Scooter[AMMO] was one of the first with this report: "According to Turbolinux CEO Paul Thomas, the future will see Linux boiled down to one generic distribution. Catch the scoop here. How can this claim be made? How can a system like Debian throw away all its guidelines to create a generic distribution? I won't give up apt, and I sure don't see RH accepting it. Why should Peter let the uber-stable power user-oriented Slackware head towards the bug infested hail-the-script-kiddies Red Hat? Standards are great, but aren't the ideals of different distributions what give Linux its flavour?"

Well, as the title says - the AMD X86-64 simulator is shipping (for Linux only - for now). You can go here and read the details. It is called SimNow!. Unfortunately, the kernel 64 bit port is not done yet, but hey, you got a nice simulated machine to play with! It's available as RPM for RedHat 6.2 and SuSE 6.4. NOTE: - you'll need PLENTY of RAM to operate this simulator! (384MB RAM is minimum) and disk space - 4 GB! So think before you download this beast!

A reader writes: "Linux and MacOS versions of Parsec LAN-Test have been released! Windows version will follow soon. The game will also be included on the European version of Red Hat Linux 7, with more than 50 minutes of music by Stefan Poiss. You can download the game here. Please use the mirrors."

TBHiX writes "Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history." Red Hat's point-oh releases have been historically been pretty bad over the years, so I the only thing that surprises me is that people didn't realize it before they downloaded it. The point release has typically been fine, but the bugzilla report lists over a thousand bugs: 200 appearing this week. Take this as a warning folks: didn't 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 teach you anything? *grin* But a DB with 2500 bugs in it doesn't necessarily mean a buggy distribution either.

HerbieTMac writes "Congrats to FreeBSD for a new single day download record. Two terabytes (that's 2 trillion bytes!) from a single machine (ftp.freesoftware.com). This was brought about by the simultaneous release of RedHat 7 and FreeBSD 4.1.1."

Mike Dubreuil writes: "When I went to download Red Hat Linux 7.0 for Sparc I was disappointed to learn RH is dropping support for the sparc processor line. They are claiming that there is a low demand for sparc versions This may be a major blow to the Linux community because Red Hat is the top vendor for commercial copies of Linux. Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand." Update: 10/02 09:43 PM by CT : Bernhard Rosenkraenz wrote in to say "It is true that we will probably not release Red Hat Linux 7.0 for sparc. However, this does NOT mean there won't be a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2 for sparc. If, at some time, we decide to discontinue commercial sparc support, we will turn Red Hat Linux for sparc into a community effort."

musicmaster asks: "Do you know what happened to OpenCCVS (Open Credit Card Verification system). Originally it was built by Dave Cinege (original homepage). After he stopped working on it about mid-1999 it was taken over by BlackHoleSun, whose site now contains the message that work has ceased since 'many legal snags and licensing issues' didn't justify the effort. OpenCCVS is a clone of CCVS (originally located at www.hks.net, now taken over by Red Hat and placed here). Although Red Hat publishes some of the source to buyers it is not Open Source." Are there any other free software projects developing credit card verification systems?

A curious Anonymous Coward wrote in with this important issue: "RedHat Linux 7.0 does not include libc5 compatibility libraries. Trying to run an old binary (RH4.2 or earlier) generates a "no such file or directory" error. To what extent does Red Hat commit to binary backward compatibility? Is it possible to get libc5-based programs, such as MATLAB, working under RH 7 without recompiling?"

a2800276 asks: "The story that XFS has gone beta raised some questions in my mind. There are now four journaling filesystems available under various OSS licenses and being actively developed for Linux, there being (in estimated order of maturity): SuSE/Namesys's reiserfs, SGI's XFS, IBM's JFS and Tweedie/Redhat's ext3fs. Avoiding the obvious question of why can't the effort going into four different projects be channeled into one, I think a discussion of the particular merits of the different fs's would be interesting."

