AntiNorm asks: "I recently installed Mandrake 8.0, and after taking much time to get it working, I found that the free version of WordPerfect 8 would not install. The same thing happened under Redhat 7.0, although it installed and worked fine under RH 6.2. It appears that the binaries (wpinstc and wpinstg) that are called by the installation scripts are unable to find a particular file or library that they need, but I haven't been able to figure out anything beyond that. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, is there a way to get around it?" Update: 05/10 04:27 PM by C : Another similar question hit the bin, today, except this one is about Wordperfect 2000. Are the same problems from WP8 inherited in the latest version? Read more, below.

flsquirrel asks: "As I spent 5 hours of my Sunday afternoon trying to get some form of Linux to load on my Sparcstation 5, I started to wonder where the support for all these Sun boxes is headed. Redhat has dropped Sparc altogether as a supported platform. Some others like Mandrake have recently picked it up but seem dismally unprepared to tackle the platform. Most distributions ignore the platform completely. So I thought I'd throw this out to the Slashdot community for discussion. Is there any hope of saving Linux on the Sparc? What options do SPARCstation owners have for a reletively up to date distro that isn't in beta or otherwise have bizzar issues stemming from someone just trying to recompile an Intel distro for the Sparc architecture?" One of the great things about Linux is its ability to run on many different architectures. So why is SPARC support beginning to lag? Lack of interest? Lack of resources? Would anyone be interested in contributing the missing necessary resources?

CarrotLord asks: "Looking at the recent release of IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux got me wondering about distribution compatibility and standards. Personally, I run Debian, and am considering a move to Progeny. However, I am concerned by the fact that many products (particularly commercial ones) are available for only a particular subset of distributions (usually RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera, but rarely Debian-based distributions or the BSDs). What is the current state of play, particularly in regards to tools for developers to enable them to create and test installation packages for various distributions?" Such a tool would go a long way in removing the force behind the "Linux fragmentation" argument that most of Linux's detractors often refer to.

Many people have sumitted that Red Hat has announced the release of 7.1. I don't see it on the ftp site yet, but, if I don't post this, I'm gonna spend all morning deleting this submission *grin*. The new features include a 2.4 kernel, USB, Updated XF86, and assorted other stuff of varying importance.

Bob Young prefaces his answers to your questions by saying, "You may notice I've ducked some of the answers below - there is a reason for this. My role at Red Hat these days is as Chairman of the board. Matthew Szulik is Red Hat's CEO and will be a better person to answer some of the specific issues that these questions raise....

2001 does not look like a good year for computer and Internet businesses, but I expect 2002 to be decent, if not spectacular, for a number of reasons including IRS policies. I also predict that Microsoft's software leasing concept will be more acceptable to businesses than you might expect, as will Red Hat Network and other subscription-based software support schemes. But before we go on, let's accept the fact that 1998 and 1999 were unusually good, and that we're unlikely to see anything like those years again in our lifetimes. We not only had Internet companies popping up all over the place -- much faster than they should have, in my opinion -- but we also had a major pre-Y2K hardware and software buying frenzy.

Yes, that Bob Young. The one who helped endow online information resource ibiblio.org, but is better known for his role as co-founder and Chairman of Red Hat. Ask him anything you want, but please hold it down to one question per post. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated inquiries to Bob (who is in England this week), and he'll send back his answers just as soon as he can.

SEWilco has comprehensive report from the Spring Comdex show in Chicago. Good listing - show was smaller, but I think there was still some good exhibits put on there. Click thru to read more- you can also read the final report that Newsforge has.

Doug Miller (no relation) is an amazingly affable and unflappable man. This interview came about because I asked Doug face-to-face if he'd do it when we met after a panel discussion he was part of in Washington DC a few weeks ago. He said "sure" without even a second's hesitation, let alone checking with PR people. His answers to the 10 selected questions we sent him are 100% straight-up. You may not like everything he says (devout Free Software people probably won't like any of it), but Doug Miller deserves your respect (and courtesy) for telling it like it is -- at least from Microsoft's point of view -- without a hint of weaseling.

robvasquez: "Surfing the web today, I see that RedHat has broke even and that Corel has shown a surprising profit (they are they still considered a linux company, right?), so I'm seeing Linux companies out of the red! Perhaps this 'recession', whether we are starting one or even going in to one, is what we need to popularize free software. Think about it: with companies laying people off and cheapening up, whats better than free software? They could lay off 5,000 people, OR quit shelling out that much in MS licenses and pay salaries!" It's a nice thought, and a good idea for established companies to look into, but quite a few Linux companies have been hit just as hard during the recent economic crunch. I guess only time will tell if the use of Free Software is as much an economic advantage as people have been making it out to be, and now is as good of a time to test this claim as any.

gilgongo writes: "The Arts Council of England are doing an interview with Richard Stallman for the CODE conference here in the UK, and we plan to stream an archive of it later that day. Stallman has stipulated that his interview must be able to be seen by GNU/Linux systems (i.e. just RealVideo is a no-no). Our RealServer installation (running on RedHat 6.2) will do RTSP, so we assume that takes care of the protocol worries, but now we can't find any eaily obtained/installed clients to test it on. So - what do Linuxers use for seeing those streaming media clips with?" So with what tools would you most like to experience this interview? (And I hope streaming isn't the only option -- what's wrong with a nice downloadable version? Not everyone has a fast connection.)

jfinke writes "Linux Today is running an article about Redhat's financial situation. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $600,000, or break even per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001, compared to an adjusted net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.04 per share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000. On a reported basis, the net loss was $24.2 million, or $0.14 per share, compared with a net loss of $24.6 million, or $0.17 per share in fiscal 2000." Congrats to all the folks there.

