vorsprung directed my attention span of a gnat to Linux Device Drivers Demystified, an interesting tutorial giving an overview of Linux device drivers (No kidding). As well, they've got devtective, a search facility to check any (Surprise!) devices you want to check to see if they are supported currently. Lastly, for those of you who really want to get into it, read the review of Linux Device Drivers.

ColPanek writes "Surprise: The newest planned Linux-related IPO is not VA Linux Systems or LinuxCare, but a company called LinuxOne, which apparently has been shipping its own distro since way back in September 1999 ... This summary of their preliminary prospectus says LinuxOne didn't disclose any underwriters for the proposed offering."

Booker writes "Red Hat, Inc. has released their 2nd quarter financial results. You can see the press release here. Operating at a loss, but then we all knew that would happen for a while. Revenues up 95% over last year. Kinda ironic that an Open Source company has to join The Man on Wall Street before their balance sheet becomes publicly available. :)

Jeff Heinen asks: "I was wondering if there exists any documentation (books, websites, etc.) covering the practical matters of organizing and managing an open source project. I'm looking for details about things like communication, organizational structure, versioning and release management, etc. I've looked around and so far haven't found anything really useful. "

asdren writes "WinLinux 2000 has entered the final beta stage. This sounds like an interesting option for current Windows users who are interested in taking the Linux plunge but don't have the time/patience/guts to partition drives and configure drivers. " has anyone tried this yet? I'd be curious as to how the installation/running of the system is.

Cyberllama writes "John C. Dvorak's latest commentary is up at ZDnet. " I've been seeing this story came across quite a bit today. Dvorak offers an insightful commentary on Linux and "The Big Time" (He uses IRC servers as an example), although one that I don't necessarily agree with. In a switch from the normal take, he sees strong growth on the desktop, while predicting Linux won't grow in the workhorse server area much. Can anyone confirm or deny the allegation the IRC servers and Linux mentioned in the piece? Update: 09/21 06:29 by H :Click below - proof is below that Linux does at least some of the machines.

Sand_Man wrote to us with the latest public relations stunt with crack-a-machine trials. This is a month long trial, pitting Linux vs. NT boxes against each other. Details are in the story, but does this whole thing strike everyone else as tired PR stunts now?

Byte.com is featuring a column by Jon Udell regarding Linux and databases. Using comments from users, other tech industry people and personal industry, Udell takes a nice walk-through the closed-source databases, as well as documentation issues.

MoonCat asks: "Are there any Open Sourced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) packages available which are comparable to their commercial counterparts in terms of recognition performance? "

Ledge Kindred asks: "I am looking for a distributed filesystem to run on my Linux boxes at home. I have several and most of the "extra" space on each one is "going to waste" - I'd like to be able to combine it all into a single network-able filesystem. How?" Click below for more.

peterjm asks: "Well, some one here at work has decided that the answer to all of our problems would be the acquisition of a bar-coder/scanner for labling and keeping track of all of our pc's in the office. A web hunt reveiled all sorts of the little suckers, but what I was wondering is, are there any bar-scanners that are designed (or have software designed) to run under Liunx?" Linux needs support for some of these if it wants to be considered as a possible tool in the retail market.

brazilian brain writes "Did you know that users don't like the inclusion of payware bundled with our everyday's "official" Linux distributions? And that they need an User's Guide more than an Install Guide? Linux in Brazil ran a poll for 30 days, asking what users expected from the next editions of their preferred distributions, and discovered these facts - and many more." (Poll results have been translated to English; the rest of the site is in Portugese)

Zerbey writes "According to Linux Today The Royal Family's web site is now running Red Hat as apposed to Solaris. See for yourself on Netcraft. Congratulations, Ma'am :) "

Tuesd@y asks: "I have been trying to find a way to get Linux to support my sound card, a Voyetra Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla, for quit some time. Is there any one out there who can offer some advice or even better a solution?" It's not listed in the Sound-HOWTO and appears to be a fairly new card. My guess is that support may be unavailable for this card at this time, and if this is true, are there any folks looking in to it?

Several readers have written in with the news that, yes, Linux-Mandrake 6.1 (Helios) is out. The ISOs, and the whole bit are availible from their site as well as mirrors around the Web.

Skogshuggarn writes "The initial public release of Linux - version 0.01 - occurred on the 17th September 1991. The world's best operating system is therefore 8 years old this Friday. Happy Birthday " Seems like only yesterday that our little kernel was in potty training, and now here it is all grown up and ready for world domination.

Carlie Fairchild writes "Linux Journal opened its polls for its fifth annual Readers' Choice Awards. The polls will be open until October 15, 1999. It's your opportunity to vote for your favorite Linux software, hardware and companies." Seems like there are quite a number of options in each category this year

aftersci writes "Partially privatized French TelCo FranceTelecom contracted with free-software consultants Alcove to revamp their infrastructure. Debian GNU/Linux, Apache, PostrgreSQL, Perl, and PHP will be used, though they apparently won't be throwing out all their Windows clients. Sorry, no France-Telecom link yet. " And note that the article is in *gasp* French. So you might want to use Babelfish for an awkward and humorous translation.

jregel writes "Linux.com has an interview with Stefan Steefeld and Graydon Hoare, two of the Berlin core developers. Interesting stuff that should dispel a few rumours and inaccuracies surrounding this project. "

An Anonymous Coward writes "Apparently, the recent claim for the trademark "Linux" in Germany will be "properly" handed. According to this article (in German), Linus Torvalds holds the rights for Linux in Germany and the EU for quite some time. The German Linux user group LIVE has already unchained their lawyers to take care of the recent attempt to register Linux as trademark again. " Try Babelfishing the article.