A number of people have written in to say that the Debian Potato freeze has been rescheduled for a month or two, as the boot floppy code needs some serious work. Click below to read the letter.

wendyW writes "LinuxPR has the press release from Namesys, announcing the stable release of the journaling version of ReiserFS. According to the press release, journaling wound up making it even faster than it already was. "

booboo writes " Stuck with a firewall on NT? InformationWeek has the news that Checkpoint has announced plans to port their Firewall-1 and VPN-1 code to Linux (2.2 kernel) "

mwknight asks: "The school district where I work has servers that were patched together with different versions of Novell and NT over the past few years. Management is ready to start over and re-design our network from scratch using Novell 5 servers and Win95/98 clients. I would rather see us go with Linux for the servers, but my biggest opposition is Novell's Z.E.N. Works. Is there a Linux program that behaves similar to ZEN? Mainly something that can remote update software to Win95 boxes? "

Charlie Zender asks: "The Earth System Science department at the University of California at Irvine is proposing to buy a 5--50 Tb DLT tape archive system to manage satellite and model-generated data. This will allow us to integrate the data we need for studies of climate and climate change. We all use Linux, and are wondering if there is a Linux-based solution? Vendors like StorageTek charge ~$250k for a solution based on their proprietary hardware and software. It seems like a Linux consulting company could beat this price and still make a nice profit. The software must make the tape library accessible as "near-line" storage and make transferring the tape to the disk transparent to the user. "

rockville asks: "I'm starting a help desk for a small company that uses a lot of Linux workstations and servers. I'm looking for some software that we can use to enter calls, track bugs, etc. All of the help desk packages I've looked at so far can handle Linux clients, but none run on a Linux server. Does anyone know of a vendor that does this? (The type of database doesn't matter: proprietary, MySQL, whatever) " I don't know of such animals, however would something like this be all that difficult to code?

paRcat asks: "My company is using a proprietary system for letting our customers order online. It takes the order, and as soon as they click submit, sends it on to our main system via a serial connection. Both systems are running on NT, and they die constantly. I've been pushing to get Linux in here, and I think replacing the online ordering server is the best way to start. Our catalog has around 25,000 items in it. It's held in an Access database right now... around 14 Megs. I suppose it could be converted, but every time a pricing update comes out, it's distributed in mdb format. What tools exist for Linux that can do what I need? It just needs to allow access to the database, take the order, and send it down the serial line. I was contemplating setting up mod_perl and just writing a bunch of code, but I'm still a bit new to PERL, and I'm not even sure if that's the best choice. " Apache, Perl/mod_perl and MySQL/Msql/PostgreSQL all sound perfect for this application, but the issue of getting the Access information (both the existing data and the future updates) might be a problem. Any ideas?

Paddy wrote to us about today's Upside article on embedded Linux, and what it can/does mean for Linux. Talks a bit about Lineo, and the possibility of kernel forking - good summary of the landscape.

Woodie asks: "Hi,I'm wondering, after reading Dvorak's article on crackers , whether good intrustion detection software exists for Linux. He specifically mentions a product called "BlackICE" - which I checked out the details of - that sounds very interesting. What Linux alternatives are there? I'm not necessarily expecting an easy to use GUI; some kind background daemon that generates a usable log and that can be preconfigured to respond to certain "attacks" would be great. " How reliable are the results from various Intrusion Detection packages? Are these things worthwhile? Or would do-it-yourself monitors be a better choice?

MorganGoeller asks: "I have an old Pentium 200 w/128 MB of RAM that just got a new 6.4 GB disk, but doesn't have anything on it. I would like to set the new machine with RH 6.1 for either: a standalone file/network backup/pop/nntp/web server (mostly for internal use); a firewall/proxy server; or both. However, I am an intermediate Linux user and am not sure where to begin." Anyone with somehelpful hints or starting tips? Click below for the details.

Aiken wrote in looking for comments on an idea he's had. To sum it up, what do you all think about this: "The development of a central GPL'd component repository would be an asset to the open-source community". My question: Do you all think this exists (couldn't Freshmeat be used for this purpose) or is this a niche that is still open? There is MUCH more to this, so if you are interested, please click below.

An anonymous reader wrote in to alert us to that fact that Debian is scheduled to Freeze this weekend. Soon there shall be spuds for everyone. This of course means that I will continue to recklessly apt-get upgrade on my laptop with reckless disregard for the safety of anyone within a 20 yard radius of my sofa.

We got a press release in the middle of the night touting Linux by Libranet, which is "based on the world acclaimed Linux release by Debian." They go on to say "Up to now the Debian distribution was a viable choice mostly for software developers and technical people. The Libranet release now brings Debian to the desktop, making it available to users with little or no Linux experience." Wouldn't it be just as easy to get an experienced friend help you install "pure" Debian and go from there? This robably won't be the last one of these we see, though.

Andrew G. Feinberg noted that Linux Today has a bit about LinuxOne releasing something. They are no longer vaporware: 'Linux Lite' is a distribution, and its selling point is that it coexists with windows and doesn't require any partitioning. Definitely nice for the novice, but there sure is a lot of hype in that press release for what seems to amount to using umsdos and a bootloader that loads the kernel from under windows?

SuSE has announced that its next release, 6.3, will be available on DVD as well as CD. The release date is supposedly December. I hope this practce catches on. Debian 2.1 was 2 discs for just binaries, and it's much larger now. I have a 6 disc set of SuSE 6.2. The packaging is both neat and clumsy. Too bad the only DVD player I own is connected to my stereo....

Gino writes "Model Technology Inc. will be making their two most powerful tools ModelSim(TM) EE and SE available for the Linux platform in VHDL, Verilog and mixed HDL configurations. Demand for Linux support has been tremendous, apparently due to customer migration to simulator farm environments - multiple node machines configured with Linux as simulation farms proofed to be quite effective. It is good news to see the big HDL boys paying attention to Linux at last. "

cshirky writes "There's an article in AsiaBizTech about Japanese PC manufacturers bundling Linux. The article concludes that 'Because Japan's main vendors are starting to offer Linux products and services, the Linux OS is likely to become a viable alternative for corporate customers.'" They're talking about big companies, too, like Compaq, IBM Japan, Hitachi, and Fujitsu. Sweet!

hpa writes "The Linux Kernel Archives, kernel.org, has gotten a major facelift! After suffering with insufficient bandwidth for far too long, we are now operating with a dedicated 100 Mbit/s connection from Globix. VA Linux gave us a really nice new box to run it on, too; so it is really a wonderful setup we have gotten. Not only should this resolve the bandwidth shortage, but hopefully we'll be adding new services soon. We have already added anonymous rsync services for the benefit of unofficial mirror sites. I'd appreciate hearing requests for new services on kernel.org, just email me. "

shawnb writes "Wired has an aticle describing Red Hat's new Non-Profit Open Source group. The group's aim is to 'sponsor, support, promote, and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public.' "

Our interview guest this week is Mick Morgan, the man responsible for choosing Linux to run The British Monarchy's Web Site, the huge open.gov.uk Web site, and more than 80 other official U.K. sites. (continued below)