deran9ed writes: "Silicon Graphics plans to introduce a version of its Origin 3000 series computer built around Intel's 64-bit IA-64 Itanium processor running Linux, according to SGI Chairman and CEO Robert Bishop. The current Origin 3000 computers from SGI are built around processors from MIPS Technologies and run SGI's proprietary Irix operating system. SGI has not decided as yet on the name for the new product line. Infoworld article."

Gerald asks: "It's been three years since Microsoft and SGI announced that they were jointly developing Fahrenheit, the new 3D graphics API that would be better and more cross platform than both OpenGL and Direct3D. The dates indicated on the press release have all passed, and there has been no mention on it anywhere. I haven't even been able to find a Fahrenheit home page. So what's happened? Was Fahrenheit a decoy to get the graphics industry off the back of Microsoft when it first came out with Direct3D?"

sparcv9 writes "The NetBSD Team announced today the offical start of the NetBSD/hpcarm port of their multi-platform OS. This port runs on StrongARM-based handheld PCs. So far, the HP Jornada 720 and the Compaq iPAQ H3600 are supported. With this port hot on the heels of the SH3/4-based hpcsh port and last year's MIPS-based hpcmips port, it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."

Some of you may find it odd to see your own experiences and memories presented as social history. But according to a meticulously reported (but somewhat dry) new book Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Open Source has changed the world and isn't done yet. If you want to read a top-to-bottom account of how it happened, author Glyn Moody offers a good one. (Read more)

I recieved this press release at some point in the night (which I've included below). We've talked about it for a while now but the deal has been...consumated. Art Tyde, co-founder and current CEO of LinuxCare will be CTO, while T. Paul Thomas, president and CEO of TurboLinux will remain as CEO. As for the name - they are staying with TurboLinux. My hopes for LinuxLinux as the company name have been dashed.

Xose writes: "Oss.sgi.com has a note from the project coordinator: Due to the Apache Software Foundation's disinterest in adopting any substantive parts of the work presented here, SGI has decided that I should no longer actively contribute to this project or to the Apache HTTP server project. I will continue to port the patches to new versions of Apache/1.3 (but not 2.0) in my spare time and to accept bug fixes and enhancements contributed by folks like you. I'm glad that many people found my work useful and I'm sorry to see it end this way."

xynopsis writes: "Based on the Indigo Magic Desktop on Irix, this Linux version contains a new window manager called 5dwm, an enhanced Motif library that supports the Irix look and feel, and widget sets specific to SGI. IMD goes further than those "themes" available that simulates the Irix desktop experience by allowing applications written in Irix to be ported to Linux with little modification in the GUI front-end. Linuxworld.com recently interviewed its creator, Eric Masson, who is single-handedly porting this great Unix desktop to Linux." Quote: "The first major difference between GNOME and IMD is the low-level API being used. In the case of GNOME it's GTK+, originally developed for the popular GIMP application, whereas for IMD it's Motif, a much more mature and standardized API ... "

sparcv9 writes "The NetBSD Team has added another port to their ever-growing list. This time, it's NetBSD/hpcsh (HPC = Handheld PC, SH = Hitachi Super-H processor), and it currently supports the SH3 processor, with the SH4 promised in the future. It currently runs on the up-until-now WinCE-only HP Jornada palmtop PC."

We've been at LinuxWorld for the last couple days, and some interesting stuff has been going on: The SAMBA folks won the $25,000 IDG/Linus Torvalds award, and SGI announced the availability of RH7-based distro using XFS ^[?] . In other news, our BOF went well with many questions about Slashcode - and the Perl Monks booth has been doing great in donations. Update: 02/01 05:18 PM by CT : The highlight for me so far was judging the "Coveted" Golden Penguin Awards w/ Don. Actually, I seriously did covet the award, beautiful hand blown glass penguin made me wish I was a contestant. We judged that Linus got the definition of BogoMIPS wrong. Fortunately his still won, but it was truly joyous seeing the surprise on his face.

Pete Blackley writes: "The best Linux distro out there has just released a new version; check out the README. And it comes with kernel... 2.2.18! Some things never change, and I am glad it works that way. Don't forget to check the autoslack package in the unsupported dir: it means the imminent death of all the "Slack lacks apt-get" arguments. PS: If you browse the ftp.slackware.com/pub tree, you'll see that Slack currently runs on vanilla x86, SGI VisualWorkstations and SunSparcs; I'm just waiting for the PowerPC port! PPS: All the crap about Slackware's death really is an exaggeration." That's what I like: a distro that isn't afraid to say that its death is an exaggeration. Update: 01/13 01:47 PM by michael : Slackware says - rudely - that 7.2 isn't released yet. This situation - confusion about what is released and what is not - is one that most software developers avoid by utilizing new-fangled conventions such as "beta".

sparcv9 writes: "The NetBSD/sh3 developer Saitoh Masanobu, who was able to boot the NetBSD/sh3 kernel on his Sega Dreamcast last summer, has now officially forked a NetBSD/dreamcast port. The Dreamcast effort will focus specifically on supporting the Dreamcast hardware, rather than just the Super-H processor contained within. Currently, it only boots into single-user mode, and the only function hardware is the serial port, but, hey -- it's a start." This project ranks right up there with all the tivo hacking going on in my eyes. When all is said and done, we could have really inexpensive, but reasonably powerful machines to play with.

green pizza asks: "My research group will soon be purchasing several workstations for telescope image analysis. We are currently planning on going with dual Pentium III systems from VA running Redhat 7. We have a good deal of custom filters and scripts that will be churning away in The Gimp and would like the best performance possible. Is our current choice the best one? Should we consider moving up to a Xeon system or perhaps a high-end, multiple processor Sun Blade 1000, SGI Onyx 3000, or Alpha?"

