It's all fun and games out here at ALS, hopefully I can sit down now and actually get the summary out before either netscape crashes again, or something else occurs that forces me to leave the safe haven that is the Slash/Themes/Meat booth. Hit the link and read the deal...

James Renken writes "After a long time without compiling, rebooting, and repeating, version 2.1.126 of the Linux kernel has been released! You can get it from the usual places. "

We're finally settling it at ALS. Kinda crazy, but finally got ye old email up and running again. I'll post a lively entertaining full blown summary of the fun and games later today, but in the meantime, Mandrake and Raster are running a a webcam over at their booth (way off at the other end of the building).

Found on Linux Today: A British company will soon be launching an MP3 player running on a 220 MHz StrongARM and Linux. Because it is technically a PC, it may be able to avoid a lawsuit with the RIAA (unlike Diamond Multimedia). It's the size of your car radio, has a 2.1Gb hard disk (35 hours of music), and should allow you to login to it!

HP is thinking of incorporating Linux into its product plans, but it does not quite know how yet: low end unix boxes? embedded OS? Obviously they are worried about cannibalizing sales of HP-UX. If HP did provide Linux in this manner, it would provide also provide support. This follows up on Unix Review's recent article.

Hemos and I are seconds away from leaving for ALS. Everyone be good while we're gone! We'll hopefully be back online yet tonight and be able to post live reports from the show. Looking forward to seeing a lot of you at the t.o/fm//. booth. (Thanks again to Cyclic Software and VA Research for getting all of us down there and setting us up)

Barry de la Rosa writes "There's a story on TechWeb about the new Linux kernel, due "by the end of the year". Interesting to see a mainstream pub'n like this hyping an OS release - doing what MS pays millions for in PR... "

Al writes "TIME has an article about Linus and Linux. I guess this means we're mainstream now! " I figure we've seen it all now. Well, there is still Better Homes & Gardens, Rolling Stone and Cosmo...

Linux-Mandrake mailed us to let us know about some interesting happenings as of late. Their site now features a documentation area as well as an updated FAQ. Hit the link below to read more.

Nick Hall writes in with a question on a really nifty idea: "I'm setting up a small (4-8 station) LAN for a hip, swingin' local bar that wants to be even more hip and swingin' by putting internet terminals in half the tables. Putting aside the wisdom or hip-ness factor of this endeavor, I've almost sold him on the idea of running Linux (rather than Win9x) on these terminals and the server, and I need any information on "kiosk" type apps - is there a Linux window manager designed to limit users to a few key apps in this fashion? Applications designed around this? People who have done this before? Any help would be appreciated!"

BeanDip asks "Does anyone know of any resources for adding better support for newer printers under linux? I own an HP Deskjet 672c and under linux, with the support for the hp up to the 600 I get bad quality color prints 300x300 dpi when under M$ with the HP specific drivers I get good quality prints." I get a lot of questions like these about getting Y printer to work under Linux, so what can you do to get a new printer...any new printer to work with it?

Glee writes "ZDnet has written a 3 page article about Microsoft vs. the DOJ. It is an interesting commentary, and the SBC's story on the second page is quite amusing. "

Con Zymaris wrote in to tell us that APC (Australian Personal Computer Magazine) has Given some awards to a few familiar faces: Productivity Sofware of 1998 to The Gimp and their Just Plain Cool Award 1998 to Red Hat Linux 5.1

Recently many people have been asking for a port of Coldfusion to Linux. Allaire has just announced it will do just that. Thanks Jeremy! There is no definite release date yet since Coldfusion relies on third party products which will have to be ported or replaced. Note that this port came about because of user demand. You have a voice: use it!

Freud writes "There's a nice article on linuxtoday about the upcoming 2.2 kernel. It talks about all the new things featured in the kernel (and also about some old stuff ;-))."

Ross Thompson has this question for you all: "I'm a consultant in the DFW, Texas area and have been tasked with cutting IT costs for a large (600+ users) Fortune 1000 company. Currently the company running NT/Novell networks and WinFrame. DHCP is being utilized for WinFrame. All clients are running NT Workstation 4.0. At this point, management isn't too happy with Microsoft, since they spend millions of dollars each year in clients licenses and support costs. I would (maybe) like to suggest going with Linux clients to save these costs." Sound interesting? Well, click below!

SUidRoot writes "I found this Web page while wasting time at work. Linux Cartoons, has a few linux realted cartoons. They are kinda funny. " You might have seen some them before, but then again, you might not have. I want t-shirts of the 2nd one badly.

Nick Petreley's LinuxWorld has finally hit the net! It looks like a mag with a clue, and even includes an article by CmdrTaco, though the touted headline is an interview with some guy named Linus ;) Go forth and Slashdot this site!

Linux' support of EDA is improving as Avant! Corp. prepares to port its Polaris Verilog simulator and Design Acceleration Inc.'s recent port of SignalScan (a debugging environment), Verilog simulation is marching toward the forefront of the Linux EDA movement. Other vendors, such as Fintronic USA are reporting a sudden upsurge in demand for Linux versions of their products. Other vendors such as Novas Software are rethinking their plans given Engineers' preference for Linux. One of the main interests appears to be simulation farms on PCs running Linux which fits better than NT into Unix networks. Indeed even Wellspring whose "decision to drop Linux support" was big news last week revealed that this decision was taken over 2 years ago.

boinger wrote in to send us a link to a yahoo bit saying that ALS has broken the record for the largest number of exhibitors at a Linux conference. I bet this trend continues for every con for that comes along for awhile. I'll be there. I guess I'm one of the exhibitors (VA Research and Cyclic are our official sponsors, so go buy their stuff :) in a booth with t.o and freshmeat so see ya there. No, I won't be naked, but I might go topless for a bit if anyone wants to give me a laptop with a fully functional x key *grin*