Another development kernel has seen the light. You can grab the patch at ftp.kernel.org and the usual mirrors. Most important update seems to be a new console driver by Geert Uytterhoeven.

Sam Ockman writes " the 500 members or os of SVLUG, are going to have a big rally tonight at the largest/most prestigious computer store in Silicon Valley, Fry's, when they stay open until 1am to distribute Windows 98. We're going to hand out Linux CDs and stuff like that as well. We'd like to have more people at the rally then go to buy Windows 98. " You can check out the details here.

Andy Tai writes "This Red Hat press release announces that Adaptec will support the Linux community by providing technical information for driver development on Adaptec products.

The Economic Times have an in-depth look at Linux, first throughout the world, and then in India. The articles are full of interesting tidbits, for instance that the largest UK ISP runs Linux, or that Suse is 40% of the German market. One less certain fact is their statement that Intel will help port Linux to Merced.

Redhat has posted a Datapro Survey showing that Linux does better than any other real OS on Overall Satisfaction, Interoperability, Cost of ownership, Price, Internet Readiness, Flexibility (tie), Availability (tie).

NT beats Linux on Percentage Growth (blame the suits for that), Solaris on Java Support (well... they did invent it), and Digital Unix on Product Functionality (anyone know why?) and Performance. Surprisingly NT does rather better than I would expect having used it, which makes me wonder how they built their survey.

Michael McLagan wrote in to tell us that Linux.org is experiencing DNS craziness thanks to everyone's favorite service, InterNIC. Things apparently are fixed now, and things will be back to normal after the servers propogate tonight.

It has been a long wait, but it's out there now: RedHat Linux 5.1 for SUN Sparc. It's available on the Red Hat FTP site and its mirrors. This is the first glibc based RedHat distribution for Sparc. Enjoy.

Joey Hess writes "Since Debian's "hamm" distribution will become "2.0 Beta" on 00:00 UTC June 24th, there will of course be an IRC party on irc.debian.org, channel #debian, at that time -- its 8 p.m EDT Tuesday."

Nate wrote in to send us This ZD Article where you can read Jesse Berst's little spiel on Linux. Nothing that any reader here doesn't know, but it might be worth a gander.

This link has been coming in all day, so I figured I just had no choice but to share it. The SVLUG will be celebrating the Win98 launch in their Own Special Way. Specifically, by building a rocket using Win98 CDs as fins, and launching it. There be strange folks out there ladies gentleman. Wish I could make it. Oh, and the web page clearly states that they will not be detonating the rocket during flight, or launching it sideways. Too bad.

Nick Moffitt writes "Taos Mountain and The Silicon Valley Linux User Group will be hosting a talk on The Future of Linux on July 14th. Panelists include: Linus Torvalds, Robert Hart, Larry Augustin, and Jeremy Allison. " Why is it that the cool stuff always happens in CA? Oh, wait. Nevermind. I remember.

Robert Levin writes "We're coordinating a list of Beowulf mirrors. We could use more mirror sites outside the United States, and we need any Beowulf utilities available, as well as tar files and Debian packages for everything (what we have so far is the basic kernel source RPM). Help us keep Beowulf alive by demonstrating that the Source Is Out There. *grin* Please mail us with the URL of your mirror, so we can add you to the list! Thanks to everyone for their support. "

Troy Baer writes "There's a news article on Dr. Dobbs Tech NetCast that sheds new light on the Beowulf debacle. It's at This article seems to be unique of all the ones I've seen in that the author appears to have interviewed Don Becker about it. As many on Slashdot have feared, it looks like the export restrictions on supercomputers may be to blame for the Beowulf software being taken down. ". They linked us back... through TCWWW^TM

Josh Lucas sent us an article called Red Hat software takes on the big guys. It's a pretty entertaining piece actually... fairly generalized (and rightfully so considering where it comes from), but it definately is a nice strong example of how far Linux has come in the last year.

Several people sent me a press release about the Avalon super computer. $150,000 worth of off the shelf parts, and it scored #315 on the top 500 Supercomputers list. Alpha chips and a Linux OS managed 19.2 billion floating point ops/sec. Very cool. Can santa fit these things down my chimney?

Mark McCoy was the first to notice a press release over at Red Hat discussing new binary only servers. Basically, binary servers will be made available for chip sets that require an NDA or for chipsets that won't release specs. This seems like a kludge to a bigger problem, but it all is an excellent start to get high end hardware supported quicker.

Don Marti writes "LINC, the International Linux Conference and Exposition to be held in Silicon Valley, California next January, has issued a call for papers. We are inviting Linux developers, administrators, and others to present papers, panel discussions, and tutorials. "

Curtis sent us a link to an MSNBC Article on Linux. Seriously. And it's even positive! The article goes as far as saying that Linux 5.1 is ready for Prime Time. Related: Does it disturb anyone else that we use television terminology to describe software? Maybe it's just me.

Stefan van der Eijk wrote in to inform the galaxy that 2.1.106 is now available for one and all to download, compile, boot, and probably repeat *grin*.

Nick Moffitt writes "The Consortium of All Bay Area Linux (there is no CABAL) would like all Bay Area types who wish there were a West Coast Linux convention to know that the Linux INternational Convention will be happening January 6-10, 1999. "