LWN has an interview with Jason Haas where he talks about LinuxPPC and going non-profit. He raises some good points and says some interesting things. Good luck to ya Jason! Someday I shall acquire a titanium powerbook, I shall bask in the glory of your toil. I hope LinuxPPC stays around for a long time.

Jon Bardin asks: "I am currently living in a dorm at the University of South Florida. The dorms come wired straight to the Internet and my connection is pretty zippy, because I have seen 2 megabytes per second download speed. I was wondering if there was a way, with the new fancy 2.4 Linux kernel, that I could shotgun at least two of the eight ethernet ports in my suite together, as to effectively double or quadruple my download speed. It doesnt have to be a Linux solution either its just all this talk about the fancy TCP/IP stack and firewalling has me thinking about things. The ethernet ports are configured by DHCP and are reasonably static... I got a new IP when I got back from winter break. so any help would be greatly appreciated." This question gets asked a lot. I wasn't quite sure if this was possible for the 2.2.x kernels, but I figure it might be time to ask this now that 2.4 has been released.

quakeaddict wrote to us with the news that Open Source Development Lab has gotten two (initial) new projects approved. The first is dedicated to increasing Linux TCP/IP concurrent support from 20,000 to more than 40,000 connections, while the second is focused on scaling Linux to support applications running on 16- and 64-way systems. The wire story is out now with more details.

bevo wrote to us with a shoot-out review of kernel 2.2 vs 2.4. It covers what's been updated, some benchmarks, and also has a good page on how to compile your own kernel, including modules recommendation and such.

Reader John Regehr contributed this review of O'Reilly's Understanding the Linux Kernel, which goes into greater depth than most people have ever seen of the kernel source itself. (I wonder what it costs to look at the Windows source.)

keskoy points out that the top blurb on the Slackware site reads: "The Slackware Linux Project announces the public availability of the -current tree for the Alpha! This is a port of the developmental tree of Slackware Linux to Alpha-based machines. It is currently available at our ftp site (ftp.slackware.com) under the /pub/slackware/alpha directory. It may also be coming to a mirror near you." Further down the Slackware front page, there's also the welcome news that both "[OpenSSL and] OpenSSH, the free encrypted remote shell program, are available in Slackware-current."

Yenya writes: "A few weeks ago, SuSE Czech created the Czech localized version of StarOffice. The most interesting fact about it is, that you can distribute the message catalogs and other parts of it freely, you can even use it freely, as long as you use it under SuSE Linux only. The localization itself, of course, works on other distros without problems. You just cannot use it legally."

sumdumgai noted that Compaq is now selling preconfigured Linux Clusters if you happen to have any weather patterns sitting around needing to be analyzed or something. But this is a pretty substantial bit of heft behind Linux as a valid Clustering platform, as well as an easier way to get one.

Jay writes: "There's a story on Linux 2.4's new Stateful firewalling. Rusty and friends have vastly improved Linux capabilities, allowing it to filter against many stealth scans and DoS attacks. Their code rewrite brings powerful "stateful" firewalling that was originally impossible under Linux. The muchly improved packet mangling allows not only better transparent proxies, but load-sharing clusters and stuff. Actually, the coolest thing about the new architecture is that it's designed so anybody can add filtering methods, for stuff like rate limiting and MAC address-based filtering."

The widely reknowned HeUnique points to this LinuxWorld article, writing: "LSB wants to ask the Linux community people -- well, the artists among them -- to create an LSB logo." Rather cool to see a contest one of the rules of which is "All submissions must be created using Linux and native Linux tools. Frankly, most of us don't have a clue about how to check for violations. Just do it. We trust you." You've got until March 1st to submit two copies of your award-worthy artwork. See that LinuxWorld site for the full schmear, though. The LSB has been quiet for a little while, hopefully this contest hints (like the article does) at some action in the near future.

grek writes: "Just noticed that TVT have announced that Pocketlinux (their combination of linux, kaffe, and xml) v1.0 has been released -- as yet no packages but you can get the source via CVS using the v1 (or branch-v1) tag. I've benn playing with an earlier CVS version and writing apps for the pl framework is real nice, and easy. Now I just need a ipaq!"

acoopersmith writes: "In the San Jose Mercury News coverage of the recent Consumer Electronics Show was this article about the new Nokia "Media Terminal" - a device that's designed as a cross between a TiVo and a WebTV, but which is really a Linux PC, including USB& FireWire ports for attaching additional storage, scanners, and printers, and other expansion capabilities. Has the hacker-friendly "appliance" finally arrived?"

