A reader writes " Looking for an xmms-kde RPM, I've stumbled across rhcontrib.bero.org - looks like Red Hat is building up a new contribution area. Looks quite interesting, but sloow."

Deven Phillips asks: "I have been using Linux-Mandrake for quite a while now, and I wanted to know what Slashdotters think of the two rival package management systems available for Mandrake: apt and urpmi. I have been playing with both (apt is available in the Contribs section), and I have to say that so far urpmi is winning. I have always heard that apt-get is the best, so I am surprised by my conclusions. Am I missing something? Is apt for RPM not as mature as the deb counterpart?" I, for one, would have liked to have heard the reasons as to why Deven feels that urpmi is superior, but maybe there are a few of you out there who feel the same way, that can communicate this as well as he can. For those of you who have tried both, what features do you like out of the two of them, and which tool serves your needs the best?

Matt Dugan returns an old question to the forefront: "I am building a Linux-based 'media box', which will sit alongside the TV, Stereo, VCR, etc.. My goals are to play DVD's, MP3s/Oggs, CD's, VCD's, and the occasional Divx AVI. Though DVD support isn't perfect, I expect it to be well on it's way by the time I get everything set up and running the way I want, but my problem lies here: I want to be able to do 'real-time' video capture to an IBM Desktar 60GXP 30GB drive via a Pinnacle DC10+ MJPEG PCI card. Has anyone else successfully configured such a beast?"

Pants Ripper writes: "In a victory for all Linux users, Linus Torvalds declared jihad on annoying 'informational' kernel boot messages. I'm sure we'll all miss the inspirational 'spewtron driver 0.09 installed (C)2000 by Wardwick Extrusion' messages in our dmesgs." I've always thought those messages looked pretty interestingly verbose, but people want pretty boot-ups. And this Linus guy seems to know a lot about this "Lee-nuks," too.

His name is Scott Handy, and his full title is "Director, Linux Solutions Marketing, IBM Software Group." You want to know how to market Linux? Or how IBM's going about it? Scott ought to know. One question per post, please. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones off tomorrow, and expect Scott's answers back in about a week.

Cpyder writes "LinuxFrench reports that Mandrakesoft (home of Mandrake Linux) are going public. Good luck to them!" The article is in French - use the fish for an...interesting...translation. Or try out GPLTrans.

Polar Pope writes "The Department of Defense has adopted Sun's Open Source productivity suite StarOffice (up to 25,000 units)." Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal, but it sure is getting submitted a lot. Then again, 25k Linux boxes inside the DoD is cool.

WeaselOne writes: "Okay, it's on the record. This Cnet story cites an Aberdeen analyst as confirming that the Red Hat database will, in fact, be PostgreSQL. Also has some interesting stuff about why they didn't just partner with Great Bridge."

Okay, here's a nice "behind the curtains" peek into the way tech industry analysts (who are not the same as stock analysts) get and interpret their data, courtesy of IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky, in the form of answers to the insightful questions you asked him last week.

David A. Wheeler sent in linkage to his extensive analysis of the true size of Linux. There's an amazing amount of information in here, and although it focuses on Red Hat 7.1, it still has tons of interesting bits of information about the code that makes up the distribution. Break downs include languages, licenses, cost estimates, and stats that in no way clear up the legendary GNU/Linux debate that will undoubtably be engraved on tombstones somewhere.

tekBuddha writes: "It looks like Red Hat is trying to make its way into the database market. This article on Yahoo! says Red Hat is about to announce its own product ingeniously named 'Red Hat Database' next Monday. "

Cycon writes "Red Hat has just announced that they have finally achieved a positive cash flow! Today they announced that in the quarter ending May 31, 2001, they have seen $25.6 million in revenue, with an adjusted net income of $600,000. Congradulations to everyone at RHAT!"

gergi writes: "Running at the kernel level, Redhat's Tux 2.0 blew away Apache and IIS in webserving content according to this benchmark! Given the never-ending security flaws found in other webservers, has a major turning point in web server design come about?"

