scubacuda writes: "A while back, Slashdot posted a Rob Valliere's Linux vs. Windows review. Since then, he has posted a 2002 Linux Web Browser Review." This is a great , straightforward round-up of current web-browsing options, as shipped with distributions. Note though that none of these browsers are static -- Konqueror's CVS version, for instance, now includes tabs and other goodies. So bear your own downloading and installation habits in mind.

An anonymous reader submits: "Codingstyle.com has posted a PS2 Linux Kit Roundup, with links to several programming guides, tutorials, and development tools. This is timely material, what with the release of the kit in Japan last month, and the pending release this May 22nd in North America."

qurob was the first of many readers to submit that Red Hat 7.3 has been released. Press release doesn't contain any surprises, just lists a bunch of stuff thats included with the dist. (Evolution, Mozilla, Apache). So go find a mirror if you're a Red Hat runner. Update: 05/06 14:05 GMT by T : christooley helpfully points out this list of mirrors.

Simon D. Levy asks: "I am consulting in a biology lab that collects data on fruit-fly mating behavior, and we would like to migrate our data collection to a Linux box. Our primary concern is being able to digitize incoming audio signals (at 8kHz sampling rate), but we would also ideally like to be able to monitor the flies' behavior using a digital camera connected directly to the computer. Crucially, we need to be able to isolate the audio component of the signal, as well as having access to an API (C/C++ would be nice) that allowed us to start and stop the recording. Any experience that anyone has had with this sort of problem would be much appreciated. We haven't bought anything yet, and are looking to build this system (CPU, video camera, A/D cards) from the bottom up. Thanks!"

Azar writes "An article at Newsforge details the experience of installing Linux on Wal-Mart's OS-less PC. It states: 'A few months ago, super-sized discount store Wal-Mart made the headlines in the Linux world by becoming the first major U.S. retailer to offer PCs without Windows preloaded...While this was widely hailed in the Open Source community as a victory over the "Microsoft tax," which usually afflicts buyers of Linux PCs, one major question remained unanswered: How well do these machines support Linux?' Here is your answer." Newsforge is owned by OSDN, which also owns Slashdot, is all part of the sinister Andover keiretsu.

irwinr12 asks: "Well, I've spent hours and hours and hours scouring though pages of google search results, trying to find a medical billing software package that will run on Linux. (Or Solaris or even Mac OS X for that matter) I've come out pretty much empty handed. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places, or perhaps such software does not exist yet? I ask this, because we are currently using MediSoft on Windows 98. We are very displeased with the service from medisoft, and the instability of Windows(MediSoft is partly to blame too) is costing us alot of money in downtime. We are a fairly small billing office, only billing for 5 doctors at this time, so some of the large 'hospital' billing systems want much more than we can afford for such a small operation. If anyone could send any information my way, i'd appreciate it." We did a similar story on Ask Slashdot over 3 years ago with very little in the way of definitive answers. Has the intervening time made any difference in the answers?

Darren Alcorn writes "Red Hat and Jim Henson have teamed up to bring you digital animatronics through the use of Red Hat Linux." I bet thats a fun system to see in operation. The article is light on technical stuff, but discusses the computerized puppeteering system a little.

andrew writes "Anthony Towns, Debian's Release Manager, posted this message regarding the status of the expected May 1st release of Woody made reference to in this slashdot story. In short, he says: "So, it's April 30th (for most of the planet, anyway), which probably means folks are beginning to get mildly curious about whether woody'll actually be ready for release tomorrow. The answer is a definite 'kind-of'. Which is to say, 'no'.""

fidget42 asks: "I was wondering what types of experiences people have had with using some of the 'real-time' variants of Linux. I have looked at some of the choices (RTLinux, RTIA, etc.) but would also like to tap the experiences of the Slashdot readers. I am not looking for an embedded solution (while I will be on a single board computer, it will not be for a 'set-top box'), but one that will live happily on a PowerPC running in a VME chassis or something similar. Have you had good luck controlling VME devices from within a real-time Linux system? What problems did you encounter? While I do not need to run hard real-time, I still need tight tolerances on my timing. Our current platform gives us 5ms of jitter per 50ms cycle (very bad) and we would like to get down to 0.5ms, or less, of jitter per 50ms cycle. I also need guaranteed deadlines. One vendor told me that '97% of the time, you should be able to make the deadline' but 97%, and should, is still not good enough. Any and all help would be appreciated."

