Jon writes "For those lucky readers who received an iPod for Christmas I've put up an article on LinuxLookup.com on how I got my iPod working under Linux. I've given a little overview on the different options available, and which one worked best for my needs. All in all, I'm extremely happy with the outcome. I can transfer my music, create playlists, and add all of my contacts. The only thing missing is a nice GUI."

davorg contributes this review of Wiley's new Red Hat Linux 8 Bible, writing "I've never been much of a fan of large computer books and, to be honest, this one hasn't done much to change my opinion. These large books often seem a little confused about their target audience. They often cover everything from very basic concepts to very complex ones, and I don't really believe that anyone really needs that breadth of coverage. Or, at least, not all at the same time and from the same book." You'll find the rest of Dave's review below.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Register has a story about traveling to a magical country where seeing Linux laptops displayed in stores is perfectly normal. The author then goes on to predict that this year will see much more desktop action coming not from Red Hat or Euro-Distros, but from China and India. Makes sense to me."

An anonymous reader writes "The Age interviews Rick Moen, a software generalist from the Linux community and an advocate for Open Source software." Rick's been a real catalyst for the Linux community over the years, helping organize the LINC Expo, Windows Refund Day, Linux birthday parties, and more. An entertaining read.

Webi writes "The government of India has started taking precise, wide-reaching steps to usher in a Linux wave in India." India sure seems to be a highly contested arena lately. Interestingly, India's plan calls for government-sponsored support and call centers. Looks like they've really thought this through.

rjnagle writes "I've always been surprised and even disappointed at my friends' lack of curiosity about Linux. Maybe geeks and slashdotters understand why Linux is so appealing, but many people simply don't have time for it. Even the more open-minded people refuse to consider Linux until it runs a lot of commercial applications (does it support Photoshop? Video games? MS Word? Etc)." Robert reviews below Linux in the Workplace, a book intended to surmount this understandable gap in knowledge.

slashdotess writes "Information Week reports: "About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment that could also run government-mandated Microsoft apps. This let his team of 30 engineers continue to program in a Unixlike environment and create Word documents and Outlook E-mail all on the same PC. This mixed-use scenario is slowly taking hold, encouraged by a growing number of applications for running Linux on PC desktops." Score another one for Linux on the Desktop."

Alkini writes "Red Hat just announced a new beta, codenamed Phoebe. Their highlight list includes Mozilla 1.2.1 with Xft antialiased fonts and glibc-2.3.1. The new beta can be downloaded from RH's FTP site or one of the mirrors."

Someone who can read Danish writes "According to this story (in Danish) Denmark has taken the first steps to start using Linux and Staroffice in all schools (1.1 million students). Sun has agreed to provide Staroffice for free, or on a CD-ROM for 10 Danish crowns ($1.5)."

inode_buddha was among a handful of folks who submitted linkage to Dvorak's latest column where he talks about Linux being to much like Windows. It's not really a slam, just a challange to be more innovative and look beyond feature creep and UI concepts that are old and tired. Hard to disagree with most of it.

ungulation writes "A joint project of SFMOMA, The Goethe-Institut, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Walker Art Center, a group called CrossFade broadcast the entire linux kernel 2.4.18. From the CrossFade website: "In Free Radio Linux, the entire source code of the Linux kernel will be webcast over the Internet. A speech synthesizer will convert into talk radio the 4,141,432 lines of code, which will take about 600 days to read." According to the Free Radio Linux website the stream is only available in ogg-vorbis format."

Cpyder writes "The fine folks over at Linux Weekly News have just released their 2002 Linux Timeline. It's nice to see what good things have happened to the community this year."

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that MandrakeSoft's short-term financial problem is worse than was thought. A new page on the Mandrake web site says: 'Everyone who is concerned with the company's future is encouraged to read and distribute the following message. In order to reach the next release, MandrakeSoft currently needs to raise cash, and quickly complete the Increase of Capital.' Darn, and I thought they were almost over this hump. Looks like a good time to help recruit Mandrake supporters for the Club."

AsparagusChallenge asks: "Let's say that I do have an open source project. I've setup a CVS on SourceForge, made release announcements on freshmeat, placed a nice webpage and a message board to discuss CVS commits. That said, what's the best way to attract talented people to help with development? I'd like to hear comments from people that have started their own projects and have got more people to work with them. What are the best channels to find volunteers, how to ask for testers, forming a team and so on. Note that I'm not advertising my project; what I'm asking for are general hints."

malx writes "Says the Financial Times: 'Matsushita and Sony have agreed to jointly develop the Linux operating system for digital consumer electronic products, in a highly unusual and cooperative deal between two of the fiercest rivals in the industry.' Interesting because Sony and Matsushita are bitter foes: this shows they're even more scared of Microsoft." update Sorry, it's a dupe.

An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com caught up with Colin Walters of the Debian Desktop subproject. Launched in late October, the project aims to simplify Desktop Linux. Walters' discusses the project goal to offer 'Software which Just Works' for home and office, new user and expert ... "

ives writes "Matsushita (Panasonic) and Sony are going to develop a Linux platform for digital home electronic devices. The nice thing is that they want to release the jointly developed source code for this project under the GPL. The press release mentions open source, the GPL and even Richard Stallman :^)."

wheeeee! writes "Red Hat has posted a profit for the third quarter. Well, a meager $300 grand of actual net, but still a profit nonetheless. Their total revenue of $24.3 million was higher than expected. The cash flow appears to have been spurred by an increase in sales of RH's Advanced Server, of which 12000 were sold, compared to 8000 the previous quarter. RH says they're now following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, developed in the wake of recent accounting troubles at some companies."

An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Following weeks of speculation, Motorola's Metrowerks embedded tools subsidiary today has finally announced that they are acquiring the key assets of Embedix Inc. (a.k.a. Lineo), one of the earliest and most popular providers of embedded Linux software and tools."

Screaming Lunatic writes "nVidia has decided to include Linux and FreeBSD in their Unified Driver Architecture and offer more tech support. Sounds like great news for Linux developers and users if Linux drivers are released at the same time as Windows drivers. (The NV30 emulation driver for Linux was made available about 3 months later than for Windows) The big push is probably from big studios that use Linux tools such as Film Gimp. More info here ." Added by Heunique: You might want to look here if you are using the latest development kernel.