Well, here are Patrick Volkerding's answers to your questions, "Just in time for St. Patrick's Day. :)" as Mr. Volkerding himself put it. Read and enjoy!

Smoking writes "It seems like SuSE 6.4 has been announced at SuSE's german site but not yet at their US site.
It includes an (hum!) enhanced graphical installer and new stuff like XFree 4.0 (not installed by default). The release date for the german version is March 27th and the little mathematical function on the box is cooler than ever. " They also recently announced that they will be working with the folks at SourceForge for some of their new development.

print-spool asks: "I know the feature has existed in certain products for some time, but is there a Free Software alternative for the collaborative editing of a document out there? This seems to me like a gap in the wide range of existing software, and would be particularly helpful for the improvement of HOWTOs, FAQs etc. As well as Open Books and the like. So do any of you know of such a utility, or if you are a developer do you know if such a system would be feasible to implement? " As long as the document is text (or even TeX) then CVS would work well enough. However, if the document is of some binary form then that may not be a good choice. Any other ideas?

EricWright writes "Although this hasn't (apparently) hit major news outlets yet, the Raleigh News & Observer is running a story in the business section today that Red Hat has dropped plans to hold the Linux Expo 2000. Although I haven't seen anything at Red Hat's website, they have confirmed the cancellation, saying 'The Expo won't happen this year. This doesn't mean that the project is abandoned; it just means that it won't happen this year. We are very much interested in keeping it alive.'"

EdA wrote in to tell us about this piece, where Red Hat takes heat for its certification process. From the article - "I'm no more of a fan of Microsoft than the next person, but I can say that the support we get from Microsoft is superior, and less expensive," Daher said. "Microsoft always comes to our door, they bring demo units, keep us in touch with their engineers, and certification for our people costs only $2000 each, on-site. Red Hat wants $5,000 a person and we have to fly our people to Durham, [N.C.]."

Markar writes "Developers and programers decided to support EL/IX by Cygnus Solutions as the API for Real-time Linux. Only one dissenter was counted after the vote was taken. The lone dissenter wanted to wait for further developements. PlanetIT is carrying more information. " You can also check out more information about the conference as well.

Ask him what? About the Walnut Creek/BSDI merger? Sure. About what's happening with Slackware in general? Go ahead! Boxers or briefs? The moderators probably aren't going to let that one through, but almost anything else is fair game. Questions will be selected (as usual) slightly after 12 noon EST Tuesday; Patricks's answers are scheduled to appear Friday.

A reader writes "Found an interesting site which describes a hack to modify the $99 Iopener internet appliance to be able to run Linux. Flat panel LCD display, small footprint, 56K (non-win)modem. No ethernet, but a built-in parallel port (for PLIP?). Just add 2.5" HD. The perfect X terminal! "

CodeShark asks: "I am 99% ready to completely wipe all Windows software from my machines, but the last 1% I need to do so is an effective MIDI system that includes: a multitrack midi sequencer, a sound librarian, and notation software (outputting the midi tracks to sheet music). I've tried searching via the Web with little luck, and am wondering what is out there/in development. I'd even be willing to pick up and/or start an Open Source project in this area myself, but I don't have a lot of knowledge of where to start. Suggestions anyone?" I'm hoping that with all the newfound popularity, someone has already started exploring with Linux in music production.

Baudtender was one of the folks who wrote to say that Interbase has been released for public testing. This is the open source release, with the code and more information available at Interbase.com

vedge asks: "Is there any serious project for software that will let you mount a Linux ext2 partition from MS-Windows 95 or NT? I saw one here but it is now unmaintained and doesn't even work on my machine. "

Joshua Lamorie writes: "Rick Lehrbaum, the guy behind www.linuxdevices.com, and involved with the PC/104 Consortium has put together a group of heavy hitters from both the embedded world and the Linux world. The press release came out today, and lists the committee members. Also, on the Web site, there are archives of discussions about the creation of the ELC. This adds to the growing excitement about Linux in embedded systems over the past couple of months."

Fred Palmer writes: "Linsider was launched recently. We're featuring lots of business-related news, profiles for every major Linux company, stock information, content licensed under the OpenContent license, and much more. You can read our press release, or skip straight to the home page. " We don't usually post new sites, but there's been a lot of word going around about Linsider/Linsight and what its aim is. Post-LinuxToday, Dave Whitinger ^[?] was rumoured to be spending a lot of time working on Linsight and this -- and it looks like it was worth the effort.

Chrismo writes: "Danny Thorpe, Sr. R&D Engineer at Borland, has written a great article addressing "some of the commonly expressed fears, misconceptions, and even misplaced euphoria" heard from the Delphi community since the announcement of their move to support Linux with their development tools."

gaj writes, "The answer to "What about Slack?" given the WCCDROM/BSDi merger has been answered. Patrick & Co. (literally now!) are spinning off into a new company called (oddly enough) Slackware Linux, Inc. They've confirmed this on the Slackware site. " BTW, Patrick will be next week's Interviewee - so start thinking of questions.

A not-so-Anonymous Coward asks: "I hope to start a dot.org (dot.com is so '90s, yuck) when I finish University (UK), and it will involve stuff to do with graphics. The question is: What's going on with Digital Watermarks, and how could I start using them in free software? Are they patented? Do they involve scary math? My ideal answer would be a C library or Perl module that can work with the standard graphics libs/mods that could do long batches of them, or even a script-fu for The Gimp."

2bfree writes "Netpliance has the I-Opener for $200 and I was wondering if anybody was working on a port for Linux for it. This would be great for controlling other computers on a home network with VNC, Internet access for people that come over and maybe playing MP3s off the network. What do you guys think? " Update: 03/12 12:50 by C :It seems that there is a solution! Check here for the details.

So I'm at Linux Expo Australia, enjoying the conference. You can hit the link below to read assorted random relevant (and irrelevant) notes from the show floor. No, I haven't seen a kangaroo.

MrEfficient writes, "ZDNet UK has a story in which Dirk Hohndel, the chief technical officer of SuSE Linux, clears up an earlier statement made by the chief executive, Roland Dyroff, about Linux's readiness for the desktop. "

Sam writes, "TurboLinux, Inc. announced today an agreement with Linksys to bundle TurboLinux in shipments of Linksys 10/100 Ethernet products sold in North America. The special bundling will be included in popular small and medium business solutions such as 10/100 hubs and switches, routers, NIC and PC cards. The agreement, projected by the companies to include more than 1.2 million product shipments over the next 12 months, will give Linksys customers TurboLinux operating system solutions with selected purchases of Linksys products. Source: Electic Tech "