P.J. Hinton wrote in to tell us that John Dodge has collapsed under the tidal wave of email from Linux Users in response to his column from few weeks ago. He's decided to throw Linux on an older box and try it out so he can speak more fairly in future columns. I for one am glad to hear it.

Andy Bakun writes " This link Contains photos from the "linux revolt" held outside Fry's and CompUSA. I wish I coulda been there. Gotta love the pic of the balloon penguin... made by MS publicity folk. " I saw a photo of somebody wearing one of my T-shirts too. I gotta move to california.

Johan Van Gompel writes ""Have you ever heard of Linux?" he asked, producing a gold cigarette case and pulling out a sardine. "Of course. It's a free version of Unix." "Someone's preventing it from gaining mass acceptance. I want you to find out who it is. We believe his initials are B. G."" Excerpt from The Maltese Penguin.

Mark Pearlstein writes "I just received a message from the GNHLUG mail list that papers and presentations from the 98 Linux Expo have been posted to extremelinux.org."

Jerkweed wrote in to tell us that things seem to be cool once again on the Beowulf thing. The Official site is back, and they've got the extreme linux cd available as well. Very Cool. Glad to see things are back where they should be.

Eric Harlow writes "Looks like I'll be writing a book for the next few months on gnu development using Linux. I've convinced a publisher that it's necessary and that there's a market for it - and they're going to take a chance on it. I want to gear the book towards the growing number of ex-windows programmers as well as up and coming list of Linux application developers. The book is going to focus on database and gui development with Postgresql and GTK+. I was wondering if there were other topics that people wanted covering or thought it would be a good idea to cover. I also was going to talk about PHP, CGI, CORBA, and maybe threading - but I don't want to write a low-level book. I think that Linux needs application developers and I want to write this as a starting point to help people write some serious applications for Linux, primarily GUI and internet. Suggestions on topics appreciated since I have to give the publisher a finalized table of contents soon when I hand in my first chapter. -Eric "

Michael Stutz wrote in to plug his Linux Bumper Stickers. Normally I wouldn't post it, but, well, they're Linux95 stickers, the demand is fading, so he's offering them 25 for $10 to interested Slashdot readers, so what the heck. Now no more product plugs for a few days people *grin*.

Another development kernel has seen the light. You can grab the patch at ftp.kernel.org and the usual mirrors. Most important update seems to be a new console driver by Geert Uytterhoeven.

Sam Ockman writes " the 500 members or os of SVLUG, are going to have a big rally tonight at the largest/most prestigious computer store in Silicon Valley, Fry's, when they stay open until 1am to distribute Windows 98. We're going to hand out Linux CDs and stuff like that as well. We'd like to have more people at the rally then go to buy Windows 98. " You can check out the details here.

Andy Tai writes "This Red Hat press release announces that Adaptec will support the Linux community by providing technical information for driver development on Adaptec products.

The Economic Times have an in-depth look at Linux, first throughout the world, and then in India. The articles are full of interesting tidbits, for instance that the largest UK ISP runs Linux, or that Suse is 40% of the German market. One less certain fact is their statement that Intel will help port Linux to Merced.

Redhat has posted a Datapro Survey showing that Linux does better than any other real OS on Overall Satisfaction, Interoperability, Cost of ownership, Price, Internet Readiness, Flexibility (tie), Availability (tie).

NT beats Linux on Percentage Growth (blame the suits for that), Solaris on Java Support (well... they did invent it), and Digital Unix on Product Functionality (anyone know why?) and Performance. Surprisingly NT does rather better than I would expect having used it, which makes me wonder how they built their survey.

Michael McLagan wrote in to tell us that Linux.org is experiencing DNS craziness thanks to everyone's favorite service, InterNIC. Things apparently are fixed now, and things will be back to normal after the servers propogate tonight.

It has been a long wait, but it's out there now: RedHat Linux 5.1 for SUN Sparc. It's available on the Red Hat FTP site and its mirrors. This is the first glibc based RedHat distribution for Sparc. Enjoy.

Joey Hess writes "Since Debian's "hamm" distribution will become "2.0 Beta" on 00:00 UTC June 24th, there will of course be an IRC party on irc.debian.org, channel #debian, at that time -- its 8 p.m EDT Tuesday."

Nate wrote in to send us This ZD Article where you can read Jesse Berst's little spiel on Linux. Nothing that any reader here doesn't know, but it might be worth a gander.

This link has been coming in all day, so I figured I just had no choice but to share it. The SVLUG will be celebrating the Win98 launch in their Own Special Way. Specifically, by building a rocket using Win98 CDs as fins, and launching it. There be strange folks out there ladies gentleman. Wish I could make it. Oh, and the web page clearly states that they will not be detonating the rocket during flight, or launching it sideways. Too bad.

Nick Moffitt writes "Taos Mountain and The Silicon Valley Linux User Group will be hosting a talk on The Future of Linux on July 14th. Panelists include: Linus Torvalds, Robert Hart, Larry Augustin, and Jeremy Allison. " Why is it that the cool stuff always happens in CA? Oh, wait. Nevermind. I remember.

Robert Levin writes "We're coordinating a list of Beowulf mirrors. We could use more mirror sites outside the United States, and we need any Beowulf utilities available, as well as tar files and Debian packages for everything (what we have so far is the basic kernel source RPM). Help us keep Beowulf alive by demonstrating that the Source Is Out There. *grin* Please mail us with the URL of your mirror, so we can add you to the list! Thanks to everyone for their support. "

Troy Baer writes "There's a news article on Dr. Dobbs Tech NetCast that sheds new light on the Beowulf debacle. It's at This article seems to be unique of all the ones I've seen in that the author appears to have interviewed Don Becker about it. As many on Slashdot have feared, it looks like the export restrictions on supercomputers may be to blame for the Beowulf software being taken down. ". They linked us back... through TCWWW^TM