Stormix, a Vancouver-based start-up, has announced the release of Stormix Linux v0.99 Alpha r1, their first public release. The new distro is based on Debian, and uses dpkg as its package management system. It seems they have some new ways of going about things, and even an interesting project called SAS. SAS allows developers to write a program once and have a text-based and a GUI interface. Thankfully, they have stated they will release all of their software under the GPL (or a "related" license).

Borland is currently running a poll to test the demand from the Linux community for porting their development tools. What with the Code Warrior folks, and all the IDEs coming around, it's a good signal of interest in the community. As well, Inprise is looking to hire a Seniuor R&D Engineer (for porting Delphi), as well as a Linux Developer Relations Mgr.

I found a nameless submission in the submission box that asks a fairly good question: "I'm installing Linux for the first time on Intel hardware (I've installed Linux for PPC and BSD for Intel and 68K) but I am confused on how the swap partition should be handled for optimum performance. The Linux Installation Guide says I should have my swap at least as big as my RAM and that the swap partition should not be bigger than 127MB. Also a "rule of thumb" answer I got from my BSD using friends is that my swap should be twice the size of my RAM. Since I have 128MB of RAM should I have two swap partitions? Also how will swap drive performance affect system performance? Would a Fast SCSI (20MB/s) swap drive be any different than a Wide SCSI (40MB/s) swap drive? There seems to be little information on how to 'tune' Linux swap for machines with 100+ MB RAM."

PugMajere submitted the following: "I've been looking into using SSH and rdist to distribute around 2 gig worth of data to about 1000 machines nightly. Rdist (v6.1.5) would be perfect for this, as it automatically forks to send data to multiple machines, but it isn't totally free software. The problem is with SSH. To use SSH with rdist you need the server side of SSH on each of the machines that are running the rdist server. The licensing fees for this are simply astronomical for this kind of application. While researching all this I noticed that Red Hat includes rdist (6.1.5) in its distribution. I also now know the rdist license terms. Rdist isn't free to use in a commercial setting if it involves another company. So, if you have two companies running Linux, that are collaborating on some project, and sharing some of the data using Linux and rdist, they owe Magnicomp money. My real question here is: Does anyone else realize this? How many other packages have similar arrangements that are going to cause major headaches in the future?"

Sm@rt Resseler has published an article about what Lotus will port to Linux in the near future. Among their products are Domino 5.0.3 with connectivity to Oracle 8.0x and IBM's DB2, Sametime 2.0 (Realtime collaboration software), and Quick Place 2.0 Collaborative Program (scheduled for the first half of 2000). Unfortunately, Lotus is not planning to port either their Notes client or SmartSuite Millenium edition to Linux, which is a sad thing. (/me thinks that a petition could help us to get those client ports.)

JediGeek writes "The BBC signed a deal to use BMC Software's Patrol product suite to manage computers running Linux. The BBC said it would use BMC's Patrol for the next five years to improve the availability, performance and recoverability of its core applications and data. The article can be found at Yahoo "

Thanks to LinuxPR for this one. It seems that the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts have opened web-based registration for this October's Atlanta Linux Showcase. According to the press release, the first 100 registrees receive an OS Wars (it's a spoof of Star Wars) shirt. They also announced that Jeremy Allison, one of the key Samba developers, will be giving the keynote. The full text of the press release can be read here.

Lost in the Corporate Maze writes "SUSE rides the Linux Cash Cow!. I guess someone asked SUSE to "Show me the money!". What's the breakdown between US and World sales? Where is this revenue coming from? Enquring minds want to know. " We mentioned this before, but its interesting seeing to appear in a major pub. Amusing step in the rivalry between the major distributions. This is getting fun, but its also further proof that Linux is getting bigger.

A reader sent us the latest installment in the Metcalfe and Peterely debate that started roughly one week ago with doubts about Linux from Metcalfe, and a response from Peterly. In this round, Metcalfe repents a bit, and also brings up the current hot topic: How the Linux community reacts to questions. Short, but interesting reading, and again raises the point: Read the Linux Advocacy How-To if you have any questions.

