CaNeS was the first of many to write in and tell us that Creative Labs now has a beta driver for the Sound Blaster Live! available on their ftp site. Alas, they are only binaries, but its a start.

Mike_Miller writes "In a recent interview with ESR in BusinessWeek, ESR calculates that, in 5 years, there will be 750 million Linux users (a conservative estimate). Wouldn't that be great!?! " I think one of my favorite parts is the title: "I want to live in a world where software doesn't stink." But this number should be fairly easy to hit-my cloning project has been doing quite well.

AshNazg writes "The Internet Operating System Counter project has published results for April 1999. This is very important because it's one of the few ways of reliably counting Linux hosts. Linux is show to be the leading OS in the survey with 31.3%. All Windows versions combined account only for 24.3% "

PowrSurge writes "CNN as a nice article on Linux's Desktop experience not being the Windows experience. It's worth reading. " It's Nick Petreley writing, which explains the fact that they actually have a clue as to what theya re talking about. But it's always a good thing to explain in a mainstream audience why networked computing is good, and why X is good.

MazMart was the first to report that a new stable kernel. Linus decided to name it 2.2.7- a surprise move that enraged and shocked, but since it was the next available digit we shouldn't be all that surprised. Now if I only I had a T1- hemos would kill me if I seized control of the ISDN for something so selfish as as kernel.

Lazzaro wrote in with the most exciting thing I've seen all day: A TechWeb article about VA (Research) buying Linux Hardware Solutions and mandrake's company, Enlightened Solutions. It goes on to say VA will regroup into three separate groups: an apparently RHAD-like development division, a web unit for Linux.com, and a systems group.

Quite a number of people wrote in to alert us to the Salon story about the Mindcraft survey. Andrew Leonard, does a great job of tracing the trail, including the information about how Mindcraft is asking for help from Linus, but is not apparently giving him the information that he needs. Ah, the joys of industry. Mindcraft has agred to re-do the tests, with Linus' help, as aforementioned, but is continuing to be...less then forthcoming about the tests. Meanwhile, Microsoft is trumpeting the original study.

Tomas wrote over to remind us about Dell's announcement that they will be doing factory-installation of RH 6.0 on select "Red-Hat" certified configurations of PowerEdge Severs, Precision Workstations and OptiPlex desktop machines. Dell has been flirting with a while-this looks like an engagement ring.

assimilated writes "In the April 26th issue of Computerworld, president and CEO of SCO made a few well-put comments about the Linux "religion". I think he was right on. A legitimate vendor speaks out... Read the article to get fussy. " Hehe-I had no idea I was working for the Catholic Church. Does that mean I can't get married after all?

Dan Yocum (Hi Dan!) writes "Well, since Comdex is over and there isn't much threat of me getting whacked by their mob, I guess I can point people to a report of the "Linus at Fermilab" event, written up by Steven Adlerif they're interested. A pretty complete transcript of the event is included. The event was pretty technical and the report was written by a nuclear physicist, but it's still a pretty good read. " Update: 04/26 11:14 by H :Steve sent an update to let people take a look at his Comdex 99 update.

The Atlanta Linux Showcase folks have put out their annual CFP (call for papers). They are looking for papers 1500-5000 words, with the corresponding talk being about an hour long. This year's Showcase is being held in conjunction with a USENIX tutorial session from October 12th to the 16th. I know I'll be there.

Jan Kautz wrote in to tell us that Red Hat 6.0 has begun appearing on the mirrors, so all you mad hatters can cruise on it, avoid the traffic, and download the latest.

Richard Finney sent us a Lengthy article on Red Hat. It's called 'Inside Red hat's Bunker'. There's a trip to their offices, articles about growth and interviews with Bob Young. Pretty impressive.

Anonymous Bastard writes "There's an article in today's Chicago Tribune suggesting that the effort being put into the Linux operating system would be better spent improving Microsoft's software. The author says that Linux is trying to reinvent the wheel. Linux isn't a waste of time, is it? " Oh my.

Marc Merlin writes "After Red Hat has been called the next microsoft by several, and after some people saying that Red Hat has not reason to follow the LSB (Linux Standards Base), this Linuxworld article should hopefully give a better view of the situation, and it also gives a nice history of the LSB "

fruviad sent us a link to a story over at news.com talking about Red Hat's New COO that will be starting Monday, and talks about unconfirmed IPO rumors for what they call the "Darling of the Linux world".

Scott writes "Just got done reading this article over at C|Net, which claims to answer the 10 most frequently ansked Linux questions. Noticed lots of links to various HOWTO's, and a few to the LDP. Overall, it seems someone actually made an effort with this one. "

theGEEK writes "Techweb has "Your Complete Guide to Linux Distributions" - it's a fairly large article aimed at corporate types for integrating Linux into the company. " Covers all the biggies and some of the minors more geared towards the suits.

Martin Bialasinski wrote in to send us a press release from Corel which says that future their Linux upcoming Distribution will be based on Debian (Yay!) and KDE.

Richard Finney wrote in to send us a Yahoo/ZD article entitled Linux hamstrung by lack of standards? It mostly revolves around the Comdex stuff from monday, but it has a few choice quotes, especially Larry Augustin predicting that Linux will supplant NT in the server market this year, comments about how Linux is growing in the corporate world, and a little bit about the standards thing. Its odd that they chose that title when the artice really doesn't spend much time on the subject.