scoop writes " StarOffice 5.0 Personal Edition for Linux is available for free for non-commercial use. The offer addresses to all individuals, private persons and students and is exclusively restricted to individual, non-commercial use. StarOffice 5.0 is a fully-integrated and Microsoft Office-compatible suite of productivity applications. It provides powerful Web enabled word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, email, news, charting and graphics applications. StarOffice runs native on the Linux Operating Environment on Intel platforms and is also available for other operating systems. "

LinuxWorld has an article which may have some valid points, but would discourage me from porting my apps to Linux. How many of you have had difficulties porting from libc to glibc? (Please only answer if you tried it). How different are the different distributions for your app? How much does autoconfig solve? Any people from Red Hat, Debian, SuSe, Caldera, PHT, etc are encouraged to relate their experience. S: My comments are that Ian Nandhra was one of the founders of the LSA, and that his article is inaccurate in assuming that software will be sold at a 60 percent discount.

Andy Tai writes " The Object Management Group, the body overseeing the CORBA standard, and Linux International put out a press release advertising the available CORBA implementations on Linux."It's all about options. Users don't want to be bound to only one platform or operating system," commented Bill Hoffman, President of the Object Management Group. "Linux offers another level of independence and CORBA vendors have responded. As Linux comes out of the back room and into the mainstream, I suspect other middleware vendors will follow this trend." This is good evidence of the complementary relationship of open standards and Free Software/Open Source."

There's a good story running at over news.com about a astrophysicist building his own supercomputer equivalent by using 140 Alpha boxes, and Linux. This has been mentioned-Avalon is the codename-but the price is so cheap (313,000$US) for this new verison of it that it warrants mentioning. The old cluster, 70 machines, was 315 on the supercomputer list. This might be in the top 100.

noble where you can read that Red Hat got itself a new President. Matthew Szulik has accepted a job as president of Red Hat. He'll be working to sell Linux to the PHBs of the world.

ThoraX695 writes "LinuxPPC Inc. has just released their plans for at least two minor updates and a major upgrade to the PowerPC port of Linux on their website. It looks like the major changes will be the 2.2.x kernel, Gnome instead of KDE as the default WM, XFB (which is based upon XFree68), and glibc 2.1 support." I'm just happy to see that the alternatives to x86 are getting good support. I'm seriously considering a PowerBook G3 instead of a P2 Laptop when my current p.o.s. melts down. (When? after als, its amazing this things boots) Course there is that one mouse button thing... will Apple ever get over that crime against the universe? The release also notes that LinuxPPC.org and .com will split, leaving org for developers and .com for the company. Best of luck to both sites.

Freshmeat has announced a new partnership with 32BitsOnline to help introduce Linux to their OS/2, Windows and BeOS readers. Freshmeat benefits by getting more content (editorials/hardware reviews/etc) from 32BitsOnline.

Liberation, one of the major french newspapers published two articles on Linux today. The first discusses Linux as a threat to Microsoft and contains a quote from Bernard Dufau, president of IBM France: Nous pensons que Linux représente à terme une menace pour Windows (We believe that Linux is a threat to Windows). It also reveals that France Telecom's portal Voila uses Linux (nice Tux logo at the bottom). The second article reveals that AFUL's agreement with the French ministry of Education is similar to the one Microsoft signed with them when Bill Gates was in Paris. Apparently, headmasters and schools boards of directors would often frustrate teachers efforts to introduce Linux into their schools because while other software providers had signed agreements with the French State, Linux had not. As usual, try babelfish if you can't read french.

Nirvani writes "check here. Some other mirror have it to, ie: wcarchive. Have fun! " Ok, are we sure that this is the real one? I see files at least *grin*.

Patrick writes " LinuxWorld Expo's Website is now. It looks Good! March 2-4, 1999 in San Jose, CA. Linus will be giving the Keynote and there will be over 40 conference sessions. " I'm hoping I'll be able to go to this thing. It looks like a lot of good stuff.

Several folks wrote in to tell the world that Red Hat Software has released v5.2 of their distribution. You can snag it from the mirror sites. For those of you on less then speedy connections, LinuxCentral is shipping the official version starting the 9th, and I'm sure the usual places will be carrying super cheap unofficial CDs just as soon as they can burn them.

glens writes "LinuxToday has been reporting on the shutdown of linux.org and this is the latest article. Seems to be developing into an intersting tale. " Update www.linux.org seems to be resolving now, but the actual site is not yet back. The page currently has the official explanation of the ruckus.

In a U-turn that will be welcomed by all members of the Linux community who still have to use a Windows box to access Lotus Notes at work, Lotus has announced that it is looking into porting its SmartSuite and Notes/Domino suites of applications to Linux. It would also make SmartSuite open-source. This link was found on Linux Today. Unlike the analysts of the story, I believe this is a low-cost (type make) move which will be very lucrative to Lotus (many Linux users in Fortune 500 companies, have 2 PCs, one for the company standards of Notes/Office (Windows) and one to do real work on (Linux). For those that do not know SmartSuite, it's a pretty awesome suite of office applications, including Voice Recognition -- I really hope this too will be open-sourced: Lotus Organizer time and contact manager, Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Lotus Freelance Graphics presentation graphics, Lotus Word Pro word processor, Lotus Approach database, Lotus ScreenCam multimedia, IBM ViaVoice for Word Pro and 1-2-3, Lotus Mail Internet e-mail.

An anonymous contributor wrote that he found a check for Linux in a Macromedia Generator script for Solaris (currently in beta). From this he surmises that Macromedia may be thinking of supporting Linux. The relevant script-fragment follows. Can someone verify this, and does anyone know anything worth knowing on this subject?

Dave Whitinger writes "In an agreement struck October 28 between AFUL (the French association of Linux users) and the French Ministry of Education, AFUL will assist with installing Linux and Free Software networks in high schools, junior high schools and primary schools throughout France." Note that the french text does not state that schools must convert over, but that should they choose to, the AFUL will help them by providing support, turn-key solutions, and the like. This is an important step towards ensuring the diversity of OS's in French schools, and I hope that many schools will elect to join the project.

The Gartner Group has an Operating System Survey you can go and complete if you use Linux at work, as I do. Please don't lie, since it'll discredit the results, and I'd like to know whether/by how much Linux usage in the enterprise is growing.

Mike Hostetler has graciously taken the time and energy to send a review of Neil Matthew and Richard Stones' Beginning Linux Programming. The title isn't quite what it would seem, so if you want more info, click below.

echo writes "On C-NET's Project Heresy yesterday Dan Shafer and Brian Cooley talked about where they think Linux needs to go in the future. In particular, they seem to think that the command line should be totally hidden, that the notion of multi-user should go away, and that programs shouldn't have "modes". At least for "regular" users. Here's the site. What do you think? " I agree that these things should be hidden from the novices, but making multi user go away? Yeah, right. update: (S) Apparently the guys at Project Heresy tried to contribute to the discussion but failed. This is what they had to say.

Linux.org has been missing in action for several days. This Url explains that they had some DNS troubles as they lost their net feed. It should be resolved soon. Thanks to Dave for letting us know.

Red Hat Linux Secure Web Server 2.0 won the Best Of Show Award at Networld+Interop '98 Atlanta today, according to the editors of Data Communications and LAN Times. Link courtesy of LWN