Mecha-A writes "Linux From Scratch 5.0 was released earlier this month, incorporating GRUB as a bootloader, GNU coreutils, GCC 3.3, and lots of other package upgrades among other improvements. If you haven't tried it, LFS is a procedural outline for building a Linux system from the ground up. For those who can't get enough customizability..."

Lee Busby writes "As a co-author, I am biased, but I think that our recent paper describing a diskless Linux deployment at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (PDF)may be of general interest. It's a little different than most diskless systems -- simpler, and designed to be high performance."

lems1 writes "Start compiling the excuses you will tell your boss to upgrade your cell phone now. Motorola has opted to use Trolltech's Qtopia to power up the next generation of SmartPhones. Get the scoop/specs from here and a nice high-res picture from this other link. The phone will have 'digital camera, video player, MP3 player, speakerphone, advanced messaging, instant Internet access and Bluetooth wireless technology' capabilities. On top of being Linux-based of course." Update: 11/12 00:44 GMT by T : Yep, this is the same phone mentioned a few weeks ago.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Softier made news with one of the first native ports of Linux to a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) architecture, introducing its "MediaLinux" and "MediaBIOS" for TI's DM64x DSP platform. In this whitepaper, Softier CTO Eatamar Drory and Senior Programmer Or Sagi discuss the unique approach to real-time processing that enables MediaLinux to run existing TI DSP algorithms untouched within the context of real time processes. Added benefits to this design include predictable scheduling and short interrupt latency. The article discusses key architectural points of the MediaLinux approach in comparison with two well-known alternatives."

tantive writes with this announcement from the Gentoo home page. "Gentoo for PowerPC G5 now available. We're proud to announce the availability of the Gentoo for PowerPC G5 32-bit LiveCD. ISOs are now available on our main OSU mirror. The LiveCD has been tested on a dual 2GHz G5 SMP PowerPC machine with 2.5GB RAM, a 1.6GHz machine, as well as others. It includes pre-released yaboot-1.3.11 bootloader and a 2.6.0-test9 benh kernel. It runs at 100% speed, with fans currently also at 100% (kernel developers are working on slowing down the fans when not needed)." Read more below.

shamir_k writes "Joey Hess has come up with an innovative solution to a problem we have all faced. He's put his whole home directory in CVS. Not only can he move between multiple computers easily, he also has automatic distributed backups."

bobmatnyc writes "InfoWorld reports that Microsoft is planning an "security assault on Linux" by hyping results of a commissioned study pointing to the number of security holes in Linux vs. Windows, the number of days it takes to fill the patches, and by raising questions as to the reliability of code submitted throught the OS process. I suppose if they focus very narrowly on one measurement of security, completely ignore script-level vulnerabilities, default settings vulnerabilities (such as root access for all users), and the demographics of the user population, as well as a zillion other things I'm not clever enough to think of off the top of my head, they may have a point. "

An anonymous readers writes "Infoworld is running a report on the Desktop Linux Conference, at which Bruce Perens suggested that in order to get Linux to the enterprise desktop, the Linux community should base their efforts on one single distribution... based on Debian. Perens went on to say that enterprises will be willing to pay Linux companies to engineer versions of Linux to suit their needs, but that the base distro should remain free. He suggested that by 2006, 30% of enterprise desktops will run Linux." Here is a wired story with more information about his proposed UserLinux project.

killergreen writes "I know some of us (myself in particular) really dig LiveCDs for work (some make fantastic diagnostic and/or security tools) or play. Well,here's one that incorporates the 2.6 kernel for experementation."

Henry G. writes "Lionstracs of Italy has released the Mediastation X-76 music workstation. It runs Red Hat and KDE 3.1. The base model features a 1.67 Ghz Athlon, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, CDRW/DVD-ROM, 8.2" LCD, and a host of other things. Full specs can be found here and pictures can be found here. To this submitter, it looks more like a keyboardized computer than a computerized keyboard."

