glamslam asks: "As the newly appointed technology director at a large restaurant chain, I've been given the task of evaluating and implementing a Point of Sale (POS) system. The main goal is to save costs on deployment across hundreds of restaurants. Another goal is to find a solution that is flexible enough to adapt to our unique operational model. Most of the vendors' products I have seen are based on Windows. I prefer the openness, flexibility, and cost-savings of Linux, yet I do not want to build the system from the ground up. Has anyone been involved in POS projects and managed to put Linux into the mix?" Are there any features that restaurants need that your traditional POS system may not include?

chrysrobyn asks: "Every write-up I see about journalling file systems under Linux discusses efficiency (embedded) or speed (desktop/server). Have any studies been done on reliability? I've used Linux since Slackware 96 (and kernel 2.0.0), and put it on 9 or 10 machines over the years (Slackware on x86 and Debian on PPC), but I've never strayed from ext2. Always, when the uptime gets high, 20-50 days, the filesystems start to get minor fsck errors. Not that I repair the system and expect it to stay live, I just use the fsck -n to help me decide when a repair is in order. Since the same thing has happened on a variety of hardware (386-PII and every interface in between and 601 and 750 processors with Apple hardware), I'm leaning on blaming the ext2 filesystem for these, the slightest of problems. I typically keep my servers up for as long as possible because 95% of my hardware problems have happened during resets and cold power-ups. It's time for my every-other-year rebuild of my personal server, with another on its way, so I was hoping to incite some anecdotal Slashdot conversation on the journalling file systems available for Linux. Personally, I'm most interested in hearing about the file systems supported under Debian stable for ease of administration for this machine which is a 5 hour drive away from home. I've been around the block a few times, so I'm not fearful of patching the kernel with better patches, but I'm respectful of the work the Debian assurance teams have done."

paskie writes "Martin J. Bligh of IBM announced launch of a Bugzilla bug tracking database for 2.5 linux kernel series - it's at bugme.osdl.org. Finally there will be some possibility to easily keep track of known bugs without being subscribed to thousand of mailing lists or googling to death. According to the relevant lkml thread, kernel developers will still prefer discussions to happen on the mailing lists, though. The Bugzilla server and connection is donated by OSDL and IBM folks administer the database."

Bil Simser asks: "I've been asked by upper management to look at the feasibility of replacing our current Windows IT infrastructure with Linux. Basically someone has said that Linux is free so now we're off to see how free that really means. A full replacement is probably impossible, but I can see some benefits coming from selective replacement of specific technologies (e.g. application servers, web servers) that might be feasible. This is both from a cost reduction standpoint and increasing productivity when it comes to system management. I've already looked at a few studies done on TCO reduction on this and they look good so now I'm turning to the Slashdot community to see if anyone has either practical experience or informative insight into a problem like this? The objective is to determine the TCO of deploying Linux as a core part of our operational environment so what does that mean in the sense of hardware, software, middleware and management impact?"

An anonymous reader asks: "Those who read e-books on PDAs may probably know that 'tomeraider' is a very popular format. After a few searches I've found Tomeraider for PDA's and Windows, and even utilities to convert from HTML to the tomeraider format on Linux. But I haven't seen anything that actually lets you VIEW tomeraider files on a Linux desktop. Does anyone know of an application that is open source and supports this format? What are the options and what works best?"

tengwar asks: "Under Windows I use a firewall (Zone Alarm) which can prevent individual applications from gaining Internet access, restricting them either to the local network or preventing any network access at all. This can be used to prevent Microsoft software and other trojans from calling home. I also restrict Outlook so that it can talk to my email server (which is on the local network), but can't pull remote content href'ed in a HTML email - helps with cutting the virus risk. I've also set it so that Internet Explorer has to ask for permission to access the Internet each time. I'm planning to move over to Linux as my main working environment, and I will probably want to use some Windows programs under Crossover - in particular I'll need Internet Explorer occasionally for getting to my banks, and I may need Outlook for work-related reasons. I'm not interested in iptables on the client (I think) as I've already got NAT and a hardware firewall guarding the network. Have you any suggestions on how to get the application-specific filtering that I get under Zone Alarm, for Linux?"

nojayuk asks: " Over the decades I've re-skilled myself several times, from mainframe FORTRAN through minicomputer PASCAL to microcomputer C. In between I've done microcontroller development and programming in Assembler, robotics, graphics design and 3-D animation for TV, PC build and repair, Website design etc. Currently I'm looking for work and I'm wondering what new skills do I need to stay in the computing biz. What OSes do I need to know, what technologies do I have to have under my belt for the employers to come hunting for me instead of me passing my obsolete CV around and being told to get lost? I'm looking for advice, not just for next week but for a few years down the line. What can I do to acquire these essential new skills?"

