Alan asks: "I'm looking for a way to do document management at the office. We have windows people and linux people, some writing documents that are a few lines (developer notes for example) and others are full of charts, graphs, etc. Currently we have a file server that has shares set up for the documentation, but it lacks any sort of revision control, and with the salespeople writing in Microsoft Word there are cross-platform issues. We were thinking of setting up an wiki or an everything-based site, but as it is only text, it's not good enough for everyone. There is also the matter of getting our master documentation (which is in PDF format) accessable to everyone as well, possibly in an XML format that can be imported into indesign or Pagemaker or something. There are lots of solutions that work for different departments and different systems, but it would be nice to have something that works for everyone."

MichaelJames asks: "Ok, I have my MP3's streaming, all our digital pictures up, and a file server running on one machine in the basement. What would be the best way to do simple backups of the system and data? Get a tape drive Get a CDRW or DVDRW to backup the MP3 and pics, but use the old Zip drive for the file server data?" With drives in the 10-20 gig range only getting smaller and less expensive, what are we to do for backups, that have yet to scale well in the same range. For home systems with up to 100G of storage, what do you use to back up that much data, with a solution that's affordable to the average computer user? Have DVD writers become cheap enough for serious consideration as a backup media?

pjones writes "Government Technology reports that "For reasons of national security and national pride, government officials in countries like China, France and Germany are increasingly adopting the free, open-source computer operating system known as Linux." Noted in the article are China's Red Flag, NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux and much more."

Now that Linux kernel 2.5 is under development by Linus and others, the all-important job of maintaining and updating the "old" kernel series (the one that people rely on in day-to-day use) has fallen to 2.4 maintainer Marcelo. You asked Marcelo about everything from the influence of politics (age and otherwise) to his working enviroment and approach to maintainership; his answers are below.

One of the most-heard complains from people who use distributions like Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE is the "dependency hell" problem. You want to install an RPM and bang -- you have a dependency problem. There have been a few attempts to overcome dependency problems: SuSE with their YOU (Your Online Update), Mandrake with URPMI, and Redhat with their UP2date program. There is also a solution from Aduva called Aduvizor, but it's not supporting the latest distributions yet. Read on to learn about another interesting solution ...

fsoft writes: "In this interesting article at IBM develWorks, Dr. Edward G. Bradford explains sockets and does some benchmark between Linux and (various flavours of) Windows. Quite interesting results."

Guylhem writes: "The former LDP license was the first license used for our documentation. While we are now recommending the GNU FDL and the OPL 1 without options A or B, many documents are still licensed under the LDPL. David Merril, our Collection Coordinator, noticed that the LDPL is "not free" according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have to get in touch with the authors as soon as possible or 2/3 of the LDP document collection will be removed from the base Debian distribution because the code freeze is happening in 2 days. Maybe some of the LDP unreachable authors are reading slashdot and could take 1 minute to submit an updated document licensed under the FDL or OPL v1 -A -B ? Another solution is to find volunteers to rewrite from scratch the concerned documents."

krow writes: "Embedded.com is running an article where the author is making some assumptions of Linux's use in the embedded markets based on the opinion of one consultant and the fact that Lineo had to lay off some people this year. It's still interesting reading though for some insight into a different world for Linux and there is a nice reference in the comments to the interview of Victor Yodaiken of RTLinux fame by by Kevin Fu on the ACM site."

HNFO writes: "HP is unveiling their new 'blade' servers that fit onto a single card. Their press release is here. They are currently available with your choice of RedHat, Debian and SuSE. A picture of the card can be found here and a picture of the chassis can be found here." If you're looking for high-density slot-based computers, earlier postings about RLX's Transmeta blades and OmniCluster's x86 variety might interest you as well.

Lester Hightower writes "I am the CTO of a vertical market application service provider, and we have a couple of applications which could benefit from an interactive voice response (IVR) system. We are an almost-all Linux shop, and most of our production systems are CGI in Perl. I would like to get some feedback and/or recommendations from the Slashdot community on what hardware and software works well, is reliable, easy to maintain, and so forth." Recommendations against hardware, that do not work well for this type of application, are also welcome.

mike_sucks writes: "The first step to porting Debian to the Win32 platform has been made - dpkg is compiling under Cygwin. Check out the post on debian-devel and the Debian GNU/w32 port's site." Some of the posters on the debian-devel list aren't too pleased with the idea.

dont_drink_the_water asks: "I am currently working on a few projects which will (hopefully) use Embedded Linux to deliver content (mp3 players, web servers, other possibilities). The question is, can Linux act as a USB attached hard drive, so that other machines can simply read/write data on the hard drive by using the USB port? Is anyone currently working on projects like this, and has any software been developed for this purpose?"

joewakeup writes "This article at CRN analyses why today is the best time to consider building a pure Linux information system, from servers to... desktop. Among all the arguments, one of the arguments is the low cost of Linux offerings compared to Windows based-solutions. Worth a read."

