David Hamm writes "Momentum for the Atlanta Linux Showcase is growing as October 23rd and 24th draw neer. Along with Adaptec, Corel, Corel Computer, ISS and many others Sun has committed to exhibit. Join the Linux community in this celebration of the success and future growth of Linux. Register on line "

C'T, the best European Computing Magazine in my opinion, has published an interview with the divinity Linus. For those of you that do not read Teutonic, here are a few key points: Oracle's database port to Linux is important in that it shows how important Linux has become. Linux is squarely targeted at the desktop since that market is harder to penetrate than the server market: you have to get more things right than just the network-code. Linus uses neither KDE nor GNOME, staying with fvwm. He liked what he saw of KDE, but the constant flame wars have made him develop a certain aversion towards both of them. While Linus feels that Qt is a technically excellent product from a good company, he worries that the Linux community cannot accept KDE's political implications, which is a shame. But he understands Redhat's concern that it cannot do everything it deems necessary with KDE, for instance that it cannot repair a security flaw if it finds one in Qt because of Qt's license. Finally, while Linus himself does not want to sign any NDAs with Intel over Merced, he knows other Linux developers who have and is therefore sure that a Merced port will not be a problem.

The Joker wrote in with a strange question. He has a cable modem with a 750 meg/month limit, along with an ISDN line. He asks "Is it possible to do ip accounting in such a way that he will start using my isdn connection as soon as the monthly traffic reaches 650 mb, but will keep the other line open."

ZDNet currently has an interesting poll online. The question is "Is Linux a threat to Windows?". Readers can answer Yes or No. Go see for yourself for the results so far.

In yet another Linus interview (aren't we spoiled), we learn that Linus' grandfather had a positive influence on the young Linus.

Our colleagues at OS News have a feature written by a Windows programmer learning Linux. It's interesting to see what he has to say, since part of the "Linux conversion" involves converting the good Windows programmers to Linux. But that does not mean I agree with him, I happen to like VI more than "IDEs", I prefer ls to Windows Explorer, and TeX beats the living daylights out of Word...

Mercutio writes "This story Seems to indicate that Dell is preparing to move its Linux installation program to a global, rather than purely European market. " The informal program seems to be working well enough that Dell execs are considering making Linux an official supported OS across the pond." Dell supporting Linux?" Update an anonymous Dell employee wrote in to say that the Performance Computing article is in error, as Dell does not do SCO, but instead DellWare (described as "Like CompUSA, but with Dell's name on it"). And this all sounded so good.

A flood of people have written in to say one thing: it's out, and you should get it

I was tickled to see the Tool of Objective Truth at the UK branch of ZDNet showing... Linux crashing less than NT. This nonsense is accompanied by a positive Redhat 5.1 review

Ryan Losh writes "After becoming addicted to playing the old coin-op video games with xmame, I have come to the conclusion that my old Sound Blaster is in need of replacement. Which soundcard does the /. community recommend?"

Josh Goins writes "The latest issue of Sunworld Online can be found at here. The cool thing about it is that it seems to mention Linux more times than Sun. :-) "

Christopher Craig writes "2.1.113 is out and includes the SMP fixes. " Everyone knows the drill:Go flood FTP sites and consume bandwidth. And nobody download patches, download the whole file. And forget about bz, go with the tgz, let's make sure every mirror is bogged down again *laugh*. I love new kernel releases. I just wish I had something faster than the mutant 21.6 modem connection...

Martin Vermeer writes " A discussion Phil Hughes (of Linux Journal) had with an Informix spokesman on the difficulty of porting Informix SE [from Solaris] to Linux. The answer to his question, how much work was involved, is given in the subject line :-) So much for the "problem" of multiple incompatible UNIX versions vs. "one binary runs everywhere" for Windows, of which M$ tends to make such a big number... "

Something many people do not know is that European law prohibits tying products together. This makes it illegal for a vendor to refuse to sell you a PC without a Microsoft OS... This law exists to prevent anyone from leveraging their monopoly to enter a new market. (That's why a lot of US companies should seriously consider suing in Europe. They're more likely to win there). Perhaps in a related move, Dell is considering making Linux an officially supported OS in Europe. They appear happy with Linux's community support.

Mike Stein writes "This is an interesting story from ISD Magazine. Since most users of Linux are in technical fields this dicussion and its implications are very important. Most of the story centers around the move in engineering to NT Workstations from Unix (Sun, HP) Workstations."

Eric Princen was the first to break the news that the 2.1.112 kernel is out. Everyone knows the drill:Flood all the ftp sites and make them unusable for a little while. It's a 250k patch, and changes quite a few things. Check it out at the usual places.

Slashdot reader Ignasi G. writes "For the past months I have been very happy reading almost everyday how Linux has been gaining popularity in the computer world. Linux is today an OS with a well deserved recognition, but still lacks support for other tasks which are very popular nowadays, such as multimedia. And I think this is something we must keep in mind, because good multimedia capablilities is something many users want to have in their computers. I sent e-mail to Matrox asking them about Linux support for their multimedia products. You can find my letter and their respone here. " Anyone know of a different but good frame grabber card he may use? Alan?

Andrew Mobbs sent us a link to an interesting note posted on usenet by someone from Sandia labs. The post is about a Beowulf Cluster being built out there, and the specs will make you giggle like a school girl. 400 nodes. All Alpha. It's all good. Methinks a linux system might score a bit higher in next years super computer list...

Jeffrey Davis writes "LinuxPPC has a big fresh new release, R4. link ". Indeed they do. The new release features Netscape Communicator, The GIMP, and a very "Kontroversial" Desktop Enviornment. Interestingly enough, the LinuxPPC folk are incorporated, and some of their stuff seems to imply they're for-profit. Can anyone clarify? It's good to see some commercial development work being done (and some good work, at that)!

Elliot Lee wrote in to tell us that Linus is the cover story in the next issue of Forbes. It proclaims "Peace, Love and Sofware". I find it strangely appealing that the Free Software Movement is so often thought of in hippy terms. Peace man. Anyway, uber cool for Linus and big PR for open source. Always enjoyable to see that sorta stuff.