ZuperDee writes "According to Netcraft, the number of Windows 2003 servers has doubled since July, and 5% were running Linux before, which is consistent with the trends they've been observing for some time. This doesn't look good for Linux, in my opinion. Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?"

LogError writes "Sebek is a piece of code the lives entirely in kernel space and records either some or all data accessed by users on the system. This paper is a detailed discussion of Sebek, how it works and its value."

ThatComputerGuy writes "Slackware 9.1 is now officially released. This is another great release, featuring GCC 3.2.3, GNOME 2.4.0, KDE 3.1.4, ALSA, and Kernel 2.4.22. Check the official announcement for the full feature list. Note that ftp.slackware.com will not allow ISO downloads starting with this release; instead, the first distribution of the ISOs will be via BitTorrent."

aelfric35 writes "David Diamond drills Linus on topics from filesharing (sharing is good) to SCO (trying to claim paternity on his child) to his rivalry with Bill Gates (doesn't care enough to be a nemesis) in next week's New York Times Magazine."

prostoalex writes "The state of Massachusetts at a meeting of state information officers adopted a broad-based strategy to move to open standards. The strategy does involve Linux among other open standard solutions, while moving away from Microsoft-based platforms is one of the decisions. State Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss insisted that decision was made on technical grounds and had nothing to do with antitrust investigation of Microsoft by the state of Massachusetts."

Michael asks: "I'm in the market for one of those portable, pocket audio recorders, to use primarily for dictation and spoken-word recording in the field. Previously, I used microcassette for this purpose but it's time to go digital. My only two prerequisites are that it use SmartMedia cards (as with my digital camera), and write a file format that can be used with Linux. To my surprise, this is turning out to be a difficult request."

rootmon writes "The interview focuses mostly on Ransom Love's views of SCO Group's current dispute with IBM and the Free/Open Source Software Community. It also provides some insights on why Caldera purchased the UNIX business of SCO and their joint Monterey project with IBM. In summary, Love's view is 'My belief is that Unix and Linux should co-exist and should look and feel the same to application developers. Fundamentally, I would not have pursued SCO's path. You see, the challenge is building business. Litigation, no matter what side you're on, tears down businesses. Only the attorneys win. Companies should focus their energies on building their businesses, not on lawsuits. I don't see any positive outcomes.'"

ConceptDog asks: "Co-Founder and current Director of Red Hat, Bob Young, is going to be conducting a presentation at my school. In addition to his presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Considering that my school is rather small (less than 3000 students at my campus), there is a good chance that I might be able to ask a question of Mr. Young. So I'd really like the Slashdot community's help in coming up with a good question to ask. If I get an answer, I'll post what it is, here."

linuxjack55 writes "According to Yahoo! Finance, IBM has filed yet another counterclaim against SCO, this time claiming that SCO 'infringed IBM's copyrights by distributing IBM's contributions to Linux after SCO had violated its Linux license by claiming a copyright on parts of Linux.' Like it or not, it looks like the GPL is going to get a full vetting in this case. It is, however, nice to know that IBM's fire-breathing legion of IP lawyers is on the side of the GPL."

A not-so anonymous, Anonymous Coward asks: "I work for a college that offers undergraduate computer science classes, and the school would like to add a new lab with about a hundred computers for students to use, for various class projects. After some non-trivial effort, we convinced the school to set up a Unix lab rather than a Windows one. However, we can't decide whether to go for Solaris or Linux. Regardless of the cost of hardware, I couldn't get agreed with my colleagues about the amount of efforts required to manage a hundred of Linux PCs vs. a hundred Sparc boxes. I believe that there are many Slashdot readers are actual managers for labs like this if not in large scales. What are your experiences of managing Linux PCs versus traditional Solaris boxes?"

nmoog writes "Heres something you don't see everyday - The Southtyrol-game is an 11 metre, 2.6 tonne pinball "style" machine. Its intention? 'Provide an ironic and entertaining demonstration of how the advent of tourism shaped the landscape and economic habits in the small Italian province of Southtyrol.' And powered by Linux to boot. Um, as well."

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Adelstein, longtime Linux advocate and consultant has spent the last year working closely with state, local, and federal government open source software initiatives. Tom launched Government Forge,spearheaded the Open Source bill in Texas and other programs. Tom shares the grass roots efforts that have offered him an insider's view of what is propelling Linux toward critical mass and the desktop. He shares his view of Linux "from the trenches" in this interview."

craigoda writes "NTT, the world's largest telecommunications company has joined the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) (Japanese) to focus on increasing the availability, clustering, and performance of Linux for use as the infrastructure OS in next generations telecommunications systems. NTT's work on Linux will be done through OSDL's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) working group. Here is a Dow Jones Business story was released yesterday based on the rumour that NTT was joining. Looking at the OSDL web site, the rumour appears to be true."

frooyo pastes from kerneltrap: "Cliff White recently posted some re-AIM multiuser benchmark results comparing the stable 2.4.23-pre5 kernel against the 2.6.0-test5 and 2.6.0-test5-mm4 development kernels. In his conclusion he makes reference to earlier scheduler tests posted by Mark Wong saying, "Short summary: we mostly rock.""

Colin writes "The founder of Slackware, Patrick Volkerding, released version 9.1 RC-2 of the upcoming Slackware. Good ol' Slack comes with new versions of packages while the addition of the Swaret tool adds dependency checking on Slackware for the first time! Here is an enthusiastic preview of Slackware 9.1 with plenty of screenshots." And pacc points out that Mandrake 9.2 will soon be ready, but only for Mandrake Club members at first. "But it will soon come to a mirror near you(TM). Though by choosing to distribute it with BitTorrent, do they effectively limit the downloads for a limited release?"

After HP extended an offer of indemnification to users who purchase Linux through HP, SCO issued a strange press release: in it, SCO claims that HP's action actually supports SCO's claims that "issues exist" with the Linux kernel's legal status. In an article at NewsForge (like Slashdot, part of OSDN), HP's Martin Fink roundly denies SCO's backhanded interpretation; a followup story quotes Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds and ESR on the HP offer. Linus: "Indemnification is wonderful. It might be a cynical marketing tactic, but if people are asking for it, why not?" The first article also points out the limited nature of HP's indemnification claims, which are definitely not blanket protection -- installing patches not approved by HP could well make them wash their hands of your machine.

stm2 writes "Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their Fluoride). According to the PR, the OS can autodetect and configure itself on the host machine."

jmahler writes "The Legends Development Team is proud to announce the availability of our Linux client and server downloads for Legends. Legends is a fast-paced, FPS-style multiplayer game. The game is designed to take advantage of the beautiful environments in the Torque Gaming Engine while still offering the breakneck pace and variety of gameplay styles available from classics such as Quake and Tribes. Our game has been made for gamers, by gamers, and will always remain free (as in beer), supported, and improved as long as there is interest in it." There's also a Windows version of this still-in-development Beta on their download page, and the Tribes-style gameplay looks intriguing ("jetpack use" through large, often open-air multiplayer maps.)

An anonymous reader writes "The impending release of a new stable kernel promises greater adoption for Linux, as it becomes more reliable and scalable over a larger variety of processors. This article highlights some of the changes, both big and small, with some code samples."

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has interviewed Rusty Russell, a humorous and productive contributer to Linux Kernel development. Author of ipchains, netfilter/iptables, futexes, per-cpu counters, hot pluggable CPU support, and the new in-kernel module loading code, Rusty's efforts have had a significant impact on the upcoming 2.6 kernel. For a humorous sample of Rusty's wit, one only needs to look at his email signature which reads, 'Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.'" Rusty is a great guy, and this is a worthwhile read.