Jesse Montrose asks: "I'd like to find out what others are doing about the urge to carry Linux around. I currenly live in Linux on a Thinkpad 560, but it's something of a commitment to bring along with me. Linux on a Psion series5 is exciting, and I'll keep an eye on their progress, a 340MB CFFlash would hold a nice text-only distribution. The various mini-laptops are also interesting, if weak on battery life (ie the Libretto, IBM's PC110, and the sexy new VAIO PCG-C1 which is due in the US around March 15). There are a lot of active projects, but is anyone using a handheld Linux solution right now that they recommend?" nthomas isn't so picky. All he wants is a "handheld...in the $500-$1300 range". What say you all?

Hmmm...this seems to be printer-driver-question day. Vesuvian Doppleganger asks: "Where can I find Linux drivers for a Canon BJC-255SP colour bubble jet printer? The canon sites don't offer any Linux/UNIX support and an exhaustive search of the net has turned up nothing.... "

Jason Osborne asks: "There is one thing though Windows seems to excel at and that's printing. I have an HP Deskjet 660Cse and I can't get it to print correctly. I have searched the Internet endlessly and have tried many filters and daemons including both the original BSD print daemon and the somewhat newer LPRng daemon. I have seen many filters designed for HP Deskjet printers, it seems none will work for me. Does anyone have any information or filters on/for printing in Linux with HP Deskjets that may help? Are there any future development plans by HP or the Linux Development Team for any additional and more up to date information and drivers for the HP Deskjet 660Cse serious and other such 'Made for Windows' type printers? "

warpeightbot writes "CNN.com is carrying an IDG article expressing concern that Red Hat may not support the Linux Standards Base for various reasons. Sounds like FUD to me, but if it's on CNN, it has to be dealt with one way or the other... " The article itself is like the 90th Red Hat conspiracy piece I've seen in the mainstream now. Its crossed the line into amusing now for me anyway.

alkali writes "The weekend edition of the Microsoft-owned, Michael-Kinsley-edited Slate has two articles on Linux, one written by Slate's chief program manager (i.e., a techie) and the other written by a staff writer without any particular technical expertise. No surprises, but the Redmond connection will probably interest at least the conspiracy-minded. "

GroundBounce writes "osOpinion has posted an article which basically refutes all of the FUD against Linux but then contends that the FUD itself may be enough to keep it from succeeding. I don't agree, but it's interesting reading anyway. "

Non-Newtonian Fluid writes "There's an article over at ZDNN that claims RMS is "immature politically" and "insists on a reward for [himself]" for claiming Linux should be called GNU/Linux. Furthermore, in a lengthy talkback article, Slashdot and the Linux community as a whole are accused of the same arrogance. Perhaps this merits a discussion of the way our community deals with outsiders.... " Now, before everyone turns on the flamethrowers, let's think about the matter-is this true? The problem with most of these situations is that they do have some inherent truth to them. The question, of course, is how much?

A verbose member of Clan Anonymous Coward asks this difficult question: "My university has a problem. We have lots of autonomous departments managing their own computing infrastructure, lots of autonomous users managing their own computers and a very large network population (in excess of 20k people). Of the systems which are not managed by "professionals" about 10% are linux. How should the university tackle the problem of people keeping their boxes up-to-date whenever it has little control on the box owners? Using tools to identify problems (e.g. nmap, satan, etc) is the easy part. How do we then get hundreds of different computer owners to update their systems when they didn't know what they were doing in the first place? How to we do this in a climate where the resources are not available to employ herds of new computer support staff to assist these people?"

slim sent us linkage to a detailed guide to installing Linux on an iMac. " There are comments about LinuxPPC R4 and R5, but its come a long way. If those iMacs were a few hundred bucks cheaper I still think they'd be fun thinnish linux workstations. And the pretty colors.

Todd Bradshaw wrote in with an excerpt from Linus' chapter in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". Linus' number one rule for keeping the kernel healthy is to avoid new system interfaces.

Phaid writes "As if you weren't already being flooded about this, linux 2.2.4 is out. Here's the official Announcement from The Man Himself. There's a small problem with BSD Process Accounting that can be easily fixed with the patch. " You know the routine-go get'em.

Langston01 writes "According to LinuxToday, a pre-beta of Slackware 4.0 is out. " I remember Slackware. Wow, its been years since I used it. I still need a Debian 2.1 CD. Or a T1.

Dirk Elmendorf asks: "A company I work with is looking at using Oracle as the database backend for a number of large scale intranet applications. They would prefer to go with Oracle under Solaris. I voted in favor of Oracle under Linux. They think that it isn't stable. Can anyone out there provide me proof or testimonials that will help me choose Linux?" How does the Linux version compare with the NT and Solaris versions of Oracle?

Patrick Dunn writes "On ZDNET's Smart Reseller they have a story about Red Hat maybe being a mini-Microsoft by it's business practices." I'd guess that the 2 most common conspiracy theories that pop into my mail box are 1. MS-Linux and 2. Red Hat becoming the next MS. What do you think?

An anonymous reader sent us linkage to a ZDNet UK Article written by Martin Butler of the The Butler Group. The article doesn't say much new, it really just says linux is just the "New Thing" (Just like windows was so many years ago) and that it will factionalize when money becomes involved. And its already started to happen. My take? Bring it on! As long as a base system of kernel, libs, and utilities is compatible accross distributions, divide all you want. Debian for Hackers. Red Hat for Suits. Slackware for loons. And the 28 other assorted distributions for whoever wants them. Its about options, and as long as we adhere to a minimal set of requirements, everyone will be happy. Am I crazy?

Gracchus writes "SuSE has announced they will release the Euro edition of ver. 6.1, with the expected inclusion of the Linux kernel 2.2.3, XFree86 3.3.3.1, KDE 1.1 and GNOME 1.0, on April 12th, with the North American version scheduled for May release. This page is in German, but you non-Deutschlanders can get yer translations at Babelfish . Watch "permissions" get translated to "Permian eating ions"! Can I get fries with that? "

Well, starting this morning, DELL are starting to sell Linux pre-installed on selected workstations, dell asks for additional 99$ for the installation. Full report from News.com is here. Speaking of pre-installing, IBM just told Info-world reporters that they will keep selling Linux servers, but they will "wait-and-see" about selling Workstation pre-installed with Linux. Am I the only one who thinks that IBM need to learn about selling from Dell?

Stephen Williams writes "LinuxToday reports that Bowerbird Computing have released a new open source license called the New Copyleft License. Seems to be aimed at people who want to sell their free software, rather than charge for support." At the rate these licenses are proliferating, soon there will be one license for every app. Does anyone besides me think this is getting crazy?

Jim Hill wrote to us about the Puffin Group & Hewlett-Packard, a popular story today being on both MSNBC and in the public section of the Wall Street Journal. It's an interesting business case story for Linux and major corporations-send this out to your bosses to show them it can be done. And if anyone has a HP icon, send it my way. Update: 03/18 02:36 by J : For interested parties, the Puffin Group website.

An anonymous reader was the first to let us know that ftp.redhat.com has something new- Starbuck, aka Red Hat 5.9, aka Pre 6.0. Hopefully this thing will be on the mirrors.