Michael McLagan wrote in to tell us that Linux.org is experiencing DNS craziness thanks to everyone's favorite service, InterNIC. Things apparently are fixed now, and things will be back to normal after the servers propogate tonight.

It has been a long wait, but it's out there now: RedHat Linux 5.1 for SUN Sparc. It's available on the Red Hat FTP site and its mirrors. This is the first glibc based RedHat distribution for Sparc. Enjoy.

Joey Hess writes "Since Debian's "hamm" distribution will become "2.0 Beta" on 00:00 UTC June 24th, there will of course be an IRC party on irc.debian.org, channel #debian, at that time -- its 8 p.m EDT Tuesday."

Nate wrote in to send us This ZD Article where you can read Jesse Berst's little spiel on Linux. Nothing that any reader here doesn't know, but it might be worth a gander.

This link has been coming in all day, so I figured I just had no choice but to share it. The SVLUG will be celebrating the Win98 launch in their Own Special Way. Specifically, by building a rocket using Win98 CDs as fins, and launching it. There be strange folks out there ladies gentleman. Wish I could make it. Oh, and the web page clearly states that they will not be detonating the rocket during flight, or launching it sideways. Too bad.

Nick Moffitt writes "Taos Mountain and The Silicon Valley Linux User Group will be hosting a talk on The Future of Linux on July 14th. Panelists include: Linus Torvalds, Robert Hart, Larry Augustin, and Jeremy Allison. " Why is it that the cool stuff always happens in CA? Oh, wait. Nevermind. I remember.

Robert Levin writes "We're coordinating a list of Beowulf mirrors. We could use more mirror sites outside the United States, and we need any Beowulf utilities available, as well as tar files and Debian packages for everything (what we have so far is the basic kernel source RPM). Help us keep Beowulf alive by demonstrating that the Source Is Out There. *grin* Please mail us with the URL of your mirror, so we can add you to the list! Thanks to everyone for their support. "

Troy Baer writes "There's a news article on Dr. Dobbs Tech NetCast that sheds new light on the Beowulf debacle. It's at This article seems to be unique of all the ones I've seen in that the author appears to have interviewed Don Becker about it. As many on Slashdot have feared, it looks like the export restrictions on supercomputers may be to blame for the Beowulf software being taken down. ". They linked us back... through TCWWW^TM

Josh Lucas sent us an article called Red Hat software takes on the big guys. It's a pretty entertaining piece actually... fairly generalized (and rightfully so considering where it comes from), but it definately is a nice strong example of how far Linux has come in the last year.

Several people sent me a press release about the Avalon super computer. $150,000 worth of off the shelf parts, and it scored #315 on the top 500 Supercomputers list. Alpha chips and a Linux OS managed 19.2 billion floating point ops/sec. Very cool. Can santa fit these things down my chimney?

Mark McCoy was the first to notice a press release over at Red Hat discussing new binary only servers. Basically, binary servers will be made available for chip sets that require an NDA or for chipsets that won't release specs. This seems like a kludge to a bigger problem, but it all is an excellent start to get high end hardware supported quicker.

Don Marti writes "LINC, the International Linux Conference and Exposition to be held in Silicon Valley, California next January, has issued a call for papers. We are inviting Linux developers, administrators, and others to present papers, panel discussions, and tutorials. "

Curtis sent us a link to an MSNBC Article on Linux. Seriously. And it's even positive! The article goes as far as saying that Linux 5.1 is ready for Prime Time. Related: Does it disturb anyone else that we use television terminology to describe software? Maybe it's just me.

Stefan van der Eijk wrote in to inform the galaxy that 2.1.106 is now available for one and all to download, compile, boot, and probably repeat *grin*.

Nick Moffitt writes "The Consortium of All Bay Area Linux (there is no CABAL) would like all Bay Area types who wish there were a West Coast Linux convention to know that the Linux INternational Convention will be happening January 6-10, 1999. "

Kenneth Oswalt writes "Performance Computing (aka the magazine once known as "Unix review") has an interesting review of Caldera Openlinux on their website and in the july issue of their mag. In it they describe the relative ease of installation, and the wide variety of applications, as well as comparing Redhat's documentation to that of Caldera. (spoiler, redhat wins.) "

Apparently June is Officialy the Lets-Talk-About-Linux month in the mainstream press, cuz we've got a steady stream of them. Christopher Blizzard sent us an article on NASA, Linux and Multiprocessing and one called Is Linux the Business? from ZDUK's Linux Focus Week. We also have a Freeware Roundup over at InfoWorld. Aaron Stone sent us another InfoWorld article, this one examines Linux and Business and comes up positive.

CatatoniC Dismay wrote in to tell us that Slackware 3.5.0 has actually now come out of beta and has been officially released. You masochists already know where to get your Slackware fix *grin*.

This is fairly sizable. Michael McLagan, better known to most readers as the brave soul responsible for Linux.org has written a response to the criticism he has recieved lately about the web site. I feel Linux.org is an important resource and Michael is working hard to do a good job. I think it's important that we work together to make sure that Linux.org is all it should be. I guess the first step is to hit the link below and read what he has to say, and talk about it.

What I have here is a few examples on how best to help evangelize Linux. First off is the now fairly well known Unreal petition has apparently been noticed, as The Official Site has mentioned it (although I haven't been able to connect to the server so I can't confirm it). Thanks to Reset for letting us know. Shalon Wood plans to do something similiar for Might and Magic VI, email him if you're interested. Finally Steven Tieu wrote in to say that he has a petition online you can sign if you are interested in a port of a port of SoftWindows. Sign these things only if you're willing to put your money behind it- this is commercial software, but I'm sure more ports is something most of us want to see (except the truly hardcore free folks)