j2brown writes: " Yahoo! News has this little article about IBM taking Linux to Hollywood. " It's not a very in-depth article, but it is interesting that Big Blue is saying that Hollywood will be moving their rendering stuffs to Linux in the next 12 to 18 months. Wonder how SGI feels about that.

yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.

rkischuk writes: "InformationWeek has an article about a group of ex-Cray engineers working on a new architecture for clustering Linux systems. 'It's not easy trying to build scalable systems from commodity hardware designed for assembling desktop computers and small servers.' Per the article, 'As the number of CPUs in a Beowulf-style cluster-a group of PCs linked via Ethernet-increases and memory is distributed instead of shared, the efficiency of each processor drops as more are added,' but 'Unlimited's solution involves tailoring Linux running on each node in a cluster, rather than treating all the nodes as peers.'" Looks like Cray engineers think about clustering even when they're not at Cray.

A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system.

alen writes "I've been working with NT for a year now, and I'm getting really tired of it. So I finally decided to learn Linux, after a year of putting it off. I've got an old P2 266 that I'm going to use. Now the next question is what distro do I get? What's a good starter version? I'm just looking to get the feel of it and to play around a little. " This question gets asked periodically - it's always good to hear have a lively discussion about it - I love my Debian but have heard that Mandrake is a good starter distro.

An AC sent in: "The IBM PC may be 20 years old, but they're not the only ones with a birthday coming up. Check out www.linux10.org for an invitation to a birthday party on August 25 for the Linux kernel. The big bash is in Sunnyvale, just down the peninsula from the San Francisco LinuxWorld Expo, but there are also links to local parties around the globe (or if there are none near you, plan your own and add it to the list)."

securitas writes "ZDNet is reporting that Korean Air has decided to move its flight-crew scheduling and daily accounting systems to Linux running on an IBM mainframe, and 5000 users will access this information through their browsers starting in September. "

Justin was the first to note that kernel 2.4.8 is out. Check the changelog, or just hit kernel.org, you know the drill.

rsd writes: "Conectiva Linux 7.0 is out. Here is the original announcement. And here is the babelfish translation. They are already shipping Portuguese box and will start the english soon. However the CDs (iso for what matter) are available in english already. Their main ftp server is overcrowded. Hoever, Rik VanRiel provided us with a really fast server. I will not describe every feature on it but the main change is the Synaptic tool, which in my opinion is the best APT frontend ever written."

Thanks to Dean Pannell (and Paul Ferris for the initial head's up) for pointing out the apology and statement of fact from Kevin Reichard, the Executive Editor of LinuxToday. I think the argument that people would know that "George Tirebiter" was merely a contrivance is weak, but whatever. You can read the previous stories in the astroturf ^[?] ing saga.

rsd writes: "I have been searching the web for a few days looking for old rpm based distributions ISOs for a study with libc5. All I could find so far is some loose packages, but not a downloadable ISO image. For RedHat 4.2 and older, Conectiva Linux 1.0, ... it is impossible to find. So I ask myself is there a centralized place taking care of this, for public use and even preservation of the Linux History and evolution? We have lots of places with ISO images, like linuxiso, however these sites just keep with recent distributions."

Mifflesticks points to this interesting "visual comparison" between Mandrake 8.0 and Windows XP. Even though it's specifically a visual / aesthetic comparison, this piece actually sums up the good things about XP -- good device detection, multiple users set up from the install, improved network configuration -- better than anything else I've seen. The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP.

LinuxNews.pl writes: "Few days ago RedHat uploaded new Beta release of their distro - Roswell. If you want to find out more about it just go to the LinuxNews.pl" And I won't even make a snide comment about how I haven't run Red Hat in 2 years!

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Looking for small pre-built systems for custom Linux-based projects or products? Look no further. LinuxDevices.com has assembled a handy reference list of small systems that can serve as ready-made platforms for prototyping applications, or as the basis of application-specific Linux-based systems and devices. The style, performance, and costs of these systems vary greatly."

aclute sent in a bit saying that Dell is dropping Linux from desktops and laptops. They cite low demand, and they plan to continue shipping Linux on the server. I've sworn off Dell PCs since their finance dept. tried to screw me over on the laptop I leased for a few years in college (No, we never got that laptop back. Nor can we explain why you have signed confirmation that it was delivered. You owe us a year's worth of late fees). Frankly there are much less expensive places to get a Linux laptop, but those suckers with the 1600x1200 screens and the GeForce 2 video card are still super pimp.

Subscribers to Mandrake's weekly newsletter got the news earlier today that "MandrakeSoft is pleased to announce that the company is now listed on the Euronext Marché Libre. As a result of the successful Initial Public Offering, a total of 688.480 shares were sold at 6.2 Euros each. This results in an increase in capital of approximately 4.3 million Euros and represents 20.28% of the company's capital after issue." A good portion of the offering was completed in just the last half-day of availability, according to email received from Mandrake higher-ups, in part perhaps because of the confusion about who could participate in the offer, and how. There's also a story about the IPO at NewsForge, and a discussion at Mandrake's forum. If you're interested in picking up any stock in the company, there are some useful pointers (and more info) at their investor info page.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "U.S. software and services company Red Hat and Britain's closely held 3G Lab said on Monday they will develop a 'Linux for the wireless world' as they team up to write an operating system for Web phones." The hypothetical "cell phone running Linux" might not stay hypothetical very long.

Jay writes: "This article is really helpful if you're new to Linux, or even if you're not-so-new. It helps Windows users transition to Linux, but those converting from other operating systems will find useful information here as well." Personally, I'd think that learning a new OS would be worth the cost of a book (which I note is out of print - does that mean a new edition is on the way?), but if you're too cheap to buy a book, well, here's a pretty decent guide to getting started with GNU/Linux.

Systems administrators -- good system administrators -- are worth their weight in coffee beans weekly, probably more if you count overtime. Getting to be a competent admin for a network of GNU/Linux machines isn't easy, especially when so many organizations rely on Windows. Today, chromatic reviews a book that can give a boost to Windows administrators learning to step up. It's definitely Red Hat-centric, right down to the title, but may be useful even if you're using some other flavor of Linux.

RoweM writes "The Australian Capital Terrority will use a Debian-based, GPL'd electronic voting system in elections this October. See this article, and the vendor's press release. Note, this is not Internet voting, but an electronic vote registration and counting system--you still have to go to the polling booth :)."