Warren Vosper asks: "As I sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the RedHat mirror sites to finish pulling down RH7, I ponder the need for this. Why can't we use the MBONE to update the mirrors? I could satisy my burning need for instant gratification *so* much sooner. Hell, why couldn't I tune in to an MBONE broadcast from RedHat and get it at the same time as the mirror sites? As I looked over the ancient (5-6 years ago) online info regarding MBONE I understand that it's used mostly for video and audio, but why not software distribution?"

weeble writes "Red Hat 7 is now out. The updates to the Red Hat web site have been made; however the ftp site has not yet been updated." Remember to use mirrors folks. Its gonna be a bit before they all catch up so be patient.

the_quark writes: "According to this ZDNet story, RedHat will be rolling out a subscription update service with 7.0, which will be available by FTP on Monday." They're also announcing the "Red Hat Network" which essentially adds something like Debian's apt-get function that I've been using for a couple years now *grin*. BTW, has anyone played with gnome-apt? Not bad.

chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.

Simon Spero writes: "Metalab, the site formerly known as SunSITE, is now www.ibiblio.org . This change has been made in response to a donation by Bob Young and Mark Ewing of Redhat of $4 million; this grant will be used to apply the techniques and philosophies of the Open Source Movement to more traditional kinds of information, creating the first of a new kind of digital library. " Metalab URLs will continue to work. Here's the FAQ and some more press coverage. Really the name change is secondary (I still hadn't stopped using sunsite bookmarks) but this could be really cool.

James Cownie asks: "The Linux kernel development is an open process, we all know that, but, as an unknown in the community it seems impossible to attract the attention of anyone on the kernel list. I'm not trying to reimplement huge kernel subsystems or do anything major, but I found a genuine kernel bug, documented it and submitted a patch on the kernel mail list; to be met with complete and utter silence. Just as if no-one had read my mail at all. I can stand and react to abuse, or requests to fix my patch, or whatever, but what can I do in response to silence?" UPDATED

chromatic's wide-ranging series of instructional and reference books for the Linux administrator continues here with three more titles, this time covering two books which sound aimed at fairly experienced uers, and one more suited to Windows crossover users. (Check out Part One and Part Two of this four-part series if you missed those, especially if you're looking for some more novice-oriented books.)

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Sokolov (a Special Agent of the International Free Computing Task Force - and that's not a joke!) has published an interresting article about how is maintened gcc, gdb and the GNU compilation toolchains on his ftp site (also send to several related mailing lists - gcc, gdb, etc..) It points at some problem and one may think that Cygnus-Redhat is again trying to take over the linux world... but that's not the point." The conspiracy theorists will definitely find room for conspiracy, but really this looks like a major issue for development, and one that warrants discussion.

Madman Chromatic (coder, writer, thinker) sheds even more light on the books lurking on store shelves designed to lure, and then snare, new or uncertain users into trying out -- and actually enjoying! -- this wacky "Linux thing." This time around, the texts he's chosen cover the topics of installation and day-to-day operation of a Linux system in greater depth than the Dummies series dares to, but they're still aimed squarely at competent, literate users rather than only at technical gurus. Read on for his insights into Using Linux, Linux Configuration & Installation, and the Linux Essential Reference.

Mike Bouma writes "Amiga and Red Hat are working together to provide the foundation for exciting games and consumer content for the desktop, set-top-box, game console, and handheld market. This announcement follows monts after the disclosure of Amiga`s relationship with the Corel Corporation. The Amiga SDK can now also be bought at Redhat.com. Also take a look at this review which includes benchmark comparisons of the Java performance of the Amiga SDK running hosted on Redhat 6.1 and native Linux Java implementations."

chromatic is back with a mini-compendium of introductory Linux texts -- and yes, they have the famously protected "Dummies" trademark. Don't scoff at the nature of these books, though; the skill of translating the arcana of any computer topic (and boy are they all arcane to the uninitiated!) into language that mom, kids and the guy down the street can understand is not a common one. If you don't know what a root prompt (or an editor) is, or why you might want one, it's hard to do much else with your system.