The GCC Steering Committee has issued a statement on the use of snapshots in distributions. This statement is clearly in response to Red Hat's use of gcc-2.96 in its Red Hat 7 release. They didn't like it very much, and there are compatibility problems. Worth a read. Credits for this news goes to Linux Weekly News.

startingInUnix asks: "I went to my college career fair today looking for a summer internships. Alot of the companies there (and on the web) that have internships are mostly Microsoft camps. I'm having trouble finding any place that offers UNIX positions. Does anyone out there have a business that looks for UNIX interns?"

cnkeller writes with this snippet from an article in InfoWorld: "BERLIN -- THE much-anticipated 2.4 version of the Linux kernel will take at least another two months to complete, Linus Torvalds, creator of the open-source operating system, said here Friday. 'It's been a slower process than many people would like,' he said, remarking that developers are no longer adding new features, only fixing bugs. 'With luck, we'll see it in early December, and with not so good luck, I still hope that we can do it this side of the year.'"

solusthewizard writes: "SuSE, probably Europe's top Linux distro, is available for download as a 'live evaluation' iso image for version 7.0. Not quite sure what that means as opposed to the shrinkwrapped version as I haven't finished downloading it yet! Check out here for the iso (or better still, look for a local mirror). Can't be any worse than Red Hat 7.0, my laptop is still recovering." Read about the things that make 7.0 beam with pride here, if you'd like. I will make a sizeable contribution to The Human Fund in the name of everyone who establishes or points to a mirror :)

Euro was the first to point out: "I happened to browse the Opera Web site and discovered this juicy nugget: Opera 4.0b1 for Linux is available for download. Seems like the Linux browser front is getting better all the time." Well, sure. But it's been a long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.

ArsonSmith writes: "It seems that at primates.helixcode.com they have been able to get Debian GNU/Linux up and running on the Compaq iPaq PocketPC. This seems to be the first main distribution to be running on a handheld." The Debian Way may sometimes seem ponderous and conservative, but obviously that's not always the case. How'd you like to be able to apt-get new apps on your PDA? This is a detailed description which should interest anyone lucky enough to have one of these cuties.

carrier lost asks: "I have to connect to my company's VPN using L2TP. I am masquerading my company-provided Windows boxes behind Linux 2.2.16. I have successfully configured the combination to provide PPTP, but now I have to figure out how to enable L2TP. Has anyone done this? Can you point me to a step-by-step tutorial?"

thrillbert writes: "According to this article, Red Hat is claiming to be the starter of the open-source movement." The article talks about several companies in the area (include the one that owns this site). I don't have the heart to comment on this. I can't say I'm surprised, but I'd tend to think a lot of others might deserve more credit. RMS (sure he'd hate the term Open Source, but he deserves credit). ESR will just take the credit.(Update:Its a joke! I was kidding! Stop flaming!) But Linus isn't even mentioned. I mean, Michael Tiemann and Red Hat deserve lots of credit for helping make Linux mainstream, but starting it?

TBHiX writes "Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history." Red Hat's point-oh releases have been historically been pretty bad over the years, so I the only thing that surprises me is that people didn't realize it before they downloaded it. The point release has typically been fine, but the bugzilla report lists over a thousand bugs: 200 appearing this week. Take this as a warning folks: didn't 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 teach you anything? *grin* But a DB with 2500 bugs in it doesn't necessarily mean a buggy distribution either.

Mike Dubreuil writes: "When I went to download Red Hat Linux 7.0 for Sparc I was disappointed to learn RH is dropping support for the sparc processor line. They are claiming that there is a low demand for sparc versions This may be a major blow to the Linux community because Red Hat is the top vendor for commercial copies of Linux. Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand." Update: 10/02 09:43 PM by CT : Bernhard Rosenkraenz wrote in to say "It is true that we will probably not release Red Hat Linux 7.0 for sparc. However, this does NOT mean there won't be a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2 for sparc. If, at some time, we decide to discontinue commercial sparc support, we will turn Red Hat Linux for sparc into a community effort."

A curious Anonymous Coward wrote in with this important issue: "RedHat Linux 7.0 does not include libc5 compatibility libraries. Trying to run an old binary (RH4.2 or earlier) generates a "no such file or directory" error. To what extent does Red Hat commit to binary backward compatibility? Is it possible to get libc5-based programs, such as MATLAB, working under RH 7 without recompiling?"

a2800276 asks: "The story that XFS has gone beta raised some questions in my mind. There are now four journaling filesystems available under various OSS licenses and being actively developed for Linux, there being (in estimated order of maturity): SuSE/Namesys's reiserfs, SGI's XFS, IBM's JFS and Tweedie/Redhat's ext3fs. Avoiding the obvious question of why can't the effort going into four different projects be channeled into one, I think a discussion of the particular merits of the different fs's would be interesting."

AcaBen writes: "MacSlash's Les Harris did an in depth interview with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC about their upcoming release and enhancements. It also includes some news of his recovery from the bad auto accident (covered by Slashdot) he was involved in, and provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X."

zoltanse asks: "As I am changing jobs, I have to return my company notebook, so it is time again to think about new hardware. Given the recent hype around OS X I am considering buying an iBook to give it a try. More important of course is my day-to-day productivity, so being able to run Linux is important, too. Does anyone have experience with this kind of setup? What are the pitfalls of running MacOS 9, OS X and Linux side by side on well equipped hardware? Is it possible at all, practical, or painful? What about the supported add-on hardware, like wireless LAN?"

phinance asks: "Are there any (preferably free) tools for publishing (free) eBooks (Glassbook, Rocket Book, et. al.) for Linux? There's an Open eBook specification, but the popular readers don't support it. Do I need to build a Windows box to make an eBook?"

Boone^ writes: "ZDNet is running an article on the future of Linux when used on Big Iron. Just a bit ago we read about running Linux on a large scale Alpha box, and SGI wants NUMA support in Linux so it can support their hardware configuration. The article talks about how memory algorithms used with 256GB machines would hamper performance on 386s with 8MB ram. So far Linus et al have been rejecting kernel patches that provide solutions for Big Iron scaling problems. How soon before a Big Iron company forks the kernel?"

This Curious Anonymous Coward asks: "There are many great apps running under others-buggy-OS to rip DVDs and to automatically convert the resulting MPEG to a less space-hungry resolution/bandwidth. These apps basically read the VOBs from the DVD, decrypt them, split audio and video and resample the resulting MPEG to a SVCD compliant resolution. Under Linux I found everything I need to do the same, except for the resampling step. Of course, I don't want to rip DVD I don't own, I just want to be able to burn SVCD to see my favourite movies on my laptop (with no DVD reader), and to delete the HD partition dedicated to the other-buggy-OS."

weeble writes "Red Hat 7 is now out. The updates to the Red Hat web site have been made; however the ftp site has not yet been updated." Remember to use mirrors folks. Its gonna be a bit before they all catch up so be patient.

mhoskins asks: "We all know about the problems with NFS security: export/home to a bunch of workstations and anyone with a laptop can switch off a workstation (after looking up its IP), assume the IP with the laptop, mount /home, create user accounts and then su to them." Are there ways to secure NFS systems from this kind of 'exploit'?

Elvis Maximus writes: "Wired News is running an interesting piece on the inroads Linux is making in Africa. The article focuses on the advantages of the 'free beer' nature of Linux, which is good, but neglects the fact that open source empowers people in developing countries to solve their own specific problems. Worth a look." Ironically, if commerical software vendors are vigilant, the advantages of Free alternatives will only be more evident. But licensing isn't as pressing an issue, maybe, when getting access at all isn't easy for most Africans.