An anonymous reader sent us a link to a startling article where you can read the horrific account of Linux Users Rioting Outside Microsoft's Silicon Valley Headquarters. The article shows graphic pictures of Linux Users being dragged off by the police, as well as burning of MSN CDs. I thought such violence was limited to Mighigan State basketball fans.

K.G. writes "A Russian computer related news agency Computerra said today that Linus Torvalds will move to Moscow, quitting his job in Transmeta to develop a Linux compatible OS intended to run on the E2K processor from Elbrus International. In a russian-language article named "Closer to Dad" Computerra said that the factors that convinced Linus to move to Russia were "more interesting and promising job", closeness to his father who works as a Moscow correspondent for Finnish radio & TV, and a more familiar climate, similar to Linus's homeland Finland (they don't get a lot of snow in LA, do they... ). They also quoted the future boss of Linus, professor Boris Babayan: "The great professional qualities of Torvalds will help create a dependable OS for the E2K processor, fully compatible with Linux, in a tight deadline". "

Jamie writes "ESR tries to clear things up, and suggests a few things for the hacker culture's future. Read it from the mouth of the man. " This puts things more into perspective-and it's good to see things have simmered down a little bit.

NakNomik writes "IDC says "Other Operating Environments Will Have Trouble Keeping up with Linux's Growth" in its first ever forecast release about Linux. Read the release document over here. " Well, it's nice to see more people paying attention. And IDC gets the attention of the PHBs-for better or for worse.

Helmholtz writes "I just got done reading a very interesting article about Debian and Clueless Users that appeared on the Debian Weekly News site. I think this article would be a very good thing for users of all distributions to read, as it touches upon what might become a very real problem. Now that the word "Linux" has been splashed around by such 'heavyweights' as CNN and NPR, everyone who want to be seen as a 'cool computer guy' is trying to get Linux up. This of course is done without any heed to the absolute requirement that some Documentation-reading. And then these same people get angry when they try to install Linux and it doesn't 'just run'. I'm not try to harass anyone new to Linux, but I really think that it isn't emphasized enough that Linux is great because it requires some learning to occur. This is a concept that the Debian article holds at its core, I believe. "

Vic writes "SAP announced an equity investment of an undisclosed amount by the SAP Venture Fund in Red Hat Software, adding more support to the Linux bandwagon and the open source movement. " So SAP is big in Germany? Why would Red Hat be interested in Germany? Can you spell S.u.S.E?

Insomniacs of the world unite: Linus has bestowed kernel 2.2.5 upon us. Looks as though some sparc64 fixes were applied, some IPv4 and IPv6 updates were included. This should prevent lock-ups on sparc64 machines, hopefully. Don't know about ega fbcon, though. Can't wait for 2.2.5ac1, though...PLEASE USE A MIRROR. Sorry to shout, but it's very important that the files can be mirrored, and that the hardcore kernel hackers can get their patches.

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?