Nathan Laredo (the A/V guru from the expo who had 4 MPEG decoders in his machine running simultaneously) wrote in to say that he's "hacked out" full read/write/rewrite functionality for the Panasonic LF-D100 series of Panasonic DVD-RAM drives under Linux, and the diff is available at OPN. He says he's used the driver to copy three unencrypted DVDs, and that you probably don't want to use ext2 on the drive (though it can be done "painfully").

Vertigo1 asks: &nbsp "I have a Cable Modem with RoadRunner. I have a Dual Pentium 200 machine (w/two NIC's), running Red Hat 6.0 w/the latest errata updates. I am going to setup a firewall w/ipchains. I have a Citrix (ie Terminal Server) behind the firewall I want to connect to from the Internet and an FTP server also. How do I set up IPChains to forward to the Citrix server (which uses tcp port 1494) and then to an internal FTP server (tcp port 21 and ftp-data). I understand how ipchains works and have read thoroughly the IPChains-HOWTO, but I still cannot connect to the Citrix server from the Internet. Please help!" This is a common misconception. IPChains are good for configuring what gets in and out of your network on a packet level, but this is a redirection problem. Anyone know where you can find a a good port redirection program on the 'net?

Deuteron asks: "Hi! I work for an ISP and we're about to deploy wireless net access and need a way to limit people to the bandwidth they pay for. We're planning on starting out with offering 128k, 256k, and 1M links. The wireless hardware itself (Breezecom if you're interested) will handle the 1M part for us. The tricky part is the lower speeds. I've done some extensive checking and haven't found any IP or MAC address based shapers as of yet. Can anyone point me to some free or extremely low cost solutions? Any leads would be greatly appreciated!"

oneeyedman writes "Maybe this will give support to the people who think that Linux is a communist plot. Salon has an item about an article called Anti-Microsoft 'subculture'" that ran in the China Youth Daily. In this reading of the situation, Linux users are angry peasants rising with pitchforks aimed at Microsoft's "hegemony." "

richard writes "CNN has an interesting article on companies racing to support Linux. " Talks about HP, IBM, LinuxCare and a few other odds and ends. Slanted somewhat oddly, but it ends on an (again mixed) high note.

SuSE has formed SuSE Labs, an effort to contribute to free software projects. The press release (which can be mangled by Babelfish for all you non-German speakers) mentions projects like XFree86, KDE, and ISDN4Linux which SuSE has already worked on, and says that they will be working on them in the future, as well as other projects like ALSA. This seems pretty cool - I know Jaroslav (the ALSA guy) was hired by SuSE awhile ago.

mediageek writes "Targeted at non Linux users, James Hills has written an editorial which tries to explain open source, why there are different distros and general Linux pros & cons. " This is a good one to pass on to your bosses/parents/friends - heck, all of the unwashed. *grin*

Code-Fu writes "NetWare is nowhere. That's the word from Lotus Development." You can read the rest of the story here. This involves Lotus bringing Domino to Linux, and will probably mean Linux being used in more business settings. I like it.

Matts Kallioniemi writes "Toshiba just now put up a Linux support page. Quite a change from two months ago when they refused to even think about Linux. Now if I could only get a Libretto ff 1100, but Toshiba Sweden are not importing the Libretto any more. :-( "

A reader sent us a recent BusinessWeek article interviewing Red Hat's Bob Young. More indepth then most of them usually, I learned some of the odder tibits about Red Hat interesting, including the toliet in the first apartment and other such stories.

F1reF0x wrote to us with an interesting story on Linux Today about kha0S Linux-a distribution primarily based on creating the most secure distribution possible. You can check out kha0s.org. Due to the United States "interesting" crypto laws, 0.99-pre4 is not currently availible on the FTP site.