Read on below for tonight's edition of Slashback, with followups to several previous Slashdot stories, including the Linux-in-Munich saga, Harlan Ellison's feud with AOL, Hotmail's response to the growing space for webmail, and more. Read on for the details.

steve_deobald writes "The Mono team just released Beta 3, the final beta before we see the 1.0 release candidate and final. Binary packages can be had for Red Hat, Fedora, and SuSE. Although not officially released, the new website is up and running. Also of note, MonoDevelop 0.4 was recently released, and has RPMs available for the first time."

sglafata writes "Novell has made an announcement that McDonald's is moving towards Linux. 'With more than 30,000 restaurants around the globe and more than 1,200 in Germany alone, McDonald's is the undisputed market leader in the fast food sector.'"

Johan Schinberg writes "Bob Marr wrote an interesting editorial about what many of us have have noticed lately: the three most popular Linux distros are getting "fatter" in terms of their memory footprint and CPU demands for their graphical desktops. Fedora Core 2 isn't usable below 192 MBs of RAM while Mandrake and SuSE aren't very far off similar requirements either. There was a time when Linux users would brag that their favorite OS was far less demanding that Windows, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Modern distros that use the latest versions of KDE and (especially) Gnome feel considerably heavier than before or even than Windows XP/2k3. Sure, Longhorn has higher requirements than XP (256 MB RAM, 800 MHz CPU) and the final version will undoubtly be much more demanding, but that's in 2-3 years from now. For the time being, I am settled with XFce on my Gentoo but I always welcome more carefully-written code."

twener writes "The SUSE 9.1 FTP version is now available on SUSE's ftp mirrors for free installation via FTP/HTTP (installation instruction). It's almost identical to SUSE 9.1 Professional except some few packages which are missing due to licence reasons. Also don't miss "SUSE 9.1: The Complete Review" recently published by DesktopOS.com."

Two strongly contrary claims describe the usability of Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Roughly, these claims go like this: 1) "Unix is easy! With a few simple commands you can navigate the filesystem and manipulate text; for the rest, just read the fine manual." That's the viewpoint (painting with a broad brush) of technically literate technojunkies. 2) "Unix is a pain. Cryptic commands, confusing explanations -- when I can get them -- from my smug cousin Jim. And where is this so-called manual?" That's the viewpoint (same broad brush) of a lot of people who -- let's say -- aren't the ones rushing to upgrade their heatsink and overclock their RAM, but have given things Unixy a spin. Linux for Dummies has been around long enough to reach its recently published 5th edition (written by Dee-Ann LeBlanc); it aims to bridge the 'Way too Hard!' and 'All Perfectly Easy' schools of thought. Read on for my review of the book.

Mad_Rain writes "Two new developments in the Mandrake Linux camp: For the beta-testers and live-cd crowd, MandrakeMove 2 (which is based on Mandrake 10) is undergoing beta testing. 2.6 Kernel anyone? Financially, Mandrake seems to be improving, as they cite a report from EuroLand Finance about how they compete with Red Hat or SUSE, at least in the marketplace (as opposed to on the desktop)."

darth_silliarse writes "Linux.com have posted an interesting review Fedora Core 2, which includes reference to the now famous Windows/Fedora Core 2 dual booting "feature". My favorite quote "Unfortunately, all of FC2's admirable qualities cannot save it from its congenital defects. These range from annoyances such as broken audio drivers to the abomination known as Gnome 2.6, and are serious enough to make the Fedora Project's second litter of pups unsuitable for any use other than as laboratory animals." Quite a indictment don't you think? My fav distro is SuSE but I'm interested to hear others views about this review..."

lsmft2001 asks: "We're busy implementing a big ERP project with PeopleSoft. We currently run a mixture of Windows 95, 98 and 2000. These machines run most of the time, but all too often they fail for various reasons. Our IT department spends too much time fixing these machines, basically patching them enough so staff can get back to work. It's frustrating for them and for the users. PeopleSoft only requires a browser to run. Has anyone implemented PeopleSoft without Windows machines? What I would really like to see is some kind of plug and play solution. If a PC fails, the maintenance folks replace the whole machine or the hard drive and everyone is back to work. I would like to see this solution for the 'power users' as well, where they could log on to any machine and have all their files and applications available to them. Everything here runs Novell Netware. Has anyone implemented PeopleSoft with minimal client software? Could it be done with Novell and SuSe?"

GhostCypher asks: "I've been a Mac user for nigh on 12 years, and recently made the reverse-switch (yes, Mac to PC) due to an unfortunate accident to my PowerBook. Now that I have this spiffy new HP laptop, I want to run Linux or Unix of some flavor on it, but I don't know the best one to run. I've been considering FreeBSD and OpenBSD, as well as SuSE Linux, Fedora, and Mandrake. Could the wisened Linux gurus here offer some insight as to the best package for a former Mac user to introduce him to the greater world of Linux without major headaches in setting it all up?"

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich Hughes posted his thoughts on the latest Fedora release with this Core 2 Review. "Fedora Core 2 is the newest release from The Distro Formerly Known As RedHat. Updates include the 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6, X.org replacing Xfree86 and numerous package updates. Having played around with SuSE 9.1, Arch .6 and Slackware 9 with the 2.6 kernel, I was interested in seeing how the Fedora team did with this release.""