Netsnipe writes "In a few days time, DebianPlanet will be covering Linux Conference Australia (LCA) being hosted at the University of New South Wales by Linux Australia from January 17-20 in Sydney. The timing of this year's LCA has been coincidentally close to the release of the 2.4 Linux kernel two weeks ago and it is the first major gathering of important Linux developers of the year. In the spirit of the Debian project, we at DebianPlanet want to make our interviewing process as open as the Debian distribution is with their own reporting and processes. To further this aim we are inviting everyone to submit their own questions to our interviewees and share a major opportunity to learn where the Linux community is heading towards. Our question submission system is now open to all at our website. "

Fluffy the Cat writes: "ReiserFS has appeared in the latest 2.4.1 prepatches on ftp.kernel.org. 2.4.1pre6 has a one-line error fixed in 2.4.1pre7, but it looks pretty certain that Linux will have a full jfs in 2.4.1." It will be interesting to see what's going to happen in the new development cycle, alright. The Kernel Developer Summit will have some interesting fruit, I'd wager.

VasLor asks: "I am considering going into the publishing business and would like to publish manuals, how-to computer books, documentation for specific applications or anything else related specifically to Linux or geekdom. I would like to set this up on a vanity press system and then sell the books directly off of my site without going through Amazon (They insist on a 55% discount on any book they sell). My question is this: Will the Linux/Computer Geek community be willing to pay something around $100 to have their book printed? The model would be something akin to iUniverse, though you would retain ALL rights and it would not be so expensive (iUniverse tends to nickle/dime you with extras, like using images inside the book and a custom book cover.) What would be the best terms for an author? Or is it just too easy to go to Xlibris or iUniverse? This will help me decide whether it's worth my effort."

Pete Blackley writes: "The best Linux distro out there has just released a new version; check out the README. And it comes with kernel... 2.2.18! Some things never change, and I am glad it works that way. Don't forget to check the autoslack package in the unsupported dir: it means the imminent death of all the "Slack lacks apt-get" arguments. PS: If you browse the ftp.slackware.com/pub tree, you'll see that Slack currently runs on vanilla x86, SGI VisualWorkstations and SunSparcs; I'm just waiting for the PowerPC port! PPS: All the crap about Slackware's death really is an exaggeration." That's what I like: a distro that isn't afraid to say that its death is an exaggeration. Update: 01/13 01:47 PM by michael : Slackware says - rudely - that 7.2 isn't released yet. This situation - confusion about what is released and what is not - is one that most software developers avoid by utilizing new-fangled conventions such as "beta".

A reader writes "This isn't a rumor anymore. A Linuxcare spokesperson confirmed that talks are underway." So, the earlier posting is correct - Turbolinux would be acquiring LinuxCare in a pretty standard stock for stock transfer.

Several people in the last 24 hours have submitted various shreds of evidence that a Letter of Intent has been signed to merge LinuxCare and TurboLinux. Please treat this purely as rumor since the most substantial piece of information we have is a brief email allegedly insiders. I've attached it if you read on. (And speculate on names: TurboCare?)

Dan Koppenheffer writes "Wow! Linux (and Java) underlies the Dodge Super8 concept cars's Infotronic information/entertainment system. " The car looks pretty terrible, but hey, embedded Linux! You'd have to be a lot more careful hacking on that system, then, say, your Tivo. (Segmentation Fault: Welcome to Idaho)

Zenker asks: "At NASA we are offering Linux as an alternative to Windows for anyone who wants it. I am working on a contract that puts a new computer on everyone's desktop and we will provide support and services for them. I need to assemble a distribution that will have all the necessary applications without flooding them with numerous option. I don't want to support every word processor and every spreadsheet out there. A good security policy is also necessary. What distribution would you use as a base for supporting a few hundred Linux desktops? Which applications would be standard for your office suite? What would your security policy be?"