Fading Captain asks: "I'm sys-admin for a mid-size organization and have returned yet again to that fateful question: is Exchange the only viable groupware server in its class? Unfortunately, browser-based solutions won't cut it in my case; management wants all the bells and whistles offered by Exchange. However, I haven't seen any mention of the InsightConnector product made by a company called Bynari (with whom I have no affiliation). Bynari claims the product will fool MS Outlook clients (full, not Express) into thinking any ACL-enabled IMAP server is an exchange server. In other words, my users can potentially utilize the groupware features of Outlook (which said users are beating down my door to do) while I run an inexpensive Linux mail server behind the scenes. Sounds too good to be true. Anyone subjected this configuration to real life testing?"

EyesWideOpen writes "I just read a review of a beta version of Red Hat 7.3 (code named Skipjack) over at Linux Journal. It's not the most complete review (being a little KDE heavy and GNOME shy, as well as focusing mainly on the install and desktop components) but it's a decent read. From the article: '...if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software...'. If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site."

codewolf writes: "Looking at this site, it seems that if someone has enough time on their hands, they can get Linux to run on just about anything. Looks like this guy got Red Hat Linux running on an Ultimate Techonologies Corporation cash register. This is a great hack if you ask me."

Anonymous Hero writes "Co-founder of Eazel and now vice president of Hancom Linux, Bart Decram gives his views on a whole lot of things related to desktop Linux in an interview at Linux and Main. He talks abour what went wrong with Eazel, why everyone should work together to build Microsoft Office filters, how anti-U.S. sentiment can be used to promote Linux throughout the world, and how he thinks KDE is 'butt-ugly.' Long read, but worth it."

tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux. Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers. Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.

wirefarm asks: "I know there is are lot of well-supported pieces of hardware for Linux, but I was wondering, which vendors really go out of their way for the community? While tracking down drivers for a wireless PCMCIA card today, I found that the vendor boasted of having Linux support, but it was seemed that they were actually touting drivers that were community-developed, rather than written with any help of the company. So my question is this: Which companies really stand out when it comes to providing specs and developing drivers?"

ulbador writes "From the Linux Mandrake PPC site: Mandrake Linux 8.2 PPC is now available for Macintosh users. This newest release offers G3 optimization, user-friendly configuration tools, and the most up-to-date software. Visit your local mirror."

krishnaD asks: "I have been using webalizer to generate access log reports for the site but lately my customers are asking for statistics like average amount of time spent by visitors on site, if a person reaches a page X, what is the probability that from here he goes to Y? From which link people exited the site etc. Basically, they are asking for a detailed flow analysis of usage patterns of visitors. Are there any tools that will do this kind of analysis? I love to know what kind of tools other sysadmins use to generate reports for their clients."

MobyTurbo writes "Well, it's technically a day late, but SuSE Linux 8.0 is now shipping. The increase from 7.3 to 8.0 is due to the inclusion of KDE 3.0, a SuSE-modified kernel version 2.4.18 (with Andre's VM), an improved firewall, among other packages that have been upgraded or added. (Including a couple of new games. :-) )"

Johnny Mnemonic writes "The Spanish province of Extremadura has adopted Linux for the official OS of schools and offices, largely because of price. Simply, they don't have enough money for other OSes, and they promise to handle the rollout more gracefully than a similar Linux initiative in Mexico. According to Wired, this is the first time a European school system has switched to Linux."

Lisa writes "An Apple iBook turns out to be a great choice for running Debian GNU/Linux. Edd Dumbill, the editor of XML.com explains why." This could also be an argument for why to use Mac OS X instead of Linux in the first place, but if you do want to use Linux, then a Mac is a good choice. :-)