nelsonrn writes "Two university groups are working on designs for tiny Linux boxen reminiscent of the Compaq Itsy: UNSW's Pocket Linux Embedded Box (PLEB), an Intel/ARM SA-1100 based box, and Ryerson's uClinux simm, a 1" tall Motorola/68K Dragonball-based Linux box on a simm. Both have serial ports and LCD interfaces, but the PLEB has IR and the uClinux simm has Ethernet. Both ports are booting on their respective development platforms. Coincidentally, both projects are currently laying out their boards in preparation for a run of prototypes." Update: 01/31 10:39 by S : In related news, Tarcus posted this ARM multiprocessing set of PCI cards manufactured by Chalice Technology which make for a cheap Beowulf cluster.

Dave Coombs writes "Montreal's Biodome has a webcam aimed at a bunch of penguins, 24 hours a day! " See! the penguins walk around! Behold! the excitement of them standing there.

David E. Smith writes "The five millionth ZDNet publication, Sm@rtReseller, has a neat Linux article. Basically, given the same hardware, they ran three different Linux distributions and Windows NT and benchmarked them. Guess who won. "

James Hall writes "Jon Taylor recently posted a message to the linux-ggi list indicating that he is going to be working for Creative Labs to build both Linux sound drivers for the Live cards as well as drivers (binary only) for all the graphics cards Creative makes (including cards based around 3DFX, nVidia, 3DLabs, and Rendition chipsets). The message has been circulating around (I found it on the opengl-gamedev-l mailing list) but the original can be found here. "

Rob Kaper asks this interesting question: "We all know LWN's 1998 timeline and some of us read Linus' timeline written in 1992 as well. But is there a more complete 1991-1999 timeline filling the gabs? I know it was once a work in progress for the Linux Promotion Project, but I've never seen something like it."

pepper20 asks: "Okay, now that the big boys in the database game have ported their software to Linux, what is a smart choice for a web site backend or small business? With all the choices out there (Sybase, Informix, Oracle, mSQL, mySql, etc... ), what would you all recommend, and why?"

Mech.Eng writes "SGI is officially supporting Linux on servers. This is their press release "

Black Art writes "There is an interview with Linus Torvalds on PC Week's web site. "

Myrdraal writes "As the subject says, 2.2.1 is released. It just has bugfixes for the showstoppers in 2.2.0. I'll have a changelist on Cutting Edge Kernels in about 10-15 minutes." Linus announced it as the "Brown Paper Bag" Release. Cute.

khizard writes "IEEE Software special issue about linux is out. It's very high level (no kernel intrinsic or any clue on linux 2.2 architecture :-) and try to place linux in the current computer industry. So sad you have to be IEEE member to have full access to the pdf file, but you can still read the abstracts. "

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us a link to an Interview With Alan Cox over at LWN that coincides with their one year anniversary. Congrats to the gang over there. The interview talks about 2.2, 2.4, Cuddly Penguins and more.

Kodi writes "Salon Magazine posted an article on the glory associated with contributing to the Linux kernel. " I remember the first time I had a patch accepted into an actual open source project- It's a good fealing. (Equally wierd is installing a distribution and seeing your apps in there, and installing a binary of your own software *grin*). You might enjoy this bit- the kernel definitely has its own super-prestige associated with it.

UU7 wrote in to say that SuSE 6 international is now out for those of us who haven't mastered the German language. I know CowboyNeal will be snagging it.

Panix writes "Good news today from HP and SGI. Both have announced that they plan to offer Linux as one of their "core" operating systems. HP even stated that it would develop a special version of Linux for Merced!" It's crazy- 2 companies once known for their OSs have chosen another.

Joseph Pranevich has written up an excellent piece on Linux 2.2 where he practically sums up the major features of the new kernel. This will be quite useful to any of you who are curious, but haven't been reading LinuxHQ every patch for the last year. Related, 2.2.0ac1 is now out.

Kristin DeAngelis sent me some interesting mail covering some of the hoop-la surronding LinuxWorldExpo. One of the big things to note is that pre-reg time has been extended to Feb. 1-head over to LinuxWorldExpo for more information. And if you're coming head over to booth 1143 to see our smiling mugs, and we'd like to thank Kit Cosper of Linux-HW for sending Rob and I out there-buy stuff and make him happy.

Ladies and Gentleman its that time again. Grab the shot glasses, or the champagne or a beer or a can of jolt and drink to Linux v2.2. Take that drink when you type 'make zImage' (or bzImage if you are so moved) and remember all the hackers that made it happen.

Dr Dobbs Journal analyses the impact that Windows Programmers could have on Linux arguing that they could boost Linux' usability drastically. So what do you think Windows programmers could do to/for Linux? Do you think the ensuing culture struggle will be positive or negative? Link from LWN.

Infoworld has a feel-good article about Linux' recent growth, and things we can expect from Linux-friendly industry giants in the future. Link from LWN.

Linux Weekly News is reporting more trojan horse activity, this time hitting util-linux. Looks like someone read that Bruce Perens Article. Assume that win.tue.nl is not safe for the moment.