Zippy writes "A couple weeks back on REX Rumor Central Linux developers were putting the pressure on Philippe Kahn, who created REX PDA. Have you ever seen a REX? It's a PDA on a thin PCMCIA card, with a full screen! No input method, so you have to synch with a PC, but until now it didn't support Linux. Well, the pressure has paid off! Philippe wrote a message offering a preview SDK to developers who want to make Linux synchronization or other tools for REX. Most excellent indeed. "

Thomas Muldowney writes "The KDE folks have released static KOffice binaries for download. They are unsupported but worth a look. Details on how to obtain and install KOffice binaries are available here "

Politas writes "Australian Personal Computer Magazine has run a comparison of linux distribs as one of their reviews this month. " They rank Red Hat as Editors Choice (no surprise) and call Debian the "Most Promising". Lots of stuff over there, but the best part is a clear discussion fo what a distribution is. This link is one for the FAQ files.

Software Magazine has a very positive editorial about Linux and devotes its cover article to Linux. It's interesting to see how weak the counter arguments to use NT or a proprietary Unix appear. It's also good to see the snotty-14-year-old myth being dispelled. I expect the Linux community has a higher ratio of PhD's/highly educated people per head of population than Microsoft does itself... Thanks to Linux Weekly News for the second reference.

Brad Glonka of LinuxCentral wrote in to plug the new version of those crazy LCD Display things that we plugged awhile back. They're 2 or 4 row LCD display panels, and the excellent LCDProc program allows you to display load and other useful tidbits. Ideal for boxes without monitors, or just goofing with. The new version comes with all the necessary parts to mount it in a 5.25" drive bay without any hassle.

rick-o writes "The current issue of Software Magazine arrived to me at work today with a cover story on Linux. Featuring incredibly bad photos of Linus and Eric (and a photo of RMS that seems to be missing from the online version), the article doesn't really say much that's new, but it's still good press. "

Hetz Ben Amo sent this link my way and daywalker also wrote "It appears that Dan Shaffer of "Project Heresy" fame will be covering be covering Linux news once a week in their CNET Radio webcast... Check out the good stuff "We'll be covering Linux news & views every Thursday in CNET Radio's 1:00 p.m. PT webcast, starting September 3. You can also catch each episode on-demand from this page." "

Joe Hamelin writes "S.u.S.E. 5.3 is now out. Get it at suse.org, the Seattle Mirror. Lots of new X config stuff and gimp 1.0 in the release. S.u.S.E. has been so easy to install and maintain that I hesitate to switch. It's reliable too.. all slashdot gifs are served from a S.u.S.E. box. " Last time I tried S.u.S.E, the install seemed a little wierd, but I think I might try it again soon. Anyway, S.u.S.E's official web site is here, and if any of the S.u.S.E folks are reading this, what the heck is zuse.suse.de?

Sean writes "Computerworld has an article about the introduction of freeware (Linux and Apache) to enterprise computing. " As usual it shows that people who don't know rely on reputation rather than trying to educate themselves. On the other hand Linux is gaining a good reputation...

The prolific Hetz Ben Hamo sent in the attached press release, and plea for writings to Insignia. As we have heard some bigger companies have begun a flirtation with the wonderful world of Linux. But Insignia as a company, and as others have shown, they need to know that there is a paying market there. So, if you are interested in SoftWindows for Linux, read below to find out how to help.

Colin Walsh writes "The Babylon Project aims to become a standard development platform for computer games (and possibly other software in the future) allowing the developer to make one executable that can run on any x86 based microprocessor, regardless of operating system (thus freeing the developer to concentrate on developing the GAME, and not having to worry about platform specific problems). In fact, given time, the Babylon Project could conceivably allow a game to be run on virtually any processor that supports the Linux kernel."

Our sister publication Freshmeat has another LSB editorial. This one emphasizes the need for tests of standard APIs (something with which I would agree), but also appears to advocate the same level of compatibility as in the DOS world... Although compatibility is nice, it is not some Holy Grail. Microsoft is killing ISA, DOS, and eventually Win16 because it's a mighty pain to keep things compatible. A better solution seems to me to be a strong spec, but also open source code to avoid the need for legacy API horrors are needed to keep binary compatibility.

Patrick Aland sent this story from MSNBC about Linux. The story itself is a well-written one, talking about some of things we already know: about how wonderful Linux is and how all it needs is one great application and nothing will stop it. I dunno, I think that the Gimp does a good job, but what do I know?

Iñaky Perez Gonzalez writes "I have released the latest snapshot of the Linux USB code (UUSBD); it is somehow useful, because now you can read from a keyboard the pressed keys ..."

Kernel development seems to go real fast these days. You can check out the updates in 2.1.119 at the Cutting Edge site. In the mean time 2.1.210 pre-patch 1 is already available at ftp.kernel.org.

Jim Kinney sent us a link to this SunWorld Article where you can read that SCO is in the process of making their Unix run unaltered Linux binaries out of the box.

Simon Janes writes "The Red Herring is running an article this Sept on Transmeta called Stalking Transmeta. They were making up their "Herring 100" and rumors started coming out again about Transmeta so they had to investigate. They learned, nothing. :)"

Hetz Ben Hamo got the exclusive scoop from SciTech, makers of the Display Doctor, with more information about what the soon-to-be-released beta will have, as well as future plans. This is good stuff-more games, more display-related materials (obviously). Click below to get the full message.

We have another development kernel: 2.1.118. Scrolling throught the 400K patchfile I saw video drivers and updates in various other places. You can grab it at ftp.kernel.org.

subhas sent us a link to a fairly standard anti-linux article. It covers all the usual arguments against the OS, but paints it as just the latest pawn in the database vendor wars. He doesn't question the technical stuff, just the lack of support. InfoWorld gave Linux best tech support, does that mean anything? What about Red Hat and Caldera? Maybe it isn't as much about support as marketing. Well that, and Linux can be a bit rough on newbies, but even that is changing rapidly.