chipperdog asks: "I am looking for an activly maintained console based word processor, similar to what one could find with Appleworks, from the Apple // era (Prodos 8 version, pre-//gs), or even one comparable to DOS versions of WP and Microsoft Word. An open-source one that compiles and runs in Linux would be best, although it would be nice to find one that could run on a 486DX2 50MHz with 8MB. A Google and Freshmeat search only turned up editors that seem to lack some of the necessary word processing features I am seeking. Although I mostly use VI (and *TEX when necessary), some no-so-geeky end users need the quasi-WSIWYG interface."

prmths writes "mplayer now plays sorenson V3! This is the last major format that was unplayable under linux and it has now been conquered! They also added the 2xsai algorithm for video scaling. This will let you increase the resolution of non-photo-like videos (anime/cartoons) by 2 times -- it's not a blurring algorithm -- 2xsai actually guesses edges and fills in the pixels."

smelroy asks: "My software company recently released a Linux port of our business instant messaging product, but we are not sure of the best way to sell it, since to many people selling Linux software is an oxymoron. Users on each end of the computer knowledge spectrum associate any and everything Linux with free. Even when we tried to get people to beta test it for us they said, 'It runs on Linux so why isn't it free?' Another comment from a reporter in response to our telling him of our Linux release was 'So it is open source then right?' So my question to the Slashdot community is when is Linux going to be prevalent enough on the desktop that people will pay for applications and not always assume they are free? Better yet, where are the people who feel that way now?"

An anonymous submitter writes: "This looks kind of interesting for those who want to run a feather weight Linux on really old hardware."

mikosullivan asks: "I'm a programmer for the Roanoke Rescue Mission in Roanoke, VA. The mission provides meals, shelter, and other help to the homeless. We're looking at upgrading the mission's information systems to a Linux-based network, from server to desktop. One of the major wrinkles in our plans is finding a good accounting system for Linux. My manager strongly feels (and I sympathize) that they should stick to accounting software that is already used by established accounting firms. There are certainly a plethora of Linux and open source accounting packages out there, but she wants to stay away from the bleeding edge, at least for accounting. She wants a tried-and-true, established, conservative choice for accounting software. What accounting software for Linux is most accepted and established in the marble and wood-paneled world of conservative bean counters? It doesn't have to be open source, but cost is a major issue, and open source is, of course, preferred."

chromatic writes "Jerry Cooperstein has just written an excellent article explaining the competing threading implementations in the upcoming 2.6 kernel for the O'Reilly Network."

brainchill asks: "I've got about 10,000 users split between a couple of quad 550 xeon machines. The machines have 2GB of ram. The problem is that the UW POP3 server takes a huge hit in both cpu and memory utilization when a 40+MB mail spool is requested via POP3. Sometimes it's bad enough to drag the monster boxes to their knees. What other POP3 daemons do you guys have experience with and how do they perform with large mailboxes"

irabinovitch writes "LPBN caught all the SCALE talks on video and has them available online. Everything from the case for Linux in the University, to the latest 2.5 updates from Robert Love and Patrick Mochel."

gwhiteacre asks: "I have been asked to assist a small TelCo that has recently begun acting as an ISP for it's customers having DSL and Cable connections. They currently use the DHCP config file as their authentication database. They add/del/mod the mac address in the config file for each change, stop and start the dhcpd, and are rapidly discovering that this is not a scalable or sustainable approach. I have spent several days researching alternate forms of DSL/cable authentication and am not finding much. My current 'best thoughts' are to put a wrapper around DHCP to intercept the request, check a database, and then call dhcpd. Has anyone dealt with this or a similar issue, and can point me in a good or alternate direction."

Miscellaneous stories about Linux usage today: the Australian government has allowed (but not required) its agencies to switch to Linux. China is apparently going to go all-Linux for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. And business2.com has a story about chain of snowboarding shops (and other businesses) deploying Linux cash registers and desktops.

Unknown Relic asks: "Because of the number of virii which are propagated through email, and the tendancy for some users to open executable attachments no matter what they are told, we have decided to seek out a server side solution. We are currently running Linux with qmail on the server side, and while a we have found a couple of products which may fit the bill, I wanted to hear about the experiences and recommendations of slashdotters on this subject. Do you or your company make use of a server side virus scanning engine, Open Source or otherwise, and if so what are your impressions?"

An anonymous reader writes "For everyone who has been wondering the method behind Linus's seeming madness of accepting or dropping patches, he has finally given a thorough explanation. A must read for anyone who wants to get their favorite feature into the next release of the kernel."

pixelbeat writes "Grigory Orlov origonally implemented this new allocator for FreeBSD, and it's been merged in 2.5.46 and the first benchmarks are in: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103 650970512510&w=2 In summary: 13% increase on unpacking a kernel tarball 43% increase on uncached kernel tree traversal 48% increase on cached kernel tree traversal 170%increase on deleting kernel tree"