Bryan Mattern writes "I went to do an FTP install this morning and noticed RedHat 6.2beta on the FTP mirrors. There is no official word yet from Red Hat, but I'm downloading it right now. Might be nice to check out if you can grab it. " Update: 02/09 06:32 by H :You can also grab it from SourceForge's mirror.

BigTed writes "Webmonkey has got an interesting article up about the VA Linux takeover of Andover and its effect on *gasp* Slashdot and the Open Source Community." Personal note: I almost quit when I heard about the merger, because I had exactly the same worries Jay Greenspan expresses in this editorial. Since then I have been personally reassured by Larry Augustin that VA Linux has no desire to mess with the content on any Andover site, including Slashdot. I'm posting this story, even though we've been over this ground before, primarily so that we don't get accused of bias by not posting it. And yes, we will continue to post news of Red Hat, Penguin Computing, and others in the Linux corporate community, same as before. Everyone who works on Slashdot, and everyone in Andover.net management, has sworn to defend Slashdot's editorial independence. Period. - Robin 'roblimo' Miller, Editor-in-Chief, Andover.net. Update: 02/09 05:16 by CT : here is a Salon Story by Andrew Leondard expressing the same concerns as the webmonkey bit.

JTMatrix writes "RedHat takes last place [in an IDG Network Operating Systems showdown]." The information on how they benchmarked everything is readily available on the site. Go check it out. Update: 01/26 01:07 by H :Check out this link for more technical information.

Anonymous Coward writes "I have a couple of Web servers (running RedHat 5.0) which I'm using to offer free Web hosting on, and I've been giving the users standard accounts, the only exception being that their HOME directory is also set to their HTML directory. This means that telnet is active, as well as ftp, which I didn't consider a problem (that's how I learned, after all), but I was wrong. One of these boxes was hacked, by someone telnetting in and installing a sniffer. We've had to take the box down and scrub it clean, and before I bring it back online, I'd like to know the best way to give users relatively unfettered access to their own files via ftp, while disabling their ability to do anything else, on a box running any brand of Linux." I know we've touched on this aspect of security before in several Slashdot forums, but this question has been asked (and will be asked again) many times. I figure it may as well have its own forum for discussion.

Speare asks a question which may be on the tongue of many Linux newbies: "Is there anyone working on a GNOME or X gui front-end that can help organize all of the known device configurators into one comprehensive front-end? Let me point-n-click at /dev/cua2 and see if it's got a modem on it, for example." He also has some valid comments about ways Linux Distributions can improve their configurators. I too feel that a single configurator is better than multiple configuration tools. Linuxconf is a move in the right direction, but it still has room to improve. (More)

solar writes "SecurityPortal.com is running a comparsion between RedHat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems on the response time between software bugs being found and patch releases. Find out if open-source is the champion bug squasher we all believe it to be. " Interesting bit.

sgml4kids asks: "Could a company that ships a Linux distribution achieve any of the ISO quality certifications? Since RedHat can't control how the bulk of its main product is built, could it pass one of these quality audits? Is there any way of using these industry standard quality standards for Linux development?" Interesting questions, and ones that may become important further on down the road. Any info?

D3 wrote to us with a story from Federal Computer Weekly that details the plans of GTSI (Government Technology Service Inc.) to team with Red Hat. They plan to team up to offer "enterprise level" for the federal government contracts.

apsmith wrote in wondering what software makers (like Microsoft) will be doing with their software versioning now that we've passed the year 2000 milestone. It's a humorous look at software versioning and it poses some interesting questions. What do you do when you cease using a sensible versioning system in favor of marketing hype (ala "Windows 2000")? Click below for the full text.

Ken Heng asks: "I'm shopping for a 15" flat panel LCD monitor. But since a lot of these come with their own drivers, I'm afraid that when I get one, I may be unpleasantly surprised if they don't work with my Linux system. Or if they work (yes, I have seen in Xconfigurator, you can choose the LCD panels with different resolutions), they may not be fully functioning. FYI, I'm using RedHat 6.1 on an Intel Pentium II platform. Please advise if anyone knows about this."

Sun has announced that it will sell Redhat 6.1 Sparc version in it online store. This is due to the customers interest in RH 6.1 for Sparc. I wish I had one of those UltraSparc machines.. (Credit for the news goes to Linux Weekly news)

Doug Muth asks: "Does anyone have any suggestions for a specific brand of tape drive I should purchase to use under Linux? SCSI tape drives are expensive (plus they require you to get a SCSI adapeter), so I've been looking at some IDE TR-4 tape drives. However, according Red Hat's Hardware Compatibility List, while IDE tape drives are "compatible", Red Hat does not support them." Anyone willing to pass along some helpful suggestions and/or more informaiton on the Red Hat/TR-4 issue?

With the success of various IPOs lately, there are a lot of new millionaires in the Open Source community running around. It's heartwarming to those of us with long-standing roots in Open Source and a deep commitment to it to see this "validation," of sorts, towards the ideals that we hold dear. Unfortunately, as postings on Slashdot clearly indicate, it also fosters some resentment. Will Open Source's own success destroy the grass roots effort that forms its foundation?

An anonymous reader sent us a pretty cool press release where you can read about University of Michigan students protesting their schools enterprise agreement with Microsoft buy arranging with Red Hat to give away 500 CDs, and helping students install it. Often stuff like this slips through the cracks, but this one is pretty smooth. This is the sort of stuff I like to see

noom writes "Dell and Redhat have extended their strategic alliance", with Dell agreeing to install RH Linux on all of it's PowerEdge servers and Redhat agreeing to provide support. Sheesh, that was unexpected. "

zDooder writes "According to Yahoo Finance, rumors are flying on Wall Street about RedHat buying out Corel. " Corel's stock has been all over the place as a result (Discloser:I own some Corel stock). It's definitely an interesting match. Corel's distribution is based on Debian, and Word Perfect is a decidedly closed source product. I'm not putting a lot of weight in this one, but I've heard stranger rumors so who knows.

Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat has re-layed-out the site yet again. Looks like an attempt at a portal, but only internal resources. IWNSM (it would not surprise me) if future versions of Red Hat had netscape and lynx's default home pages set to redhat.com :) " It looks quite a bit like Yahoo. The GeekToys section is a bit timely, too, if not a bit heavy on Nerf.

mozart in mirrorshades asks: "Okay, I know that there is a naming convention that is used by RedHat for the distro code-names. I asked some Redhat guys at the Atlanta Linux Showcase (hey Rob!) how the names were linked and they refused to tell me. Apparently there's a link between each pair of names (eg: Cartman(RH6.1) and Lorax(RH6.2?) are both cartoon characters?). Could someone please shed some light on this so I can put an end to my quest?"

mochaone asks "I've always admired the Slashdot crew for putting together a great site that has vastly contributed to the internet experience. I have an idea for a website that I think has great potential also. I would like to know how slashdot (or any other webcompanies) got started and what tips they might offer? Should I use webhosting services or provide content on my own computers? What's a typical server setup -- separate boxes for web servers, database, banners, etc? T1 line or T3? How often should I backup data if providing content on my own computers and should I store backups offsite? Any other tips are welcome. More interested in the high-level, architectural issues rather than the "Use Debian over Redhat" or "Use Python over Perl" issues. I think those have been covered in other Ask Slashdot features. "

bgarcia writes "There is a PR Newswire story stating that Red Hat and RSA Security have signed an agreement to include RSA's BSAFE SSL software in Red Hat Linux Professional Edition." And Wired tells us Red Hat is coming out with with a new version that improves large system performance and speeds crash recovery. (Click below for more)