Rimbo asks: "I'm building a computer for a friend, who has three major requirements from his system: He wants an Athlon with a 333MHz FSB, he wants absolutely no Microsoft software anywhere near it, and he needs the ability to read and edit Chinese. I imagine Red Flag Linux has great Chinese support, but is it as easy to use as a desktop OS as Mandrake or Red Hat? How easy is Chinese text editing and entry under the major distributions? What "office" software for Linux is good for editing Chinese? Thanks!"

rngadam writes "gprof doesn't work in Linux multithreaded programs without a workaround that doesn't work that well. It seems that if you want to use profiling, you have to look for alternatives or agree with RedHat's Ulrich Drepper that "gprof is useless in today's world"... Is profiling useless? How do you profile your programs? Is the lack of good profiling tools under Linux leading us in a world of bloated applications and killing Linux adoption by the embedded developers? Or will the adoption of a LinuxThreads replacement solve our problems?"

joyoflinux writes: "Red Hat has released a beta version of its distribution, called LIMBO. It includes the latest desktop technology, gcc 3.1, Mozilla 1.0+, OpenOffice 1.0, and much more. You can download it here or use a mirror. Submit bugs here." Here's the announcement.

Jonathan S. Shapiro writes: "The new OpenCM Configuration Management system has just released it's first external alpha (0.1.0alpha6) over at opencm.org -- brought to you by the same folks who are working on the EROS operating system. Being a 0.1 alpha release, it shouldn't be used for prime time development yet, but it's definitely ready for a first look. We've been using it internally for OpenCM development for a while, and we have officially moved EROS development over. It looks like most of what needs to be done toward a first release is cosmetic at this point. Alpha6 has been tested on RedHat 7.3. Porting and cleanup are underway for solaris and (soon) *BSD. People seem to be excited about this -- especially the OpenBSD folks. While you are over at the web site, have a look at the two papers on OpenCM from this year's USENIX and USENIX Security conference."

ruiner writes "Mandrake has announced their intention to support AMD's Hammer with a 64 bit version optimized for the new CPU. Redhat is also rumored to be following Suse's lead. 'This new generation of AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is extremely exciting. A version of Mandrake Linux dedicated to these powerful 64-bit processors can certainly accelerate MandrakeSoft's growing adoption in the Linux corporate market' said Jacques Le Marois, CEO of MandrakeSoft."

Anonymous Coward writes "This article at LinuxDevices.com, which includes an Interview with Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann, probes Red Hat's dissolution of its eCos project team and the reasoning behind Red Hat's newly adjusted embedded linux strategy. Tiemann says his company is still in the embedded business, but considers embedded to be an aspect of a broader 'platform OS' strategy."

joel_archer writes "According to this Yahoo! article, Red Hat will begin selling an Itanium version of its Advanced Server Linux in partnership with HP. This is one of partnerships currently underway between these two companies. HP is a key partner for anything Itanium-related, the company invented the design underlying Itanium before handing it off to Intel to develop and manufacture. Bolstering that effort, Red Hat and HP have signed a deal under which Advanced Server will be certified on and available with all of HP's Intel-based ProLiant servers--not just Itanium systems, but also lower-end Xeon and Pentium versions and superthin 'blade' systems."

Slashback tonight with a quartet of updates. So, read on for more information on portable video viewing (and instant recording!), United Linux and one analysts view of What it All Means, Microsoft's answer to a Gopher hole, and why easily guessed passwords sometimes save the day.

Monkius asks: "A year ago, there seemed to be two promising Linux HA frameworks--along with lots and lots of experimental things: SGI's FailSafe, and Kimberlite from Mission Critical Linux. The FailSafe software website now seems very out of date, although the mailing list remains active, and there seems to be forward momentum. On the other hand, Redhat seems to have forked the development of Kimberlite, calling the fork Redhat Cluster Manager. They don't seem to be making development source available, at least to the public. Are these two projects still relevant? What's the current status of Open Source HA?"

colonel writes "In a followup to an earlier story about Red Hat filing for software patents, a "promise" has appeared on RedHat's website stating that they do not intend to pursue patents against software licensed under a specific set of licenses. It's not binding in perpetuity, and some licenses are notably absent in the list of approved licences, like the LGPL. But, at least Red Hat's made their intentions clear now."

