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."

RedHat Rocky writes "ARIN has suspended their 'name-based web hosting policy', see details at their site." A lot of webhosts don't like virtual hosting, and apparently complained. Still, IPv6 is coming Real Soon Now, so hopefully there won't be any number shortages.

Cranky Spice (and everyone, and everyone's brother) writes: "Get it here: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/beta/fisher They've moved to mainstream the 2.4 kernel (surprise), there's an IA64 set of .iso files, the installer can wizard you up a basic firewall config, all the usual minor tweaks and enhancements. Though they say PCMCIA support is still flaky, meaning my VAIO Z505 slimline might not be running Fisher anytime soon. :/" The flood will only increase now -- even PocketLinux was demonstrating 2.4 on their iPAQs today at LinuxWorld.

Mike McTernan asks: "I am about to start programming my final year project for my degree. I am aiming to write a lightweight application that will communicate with the user through some (yet to be dreamt up) novel speech interface. The program is to support the idea of applets that can be loaded and unloaded on demand, and should be reasonably lightweight. The target OS will be Linux on an ARM based board. My initial considerations were to use Java, since Reflection allows easy opening of new class files at runtime, but Blackdown are only upto 1.1.8 on arm, and this doesn't allow WeakReferences that I would very much need to use for the unloading aspect. I thought about using gcj but this isn't upto Java 2 either. I then though about C, and it seems tempting and would give a much finer grained control over the application. In particular I think can do anything with dlopen() that reflection can do for me in Java."

Veidit writes: "The Compaq Cambridge Research Laboratory seems to have a cool project named "Mercury". They are integrating an IPAQ running Linux with many diffrent types of wireless alternatives like 802.11b, Bluetooth, GSM, CDMA via PCMCIA. The linux version seems to be the one that Handhelds.org has. " We also had an e-mail from Dan Sparks who writes: " The free Compaq TestDrive Program has added two new features allowing iPAQ handheld development online. In the Test Drive Program, we have four DEC Sharks (DNARD) SA-110 based network computers running Linux allowing development on Linux based StrongArm systems. In addition, Alpha2Arm cross-compiler tool chain has been added to every single one of our Alpha Linux machines, including our Brickwall Beowulf cluster. This means that you can compile programs for your iPAQ handheld on our blazingly fast Alpha computers. The Toolchain includes support for C and C++, and is available on all the Alpha-based Linux distributions we have, including RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux, TurboLinux, Kondara Linux, and Debian GNU/Linux."

Last Friday we solicited questions for Robert Watson, hard-core FreeBSD and TrustedBSD developer. His answers (below) are breathtakingly deep and instructive. Whether you're "just curious" about BSD or a FreeBSD user who wants to see what's going on with the inner circle of developers, you'll want to spend the time it takes to read everything here, and possibly even send Mr. Watson a brief "thank you" email.

We got a bunch of cool questions Monday for LinuxPPC dude (and recent near-death drunk driver accident victim) Jason Haas. Here, today, are his responses.

reptyle asks: "Over Xmas dinner, a friend of the family told us she was considering launching a partnership between her employer FNMA (colloquially known as Fannie Mae; they are a semi-private company that guarantees mortgages) and Microsoft to provide training and eventually, surplus hardware to private individuals and non-profit outfits. I lamented this choice and she suggested that I e-mail her names and URLs of companies as alternative recommendations. So far I have come up with: Debian, Red Hat (distributions), VA Linux, Penguin (hardware companies), and maybe a few non-profit advocacy groups, but I think the list is still a bit too short. I can't think of any other entities that might be appropriate so I figured I'd ask Slashdot readers for help in providing other organizations that I may have missed. I don't care whether the organization uses Linux or BSD, just as long as it's not a proprietary model."

green pizza asks: "My research group will soon be purchasing several workstations for telescope image analysis. We are currently planning on going with dual Pentium III systems from VA running Redhat 7. We have a good deal of custom filters and scripts that will be churning away in The Gimp and would like the best performance possible. Is our current choice the best one? Should we consider moving up to a Xeon system or perhaps a high-end, multiple processor Sun Blade 1000, SGI Onyx 3000, or Alpha?"

horos1 writes "hey all, I was wondering if this was possible: Right now, I'm running redhat 6.2 colocated at an ISP, and have had my box compromised twice because I was slow to apply security patches to the box. So I'm thinking that I'm going to switch to OpenBSD and not worry about the security aspect anymore (or at least less). Anyways, normally I'd get a CD and install it... however, the box in question is in another state so I need to do it remotely via console. So -- any helpful tips on how to go about doing this? I'd like to archive linux and replace it with OpenBSD, such that the next time the computer boots up, I'll be sitting at a OpenBSD prompt to log in. I have a very fast connection, just no ability to sit down at the console. I realize that its a rather risky proposition to do this remotely (ie: that the computer may not boot) but am willing to take the chance. Thanks much for any advice. horos" This sounds like something that should be labeled "only try this at home".

lizrd writes "The New York Times is reporting (yeah, yeah, you gotta sign to read it) that several Linux distros will be shipping stable versions of Linux for Intel's new 64-bit Itanium chip on the day that it is released to the public. Microsoft however will not be supplying a version of Windows for Itanium until sometime in the fall of next year, several months after the expected May release of the new processor."

We had an extremely interesting submission from Ted T'so,, Linux kernel developer, who also has an obvious interest in security, given his work with Kerberos ^[?] . He wrote in concerning the release by the NSA (Yes, that NSA) of a high security version of Linux. I've included his comments below.

A computer that Madonna might approve of, ubiquitous boxes delivering Internet acccess all over paradise (and why not everywhere?), and some more insight about Moore's Law and Intel's tiny new transistors, from the horse's mouth. Read more below, in this edition of Slashback.

zonker writes "This article at C|Net says the army is going to try an embedded version of Linux to use on portable vehicle diagnosis devices. Red Hat got the contract. Here is an article at Red Hat's site." Not a huge deal fiscally, but this is one of the areas where Linux is probably going to grow the most - hence companies like Lineo and others like them.

linugen writes "According to this article on LinuxGram, the majority of Linux distributions won't install on the Pentium 4. Apparently this is caused by the CPUID database, which contains no information on the Pentium IV. Currently only Red Hat and Turbolinux have updated versions of the CPUID databases."