brent_linux writes: "ESR has developed a new kernel configuration system called CML2. Recently (as in yesterday) he posted to the kernel mailing list that he had added a new configuration for Expert Users. This new interface follows the interface developed from the old infocom text based adventure games. Commands such as 'look,' 'nearby,' and 'go' are used to navigate and options are items that you 'take' or 'put.' Check out the mailing list for his messages or download CML2 for yourself and check it out."

awa asks: "I'm writing on behalf of the Costa Rican LUG (Grupo de Usuarios de Linux de Costa Rica). We are organising a conference on the use of free and Open Source software in Costa Rica, by proxy of its use in third world countries in general, but applied to our own case. Phil Hughes (of Linux Journal fame) is in our Country and has agreed to be a speaker at the event. We were lucky to get permission to use the auditorium of a private university (Universidad Latina de Costa Rica) for the conference, as it has all kinds of goodies (audio-, video- and networkwise). The stage has three giant screens, each with its own projector, and we thought a good use for them would be to show promotional Linux videos, however we have not found anything (film/movie-wise) that would suit our needs aside from short 'How-To' videos. Does anyone know where we can find such films, what format they might be available in, and so forth. We are willing to pay any reasonable fees for transfer and/or shipment of anything that suits our intended use."

meldroc writes "Or should I call it "Shared Library Hell"? The top story of LWN.net this week states that the newest version of GnuCash requires sixty libraries(!), many of which are new versions that aren't available out of the box with most Linux distributions. Managing shared libraries, with all their interdependencies and compatibility problems, is a major hassle. How should we go about dealing with the multitudes of shared libraries without driving ourselves mad or descending into the DLL Hell that makes Windows machines so unreliable?" Well, GnuCash 1.4.1 works fine for me, and I feel no immediate need to update to 1.6, the version that needs 60 libraries. But still a good point here.

How many people run Linux as a desktop OS? How many servers run Linux? Is the Linux server market share 8.6 percent or 24 percent or somewhere in between? Dan Kusnetzky is a heavily quoted analyst at IDC who wrestles with questions like these for a living. This is your chance to find out how analysts come up with all those numbers -- and why analysts seem to disagree with each other so often. One question per post, please. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Dan, and post his answers as soon as we get them back.

Dale Woolridge asks: "Suppose I want to increase the availability/reliability of my home network's connection (to the internet) and high-speed & low-latency are important. I've been using cable for almost two years now, but there are sometimes inexplicable outages which leave me without net access for hours at a time. Rather than switch to another type (aDSL) of provider, I augmented my connectivity by adding another provider. I want to automate the selection of outgoing route, but am willing to live with manual failover in cases where a particular interface/route is available but my upstream provider is having routing problems. Basically, I want to be multi-homed, but my choice of options is limited; clearly, I cannot fiddle with upstream routing."

skuzzlebutt asks: "If you are dragging your office (kicking and screaming, no less) into the dynamic and typically, more affordable world of Linux and Open Source to keep those licensing and external help desk call costs down, have you considered your Office Management Software needs yet? I'm talking about things like HR Management, Scheduling, and the like. Snooping around on Freshmeat and SourceForge, the pickin's were pretty slim (I found one package at SF, but it has been posted for a year with no file releases), and Google wasn't much help either. I work as a developer for B of A and am also an MBA candidate; between these two roles, I run into many small business owners who are complaining about licensing costs, limited support options, can't-upgrade-unless-we-get-that-$75M-grant, and so forth. Has anyone had any success/horror stories for particular pre-fab commercial packages (be they open, closed, gratis, paid, etc)?"

An anonymous reader noted this article running over at Linux Devices talking about an alliance of companies working together to standardize Linux Set Top Boxes. Bigger names include ATI and Tivo. There are also a bunch of more or less irrelevant companies on the list too so the hype about 24 companies isn't really worth noting. But in the end, I'll believe it when I see products actually taken to market.