We had an extremely interesting submission from Ted T'so,, Linux kernel developer, who also has an obvious interest in security, given his work with Kerberos ^[?] . He wrote in concerning the release by the NSA (Yes, that NSA) of a high security version of Linux. I've included his comments below.

PhilLong asks: "SGI has a limited time offer for the 1600x1024 flat panel for $1500 US. What options are available to support the 1600SW under Linux or BSD, especially at 1600x1024? What I know so far, from DejaNews and phone calls is the following: they will bundle it with either a multilink adapter or an Oxygen VX1 PCI card with DVI out, the multilink will take standard VESA resolutions @60Hz and drive the monitor, it will also accept 1600x1024@60Hz (there's a list of cards that will do the 1600x1024 under Windows on SGI's site). The SGI Linux (Red Hat 6.2) workstations with the nVidia chips (and more recent than 0.95) drivers work through multilink, and possibly DVI. I'm not clear on that. The matrox G400 is said to support the 1600x1024 under DVI/windows with the DVI daughtercard. Does this work under XFree4 @ 1600x1024@60Hz? Does anybody know if the daughtercard will fit on a card with the two head output built in? MetroX doesn't support the 1600SW, but Xi (Friday) posted a patch for the accelX 6 to support the Oxygen VX1 card." This offer is only good thru December, so you better act soon if you're interested.

Here you go: straight answers to your questions from Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD. Read, enjoy, and comment away. (Theo might even check in with a comment or two of his own if he has time -- although he's been awfully busy lately, so please don't hold it against him if he can't, okay?)

TJPile asks: "I work for a larger advertising company with offices all over the US and soon Europe and Asia. Due to our growth in the past year, our current archive/storage system cannot fulfill our needs. Others in my IT team have been talking with Dell about a storage area network. I will be the one administering this system and I was wondering if anyone in the Slashdot community has ever dealt with this before. I know we will be needing some heavy metal along the lines of an SMP Sun or SGI box. We need a system that can support (at max) about 100 simultaneous users working on large image files stored on the server. We also need cataloging software that will allow PC/Mac users to browse documents via thumbnails and job numbers. What do you guys think?" The previous two articles that touched on this subject didn't get much traffic, and were posted at least 6 months ago. Has the intervening time provided more advancements in this area?

Julian Stoev wrote in with this query: "Recently I've seen quite a lot of conversation about Linux on 'big iron' and talk about a possible fork due to the fact that the Powers That Be do not want to include the necessary features that are necessary. A guy from IBM in an interview sounds a little desperate. He sounds like IBM is not very happy with Linux's direction to small devices. The guy is cautious not to make kernel people angry and does not speak directly about kernel fork. But why don't they (IBM, SGI, et al) grab HURD and add to it all the things they find important for 'big iron' support?"

Saberwind asks: "Fed up with flicker problems when viewing 1600x1200 and 1920x1440 resolutions on even some high-end CRTs, and wanting a perfect image that I can hang on my wall, I'm ready to switch to LCD. I almost plunked down nearly $3000 for a 18.1-inch Viewsonic VP181. The ideal LCD would have a digital input, be at least 20" diagonal, be wall-mountable, have an orthagonal shape, and of course square pixels (regardless of the aspect ratio). Does anyone know where such holy grails might be procured?"

dameon asks: "I have been asked by my supervisor to select a replacement for our current SGI Onyx2 space heater. The current setup contains 24-195 Mhz IP27 processors, 12GB main memory, and around 140 GB of total storage space. We use it to run a bunch of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code. Currently the demand on our system is so much that the jobs are backing up. So, they came to me with two quotes and said: "Which one is better?" I have had limited experience in the field of powerhouse number-crunchers. The two quotes I have received are from HP and SGI. SGI's quote is for: an Origin 3400 with 12 GB Memory, 24-400MHz/8MB R12K's, and 1/2 TB of storage space. HP is offering 3 9000 series N-4000's adding up to about the same specs in total, with the exception of the processors. Hp is offering 550 MHz PA8600's (1.5MB) processors in their setup (it also has more storage space setup with a hyperfabric configuration). All of the software we use will run on both platforms. So, I would like to put this to the Slashdot community: Which one is better?"

Dynedain asks: "Let's suppose that an architecture fraternity suddenly has the opportunity of obtaining a handful or two of old SGI Indigos for little or no cost. What do they do with them? Obvious answer: set up a render farm for their digital projects. Now the question is HOW? We have the ability to network these machines (via TCP/IP on a 10bT network) and a few of us have experience w/ UNIX flavors. We've even been playing with Blender, but it seems to lack network rendering support. Considering we are relative newbies, the limitations of the Indigo (1Gb HD, 96 MB RAM, IRIX 5.3), and the fact that we have no money to spend on licensing, what solutions are available for implementing a 3D render farm with DXF support? Do we cluster? Or do we run network scripts?"