Taiko writes: "Kerneltrap.org has posted some of the more interesting messages from a recent kernel mailing list discussion. It started with a post on proper indentation, but turned into something a bit more. There are some posts by Linus and Alan Cox about the nature of design, computer science, Linux development, evolution, and more. Quite interesting and funny."

josquint asks: "I'm on a building/remodel committee for a local non-profit organization. I've been playing with a few CAD programs for Linux (QCad, etc.) and, like their Windows counterparts, they are geared for the professional. I have no serious problems useing this software, but would much rather use something geared toward the amateur. I've used Windows programs from Punch Software, which are quite good, and have utilites for landscaping, framing, wireing, and so forth, and was wondering if there are any Linux counterparts. Punch's software is good, but it won't run on my box, and I don't want to shell out US$89 for a one-time project. Any suggestions?"

Madfishmonger asks: "I'm putting together a live computer rig for a band to play back backing tracks as well as simultaneously transmit MIDI program and control changes to various synthesizers and digital mixers. Are there any Linux-based apps (especially Linux PPC ^? , since we'll be running an older PowerBook) which can replace software like Logic, Cubase and ProTools for simpler tasks like managing MIDI ^? program changes and audio playback simultaneously, or which are even capable of rudimentary hard disk recording tasks, and will also work with the more common multi-IO MIDI interfaces from makers like MOTU and Emagic? I haven't heard of anything comparable to the current Mac and Windows-based technologies like TDM ^? , VST ^? , RTAS and ASIO, but is there anything in the works which could give the music community a third platform to work on, or do I have to wait for the big name proggies to come out on OS X?"

robstah writes: "The installer is the heart of any Operating System, Debian is no different. The mature but ageing boot-floppies installer will rear its head for the last time in woody. In this interview with Adam Di Carlo, one of the lead developers of this system we investigate the past, present and future of the Debian installation system ready for the upcoming release of woody: The next generation of Debian."

Jed1Mnd asks: "I have recently set out to find some decent audio manipulation software for Linux, with out that much luck. I have a friend who is currently using CoolEdit on Windows 98SE is running into issue with performance. We are looking at Linux because of the better IO, memory management and support for file systems like xfs. However like I said I am having trouble find a decent replacement for CoolEdit. I was hoping that the Slashdot crowd would know of a product (commercial or non-commercial) that would fit this situation."

slick_rick asks: "I'm looking for info on encrypted file systems under Linux to help my employers company move away from Microsoft centric solutions. However the latest HOWTO is two years old, the latest kernel patch dates back to April (and 2.4.3) and even the Sourceforge project has nearly zero documentation and appears to be very dead. Are slashdotters using encrypted file systems? If so, what are your experiences?" We last talked about this topic, just over a year ago, in this article.

juan.fernandez asks: "A couple of years ago I found a dust-covered CANON A-200TP/16 'portable' personal computer (9 kg weight, 40MB HD, 4MB RAM, 386SX/16, 2.1 bogomips) which dated from 1988. It was running DOS 4.0, being a completely useless computer. I managed to install Slackware 4.0 and a custom 2.2.13 minimum kernel I compiled on my girlfriend's computer (AMD K6II 300MHZ, kernel 2.2.13, distro Suse 6.4). I just went through the usual steps (make config, make dep, make clean, make zImage) and the kernel compiled and booted fine. The other day i tried to 'upgrade' to the 2.2.20 kernel since i'm interested in running the latest stable Linux kernel on this machine, but despite the fact that the resulting 2.2.20 zImage is even much smaller than the current, well-working, 2.2.13 zImage, I get 'out of memory' when the computer tries to decompress the kernel image right after lilo has finished loading it." Sounds like he doesn't have much memory to play with and the 2.2.13 image, although larger, fit in the available memory footprint available and the 2.2.20 one just didn't. The simple suggestion would be to move a few things into modules, but could this possibly be a memory bug in 2.2.20 that appears only on certain 386 machines?