Jim Gleason writes "Does the idea of hiking the castle-laden hills, caves and medieval hamlets of the German countryside appeal to you? Does the thought of excellent beer preserve your good mood for days? Do you think that Linux rules? Well, Electric Lichen L.L.C. is organizing a week-long trip called Linuxbierwanderung, "The Linux Beer Hike." Scheduled for August 1999, Linux users will hike the hills of northern Bavaria to learn Linux on their laptop computers and visit the local brewpubs. Experts in Linux and the Bavarian outdoors will teach classes to the hikers during the day and enjoy the local pub scene in the evening. " People can subscribe to the mailing list via the Web Page which is also archived. Linux, Beer, and Nature. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

P.J. Hinton writes "Performance Computing has posted their first installment of a regular column on Linux called Penguin's Brew. It's being written by the venerable Jon maddog Hall. The first column is just the basics about what Linux is. It's a bookmarker for those of you who need to point someone to an article about what Linux is all about. "

Clive Turvey wrote in to point out a new News.com article touting Linux, and its strengths, specifically as it relates to Microsoft. Sort of good, here's why it matters article.

EngrBohn writes "A number of the HOWTOs at the Linux Documentation Project have been updated. Linux Today has compiled a table of which ones have changed. "

Lazy Bones asks "Can anyone recommend a good 'off the shelf' Problem reporting for Linux. I am working in a multiply supplier development environment and we already use Linux/appache for interproject information. It would be nice to have a web based tool to document problems between Stakeholders. The current system is based on Access and is unusable. Does anyone have experience of using the PHP based tools such as 'Keystones'?"

Judah writes "The December issue of the Linux Gazette is out." There's an intro to Emacs, as well as an intro to RAID if you're interested. Plus Miguel on GNOME and a review of the Happy Hacking keyboard.

Charles Bronson writes "If you notice, at the bottom of this article, Robert Young mentions that Red Hat is currently in talks with IBM (and hence, he cannot talk about it any further). This could be big news for Linux if any sort of deal goes through. Remember what launched Microsoft.."

bjacques writes "Adaptec has decided to provide development support to Red Hat for Ultra2 drivers. This is pretty cool, even more support for Linux by a large industry leader!"

Greg Herlein writes "Linux Telephony is a new website that hopes to be a focus for linux-related t elephony development. There's not much there yet, but with exposure hopefully it can become a prime spot to collate all the diverse telephony projects that work with linux. " Definitely a field where Linux tends to fall behind its competition.

ZDNET published an article regarding a Worm program who appears to attack IMAP servers with ISP's and others who run Redhat 5.0. Needless to say: People who use Redhat 5.0 - please install patch or upgrade (patch available at redhat FTP site)

Well, a friendly bird over at IDG has dropped me a line saying that a LinuxWorld press release has come. It's so new, it's not even up on the web site-click below for details. Exhibitors are signing up, and things are starting to take a more concrete shape-looking good. Rob and I will definitely be there-maybe more. Click below to read more-and to find out who the keynote speakers are.

Andrew Bunner writes "ABCNews.com reports that the Mexican government chose Red Hat Linux to power their elementary and middle school computers. The full story and an interesting rumor on Linux in France are available here (scroll down to the 2nd story...) " I think we mentioned this once before, but check out that picture of a the fedora clad Red Hat top dogs. Positive press in the mainstream. Always good.

Jason Haas writes "We have the first real beta version of LinuxPPC 5.0 running! It's running glibc2 and fvwm -- and looks identical to RedHat 5.x. I posted the update about it on www.linuxppc.org from the PowerBook G3 that it was developed on, so I know basic services are working. We'll post the beta for everyone to break/fix/contribute in a day or so. (Figure December 3 would be a realistic date to have it up with a working installer.) To read about the R5 beta's first boot, go to www.linuxppc.org/r5.html. We'll put up a large note there when R5b1 is available online. "

Robert Wikander was the first to write in and tell us that S.u.S.E. is taking orders for 6.0 and will begin shipping on December 15. S.u.S.E. 6.0 will upgrade to glibc 2.0.7, and feature egcs 1.1.1. You can read more over at Linux Today. This combined with the possible 2.2 kernel release is going to make for some happy holidays.

Dandy writes "In this article Robin Miller, one of those rare non-clueless journalists, lets everyone know that it *is* possible to have a Linux computer that is perfect for the average home user who only wants something that is easy to use. Surprise, everyone! It's not really hard after all. "

Amlan Saha wrote in to send us an announcement about a Singapore Linux Conference in (surprise) Singapore. For some reason, I don't think I'll be able to make this one *grin*. Its March 5 & 6 for those of you out there. You can hit the link below to read the release.

xer.xes was the first to write in and announce that yet another in the popular series of Linux Devel Kernels has been released for mass consumption. It can be snagged from The usual Places.

An Anonymous Coward writes "According to an interview published in SAPMAG, a linux version of SAP R/3 exists. It has been developed in the spare time of some of the SAP R/3 developers. SAP is providing R/3 for Linux to interested clients without support. Check babelfish for a translation. " No support, but this is still cool. One more step towards total world domination.

jebba wrote in to tell us about a new Linux distro: Yellow Dog Linux. There will be two versions: a server edition and a personal edition, a trend which seems to becoming pretty popular. Both will be based on Red Hat/Linux PPC. If the web site is any indication, it will be very nice indeed. Update: Dan Burcaw wrote in to say they've updated their website since yesterday's post. They now have more info about the distro and pricing info, too.

David Sifry writes "LinuxCare is proud to announce a free bug tracking service for the open source developer community. We'll set up a jitterbug-based tracking system that will help keep track of your project. It's all web-based and easy to use. If you would like to take advantage of this, drop us a line at caretracker@linuxcare.com and we'll set it up for you! More details are on the LinuxCare website. " Is anyone doing something similiar with CVS yet?