Windows competitors. A good "makes you think" piece.

Bowie J. Poag writes "First it was "The eligibility profile will have no bearing on your ability to participate." Then, it was "Sorry! you failed the eligibility profile since you dont have half a million in the bank and 20 years trading experience. Bye." Now we've come full circle, thanks to a great deal of flames from the community.. E-Trade is backing down and letting us in. "

Anonymous Crow writes "I was wondering how many other people out there are in the same situation: I was lucky enough to get "invited" to participate in the Red Hat IPO, but after I opened an account and moved my money I was told that I'm ineligible for the IPO... because I have no stock-trading experience. I opened an E-TRADE account for this purpose, and moved $1400 there to buy Red Hat stock. When I attempted to place my "indication of interest" (which is how you get into an IPO on E-TRADE) I had to answer a bunch of questions stating I'm not an employee of a stock-trading firm, not an employee of Red Hat, etc. And, by the way, how much stock I own and how ofter I play the stock market. After answering these questions the E-TRADE oracle apologized nicely and informed me of my ineligibility. Now, those of you that do this often are probably chuckling at my naivete, but honestly: I'm a linux geek, not a stock trader. Isn't it ridiculous to "invite" a bunch of linux geeks to buy Red Hat if only experienced traders are eligible? And shouldn't Red Hat have known better? " (I've had at least a dozen people contact me with exactly this problem)

Wonko42 writes "The subject pretty much says it all; Red Hat is now selling its new E-Commerce server for $149.99. The server is packaged with several other programs, including the Netscape Roaming Module, Squid proxy, and Webalyzer web server log analyzer. And of course, it's built to run on Red Hat 6.0. "

According to a company press release published today on Yahoo!Finance, TurboLinux is now the top-selling Japanese computer operating system. Not just the top-selling Linux distribution, but the top-selling OS, period, with sales almost as great as those of the Windows 98 commercial release and the Windows 98 commercial update combined. If only new commercial OS sales, not upgrades, are considered, things look even rosier for TurboLinux, which claims 24.09% of total market share as opposed to 13.25% for Win98 and 10.23% for Macintosh.

Joseph writes "Red Hat looks like it put those Atomic Vision folks to work with a new site design. More hype before their IPO?" I'm just glad to see a simpler, more elegant design.

Tekmage hooked us up with an Interview with Alan Cox called "Number two -- with a bullet" that is currently running over at the Ottawa Citizen. Its a nice piece- as always, Alan is super cool. Nice picture of his "Unconventional Appearance" too ;)