Andreas Krennmair asks: "I'm planning to build my new Linux system from scratch, similar to Linux From Scratch. I'm currently collecting all source packages, and I wonder how common it still is to use a self-built Linux system, although graphical (or pseudo-graphical, curses-based) installation programs with automatic hardware component detection and great software package management systems are used in almost every modern Linux distribution. And are there any people left who still use Jurix or Yggdrasil?"

Deven Phillips, CISSP asks: "Recently, the company that I work for bought some VA Linux servers for our network and Web site. I was the one who recommended VA, due to the idea that they would give good technical support. When we purchased the servers, we were a bit dismayed by the fact that VA would not install Mandrake on our servers. Never to be daunted, we ordered the servers, and installed Mandrake ourselves. One of the servers (our file server to be) wouldn't load, wouldn't boot, and wouldn't even give us a good error indication. This is exactly why we chose VA, customer support. We returned the server and requested an immediate replacement. We were told 'No problem'. After the 7th day, still not being built. At two and a half weeks we got our server. The server came back to us missing parts, and still suffering from the same problem we were having before!"

alee writes "Here's what everyone's been waiting to see: screenshots of the Compaq iPAQ (PocketPC) running Linux. No, you're not going to see it running a plain-jane shell -- you're going to actually see it running X! This project is a lot more mature than I expected. Here is Photos of iPAQ being opened, and running X and Screen captures of the iPAQ running X." Ummmm.... wow.

Eugene Cabanopscotch writes: "I run a Web-hosting company that is seriously looking at managed co-location in the U.S. as a means to get content to overseas clients without the delays of using NZ's congested international links. I clicked through from the popular Slashdot banner ad Rackspace.com and also checked out digitalNATION and saw that they offer managed RedHat boxen. Now, not wanting to start any sort of holy flame war or anything (moderators, start your engines) I thought "that's great and all, but I want a Debian GNU/Linux box" so I quickly fired off a couple of e-mails to the listed e-mail addresses asking whether they would be willing to install and manage a Debian box. I got back flat refusals to manage Debian machines. Does anyone know of a managed co-location provider that is willing to work with Debian?" I find it odd that places will restrict co-locations to specific distributions of Linux. It's not that hard to manage a Red Hat and a Debian box, is it?

spizkapa writes: "IDC has predicted that Linux will grow steadily along with Microsoft in the near future in the home PC (client) market, as well as including numbers that prove Linux's acceptance rate is fantastic. " The numbers look nice, especially in the server area, but it's too bad that things weren't broken down more. I'm also wondering where *BSD fits in -- I assume under UNIX, but it's unfortunate that they weren't broken out separately.

b0nk3d asks: "Hi, I work at a computer lab and would like to set up a remote login cluster. I have 4 Pentium Pro and I'm running Storm Linux on them. Do you think it'd be efficient to do a load balancing schema or a process sharing cluster? Also are there any recommended distributed file systems that would work well with small 2-6 gig drives that these machines have so that I could create a virtual volume?"

Gareth writes "CNET has more information on IBM's wrist watch running Linux, including an interview with the vice president of research." A lot meatier than we had yesterday. It looks legit, but it's still looks pretty impractical (despite scoring many points on the old cool-o-meter).

Phexro writes: "According to this story at newsalert, Debian has been awarded the $25,000 IDG/Linus Torvalds Community Award. It will be presented during the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo on Tuesday, Aug. 15. Go Debian!" Congratulations to the Debian crew for this. Non-Debian users benefit from the pressure that Debian puts on other distros -- just by existing -- to mind their P's and Q's when it comes to Free software, and for proving that elegant upgrade systems don't have to be glitzy or labyrinthine.

Yet another of the numerous Anonymous Coward asks: "A group of us are hoping to convince a big UK based defence organisation to break away from Microsoft's stranglehold on the workplace and to try out Linux. I am preparing a Q&A style document to be e-mailed to the company which will answer people's worries. What I am trying to do is convince people, either at work or at home that there is a cheaper, more stable alternative to M$. So, I am writing for a general audience." A document describing the advantages of Linux to corporations and small companies can't be a bad thing. I should know: the Ask Slashdot bin is full of them!

Henrik pointed us to the Linux in a Box project, which is a bitchin' little project to create an inexpensive little Linux box: it boots a 2.0.36 kernel from a ramdisk, and it's pingable and Telenetable, as well as being usable as a Web server. Only for the brave of heart and willing to hack.

stuyman asks: "I'm amazed that I haven't been able to find a good source of information on this sort of subject, but it seems that all anyone ever says is that it needs to be determined based on "certain factors" on an individual basis. No one ever says how to evaluate those factors. I need to set up a whole bunch of new Linux servers. How big should the partitions be? Anyone have any formulas or ideas? I'm open to superstitions, too (heads, root is 300, tails it's 60). Some quick details about the setup: We've got a 20.5 gig HD and we want to have separate partitions for /, /var, /usr, /usr/local (maybe), /home, /opt, and /tmp, as well as a sufficient amount of swap. The servers will run RedHat 6.2 with Apache stronghold, and will also need X installed. We're currently leaning towards having huge /usr and /usr/local, with about 2 gigs for var. Also, how much /var would one suggest for a syslogd server that'd be serving logs for 50+ boxen? (running mostly RH or SunOS) Awaiting this thread eagerly..."

