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)

Anonymous Coward writes "The ChangeLog as well as a readme for Slackware 7 are out and ready. Proceed with caution, ftp.cdrom.com's server has a new limit on the number of simultaneous user's (5000)... " It's out apparently - I cannot get on the servers though. Have fun!

dfay writes "An interesting article on ZDNet about who makes up the Open Source Movement. Of course, you have to accept the premise that all OSS programmers are tracked in the LSM. Still, I think the overall tone of the piece suggests that OSS developers can be taken at least as seriously as those in the 'industry'." Actually, the article mentions that lots of developers' work, including kernel hacks, don't show up in Linux Software Maps [LSMs]. Still good stuff.

joe_s writes "CNET recently posted and update to their shootout between Red Hat Linux and OpenLinux, which has some pretty interesting points of view...and could be pretty useful for a newbie. "

Roberth Edberg writes "The Swedish birthday congratulationlist for Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) is increasing every minute. Will he have an world record in individual birthday congratulations? Even the Swedish Linux World site, made news about it. Why not follow the example and make lists for your own country?" Linus Torvalds is turning 30 on 28 December 1999, so start sending those greetings! Update by RM: I can be an idiot sometimes! I originally thought Linus's b-day was 10/28 & wished a "belated" congrats. 28 Oct. is um, *Bill Gates's* b-day. Thanks to all who spotted the error.

pants95 writes "It looks like Larry and the folks at Oracle are having another go at the world of Network Computers for $199 a pop. This time, they will run Linux and come with Navigator. Is it just me, or does the term `disposable' computer not sit right with you? I still get plenty of use out of a few old 486s!"

relaye writes "The performance clustering software and services announced today by Linux vendor TurboLinux Inc. and a cabal of partners including Unix vendor SCO Inc. takes the Linux market in an unusual and somewhat risky direction, analysts are saying. " The article cites risks of forking the kernel - not an incredibly probable risk, but a thought-provoking scenario. The danger comes if Linus decides not to incorporates TurboLinux's changes into the kernel.

_blueboy asks: "I work in IT at a medium-sized Life Sciences company, and we are in the process of developing an intranet. As one of the primary developers, I have been involved in evaluating both development and server software. We are currently using an all Microsoft setup but it has proven to be very finicky, unreliable, and unpredictable. Our director is currently evaluating Domino R5 but several of us would like to move to Linux and Apache. Our director likes the idea that Notes & Domino form a "complete package". I know that Lotus is planning to ship Notes & Domino for Linux soon. Does anyone have any experience with the Lotus software and how well would it likely run on Linux? Are there any similar packages for *nix/apache or any companies that might provide a similar custom built solution? It is essential that the software be able to provide us with easy and reliable document sharing/collaboration tools for a Windows network. "

So, little_bird sent in some information about the upcoming LinuxWorldExpo in February, talking about the program but also a "Linux Showdown". It's a feature panel consisting of "leading commercial Linux providers" with questions being field from a panel of experts, the audience and one another about Linux. My question - what would you want to ask these folks? What's on your mind?

Kazparr writes "This source code was posted earlier today at Livid. Derek Fawcus confirms that this is his decryption routine for the DVD css encoding scheme. Hopefully, LinuxDVD is one step closer. " So, now we've got some source - but how many of the keys do it actually have in there?

mulan writes "The E-Business and Internet Technology Network has acquired linuxcentral.com. This comes shortly after the recent aquisition of LinuxToday.com in a move to further Linux support for the Internet community. The article appears in today's Business Wire or you can read the official press release here. "

ColourCure asks: "Maybe this has already been asked (definitely not an original thought), but how much of an impact do you think Linux would have made as a non-open source operating system? There's definitely more to open sourcing than being able to peek at the code. Would the open source movement even be that big without Linux backing it up? " Ah, I expect this to generate some controversy, but my personal feeling is that the time for Open Source has come. Linux just accelerated the time table.