nerdguy0 writes "It appears that Winamp isn't just for Windows anymore. Nullsoft has a Linux alpha of Winamp3 out on their site. Hopefully it doesn't overshadow all of the hard work the XMMS people have done." Does winamp have better playlist controls then xmms? I've taken to using freeamp just because it has decent playlist controls. I say decent, not good. I want something with a tivo type of intelligence, but everything that claims to do something like this, well, doesn't.

po8 writes "The 2001 Annual Linux Showcase (ALS) is offering free registration until October 15, to try to increase attendance. If you're in the Oakland, CA area, perfect! If not, plane tickets are really cheap right now." In the past, this has been the Altanta Linux Showcase, which was always one of my favorite shows to attend. If you can make it, definitely check out - run with USENIX, it tends to be a more programmer/developer oriented show, rather then marketing.

mutantcamel writes "Eddie Bleasdale, the director of NetProject has been offering £10,000 to the first hacker to infect his Linux machine with a virus for the last two years, and so far no one has hit the jackpot. He's re-announced his challenge to virus writers following a Gartner report which told IT depts. not to trust MS server software because of recent worm attacks on their servers, but a Microsoft exec said yesterday that the hugely successful worm attacks were due to 'tardy' sysadmins."

Milo_Mindbender asks: "Our lab has a few dozen Linux machines with varying configurations of hardware and software. We're trying to keep track of all the configs so we can get the machines upgraded when we have parts/time/money to do so. Right now, I have a little shell file that I have everyone run which copies the output of a bunch of commands and /proc files from each machine to a central server. The problem with this is that you get a lot of info you don't need, and it's in a format that's hard to read or put in a spreadsheet. Does anyone know of a reasonablly good, free system for taking a hardware inventory of a bunch of networked systems? It's important that it be easy to install on the client machine and not have a huge number of dependancies. It would be particularly useful if it automatically decended through the various /proc trees and returned as much info as possible for disks, USB, graphics cards...etc." Inventory control is a big thing in corporations these days. A simple program that's able to collect hardware information from the Linux boxes on the network would be yet another feather in Linux's cap.

Jens Lönn writes: "Linux seller MandrakeSoft has had to delay shipment of its newest version of Linux because of problems in moving manufacturing to the United States. Mandrake Linux 8.1 is available as a download, but the first CDs of the product were supposed to ship by the end of September. "Getting 8.1 production up and running in North America has been a slow and expensive process," the company said in a e-mail message to those who have ordered the CD." Since Mandrake makes certains things so easy (smooth installation), I hope they soon get their newest release again on Walmart shelves across the U.S.

Whoops. A nasty bug affecting symlinks made it into 2.4.11, and Linus has ditched that "sorry excuse for a kernel" in favor of the new and improved 2.4.12. :) See the (short) changelog or list of mirrors, as usual.

Eugenia writes: "Linus Torvalds gives an interesting interview to OSNews.com, talking about everything people are wondering about his personal opinions on several matters: on the GNU/Linux naming, the GUIs currently offered for Linux, the kernel 2.6, his plans for hot-plugged devices & drivers, Microsoft, FreeBSD and the future in general."

the_2nd_coming writes "Red Hat has announced a legislation alert for the SSSCA. They are collecting comments to hand to lawmakers. Get those comments in while you can, but make sure you give them some thought."

stygian writes: "Linux 2.4.11...need I say more?" Of course you do. You need to point people to the mirrors and changelog, at a minimum.

WCLPeter asks: "One of the things that I like about Linux is that once it's set up properly it tends to stay that way. I have had experience using Linux as I've set up a firewall for my xDSL line, but that was a while ago. Like all things, if you don't use it often, you forget how to use it. Which is what has happened to me. As I prepare to install a Slackware 8.0 ISO so I can play some Loki games I bought I wondered: Is there a Unix cheat-sheet?" If you were going to create such a cheatsheat, what commands would you have in it? Of course, you can't get all of the Unix commands on a single sheet of paper, but probably enough of them to at least get a new user confortable with navigation and file operations.

An anonymous submitter sends in a link to a quick reference guide of various devices and gadgets that are in some way running Linux. Cell phones, set-top boxes, web pads, internet radios, and some miscellaneous gizmos (definitely take a look at the "other" page).

friday2k writes "There is a nice Article on Newsforge describing how the German Government moves ahead on looking into Free Software solutions for government agencies. And you need a standard, secure, email client for this." Basically, they are funding some good secure e-mail - but making sure that it works with stuff like Kmail.

beton asks: "We've all come to the point where we feel the need to change distros. A friend of mine has been a loyal Red Hat user for over 4 years now, but now he'd like to try Debian. He's trying to accomplish this with minimal effort so I was wondering if there are any tools around that allow to change from Red Hat to Debian without having to start from a 'clean' PC and reconfigure everything to fit your needs. Such a tool should e.g. reinstall all your programs and should try to configure them using your current config files. I did some searching on Sourceforge and Freshmeat but I didn't find anything useful. Do any of you know such a tool or is the whole idea just impossible to accomplish?" Even limiting such a tool to the larger distributions out there, it would be a bear to implement such a tool and iron out all of the wrinkles. Of course, if all Linux distributions could agree on a file system standard, then such a tool may even be unnecessary, but I doubt that will happen in the near future. So how do you all weigh in on this issue? Would a distribution conversion tool be useful or would we all be better off with a file system standard that works across multiple distributions?

southern asks: "I have a client that would like to backup his data to an external server in addition to tape. His office is made up of a couple of Linux server and a few NT machines. What backup services are out there for Linux servers? Services like NetMass and others only work with Windows."

jackb_guppy asks: "Talking with Managers about Linux Training for staff. One asked a simple question: 'Where is the largest installed base of Linux desktops?' My guess the question was asked prove that there is no market, and I am unable to find an answer. I am guessing the next question will be: 'Largest site using Linux to replace MS desktops?' Anyone have a suggestion?" Just for fun, if any of you have Linux Desktops deployed in your department, can you give us some numbers?

James Cho writes: "Four days ago, the 2nd public release of the NSA's 'security-enhanced' version of Linux (it's not an entire distribution) came out. The NSA describes it as having 'a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture incorporated into the major subsystems of the kernel". However it must be noted that this 'is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux' and that there is 'still much work needed to develop a complete security solution'."

11 platter hard driv writes: "CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association), the people who made the A+ and I-NET+ certifications, have made a Linux certification. I just received an e-mail a day or two ago that the test is out of beta. This seems pretty important seeing how CompTIA is non-vendor specific." Legions of PHBs and Kinko's nationwide look forward to the resulting resume changes.

alanjstr writes: "eWeek reports that 'The Open Source Development Lab has created a code benchmarking tool--known as the Scalable Test Platform--that it says will allow developers to easily test their Linux kernel patches from a variety of tests and server configurations.' It is intended for centralized performance testing." OSDL is sponsored by a lot of companies, including VA Linux, parent company of OSDN and Slashdot.

Loke and several others wrote in with notes about Mandrake Linux 8.1. Release notes are available, or download an .iso, or just order it. Looks like it includes KDE 2.2.1, which is pretty impressive...

xPG2x asks: "I'm screen printing and I've tried a lot of (good) color separation programs . However, I haven't had any luck finding an open source equivalent. Are there any Slashdot readers who are into screen printing who would know if such a program exists? A good example for such program would be Screenprint Separator."