Dan Clough writes "Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CDs. It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a lot of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact, sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though." Read on for the rest of Dan's review.

cybermint writes "Tux Racer, the well-known game starring Linux mascot Tux, has made its way into a redemption based arcade machine, which has recently been released by manufacturers ICE. The arcade version, co-developed by Roxor Games, is much more simple than the original PC version. It has two big buttons, one for left, and one for right. As far as I can tell, there is no longer a way to jump or do tricks. Tickets are earned by collecting fish. Looks like lots of fun for the kids - I'm glad to see the developers have finally found a good market for their game."

Knuckles writes: "According to c|net, IBM will give desktop Linux a thumbs up at the Desktop Linux Conference in Boston on Monday. Sam Docknevich of IBM's Global Services group will give a speech titled, "The Time is Now for Linux on the Desktop." It seems that IBM will not go for the multi-purpose desktop, though, but for machines performing narrowly defined functions (kiosks etc.). However, basic office workstation seem to be included in this definition, according to C|Net" And in a classic case of the right-hand not knowing what the left-hand is doing, Realistic_Dragon adds: "IBM was leading the words of Red Hat's CEO in comments to the UK government last year saying that '...open source was not ready for the desktop'.

Ho Kooshy Fly writes "Supposedly Novell/SUSE looks like a good buyout target now. The likes of the obvious, IBM and the less obvious Cisco might be interested in integrating in the new Novell/SUSE company into their portfolio." Lucent, AT&T, and HP are also mentioned as possible buyers, but it's important to remember that it's all still just speculation.

Time Doctor writes "LinuxGamePublishing has just announced three new titles in their IRC channel (#lgp) on freenode: Gorky 17 (more info, also known as Odium), Knights and Merchants (more info, somewhat like the Age of * games), and Software Tycoon (more info, one of the first Tycoon-style games for Linux!). The best part is that they are all ready to go into beta, and if LGP sells enough copies, Epic Interactive Entertainment has committed to six new titles for LGP in 2004!"

An anonymous reader writes "Daniel Lyons, the man you may remember for calling the FSF 'Linux's Hit Men' is now reporting that SCO is 'Holding Up Hollywood.' Their reasoning? It's because 'They're using a ton of Linux in Hollywood, so they've become a lightning rod for us,' says Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive. As usual, Groklaw provides insightful commentary concerning rehash SCO has planted to remain in the news, saying 'Maybe they should fulfill prior threats before they throw out new ones? Otherwise, it could lead some of us to doubt their sincerity.'" At least it's smarter than trying to sell a license to every home user of Linux.

hrhsoleil writes "Johnny Barnes, IBM's vice president of global IT solutions and standards, told attendees at a TechTarget conference this week that his company plans to migrate at least 80% of its more than 300,000 employees to voice over IP by 2008. The project will replace approximately 900 PBXs around the world with regional IP installations. IBM's server-based IP telephony platform is going to run on Linux."

Alexander Limi writes: "The winners of the O'Reilly "Open Source Goes to COMDEX" Contest have been announced. The lucky ones are: GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, Zope, GIMP and our own project, Plone. Congratulations to all the deserving projects! Check out the announcement here."

IgD writes "Kylix, Borland's Linux port of their popular Delphi compiler has been covered on Slashdot before. LinuxWorld is reporting that Kylix development is in limbo. Many speculate this is a politically correct way of saying the project has been abandoned. There hasn't been any updates to Kylix 3.0 in well over a year. One user who attended BorCon this year wrote in his blog that Borland didn't have any updates to Kylix planned for 2004. This is really disheartening news. Why didn't Kylix sell? Does this say something about the application or about the difficulties of marketing a commercial Linux application?"

An anonymous reader writes "The BitKeeper to CVS gateway was apparently hacked in an attempt to add a root exploit back door to the Linux kernel, according to the linux-kernel archive. The change was in the file kernel/exit.c and changed the user ID of a process to root under the guise of checking the validity of some flags. The core Linux BitKeeper kernel repository was not at risk, and in fact it was the BitKeeper CVS export scripts that detected the unauthorized modifications to CVS. The changes were falsely attributed in CVS to long-time Linux developer davem (David Miller). Users of the BKCVS repository should resync their trees to remove the offending code if they had replicated it since yesterday."