Phil Gross writes "InfoWorld's Robert X. Cringely is reporting that the US Air Force is considering adding Linux to the list of potential standard military operating systems. It seems the U.S. Air Force has recognized the significance of the momentum behind Linux, according to one reader. Apparently it is asking developers and users if they would be interested in a Defense Information Infrastructure-Common Open Environment (DII COE) segment for Linux. If there is enough interest, Linux would become an "official" operating system for military computers.' I'd love to get more details on this. "
In related news, Wired is reporting the Navy is reconsidering its use of NT: " the Navy said that while Windows NT was specified in the Statement of Work as the operating system for the workstations in question, other components of a coming upgrade will primarily utilize Unix-based systems. The source said. "I don't think that Unix or NT were ever really evaluated -- it was just somebody thinking this was good, with no knowledge"". Thanks to brentbent

chrisd sent us a link to a nice little InfoWorld Article on our friends over at VA Research. Mentions the specs of their latest speed demons and talks about them getting some capital.

CynicalBastard writes wrote in to send us a link to something interesting that recently appeared on CNet. It's a special section on Linux with articles on Alternative OSs, Linux, Linux vs. NT, and project Heresy.

Robert McMillan writes "Nick Petreley answers the question "Is Red Hat becoming too powerful" in hist latest LinuxWorld column. We also have an interesting opinion piece by Bob Young on the site explaining why Linux won't Balkanize. " I feel like throwing more bait into the ring :) Anyway, I think Nick hit on something big - if Red Hat tries to bully an OEM, the OEM laughs rather than trembles in fear like they might with a certain other vendor. Maybe that is stretching it too far, but it's food for thought. What do you think?

wardk wrote in to send us linkage to a PCWeek artcile that Linux 2.2. It starts off by saying that Linux is Enterprise Ready. Talks about corporate support and improvements in SMP. Check it out.

Christopher Leung writes "1999 February issue of Linux Gazette has been pubished. " Articles include a timely one on Linux Certification, an Ode to RMS, Linux Installation and ispell.

Feynman writes "Digital Metrics has released the first level of certification for the Linux community. The dmCLA--Digital Metrics Certified Linux Administrator--is a non-distribution specific Linux certification for system administrators. " Who is Digital Metrics? Red Hat might be aligned with a distribution, but they have a name. I mean, if I start a certification program does that make it meaningful? Should Linux International do this sort of thing? That's at least an impartial group with a valid name. Anyway, its to early on a monday for this many questions *grin*.

nelsonrn writes "Two university groups are working on designs for tiny Linux boxen reminiscent of the Compaq Itsy: UNSW's Pocket Linux Embedded Box (PLEB), an Intel/ARM SA-1100 based box, and Ryerson's uClinux simm, a 1" tall Motorola/68K Dragonball-based Linux box on a simm. Both have serial ports and LCD interfaces, but the PLEB has IR and the uClinux simm has Ethernet. Both ports are booting on their respective development platforms. Coincidentally, both projects are currently laying out their boards in preparation for a run of prototypes." Update: 01/31 10:39 by S : In related news, Tarcus posted this ARM multiprocessing set of PCI cards manufactured by Chalice Technology which make for a cheap Beowulf cluster.

Dave Coombs writes "Montreal's Biodome has a webcam aimed at a bunch of penguins, 24 hours a day! " See! the penguins walk around! Behold! the excitement of them standing there.

David E. Smith writes "The five millionth ZDNet publication, Sm@rtReseller, has a neat Linux article. Basically, given the same hardware, they ran three different Linux distributions and Windows NT and benchmarked them. Guess who won. "

James Hall writes "Jon Taylor recently posted a message to the linux-ggi list indicating that he is going to be working for Creative Labs to build both Linux sound drivers for the Live cards as well as drivers (binary only) for all the graphics cards Creative makes (including cards based around 3DFX, nVidia, 3DLabs, and Rendition chipsets). The message has been circulating around (I found it on the opengl-gamedev-l mailing list) but the original can be found here. "

Rob Kaper asks this interesting question: "We all know LWN's 1998 timeline and some of us read Linus' timeline written in 1992 as well. But is there a more complete 1991-1999 timeline filling the gabs? I know it was once a work in progress for the Linux Promotion Project, but I've never seen something like it."

pepper20 asks: "Okay, now that the big boys in the database game have ported their software to Linux, what is a smart choice for a web site backend or small business? With all the choices out there (Sybase, Informix, Oracle, mSQL, mySql, etc... ), what would you all recommend, and why?"

Mech.Eng writes "SGI is officially supporting Linux on servers. This is their press release "

Black Art writes "There is an interview with Linus Torvalds on PC Week's web site. "

Myrdraal writes "As the subject says, 2.2.1 is released. It just has bugfixes for the showstoppers in 2.2.0. I'll have a changelist on Cutting Edge Kernels in about 10-15 minutes." Linus announced it as the "Brown Paper Bag" Release. Cute.

khizard writes "IEEE Software special issue about linux is out. It's very high level (no kernel intrinsic or any clue on linux 2.2 architecture :-) and try to place linux in the current computer industry. So sad you have to be IEEE member to have full access to the pdf file, but you can still read the abstracts. "

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us a link to an Interview With Alan Cox over at LWN that coincides with their one year anniversary. Congrats to the gang over there. The interview talks about 2.2, 2.4, Cuddly Penguins and more.

Kodi writes "Salon Magazine posted an article on the glory associated with contributing to the Linux kernel. " I remember the first time I had a patch accepted into an actual open source project- It's a good fealing. (Equally wierd is installing a distribution and seeing your apps in there, and installing a binary of your own software *grin*). You might enjoy this bit- the kernel definitely has its own super-prestige associated with it.

UU7 wrote in to say that SuSE 6 international is now out for those of us who haven't mastered the German language. I know CowboyNeal will be snagging it.