Nathan Machula writes "Linux is one of Time magazine's top 10 technology stories of 1998. There's also a menacing picture of Linus! "

Hamlet Batista writes "Last time checked at 1:30 on 21 December 1998, the beta version of RedHat's Linux Intel distribution included KDE-1.1pre packages. This is very good news for Red Hat Linux users. Welcome, Red Hat. "

qbzzt writes "For all you budding Linux Kernel Module programmers out there - I just wrote a new book for the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) to help you get started. For more information, go to the doc project or an LDP mirror near you. - Ori "

L-ViS wrote in to say that SuSE 6.0 has entered beta testing and can be downloaded over at the SuSE FTP Site .

MonkeyPaw writes "Not really related to computers, code or technology, but it has to do with penguins. If you want to spend you money on a penguin yet don't have the space to keep one at your house, the Oregon Zoo has the answer. "The Oregon Zoo Foundation is raising money to rebuild a wall that protects the largest breeding colony of Humboldt penguins in the world." The Oregon Zoo also has a "zoo parent" sponsorship to help pay for the costs of keeping their animals. (penguins included)" MonkeyPaw's website seems to be rather amusing. Do we have a Segfault competitor?

Vryl sent this latest Salon article our way. It's a well-written story about Google.com a new search engine, brought to us by a couple of Stanford grad students (sound familar?). However, the cool part-besides being run off of a Linux box-is how well it searches, and the relevancy of the returned pages. Check it out.

jjohn asks: "It seems simple enough. You want a new linux toy. You find the source and download it. You do a 'configure', you type 'make' and then ... poof. You're missing a library file. Is there a good text on upgraded system libraries? Is there one or two places, besides old sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux, that are "main" repositories for Linux libs? I prefere to compile source rather than get binaries. For the record, I'm looking to upgrade the libs on my old Slack 3.0 box...Thanks"

Oracle_Monkey asks: "I finally got my first LINUX box up and running with RedHat 5.1, and downloaded ORACLE8. Added path to $ORACLE_HOME/bin and still the apps - sqlplus, svrmgrl..etc won't execute. "shared libraries not found". Anybody elese got this up and running? I have visions of blowing my boss out of the water with a web - enabled (Apache ) datamart . I haven't been this excited about a new product ...well, ever , really.... Anyt thoughts , Ladies & gents? "

python_geek writes "Red Hat has announced a new training/certification program for those who want to be certified Linux Geeks. It looks like their certification will actually mean something as it includes a lab exam were you actually have to show you know how to solve problems, unlike the Microsoft tests which anyone who crams hard enough can pass. It looks really cool, now if I could just get my company to pay for the training and test..."

Roger Davenport writes "Got this in my e-mail today from graham. It seems that AlphaLinux is getting help in the Graphics Department. XI Graphics is releasing its AcceleratedX v4.1.2 for Linux on Alpha. This product will also dramatically increase the number of boards supported for Linux running on Alphas as it currently supports over 250 graphics boards from a wide variety of vendors. " It's now posted on Xi Graphic's website, with full benchmarks. It costs $149.

Apparently Emmanuel Marty of the GGI-project wrote in to tell us that the GGI web site was wiped by the original host provider for no known reason. Opie first alerted us to the story since Emmanuel's post got lost. Could anyone help host the site since the GGI-project is in the pre-beta phase and will soon be making public releases?

CNN has an article reporting that 58 +/- 10 % of IT executives would switch OS given the feeling that Microsoft is not delivering on promises. The poll was conducted on only 150 people reducing its certainty.

Wingz and Wingz-Professional are the latest new tools to be brought to Linux. They appear to be spreadsheet applications with scripting capabilities which allow one to make HyperSheet applications which run on Linux, Windows and MacOS. It will be available at no cost on Linux, and other apps are to be ported. Link courtesy of Linux Today.

Matthew Patton asks "RH5.2 is supposed to be 2.0.36 but it isn't quite there. Notably the install tool doesn't offer the AMI Megaraid as a supported device though the kernel release notes say it's supported. I have several boxes with AMI's as their only controller. Thus I can't install Linux on any of them. I have an old RH5.1 (i386) kicking around, is it possible to build the .img floppies off of this, assuming I managed to grab latest codebases for the kernel and tools?"

Cassius wrote in to send us a link to News.com which has a front page story that talks about the recent Amazing Linux Growth. They say 212% in 1998. Shouldn't be a surprise to anyone in the know.

Several people have written in to tell us that ZD is running a poll about the Top News Maker of 1998. I find it terribly amusing that Jenni of Cam fame is winning. Sure, I dig the Jennicam, but Linus is on the list as well, and for some reason I think Linus was a bit more of a news maker in the last 12 months. So go vote if you like.

H. Peter Anvin writes "I would like to set up an "official mirror" system for kernel.org. "Official" means a set of mirrors that are willing to:

1. Have a contact person on file;
2. Allow public access;
3. Update their mirror via rsync or FTP at least daily (privileged access will be provided to participating hosts);
4. Mirror all of /pub/linux and /pub/software (either .gz or .bz2 files may be excluded at your option);
5. Participate in a uniform URL (via roundrobin CNAME DNS) scheme. The exact spec for the uniform URL is not set in stone at this point, but probably will be in the next few days.

If you are interested in participating, please subscribe to the mirrors@linux.kernel.org mailing list; the goal is to have this system operational by the time the 2.2 kernel hits the wire. "

Chris Allwein writes "SoftwareAG has released EntireX DCOM 4.1.2 for Linux! Better yet, it's free. For those who don't know, EntireX DCOM is a set of programs that allows you to run DCOM objects on non-microsoft OS's. This includes such things as ActiveX! It looks like we just blew one more chunk out from under the proprietary foundation that holds Microsoft up. " Is there source? How is the performance of this thing? I'm still skeptical.

Dawn Keyhotie writes "How do you know when Linux has become part of the mainstream? When a major software package is released and one of its 'cons' is that it doesn't support Linux (yet). Check out this review of Java2 (a.k.a. JDK 1.2) on the world-renowned ZDNet. Of course, it would be too much to expect that Linux would be mentioned in the actual body of the article. But there it is in the sidebar, big as life. "

I've gotten a response from IDG, the Linuxworldexpo people. This response comes from the outcry raised today. Click below to read the response. Update: 12/14 05:55 by CT : Alan Cox also sent in his response which is also attached to the end of this story.