topdown writes "I just noticed that AOL released Instant Messenger Beta for Linux (rpm format for RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake). Don't know about you, but I'll be sticking with gaim for now." Wow, this is fantastic news. Way to be on the cutting edge, AOL. Sorry, but this release doesn't even warrant a copy of our home game. I still don't forgive you for using the Jetsons theme music in your commercials.

Eugene Cabanopscotch writes: "I run a Web-hosting company that is seriously looking at managed co-location in the U.S. as a means to get content to overseas clients without the delays of using NZ's congested international links. I clicked through from the popular Slashdot banner ad Rackspace.com and also checked out digitalNATION and saw that they offer managed RedHat boxen. Now, not wanting to start any sort of holy flame war or anything (moderators, start your engines) I thought "that's great and all, but I want a Debian GNU/Linux box" so I quickly fired off a couple of e-mails to the listed e-mail addresses asking whether they would be willing to install and manage a Debian box. I got back flat refusals to manage Debian machines. Does anyone know of a managed co-location provider that is willing to work with Debian?" I find it odd that places will restrict co-locations to specific distributions of Linux. It's not that hard to manage a Red Hat and a Debian box, is it?

stuyman asks: "I'm amazed that I haven't been able to find a good source of information on this sort of subject, but it seems that all anyone ever says is that it needs to be determined based on "certain factors" on an individual basis. No one ever says how to evaluate those factors. I need to set up a whole bunch of new Linux servers. How big should the partitions be? Anyone have any formulas or ideas? I'm open to superstitions, too (heads, root is 300, tails it's 60). Some quick details about the setup: We've got a 20.5 gig HD and we want to have separate partitions for /, /var, /usr, /usr/local (maybe), /home, /opt, and /tmp, as well as a sufficient amount of swap. The servers will run RedHat 6.2 with Apache stronghold, and will also need X installed. We're currently leaning towards having huge /usr and /usr/local, with about 2 gigs for var. Also, how much /var would one suggest for a syslogd server that'd be serving logs for 50+ boxen? (running mostly RH or SunOS) Awaiting this thread eagerly..."

spell_caster asks: "I have an HPNA 2.0 network at home (10M LAN over ordinary phone lines). I am experimenting with Linux, but I can't find any drivers for HPNA 2.0. Is anyone working on this? Has anyone else tried the HPNA cards?" For those of you searching for this type of support, there might be some good news for you.

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Security Portal has a review on the security of Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera Linux distributions." Debian and Slackware are absent, but its a decent piece.

Last Tuesday you asked Ingo Molnar, Red Hat kernel hacker, about the means by which his TUX Web server recently achieved such fantastic results in SpecWeb99 . He was kind enough to respond with at-length answers addressing licensing, the reality of threads under Linux, the realism of benchmarks, and more. Thanks, Ingo!

Greyfox asks: "I'm looking for a good set of C++ bindings for ORBit. The only thing I can find seems to be OrbitCPP, which doesn't appear to be particularly robust yet. Are there any other projects out there to implement C++ bindings for ORBit?"

jmsohn wrote in with a link to a press release announcing the launch of Wasabi Systems, formed to provide a commercial channel for sales, support, and service for NetBSD. With me in the Usenix terminal room is Perry Metzger, NetBSD's release engineer, and CEO of the new company, to talk about the company's plans.

Several people noted that Red Hat is now partnering with Dell and offering Red Hat as one of its strategic operating systems, as well as shipping Linux web/proxy boxes to Lexus and Toyota dealerships. But thats not all... Big Blue apparently is now shipping T20 Thinkpads with Caldera and Star Office preloaded.

Günter Bechly sent in an interesting open letter to the KDE project regarding KDE, and its current exclusion from Debian (this is of course due to the licensing issues over which wars have been waged, lives lost, and kittens strangled). The letter is attached... he offers a $3k "Bonus" or "Reward" or "Bribe" depending on how you look at it, if KDE will be included with future versions of the distribution. Its an interesting one because the license issues are fuzzy to begin with, but it also shows that there is a strong demand for the software. Then again, I wonder if just hosting the debs and a line for a sources.list might suffice ... or just inclusion in non-free?

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

appletnc from linhardware.com points us to their article about Athlons and Linux. They're trying to sort out the compatibility problems rumored to exist with the boards and chipsets. He says "Despite SuSE's Athlon workaround and RedHat's (in)compatibility note, etc.) and rumors, we have not seen many reports of problems by LhD users. Are Linux users actually experiencing problems with Athlon motherboards? Given that the outstanding price/performance value of the Athlon, the question is how well do Athlon motherboards work under Linux?"

Matthew Miller recently went through the RH300 training course, as well as the RHCE Certification Exam. He was kind enough to write an overview and give us his opinions on both of them, as well as his opinions on the relevance and quality of the training and the exam. Certification has been discussed extensively with regards to Linux, and here's a big scoop of food for thought.

SuSE has announced that they are going to release a beta SuSE Linux for IBM's S/390. A beta version will be out in late June. TurboLinux has signed an agreement to port their Linux distribution to S/390 as well. The only major distributor that is missing here is Redhat. What do you think about Linux distributions and the S/390??

nicktook writes: "ZDNet has this story that RedHat has released a full alpha distribution for the 64-bit Itanium processor. Can Itanium hardware even be bought yet?" Not by jes folks, that's for sure. cnoe also sent a link to the official announcement from Red Hat as well. Coupled with SGI's release of Pro64 compilers for Itanium, it seems like Intel's Next Big Chip keeps whispering "penguins." Stunning news from MS on this front is long overdue.

Jon347 writes: "KDE 2.0 beta has been released, and looking very slick, regular files are on kde.org's servers and rpms on people.redhat.com. This one has been delayed for a while but looks worth it. This is the first of three beta releases. "

chromatic returns with a book tuned for anyone whose answer to heterogeneous networks is SAMBA, and wants 500 pages of practical advice (and answers to common problems) distilled from the fountain of SAMBA knowlege.

buzzcutbuddha writes "Bob Young from Red Hat issued his rebuttal to John Taschek's Anti-Open Source Article on ZDNet. Well written and articulate, and to the point ... He shoots, he scores!" Check out the original article blasting the open-source idea. Good rebuttal, Bob.

As this release explains, BSDI are about to start providing support contracts for FreeBSD. Support options will include options from per-incident to 24x7 support. Linux already has a number of high profile companies providing support contracts, such as Red Hat, and IBM. It'll be interesting to see how much of an issue the availability of BSD support turns out to be.

patrixmyth writes "A default password of "Q" in the standard Red Hat 6.2 installation of the Piranha module opens a Web server to intrusion, according to Internet Security Systems. The problem was discovered during a review of Open Source code, and the fix is already available. Another victory for Open Source! The MSNBC article is here. The fix is here, or you could just reset the password yourself for the Piranha module."