All Dead Homiez asks: "My company has several very nice printers left over from our old mainframe setup. Unfortunately, they have a BNC interface that speaks the IPD/SCS protocol instead of Ethernet. We are an all-Linux shop now and we'd hate for all of these perfectly good printers to go to waste, so does anyone know if there is any software for Linux that speaks IPD/SCS?"

xturnip sent us a good piece running over at Byte about Linux's VM. Somewhat more technical then the stuff we usually see online, this one talks about different VM systems, and the egos in the kernel. Its worth a read.

We usually don't post stories about specific shows and such, but since I'm hoping to attend this one, and it will be a continent I've never been, I thought folks would like to know that Linux.conf.au is going to be happening February 6-9, in Brisbane, Australia. They've got the call for papers up and everything -- hope to see you there.

Reezle asks: "I am a reluctant Microsoft Engineer who has a few customers sitting on the fence whether to go the XP route, or bite the bullet and switch an entire office over to Linux. I would love to assist them, and educate myself at the same time, but am unsure of the limitations of file type interoperability between MS Office, and Linux programs (Star Office is the only one I'm familiar with). I assume anything they create could be saved in formats that their business partners will be able to open (i.e. RTF), but what happens when they receive attachments encoded with Office 2000 or XP (ie DOC, XLS, PUB, etc)? I'd love to encourage them to make the switch, but would hate to see them unexpectedly cut off from the people they need to communicate with. Any help/advice would be appreciated."

Tom writes: "This is part six of the Advanced filesystem implementor's guide. I've been following an outstanding series of articles about implementing the advanced filesystems that are available with Linux 2.4. The author really knows his stuff and has done a great job with explaining Reiserfs, XFS, GFS, and the other file systems that are available." The series gets into greater depth as it goes on; you may want to start with Part One and work on from there.

lems1 was among the avalanche of people who submitted this Linux powered Humanoid. The website has pictures and videos if you're curious. We're not exactly worrying about him seeking out the blue fairy or anything, but its nifty.

Jeremy Andrews writes: "Kerneltrap interviews Keith Owens this week, an experienced kernel hacker who has long contributed to the Linux kernel. His contributions include updating ksymoops and modutils, both of which he maintains. He also works on kbuild 2.5. Earlier, he built the original Integrated Kernel Debugging patch. He's also working on kdb and XFS. Check out the interview." Lots of good information in here about things to expect in 2.5.

WhyPanic writes "XOSL, the Extended Operating System Loader, is a free (as in beer and as in GPL), full featured, graphical boot loader that can work in conjunction with Lilo or separately to boot all varieties of Windows, Linux, and many other OS's." Nifty looking.

KingM asks: "I have for the past few months searched the web for a "Client Access" (terminal type interface to AS400) type application which was either natively created or ported in Linux. I work for an insurance company and we are willing to move a total of 16 workstations to a Linux based solution to lower costs and enhance stability and security. However, thusfar the only thing keeping us from doing this is the Client Access application which interfaces with an AS400 server at a remote location. Does anybody know how I could switch this system over to Linux?"

An Anonymous Coward writes: "My company is currently sending out RFPs to various real-time collaboration software vendors. One of the packages we would like to persue is Jabber (the open-source IM/chat software at www.jabber.org). However, for open source projects, where should the RFP be sent? For Jabber, we may use Jabber.com as our reference. But, as my company possibly pursues other open source alternatives, how do we answer this question?"

Albert writes: "This article is the best guide I've seen for moving your Solaris applications over to Linux. It provides guidelines, suggestions, and resources to help deal with porting your application from Sun Solaris to Linux. You also get access to an online tool that shows how the specific APIs used by your Solaris application map to Linux. This is a great resource."

jwest writes "LCS now has Debian GNU/Linux 'woody' on DVD-R We were just tired of shucking around the 6 CD/ROM's it takes to do a new installation with woody. One DVD that can be read on a common place DVD reader seemed like its time had come. More info." Debian unstable, for the adventurous with a DVD-drive. Update: 10/25 23:14 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "testing." Just ... testing.

3141592654 asks: "I've been doing a little experiement to compare Ext2, ReiserFS, and SGI XFS. The experiment (LFS Sprite benchmark for small files) involves tight loops of creating 10,000 1K files spread equally among 100 directories, reading them back in order, and deleting them. On a 1GHz processor with plenty of RAM running Linux 2.4.2, with matching versions of file systems in default configurations (no debugging and no internal checks). In our tests, EXT2 turned out to be faster than both ReiserFS and XFS. We had been led to believe by other published results that XFS would be much faster than Ext2, and ReiserFS would run just about as fast. Have any slashdot readers had experienced similar results with these filesystems? Or have we simply overlooked a major factor in our tests?"

Lawrence Teo writes: "Looks like Linux 2.4.13 is out. You can get it at the usual place (kernel.org) and the mirrors. Check out the Changelog."

darksmurf writes: "In answer to repeated requests for an easy way to test linux kernel releases the OSDL has developed an automated testing framework called the Scalable Test Platform. The LK posting with examples is here and the main page is here. The system can do regression testing, benchmarking full environment documentation and various other goodies."

Carl Nasal asks: "For a college class I'm taking, I have to write a research paper. I chose a topic of how open source software affects businesses, focusing on the use of Linux. While doing searches, I have actually found it hard to find opposing views of open source software. Mainly, what I'm looking for, are opinions, articles, looks, and evidence about the drawbacks of using open source software in business. They can either be online or offline, but preferably from reliable sources. (In other words, I'd rather not just have someone's homepage that loves Microsoft and hates Linux.)" The more constructive criticism we get about the drawbacks of Open Source, the better we can address and fix them.

Spirit writes "Red Hat has anounced the release of Version 7.2 distribution with Gnome 1.4 and Nautilus, default ext3 fliesystem and according to ZDnet migration from LILO to GRUB"

JWhiton writes: "According to Blue's News, Mandrake and TransGaming are going to ship a new distribution of Mandrake Linux specificially aimed at gamers. It comes with The Sims and TransGaming's WineX for compatibility with Windows games. Apparently it's going to ship on November 9th."

Jeremy Andrews writes: "Kerneltrap has posted the latest in-depth kernel hacker interview with Russell King, who originally ported Linux to ARM and continues to oversee ARM Linux development. Russell talks about ARM, the 2.4 kernel, the upcoming 2.5 kernel and much more..."

jaxon_brooks writes: "I guess if you can't blame yourself, you gotta blame something?!?! 'Ravens (-7 1/2) at Browns: Ravens Coach Brian Billick faults last week's defensive breakdown on team's switch to Linux operating system.'" Maybe the team got caught up playing Same Game?