Slashdot reader Ignasi G. writes "For the past months I have been very happy reading almost everyday how Linux has been gaining popularity in the computer world. Linux is today an OS with a well deserved recognition, but still lacks support for other tasks which are very popular nowadays, such as multimedia. And I think this is something we must keep in mind, because good multimedia capablilities is something many users want to have in their computers. I sent e-mail to Matrox asking them about Linux support for their multimedia products. You can find my letter and their respone here. " Anyone know of a different but good frame grabber card he may use? Alan?

Andrew Mobbs sent us a link to an interesting note posted on usenet by someone from Sandia labs. The post is about a Beowulf Cluster being built out there, and the specs will make you giggle like a school girl. 400 nodes. All Alpha. It's all good. Methinks a linux system might score a bit higher in next years super computer list...

Jeffrey Davis writes "LinuxPPC has a big fresh new release, R4. link ". Indeed they do. The new release features Netscape Communicator, The GIMP, and a very "Kontroversial" Desktop Enviornment. Interestingly enough, the LinuxPPC folk are incorporated, and some of their stuff seems to imply they're for-profit. Can anyone clarify? It's good to see some commercial development work being done (and some good work, at that)!

Elliot Lee wrote in to tell us that Linus is the cover story in the next issue of Forbes. It proclaims "Peace, Love and Sofware". I find it strangely appealing that the Free Software Movement is so often thought of in hippy terms. Peace man. Anyway, uber cool for Linus and big PR for open source. Always enjoyable to see that sorta stuff.

Bill McCarthy wrote in to send us Mark Tebbe's latest piece on linux and corporations. It's a fair piece. Nothing particularly new or insightful to anyone regularly reading here, but it's a good general summary to remind people of what needs to happen if we want Linux to succeed in the corporate world.

Everyone's favorite PGCC distribution recently took a big leap: Stampede is now at 0.86. The major changes are not well documented, but are said to include a much easier install, and administrative tool updates. Stampede packages may be browsed here, and non-Intel ports should be on their way soon.

Linus has done it again: kernel 2.1.111 is now available. It is a modest 150k patch, and only 177 files were updated. Major updates include fbcon updates, some smaller /proc updates, and some sound updates.

Back at Infoworld Nicholas Petreley keeps writing about Linux. In this week's forum article he compares the dominant operating system to Tolkien's One Ring: the one who has it will inevitably be corrupt. Linux is like Tom Bombadil, the only character immune to the seduction of the evil Ring. A short article with an insightful comparison that might explain recent moves by Netscape, Oracle, SUN and many others. Go check it out.

A new Linux distribution has been released. This one is called Linux-Mandrake and has nothing to do with Mandrake of Enlightenment fame. Its goal is to provide an easy to use environment for beginners, and provides out-of-the-box support for French users (accents, etc). It's based on Redhat 5.1 (with all bug fixes up to 17th July) and a fully functional KDE. Users can mount their CD's without messing with /etc/fstab. It seems a good idea as an introduction as long as it does not lead to dumber users.

Jon Squire writes "I figured I'd ask the well informed slashdot readers if anybody has heard of or is developing Voice recognition software for linux? I'm also interested in developing TV Tuner Support for the ATI All in Wonder if no-one else is doing it. "

The Debian Project has finally released version 2.0 of their Linux distribution. After many months of work and testing, Debian 2.0 was finally released at 00:00:00 UTC. Consisting of over 1800 glibc-compiled packages, very few mirrors have it, but you are encouraged to use them as ftp.debian.org will be swamped for a long time. Those of you who are truly in the know will order a CD from netgod. Ding dong, libc5 is dead!

AJ Prowant wrote in to warn everyone that we're scheduled to see the official release of Debian Two Point Oh tonight, at 8pm (eastern). Party tonight on irc.debian.org in #debian.

vasquez was the first to tell us that X inside, now Xi Graphics, the makers of Accelerated X, will be releasing a new Linux distribution targeted at Fortune 500 companies. As they already sell and support their own commercial software to the above companies, they know what level of support to provide, and how not to get sued. What's funny is that they were asked to do this by the said companies... what's wrong with Redhat? Suse? Dld? Caldera? Maybe Xig will produce updates at a slower rate. Let's hope they also contribute to all Linuxes, like Redhat, Caldera and Suse have done.

Today Oracle officially announced it will be porting Oracle 8 to Linux. The software will be made available for a 90 day free trial via the Web by the end of this year. For further details, check out the press release.
In a similar press release Netscape announced that Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Directory Server will be available for Linux by Q1 1999.

Christopher Craig was the first reader to write in and alert us to the existance of the next in a long line of hits, 2.1.110. Snag it if you have the bandwidth...

Phil Smyth writes "I toured the under-construction Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at an open house at Brookhaven National Laboratory yesterday. One of their systems people told me that they will be using a massive array of Pentium Pros running Red Hat to analyze the terabytes of data streaming from the experiments. NT was rejected because of the difficulty of administering the array. Incidentaly, the RHIC is an unbelivable piece of engineering. "

Greg Roelofs writes "I've just finished up my hideously detailed report on last Tuesday's "Future of Linux" panel. (You'd think I didn't have a life...) With luck it will help cast some of the other (sometimes misleading) news reports about the evening into perspective. It's at: link (which will resolve to another site, but please use this link). It's even "Don't Fear"-enhanced. :-) "

EETimes has coverage of last week's "Future of Linux" conference. This one recognises that Merced support should be simple (the 64 bit hurdle is long past). What really interests me is that Intel seems to have noticed us: 36 bit physical memory support, MMX support (what does that mean? auto-SIMD in gcc from C code like Metroworks can???), fast system calls (Appendix H stuff?). High profile players like Intel and Oracle and good press from the EDA media like EE-Times may also encourage the EDA vendors to support Linux.

Raymond Fellers writes "Oracle announced that they will release a Linux version of Oracle 8. Article from InfoWorld Electric "

The DjVu Wizard writes "Slashdot ran a story about AT&T Labs' new DjVu document image compression technology a few weeks ago. Versions of the DjVu viewer/plug-in for Netscape are now available for the following platforms: Linux/x86, Irix/SGI, Solaris/Sparc, MacOS8.0. DjVu allows users and web site designers to put high-resolution scanned documents in color on the Web by achieving compression ratios as high as 1000:1. A compressor for various Unix platforms is available free for non-commercial uses. Some Slashdot readers complained about a "spam" clause in our licensing agrement. Our lawyers listened, and removed the clause (it was never our intention to spam anybody anyway). At AT&T Labs, we read Slashdot and we support Linux. "