An Anonymous Coward points to a review listed on osfaq.com, summarizing: "Red Hat's latest release is here with the much improved 2.4 kernel. Its new features make it a compelling upgrade for both server and workstation installation. In addition, there has been more of an emphasis on security in this release than in previous Red Hat releases." Similarly, another nameless reader writes: " The Duke of URL has given Libranet a favourable review. It looks like Libranet may be heading toward becoming one of the big players in the Linux distributions game." I'm still looking for a good review of Mandrake 8.0, which seems to have generated few reviews so far. (Or distro reviews willing to be a little harsher in general.)

A reader writes "This is Rick Lehrbaum's "traditional" report on "all things Linux" at the Embedded Systems Conference which took place during the week of April 9, 2001 in San Francisco, California. Lehrbaum briefly describes many of the Embedded Linux oriented exhibits, takes us on a photo tour of some cool Embedded Linux based devices that were being shown off, and offers his assessment of the current state of the Embedded Linux industry. There's even a "best of show award" for the "geekiest demo" at ESC! Full report is on Linuxdevices.com"

avidwriter@excite.com writes: "Linux Today is reporting that the phone lines to Stormix have been disconnected, and the Web site isn't accepting orders. Looks like another Linux vendor is down for the count." So, I think we'll officially pronounce Stormix dead. Some of the FTP sites are still carrying Stormix ISO's, so if you're looking for an easy way to install Debian on a machine, better get them while you can.

An anonymous reader noted that there's a story on Newsforge about IBM's new ThinkPad. This story says it's the "first commercially available Linux computer with the ability to play back DVDs." The 900MHz Linux T22 will come with a commercial Linux DVD player. Meanwhile Xine, Xmovie, and OMS race to be the first one to support all the features (I need subtitles for anime darnit!) in an open source project, but since CSS plugins float around the net for each of them, actually playing DVDs is something they can do pretty well depending on your hardware. Most interesting about this LinDVD included with the ThinkPad is the implementation of one feature no user needs: Macrovision... done as a kernel module? Hrm.

Boban Acimovic writes "New Mandrake 8.0 is finally out. Official announcement will come today, but new ISO files are already on some of mirrors. Main improvements are kernel =2.4.3, KDE =2.1.1, GNOME 1.4, Nautilus 1.0, Evolution 0.9, XFree86 =4.0.3, RPM 4.0, improved installer with pictures and other nice stuff. Enjoy!" Thanks to Gael Duval, from Mandrake for letting me know - the main features are listed as well as the new features page. But one of the cooler parts is a new part with Mandrake-Linux that will let you donate to the Free Software project of your choice in Mandrake - that's at at Linux-Mandrake.com. Update: 04/19 12:27 PM by H :Newsforge has got a article with more mirrors as well.

Jeremy Allison wrote in to tell us that Samba 2.2.0 has been released. Of course, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what that means already, so I've attached the press release. Mostly this looks like its stuff for compatibility with Windows "We just changed enough to break everyone else" 2000's implementation of the protocol. Congrats to everyone involved with what is unquesitonably among the most important server apps on Linux.

jolan writes: "Patrick Volkerding posted an announcement saying that Wind River is not planning to keep Slackware after the merger." Patrick writes there: "This isn't going to take out Slackware, though. Development continues," and goes on to say "I'm working on setting up a company so we can handle the publishing ourselves. Unfortunately, I'm broke. I can get funding to publish and ship the release to all the subscribers (and anyone else who wants it), but have no money to pay my fellow friends (which sucks) until we make some." Since Slackware has perhaps the most loyal users of any product (just happens to include Linux distributions), and with a new release upcoming, certain reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Maybe we're about to enter a whole new Slackware era.

Many people have sumitted that Red Hat has announced the release of 7.1. I don't see it on the ftp site yet, but, if I don't post this, I'm gonna spend all morning deleting this submission *grin*. The new features include a 2.4 kernel, USB, Updated XF86, and assorted other stuff of varying importance.

Curious__George writes "Kurt Seifried on SecurityPortal (4-11-01) writes on a topic that deserves wider notice in the Linux world: The potential dangers of installing BINARY RPMs (as opposed to SOURCE RPMs). Here is the article in standard and printer-friendly versions." (Read more below.)

