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."

tommy.tonteri@arcada.fi writes, "Amiga released (yet another) plan for the future at an Amiga-show in St. Louis on Sunday. They plan on making a new OS that will be hosted on top of (Red Hat) Linux. Amiga's partners in this new effort include Sun, RedHat and Corel. Yet another impressive-sounding plan, hope they will finally be able to pull this one off..." I of course will believe it when I see it.

bero-rh writes: "We have just launched the UFO (Unmaintained Free software Open source) project -- an attempt to fix one of the very few problems with open source: People who used to maintain a package and can't do it anymore can leave it to the project where at least basic maintenance work is done. We'll also try to find a new real maintainer for the packages."

Brian Ginter writes "I noticed on www.redhat.com today that 6.2 is officially released. It'll be shipping April 10. "

purpleduck asks: "I will be teaching an introductory college course in Linux this summer or fall. The idea is to introduce UNIX to the students using Linux. I think we will focus on the server side of things and will most likely use the Redhat distro. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good text?"

It seems that Redhat 6.2 will be out Real Soon Now - the mirrors (at least at metalab) are starting to get it. The main Redhat FTP doesn't have it yet - but it should be there in the next few hours... I think that the beta idea was a really good one (and I know lots of problems have been fixed since the beta was out - look at the rawhide directory in their FTP server). I hope other Linux distributions will follow RedHat with a public beta test before releasing a new version. (Thanks Udi for the info).

Well, here are Patrick Volkerding's answers to your questions, "Just in time for St. Patrick's Day. :)" as Mr. Volkerding himself put it. Read and enjoy!

EricWright writes "Although this hasn't (apparently) hit major news outlets yet, the Raleigh News & Observer is running a story in the business section today that Red Hat has dropped plans to hold the Linux Expo 2000. Although I haven't seen anything at Red Hat's website, they have confirmed the cancellation, saying 'The Expo won't happen this year. This doesn't mean that the project is abandoned; it just means that it won't happen this year. We are very much interested in keeping it alive.'"

Jean-loup is the kind of person I love to see us interview here. He's important in the sense that work he's done (positively) affects almost every Linux or Unix user, but the chance of Jean-loup ever getting any "mainstream" media attention is zero. Or possibly less. Without people like Jean-loup there would be no Open Source movement, and I consider the chance to present him as a Slashdot interview guest a *huge* honor. The readers who asked the excellent questions, and the moderators who helped select them, also deserve major kudos. So thanks to all of you for an excellent Q&A session!

Earlier we announced that Walnut Creek CDROM and BSDI are merging. Obviously, this will shake up the BSD playing field considerably, and will doubtless have knock on effects with the Linux and other open source communities too, to say nothing of the various commercial organisations that already rely on FreeBSD or BSDI on their servers. Here, to answer questions about the merger, is Bob Bruce, president of Walnut Creek. Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD core team member and release co-ordinator, and Gary Johnson, CEO of the new company, also contribute.

GregGardner writes, "According to this press release, RedHat and Real Networks are teaming together to bring Real products to Linux. RealServer 7.0 and RealPlayer 7.0 will be physically bundled with RedHat and that RealPlayer 7 will be released for Linux within 30 days on Real's Web site. "

Namaste writes, "As reported on MacNN. Connectix who after a recent legal victory over Sony has signed an OEM agreement with Red Hat in which Connectix Virtual Game Station (VGS) will ship bundled with Red Hat Linux. The press release can be found here. The Macintosh version has been out for a while and seems to be quite a hit. Both the Linux and Win2k versions with be shipping in March. " Update: 02/16 03:21 by H :OK, this issue got confused: Red Hat won't be bundling VGS with Red Hat. Instead, Connectix will be bundling Red Hat with their Virtual PC emulator. VPC is not released for Linux at this time. I'll make sure Rob gets some more coffee before posting again. *grin*