Today Oracle officially announced it will be porting Oracle 8 to Linux. The software will be made available for a 90 day free trial via the Web by the end of this year. For further details, check out the press release.
In a similar press release Netscape announced that Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Directory Server will be available for Linux by Q1 1999.

Bill Miller wrote in to tell us that he wants to work on an Opensourced media streamer. Hit the link below to read a few more details. Email him if you're interested in helping.

Alan Bailward sent us a link to a funny User Friendly. And Joe wrote in to tell us that FoxTrot is doing a series where Jason writes an OS over here. daschel wrote in to send us a link to a site about Bubble Wrap. What a strange world. Angus Davis wrote in to warn us that they've posted lots of interested stuff for mozilla hackers. This includes some docs on the new layout engine and porting instructions. They also need help porting the new engine if anyone is interested. And lastly, just wanted to mention that Everything has swollen to 6600 nodes in around 48 hours. There's some cool stuff in there to read now, and the server is holding up pretty well under somewhat less intensive usage than Wed.

The DjVu Wizard writes "Slashdot ran a story about AT&T Labs' new DjVu document image compression technology a few weeks ago. Versions of the DjVu viewer/plug-in for Netscape are now available for the following platforms: Linux/x86, Irix/SGI, Solaris/Sparc, MacOS8.0. DjVu allows users and web site designers to put high-resolution scanned documents in color on the Web by achieving compression ratios as high as 1000:1. A compressor for various Unix platforms is available free for non-commercial uses. Some Slashdot readers complained about a "spam" clause in our licensing agrement. Our lawyers listened, and removed the clause (it was never our intention to spam anybody anyway). At AT&T Labs, we read Slashdot and we support Linux. "

Yesterday evening Netscape Communications published a preview of Communicator 4.5. You can download the browser at the usual FTP-sites. For Linux you will find a linux12, linux20 and a linux20 glibc version. The Messenger client is significantly updated and the browser has quite a lot of extra features that integrate it into Netscape's Netcenter.

Shawn T. Amundson has sent us a feature on Solaris and the Desktop. Most of his arguments are cut and paste translatable to Unix as a whole, but in Sun's case, he's quite right. If they want to grow, they need a new desktop. Anyway, hit the link below to see what he has to say about making that happen.

L.J. Hanson Sent us a link to a new Open Source Page at Daily Diffs. Daily Diffs monitors web page changes and posts them. Mind you Netscape does this on its own, but if you use a browser that doesn't, well, there ya go then.

ita wrote in to say "Fredric Paul at Builder.com doesn't think that Open Netscape can compete. " You can read what Paul thinks by following this link.

Joshy has written an excellent piece after going to visit the Xerox PARC. Joshy also talks about what we could learn from the Star, and gives some ideas on how Linux could benefit as well.

Hallow writes "Recently Chris Toshok released his initial work on a gtk front end for mozilla. It's now in the gnome CVS. (see postings in news:netscape.public.mozilla.gtk for more info.) Well, one of the gnome developers has a screenshot of an at least somewhat functional version! Whopee! "

Rogers Cadenhead writes"Marc Andreessen is evidently souring a bit on Java after the cancellation of Netscape's all-Java version of Navigator. "My joke is that a Java Navigator will have a lot of good attributes," Andreesen told Computer Reseller News. "It's slower. It will crash more and have fewer features. So you can do fewer things. It will simplify your life."

Compare this to the March 23, 1995, quote from Marc Andreesen in the San Jose Mercury News that gave a huge boost to then-unknown Java: "What these guys are doing is undeniably, absolutely new. It's great stuff. There's so much stuff people want to do over the network that they haven't had the software to do. These guys are really pushing the envelope."

An anonymous tipster let me in on a worthy announcement: Chris Toshok, Netscape hacker, has begun work on a GTK+ port of the Mozilla front-end (fe). Apparently, Chris is the best person to do such a port. His announcement reads: "So, just after the qtfe announcement, and the subsequent touting of their toolkit, I got a bit disgusted and decided I'd write an FE based on gnome/gtk, and I'd do it alone, and I'd do it in the same or less time than it took them". I think this is great, mainly because I love GNOME (SlashApp betas are floating around...). Read on for the rest of the announcement.

According to Mike Shaver, "the first wave of mozilla mail and news code has landed on the tree". He says it won't compile, but I don't think that will stop any of us from trying!

Jim Race writes " An essay was released 6/19 written by Michael Toy, one of the cool cabal folks behind mozilla.org and an old-timer at Netscape. Definitely worth a read. " Agreed.

One of our loyal readers at Netscape, Alec Flett wrote this, to give us an update on 4.5: "Just to update you on the whole Communicator 4.5 situation: We're going into a short beta cycle Real Soon Now. Of course I'm an engineer so I can't speak with authority about schedules and such. However the key point about this release is that the browser is essentially the same (hence the 4.x version number), it's everything ELSE that's changing (Messenger, Calendar, Address Book, LDAP, etc) This is not the version based on the Mozilla source. ".

Michael Plump writes "Netscape released this press release, probably in response to the rumors going around yesterday. Looks as though 4.5 won't be out for a while yet."

Intrepid reviewer Rick Franchuk has returned with another review, this time of the JavaScript Sourcebook. Yes, in full living text, read about how organization can sink or make a book. And, maybe, you can learn how to the mouseover as well. So, click below to read Rick's incisive review.

Robin V. Stacey has written an excellent feature on installing an alternative operating system, and the troubles he encountered while doing it.

Trae Mc Combs writes "Thats right, Jamie Zawinski, one of the biggest dogs in the Netscape chain you can possibly get ;) has decided to be our guest for the week and provide us with 3 questions and a Tile!..." It's a really good interview. Jwz talks about GTK, Motif, Lesstif, Easter eggs and more.

Mike Shaver has informed me "mozilla.org has released the source for bonsai and tinderbox, the tools used to track the mozilla CVS tree. The source is available from the mozilla CVS server, in the mozilla/webtools directory." Good news, if you ask me. I'm sure there are a lot of projects that can benefit from these tools.