Jon James writes "eWeek is reporting that a number of Linux vendors will announce on Thursday that they have agreed to standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance in the industry. " The vendors in question are SuSe, Caldera, Conectiva, and Turbolinux. However, as the article also points out - Red Hat has a very well established lead in the corporate market - and Sun's decision to create Yet Another Linux Distribution (Sun Linux! Now With McNealy Vision!) will make the waters even more muddy.

krez writes: "Lately I've been looking for info on open-source audio recording & processing software. Not an easy task really: Suites like Brahms for KDE, and GLAME for Gnome are a good start, but I've yet to find a program - or a series of programs - that even approach something as comprehensive as Cubase or Cakewalk on those other platforms. Anyway, here's something that might just prove to be a good start. The European Commission is sponsoring a distribution called AGNULA (A GNU/Linux Audio distribution). The distribution will come in two flavours: Debian-based, and RedHat-based. You can read about the project and it's goals at http://www.agnula.org." The Debian side of this project is called DeMuDi, and it's been mentioned here before.

gowen writes "The gloves have come off in the competition between commercial linux distributions. The Register is reporting that Red Hat is offering a $10 rebate to people who upgrade to Red Hat 7.3, including those who previously used Mandrake and SuSE. Previous users of Windows are not eligible for a rebate."

We put up the original Talk to Sun's 'Open Source Diva' call for questions on January 10, 2002, which makes this the longest lag we've ever had betweeen a set of Slashdot quesions and their answers, a record previously held by the late Douglas Adams, whose question post went up on May 2, 2000, but didn't get his answers to us until June 21, 2000.

A user writes "According to a story at The Register, schools who want to take advantage of educational bulk licensing agreements with Microsoft have to count all PCs (and Macs!), even those not running Windows." One package of software applies to all installed PCs and Macs, including those running Linux or BSD, so schools end up paying for stations that Windows (and other programs) cannot or do not run on. Microsoft's justification is that the agreement requires an "institution-wide commitment." Coincidentally, bc90021 points out that "RedHat announced its Linux Pilot Program for schools today. Designed to improve the overall learning experience for children, seven North Carolina school districts have already joined. One county director is quoted as saying: 'With the money we saved from not buying proprietary licenses, the school district purchased additional resources that directly [a]ffected the learning experience of our students and brought us into the 21st century.'"

qurob was the first of many readers to submit that Red Hat 7.3 has been released. Press release doesn't contain any surprises, just lists a bunch of stuff thats included with the dist. (Evolution, Mozilla, Apache). So go find a mirror if you're a Red Hat runner. Update: 05/06 14:05 GMT by T : christooley helpfully points out this list of mirrors.

EyesWideOpen writes "I just read a review of a beta version of Red Hat 7.3 (code named Skipjack) over at Linux Journal. It's not the most complete review (being a little KDE heavy and GNOME shy, as well as focusing mainly on the install and desktop components) but it's a decent read. From the article: '...if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software...'. If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site."

tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux. Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers. Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.

Nat Friedman often seems to live in the shadow of his famous coworker, Miguel de Icaza, but today it's his turn to shine. You asked Nat questions last week. This week he answers, in detail, with lots of links, touching on subjects ranging from Gnome's future directions to how Microsoft is dealing with Linux as a competitor to Windows.

isdale writes: "Charmed Technology, founded by MIT Media Lab graduates, announced what it claims is the fastest available wearable computer -- 800Mhz Crusoe TM5800 processor. The CharmedIT comes standard with a 266 Mhz Pentium MMX for about $2k. The Crusoe upgrade costs another $500. The OS is extra ($250 for RedHat or Debian), as is the display, input device, carrying case, battery, charger, usable application ... if that isn't enough options, you can also get a DIY kit."