Kris Warkentin writes: "This question is not entirely intended to start a debate about the pros and cons of microkernels vs. monolithic ones. What I would really like to know, however, is how _feasible_ it would be to convert the Linux kernel to a microkernel. I was looking at how the QNX kernel offers only core services like threading, IPC, process creation, memory management, initial interrupt handling, etc. Everything else functions as a process within its own memory space. Linux can be configured so that it is much like this with other things (filesystems, etc.) compiled as modules. The key difference is that all the modules are operating in kernel space. So, the question is, how difficult do you think it would be to devise a communication protocol to let modules function outside of kernel space and merely talk to the kernel? What would be the cost and benefits? Would it be possible to have both types in the same source tree? (say, as a compile option)"

suwalski writes: "I have a question for all of the mklinux Gods out there. At work I'm forced to use HP-UX, which is all nice and good, but I prefer Linux. I went looking around and found that mklinux is supposed to run on HPPA (which is the type of CPU my HP-712/100 has). I haven't been able to find any useful information on how to go about this, and I'd be very happy to hear comments and tips from anyone who uses Linux on HP's regularly."

dhammabum asks: "I've just installed a machine with a copy of Red Hat 6.2. I thought I would use the squid RPM that comes with the distribution to save time, etc. All went well until it tried to set up delay pools as this configure option had not been set in the RPM. So I then had to stuff around for quite some time working out how the RPM differed from the distribution. It even turned out the install options they used were broken -- they had to link a directory to get it to work! This begs the question -- why not have the configure options included with the RPM, say in /usr/doc, so that when one has to change something you simply add or subtract whatever you need to change, rebuild the package and reinstall?" I've always wondered why source-handling package managers like dpkg ^[?] and RPM ^[?] haven't implemented such schemes, allowing users to pass flags to configure and preserving them for the next time the package needs to be built. Does anyone have any ideas as to how such a system would best be created? Are there package managers that already do such things?

Logik writes: "It appears a bunch of guys over at http://www.geocities.com/tivohack/ have hacked the tivo to add a second hard drive. It appears they run Linux on a 50mhz PowerPC chip. They've even open sourced the kernel." Tons of great ways to void your warranty, and information about the guts. Also talks about how to add disk space. (Huzzah!) I'm also hearing rumors of MP3 playing on the boxes as well.

Inforum writes: "From the Ericsson Web site: 'Ericsson and Red Hat announced a strategic initiative to develop a new range of consumer products and services for home communications. They will develop consumer products combining existing industry standards, such as Java, and the latest open source technologies, such as Embedded Red Hat Linux. The products will also support existing and evolving standards such as broadband networking and Bluetooth ...' Then I wonder: what will happen to Symbian?"

MaxVlast asks: "I was browsing around Helix Code's site looking at their interpretation of GNOME when I found the program that they claim is 'the next step forward in GNOME applications,' Evolution. I was startled and upset--this program is, from what I can tell, a direct transfer of MS Outlook to Linux. It's bothered me for some time that the two major file and desktop managers for Linux are all clamoring to look more like Windows than their competitors, and in the scuffle, are missing some very effective paradigms (like Miller columns). Do people think it is good that Linux seems to be shooting for the 'looks like Windows, but without all the features' market? The popularly available apps seem to say so." Please pause for a moment before saying "But you've done this already!". Before the question was "Do new GUIs exist?", the answer to that was a resounding yes, but now the question is "Why do our applications still look the same?", even across platform boundaries and for two different applications?

DickBreath writes: "It looks like SuSE 7.0 is released. See http://linuxpr.com/releases/2272.html. Now I wonder how soon it will be on my local bookstore's shelf." cloudmaster points to this description -- in German, there for the babelfishing adventurer -- of the new release. In addition to the ever-evolving SuSE logo, you'll find there that SuSE is branching ala Red Hat and others into Personal and Professional versions; the Personal comes with "three easy to understand handbooks" intended to guide new users, one of which is all about system configuration.

From July 19th through 22nd, the Ottawa Linux Symposium 2000 provided hardcore technical seminars, conferences and demonstrations to a crowd of over five hundred. Like last year, there were no booth babes, no tradeshow floor with T-shirt giveaways and hype. OLS is all about the tech, and made no apologies.

Thorkild writes: "The subject says it all. They just opened up the directories on the mirror sites." If you can't find it without me telling you where it is, then you shouldn't be running a Beta Red Hat 7.0 ;)