kTag sent us a page of daily updates from the wife of Jason Haas, LinuxPPC developer. For those who hadn't heard, Jason was in a bad car accident a bit over a week ago. Keep Jason in your thoughts. Any e-mail addressed to him will be forwarded.

LinuxNews.com Editor writes, "A new talking distribution makes Linux easy for visually impaired users to install." An amazing hybrid of a compact Slackware distro and a Linux speech synthesizer, this is an effort that deserves kudos not only because it helps blind and visually impaired users, but because it sounds like it could teach the big boys a few things about appropriate user interfaces. As a bonus, it's small and can run on relatively low-end hardware (though it requires a compatible speech synthesizer), and doesn't even require repartioning.

A number of folks have written to us regarding the purchase of Chilli!soft by Colbalt Networks. It seems that Cobalt is interested in Chilli's implementation of ASP for Linux for their own server appliances.

DocRea writes: "Using Linux, IBM and the University of New Mexico will connect 256 two-processor IBM Intel-based servers with high-speed Myrinet cards to create a 512-processor machine capable of 375 billion calculations per second. The computer, called Los Lobos, will primarily be used for scientific purposes, but will be adapted by IBM to provide the "cluster" approach to running software for business tasks and e- commerce. "

Direct from the mouth of Gael Duval, we've gotten word that MandrakeSoft (Yes, the folks who make Mandrake-Linux. No, it has nothing to do with Mandrake of Enlightenment fame. ) have purchased Bochs and hired Kevin Lawton. Now that Bochs is LGPLed, the Plex86 development can be speed up as well.

oleo wrote to us about MandrakeSoft's latest popular coverage in Upside. Talks a bit about the roots of the system, some quotes from Red Hat about Open Source Software, and some of MandrakeSoft's potential future plans. They also have a little commentary on the LinuxOne history as well.

Recently several stories have floated into the bin regarding troubles with NVidia and Linux. See, they've started down the right path: releasing drivers, and starting to support the OS, but unfortunately they have decided to release binary only drivers. This gets extremely complicated when standards like DRI and Multi-Head start getting involved... binary code releases make it difficult for people like XF86 developers to make everything work together. For a more qualified viewpoint, I've attached a great summary of the situation from Precision Insight's Frank LaMonica.

Quite a number of people have written in about today's business section headline in the New York Times: IBM Goes Counterculture with Linux . Beyond just a good title, it delves into the increasing pairing of IBM and Linux as well as some of the history behind it. The article also talks about the commitment from the top levels in IBM - from Louis Gerstner down. The other interesting aspect is IBM's recognition that Linux is a way for them to regain some of the ground that they have lost to Sun and Microsoft.

Hai|_ Hai|_ writes "Linux vs. Linux? ZDNet has an interesting article about the potential for a forking of Linux distributions into incompatible OSes. " Nothing we haven't seen before, the article just basically says "Linux could fork". Well duh, welcome to open source. The bigger questions are 'Will it' and if it did, 'Would it matter?'

jacobito was the first of the folks who sent us a report running in Silicon.com regarding security and open source products. It's the typical claims - that open source is insecure because it is open source. They've also provided the counter-quotes, though, talking about that because it is open source, it's inherently more secure. *sigh* I hate issue re-tread.

Noctrnl asks: "I've recently begun a search for a Linux distro to run on my old IBM RS/600 model 250 machines. A lot of PPC projects support the CPU architecture, but I have yet to find one that supports MCA on them. At every turn I can find a distro that supports the PowerPC chip on a PCI-based system, but have been unable to find a distribution that will run on my machines. Are there any projects underway that will allow me to boot a real operating system besides AIX on these babies? Just in case you were wondering, *BSD doesn't support them either."

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier writes, "Kirrily 'Skud' Robert, CEO of Netizen [and part-time freshmeat appindex maintainer], gives Linux job-seekers a few tips on landing a job with a Linux-friendly company. Netizen is an Australian Open Source and Internet training and consultancy company." It's a fun read, but eminently practical. Among her advice: Have opinions on beer, get involved in open-source projects, keep track of your source code ... just not necessarily in that order.

muengineer asks: "We're looking for a solution that will allow us to put a zoomable, panning campus map online, with clickable hyperlinks, but not fall into the trap of raster images with image maps. Preferably, I'd like to use something vector based, that can import our GIS data. Although there are solutions out there from companies like Autodesk and Intergraph, unfortunately they appear to be intimately tied to Windows NT as the server. Is there anything out there that will let me use Linux?"

Jason Kau writes " is a working paper on the economics of open source software from the Nation Bureau of Economic Research entitled "The Simple Economics of Open Source". Focuses primarily on Apache, Perl, and Sendmail but mentions Linux, Debian, VA Linux, etc. It's a 40 page PDF document. Some background in Economics would probably be helpful."

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.