Paul Nelson, writing "We are educators who think using open source software in public agencies is the responsible thing to do," says "We have released a turn-key terminal server distribution based on RH7 and the LTSP packages. Simply install Linux and start plugging in your diskless terminals. Very little or no configuration is required. We've included some cool educational software and have (with permission) bundled StarOffice as part of the install. To kick things off we have 1000 Intel Celeron processors to give to schools building Linux terminals. We also have some Xeon processors to help schools building servers. Our goal is to have 1000 terminals in 100 schools by one day (July 4th.) For more info including links to download the CD-Install image (650mb) head for http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux/." Any parents (or other aggrieved taxpayers) out there might be interested in showing this off at a PTA meeting. You may also be interested in the Simple End User Linux and the Debian Jr. projects.

An anonymous user wrote in to tell us (and Timothy called RH and confirmed, this change was made a few weeks ago) that you no longer can Freely and Anonymously use Red Hat's Update Agent to download updated package DBs, and update packages. You must register, and pay $9.95 for the service. Of course you can still update manually, but how long before other services pop up to take its place? And Debian still does apt without me having to tell them where I live. This is unfortunate, but not unsurprising. I want RH to make a buck too, but this seems like a pretty crappy way to do it. Update: 03/19 03:21 PM by T : An unnamed reader points to this FAQ on the change, too.

Revista do Linux writes "The final (1.0) version of Nautilus was released this morning. Binaries are available for RedHat 6.x and 7.x, everyone else should try the source code. This version includes a "preview" of the Eazel Services, which includes, among other things, a virtual disk. Grab your copy at the Eazel homepage." The download page has RPMs for RH 6.1/2, and 7. They've also got source that you can download as well If you want to check it out before downloading the demo page is pretty cool - but it looks like the server might be a wee bit overtaxed.

Boiling rumors can now be set aside: Linux-Mandrake's 8.0 beta is ready for grabbing. Before you complain about Version Inflation (Slackware, Red Hat and others should come out with v10 just for fun), read the fine print indicating that by using this beta version, you're surrendering your machine to the winds of time, and French aliens may come kidnap you and your data for sheer sadistic sport. That is, especially if you have a VIA Apollo Pro or KT133 Chipsets and a WD drive greater than 8.4Gb in size. So the real 8.0 isn't ready yet (that will be the time to complain about version inflation proper), but like Red Hat's Fisher, this is a nice way to experience upgrades all around the mulberry bush, including a 2.4 kernel (2.4.2, actually) without building them all yourself.

blutgens writes: "I have a Sony VAIO superslim with no cd-rom and only a USB floppy. I'd like to install Debian or Slackware. Only problem is, without some serious mojo it's next to impossible to do. FreeBSD has an install disk which works fine and will load the MFS (same as a ramdisk essentially) but I'd just as soon migrate it back to linux (Don't ask, I have my reasons) but refuse to run redhat. I made custom kernels with USB support but all I get once the kernel tries to load that second floppy from USB is "Invalid partition table" the disk is fine, I've tried others. My question is what do other people do when they lack normal install media? Isn't there a debian netboot.img floppy image that won't require some magic needed to read a second floppy?"

cybrthng asks: "How do you stop glibc hell on Linux? I thought I'd long lost the ever familiar DLL hell on Windows, but with Linux it breaks the applications so bad its not funny. Will Linux only be able to truely survive with applications available in source form? For instance take Oracle Applications, it is nearly impossible to install it on RedHat 7.0 or any glibc 2.2 based distro since the applications were built against 2.1.x. When you install this software it tries to relink itself with the correct libraries and fails miserably. You can however force it to use glibc-compat, but that isn't a solution for a production system. Do vendors have to recompile there applications for every kernel, every library and every distro? How can I use Linux when the core libraries don't seem to be forwards or backwards compatible across different distributions?"

Shadow_Font asks: "So I've been using XFree since RedHat 4.1 or so (I'm using XFree 3.3.6 on FreeBSD 4.2 nowadays). I've been using Macs since the 128K machine in 1984. The biggest reason I don't use X day in and day out for development is the status of fonts on the platform. They're just horrible! What's being done about this? Does anyone care about this? X fonts have been a sore sight and far worse than what I had on my Mac in 1984, and yet here we are 17 years down the pike. Are there any solutions? Until I can figure out a solution, my main development machine will continue to be a Macintosh with its anti-aliased text which really makes reading code for hours on end easier on the eyes." Give it a few more months folks, and X11 fonts will improve. And if the traditional 75 and 100dpi fonts are too repulsive for you, support for TrueType and Postscript Type 1 fonts has been around for quite a while.

jesyntax asks: "Does anyone know how to get my 1280x1024 TFT working in Linux? When loading RedHat Linux 7.0 on my Gateway Solo 9300 laptop, I cannot seem to get it to go to graphics mode. The Linux installer does not detect the video hardware and when setting the 'settings' manually, the choices do not make sense for a laptop (TFT or LCD). I could not find a usable choice in the settings anywhere, but some TFT and LCD screens were listed in the options. These flat screens do not have a scan frequency per-se because they do not have to draw the lines on the screen as with a CRT monitor. Instead they have a fixed number of transistors which makes them not have lines but dots. There was no way in the manual settings to specify this."