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*

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)