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.

Paul Bristow writes "I've been using a Headless Linux server at home for years and years, but I always find myself putting off doing a distro upgrade. It always means digging out the old graphics card, keyboard and monitor, dusting them off and plugging them in, just so I can have a console to upgrade on. Are there any linux distributions that will allow remote upgrades? You know, log in as root viua ssh, webmin, whatever, run upgrade prog, remotely reboot, off we go. ;-) I know I'm not the only one running a headless server, and I *know* how stable it is, but occasionally RedHat (in my case) come out with a nice new feature that I might want to upgrade for. Also, with just one server it might just be possible, but how do you upgrade a headless server farm?"

An unnamed correspondent writes:"Transvirtual has released PocketLinux for the iPaq. It features Video4Linux, mp3 playing ability, web synchronization, Kaffe OpenVM, GUI Themes, and displaying in standard or portrait mode. PocketLinux runs on VTech's Helio, iPaq's, and various other platforms." PocketLinux V.P. of Engineering Peter Mehlitz took some time off from the LWCE booth the other day to tell me about Pocketlinux -- read on for some details.

The ongoing debate between KDE and GNOME has calmed down a lot in the last year as each system became stable and usable. Recent announcements regarding the Gnome Foundation has caused some tension (ranging from words to DNS hijaacking). Kurt Granroth, a KDE Core Team Member, and the KDE US Press Rep has submitted his opinions on the subject, are in some cases very good points, and in other cases extremely inflammatory, but in both cases, worth reading.

Jacek Fedorynski writes "Indrema (the Linux gaming console guys) and Red Hat have announced that they have formed an alliance to "jointly manage branding and distribution" of DV Linux, a Linux distribution for gaming consoles."

Ant Mitchell was first out of the gate with the submission revealing that C2Net had signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by RedHat. An e-mail message was sent to all registered Stronghold customers. Interested in the details? Check out the FAQ.

drift factor asks: "I work for a small company with about 200 Linux desktops, all identical aside from hostname and IP information running Redhat from a kickstart install. Currently, when something needs to be changed on all of them (say, the default gateway) we either have to ssh into all of them and do it manually, or write a Perl script to do so for us. Is there a good remote configuration system that will also allow some level of automation, i.e., I tell it what IP I want the default gateway to be on each machine and it updates them for me?" If you manage a large server farm and have used or written utilities that do this, please share your experiences.

As the title says - Yahoo released their Yahoo Messenger for Linux and for FreeBSD. You can find it here. The Linux versions have been tested on Redhat 6.0,6.1 and 6.2. I really hope that Yahoo will think more about Linux/BSD users who want to use other Yahoo's services like Yahoo's Financevision service. Do you hear me Yahoo?

It's quickie time! Let's get into the action with some blood and guts. cthulhubob told us about Overkill. In light of all the irritating infringement news, An anonymous coward pointed us at http://www.groucho.com. I don't know why, but Jesper Skov thinks that having turbojets on model airplanes is a fantastic idea. Hey Doc, are you reading? Gabriel Golden submitted The Boomtrain Manifesto. leviathan shared the l33t surfer. According to our anonymous source, "Wired News is reporting that Danni Ashe has become the Most Downloaded Woman on the Internet. In your face, Cindy Margolis!" Bluedove (with a little help from Wes) showed us how to pirate music and video without a computer. alienmole gave us the origin of @. Mantis! is a Sega Saturn obsessive. Check out his site. Garth, while busy turning it up to eleven, told us about the upcoming re-release of Spinal Tap. On a personal note, just wanted to tell my friend Raja to get well, and that we're all thinking about him.

KS writes: "Old time GNOME hacker and Slashdot familiar Guillaume Laurent has finally written up an explanation on why he left the GTK-- project. In summary, he disagrees with some of the fundamental features of GTK-- but sees a bright future for Red Hat's Inti. I don't know why but I always find these sorts of things eye opening." Update: 08/10 02:50 PM by H :Guillaume wrote me asking me to mention the an update to the story.