lc writes "This article in LAN Times basically tells about Linux and what it is, and how its stability and speed are why NT professionals are switching to Linux. It also goes on to tell about the software companies that recently stated that they're supporting Linux such as IBM, Oracle, Informix Corp, and Netscape. Cover story too..."
As well, PC Week is running a good review of Caldera Netware, and tying Linux into x-nets.

Joey wrote in to ask "I'm currently working on a project to turn a Linux box into a Juke Box running Mp3's. But I'm faced with several problems, it has to be coin operated (i was just told it has to use brasilian dollar bills), have an interface anyone could use, and be stable. If someone could help me out with ideas and where to get the money validators I would really appreciate it."

Melissa London of Red Hat wrote in to alert us that Raw Hide has been announced, and is up for testing. It's rough stuff, but it shows promise. The system will very possibly get all of us stabler systems, faster. No arguments here.

an anonymous coward wrote in to tell us that Fry's electronics is running a commercial on Silicon Valley tv stations advertising "Red Hat Linux 5.1 - the next generation operating system !" Can anyone get it in RealVideo or mpeg or something? I'm sure we'd all love to see it. This is the first time I've heard of a commercial mentioning linux.

Sean Heber wrote in to tell us that voting has started for the t-shirt contest they've been running over there. Dave's entry is #57, go vote for it if you love Dave (and who doesn't?). There are several really sharp designs in there now.

Our sister publication Freshmeat is carrying a (last?) editorial on LSB which announces the death of the LSB: few people felt it was necessary to have a very tightly defined "standard distribution" from which all other distributions would diverge only a little. Indeed, Linux's diversity enables Linux to be tailored for different applications or cultural needs. A common filesystem/library policy, the LCS will resolve most of the compatability issues. Vendors who insist on supplying binaries only will know which libraries they can depend on being in the system, and which they should statically link in. Update: The LSB is not officially dead, but "in transition". Nevertheless the above editorial blows some rather large holes into its current incarnation.

Big Dave Diode writes "I don't know if this has been submitted before, but those media lab dudes at MIT have a talking stuffed penguin that runs Linux. Just the thing to get the kids involved in Linux."

Jeff Gehlbach writes "Technauts has unveiled a tiny (8"x8"x1") P100-based personal-pan-pizza-box departmental-strength server running home brew mail and web servers over Linux. This thing is amazingly tiny."

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal.

Ed-Da-Man sent us an excellent article on the Linux Community. This is one aspect that seems to be neglected far to often by journalists mentioning Linux- sure, it's a great OS, but the free software community (usually!) rocks, and are willing to help folks. Anyway, it's great positive press for linux. Not the usual stuff in any case.

Brian Daniels writes " NASA's created a Beowulf to investigate the data seized from computer criminals. The article is short on technical detail, but Linux and the cost advantage of Beowulf vs supercomputers is mentioned. One wonders about exaggerations though - does the average computer criminal really have "hundreds of gigabytes of data", and where was he keeping it? "

Brock wrote in to tell us that LinuxPPC is now released. Comes with KDE, The Gimp, Netscape, and all the fixin'z you'd expect in a modern *nix. If you got the hardware, you know what to do.

muggles writes "news from the corporate front: i received email this morning from John "Maddog" Hall stating that an Alpha server is being donated to the Debian Project by the Compaq Computer Corporation. John himself is making a personal donation of an extra 64MB of true-parity memory for the box. the server will be a development platform for the Debian Alpha distribution. much thanks and regards to both John Hall and Compaq for the support of Debian and Linux! muggles ( muggles #debian / mark@debian.org ) "

So many people submitted this story that I wonder if any readers might not know about it yet, but here it is. Debian and Red Hat are now collaberating to produce Linux Compatibility Standards (LCS) Erik Troan (Red Hat) and Dale Scheetz (Debian) are managing the project. I've attached the press release, so click on if you want more.

Joseph Pranevich has written in to talk a bit about one of those features that might be slipping into Linux 2.2, the Frame Buffer Console. It's a nice summary of what it is, and why we might (or might not) want this feature.

Yoav Cohen-Sivan wrote in to tell us that Marc Ewing has posted his take on the Qt License. The final result is that Qt will not be included with future versions of Red Hat's distro.

InterBase Software Corporation, a subsidiary of Inprise Corporation (FKA Borland), has announced it will release the next Linux version of its database, Interbase 5, on August 14, 1998. According to Jim Weil, president of Interbase, there has been a tremendous demand for their recent freeware offering of Interbase 4.2.

Eaglemoon sent us a link to MITs Orca-1 Submarine which apparently is run by an onboard linux system. It just won a contest that involved deploying a marker at the deepest point of a lake, while running unattended. Oh, the places Linux will go... automated subs, automated cars, the space shuttle. Ain't it cool?

Albert Strasheim writes "Just a quick update on the status of the Linux T-shirt Competition. So far I've received 42 entries, and they've all been posted here and here. There's still 5 days left to get entries in so move, move, move! :-) After the competition and voting the t-shirts will be on sale @ $18.00 each, including international shipping and handling. Mastercard, VISA and Amex cards, and bankdrafts, will be accepted. " A lot of the designs won't work as t-shirts, but I did see a couple of really sharp ones that will. Several other ones looked inspired by my DFtP shirt too :)

Chris Story was the first to give testimony that 2.1.116 is out. We've got a fairly stable kernel running off 2.1.114, and things are getting cleaner. 2.2.0 is getting closer. Not much closer, but still.