CelestialWizard writes: "After the Linux Kernel 2.5 summit, a new security model is to be created for the next kernel. You can see the post from Cripsin Cowan on BUGTRAQ. " Interested folks should look at the mailing list; my guess is this is gonna be for the techies only.

Bob Young prefaces his answers to your questions by saying, "You may notice I've ducked some of the answers below - there is a reason for this. My role at Red Hat these days is as Chairman of the board. Matthew Szulik is Red Hat's CEO and will be a better person to answer some of the specific issues that these questions raise....

It's taken a bit of time, but the webcast from the Linux Kernel Summit is online at OSDN. There's some good talks in there, from some of the big wigs in kernel development - Real is required to view it, but instructions for download/installation are on the site.

martins99 writes: "Progeny was released today. It is a commercial dist based on debian but with lots of new stuff which Debian 2.2 (potato) or woody (testing) lacks like: support for 2.4, graphical installation, XFree86 4.02, glibc 2.2. Read more at www.progeny.com." Since Stormix is ailing so badly, I hope Progeny can do better...

Yes, that Bob Young. The one who helped endow online information resource ibiblio.org, but is better known for his role as co-founder and Chairman of Red Hat. Ask him anything you want, but please hold it down to one question per post. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated inquiries to Bob (who is in England this week), and he'll send back his answers just as soon as he can.

robvasquez: "Surfing the web today, I see that RedHat has broke even and that Corel has shown a surprising profit (they are they still considered a linux company, right?), so I'm seeing Linux companies out of the red! Perhaps this 'recession', whether we are starting one or even going in to one, is what we need to popularize free software. Think about it: with companies laying people off and cheapening up, whats better than free software? They could lay off 5,000 people, OR quit shelling out that much in MS licenses and pay salaries!" It's a nice thought, and a good idea for established companies to look into, but quite a few Linux companies have been hit just as hard during the recent economic crunch. I guess only time will tell if the use of Free Software is as much an economic advantage as people have been making it out to be, and now is as good of a time to test this claim as any.

mojo-raisin writes: "Linux Weekly News is providing a report of the 'Linux 2.5 Kernel Summit,' a gathering of 65 core kernel hackers. Notes are provided on the first day of session, which covers changes required to make Linux more capable on high-performance machines and more user-friendly with hot pluggable devices." 2.5 looks close on the horizon, especially now that Linus has donned a funny paper hat. Better get your feature requests in soon;)

Joel Rowbottom writes "Kernel 2.4.3 is out, time to thrash those mirrors kids!" Download, Compile, Reboot, Repeat. If anyone has linkage to changelogs or something, please post them in the comments. I've been reliably running 2.4.x on a few boxes and loving it. Both X and my DVD drive both thank the kernel hackers.

Carlos Laviola writes: "Ben Collins is the new DPL. The results of the 2001 leadership election have been posted a few minutes ago on the debian-devel-announce and debian-vote mailing lists. The announcement is here. Congratulations to Ben Collins and the other candidates!"

An unnamed reader writes: "It seems that Libranet wants to start a new trend. They are asking $15 for their download. They make a pretty good case for why, don't you think?" A note on their website (reachable from their download page) includes the following: "We at libranet have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for us to get paid for our work. We produce and support what is perhaps the best GNU/linux distribution ever, and we spend long hours and much effort in doing so. Also we think it unfair that only those users with fast connections can download CD images. We provide a free download of our previous release, which is still a first class product. We have made a simple calculation in deciding on a price for the download of our latest and best version. The price of the CD, less $5 for the production of the CD, less $5 for shipping. At $15 this is still little to pay for a product of this quality. Compare it to the price of windows software or even to a few cups of coffee."

El Blasphemouso Padre writes "According to this Reuters story Intel is building 250,000 AOL-Branded Web-Appliances to be given away by a Spanish bank. It runs Linux and soon many people in Spain with no computer will say hola to Tux!" Gotta wonder what the actual cost is on a box like that if they can give away a quarter million of them.