Bruha asks: "There have been several reviews of SuSE 9.1 lately in the online press. However I'd like to hear what the buying public has to say about Novell's first release of SuSE since buying the company. I'm currently typing this article from SuSE 9.1 x86_64 and I have to say past a few quirks I'm really starting to love this distro and admire how polished it has become since 8.2 my last SuSE purchase. What are other's opinions of the software after trying it out and what problems and new things have you discovered? And if you're sticking with it after a move from another distro why did you decide to stick?"

Aiua writes "Novell and SuSE AG have made the Live Evaluation CD of SuSE Linux 9.1 available for download. A list of mirrors carrying the 680MB ISO image is available on the SuSE Website. The Live CD allows you to test some of the new features of 9.1 without installation, and is a SuSE recommended download to test your computer for distribution compatability. The full Personal and Professional Editions are now shipping and available for purchase in the SuSE Store or your local reseller." Reader Sweetshark points out that the first release of the Live CD has problems, so make sure you get the most recent one: "SUSE Security Announcement: Live CD 9.1 (SuSE-SA:2004:011) describes a big security hole in the SuSE 9.1 Personal Edition Live CD: 'Upon boot, the Live CD will automatically configure a network card if one has been detected. [...] A configuration error on the Live CD allows for a passwordless, remote root login to the system via ssh, if the computer has booted from the Live CD and if it is connected to a network.' A fixed iso is available."

SafeTinspector writes "Yesterday I attended a Novell/HP Linux seminer "Delivering & Deploying Linux Across the Enterprise" Among the boring and expected stuff, the Novell representative had several slides in his presentation claiming that Novell is going to get heavily involved with LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) to bring policy based security and administration to the LTSP similar to those found in Microsoft and Citrix terminal servers--probably through their venerable Zenworks product line. Also heavily hinted at would be an install wizard provided by Novell that would greatly simplify the installation and configuration of LTSP, which is currently quite complex. I can find no hard information about this on LTSP or Novell websites, nor any information within Google newsgroup search. Does anyone know more about this? On a side note, the laptops of both the HP rep and Novell rep were running SuSE Linux Desktop with Ximian XD2 installed and the presentation was made using OpenOffice Presentation."

prostoalex writes "Advanced Unix Programming by Marc Rochkind is published by Addison-Wesley this year in its second edition. A book that has been considered a timeless classic, a title that saw its first edition back in 1985 and its second edition almost two decades later, in 2004. Where do you even start to review?" Read on below to see read prostoalex's evaluation.

ron_ivi writes "In a move reminiscent of the 1997 MSFT/Borland Lawsuits, Microsoft has hired the SUSE sales guy who won Munich for SUSE. So if you want a job in this tough job market, just be wildly successful at your current job and Microsoft will come recruit you. (Another interesting Microsoft hire is the chair of the ISO C++ standards body as their VisualC++.NET architect.) Personally I think it's great that they recognize talented individuals and reward them well."

darthcamaro writes "We all assume that the kernel is the kernel that is maintained by kernel.org and that Linux won't fork the way UNIX did..right? There's a great story at internetnews.com about the SuSe CTO taking issue with Red Hat backporting features of the 2.6 Kernel into its own version of the 2.4 kernel. "I think it's a mistake, I think it's a big mistake," he said. "It's a big mistake because of one reason, this work is not going to be supported by the open source community because it's not interesting anymore because everyone else is working on 2.6." My read on this is a thinly veiled attack on Red Hat for 'forking' the kernel. The article also give a bit of background on SuSe's recent decision to GPL their setup tool YAST, which they hope other distros will adopt too."

JoshuaTreeCA writes "Adam Doxtater of Mad Penguin has published another excellent review... this time on the newest SUSE Linux 9.1 beta-release. This release comes complete with the latest GNOME and KDE enviroments as well as being the first distro to present a retail package built on kernel 2.6.4 Check out the review, with screenshots." rokzy also wrote in with another review from NeoLink Computers.

Several folks submitted the press release announcing the formation of the X.Org Foundation and the release of X11R6.7 of the X Window System. The XOrg Foundation is the successor to the X Consortium, formed by many of the most notworthy participants in the XFree86 Project. This code release is a tree forked from the last XFree86 release not troubled by that pesky license change. Since Mandrake, Gentoo, OpenBSD, and Debian have already rejected the new XFree86 license, this new code tree will likely become the default X11 for most Linux users. I've attached the press release that explains more details about the code release, as well as the X.Org foundation itself.

dave writes "GNU/Linux vendors Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, and SUSE have joined together to give a common statement about the Forrester report entitled "Is Linux more Secure than Windows?". Despite the report's claim to incorporate a qualitative assessment of vendor reactions to serious vulnerabilities, it treats all vulnerabilities are equal, regardless of their risk to users. As a result, the conclusions drawn by Forrester have extremely limited real-world value for customers assessing the practical issue of how quickly serious vulnerabilities get fixed."