Omega996 asks: "Does anyone have any experience with Firewire on 'alternative' OSes? I use Linux (SuSE 6.4), FreeBSD, BeOS, and MacOS, and it seems only MacOS (and only recently) has Firewire support for something other than digital video input. I'm a UNIX geek, and I'd rather be using a UNIX variant with Firewire than MacOS 9, but I don't see any support for Firewire storage (disks, CD/RW, etc.). Am I missing something?" Well, here's a link to the Linux 1394 Project, however IEEE 1394 (or, if you are dealing with Sony devices, i.Link) is the generic name for Firewire. Does anyone have any information on such projects for FreeBSD, BeOS and other not-often-heard-from Operating Systems?

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Security Portal has a review on the security of Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera Linux distributions." Debian and Slackware are absent, but its a decent piece.

flupke asks: "In this article at ZDNet one can read about Linux consolidations. They provide several possible schemes such as: Caldera & SuSE, LinuxCare and O'Reilly, SCO and Turbo Linux, Compaq and MandrakeSoft. I don't think it's very accurate, but I'd like to have Slashdot readers on this subject because one day, it will happen ..."

salty dog writes: "Linux now supports Ultra ATA/100 HDDs, initially funded by SuSE Linux. Get the driver from: [www.linux-ide.org]." As you either know or have probably guessed, ATA/100 is the successor to the ATA/66 hard drive interface standard. And as the linux-ide.org site puts it, "Again Linux Beats MicroSoft to Future Technology Standard!" 'Nuff said.

Patrick McGouirk asks: "I work in a mixed-OS house, and need to have both Windows NT and Linux installed on my laptop. While everyone in this situation knows about the Linux+NT mini-Howto, I was installing SuSE 6.4 this weekend and accidentally did something that seems to have created an alternative solution. I installed NT as usual (hda1, primary) then installed SuSE (hda2, primary) + swap, as well as a third shared FAT32 partition (hda3, primary). I put lilo on hda2, but while fooling around with YaST2 I made hda2 active by accident. When I rebooted lilo came up with the choices of Linux or NT, which I have switched back and forth several times this weekend with no apparent problems. While in theory I knew that both Linux and NT care less about which partition is active (as long as it's a primary), It never occured to me until now that you could actually change the active partition to dual-boot. My question is this. Does this seem a safe method of dual-booting? If so this solves the basic problem of everytime you update Linux you needed to copy the new lilo to NT's root drive. It also makes Linux your primary OS!" I'm running this one for all of the Linux/NT folks out there who didn't know about this trick.

Günter Bechly sent in an interesting open letter to the KDE project regarding KDE, and its current exclusion from Debian (this is of course due to the licensing issues over which wars have been waged, lives lost, and kittens strangled). The letter is attached... he offers a $3k "Bonus" or "Reward" or "Bribe" depending on how you look at it, if KDE will be included with future versions of the distribution. Its an interesting one because the license issues are fuzzy to begin with, but it also shows that there is a strong demand for the software. Then again, I wonder if just hosting the debs and a line for a sources.list might suffice ... or just inclusion in non-free?

Frequent book reviewer and genuine Englishman Duncan Lawie sent us this first-person account of UK Linux Expo 2000. Proof (not that it was needed) that not only is Linux continuing to grow in the UK as elsewhere, but that the disconnect between suits and geeks remains as evident as ever. Read below for good news and medium news -- thankfully, that seems to be as bad as it gets for this transmission.

appletnc from linhardware.com points us to their article about Athlons and Linux. They're trying to sort out the compatibility problems rumored to exist with the boards and chipsets. He says "Despite SuSE's Athlon workaround and RedHat's (in)compatibility note, etc.) and rumors, we have not seen many reports of problems by LhD users. Are Linux users actually experiencing problems with Athlon motherboards? Given that the outstanding price/performance value of the Athlon, the question is how well do Athlon motherboards work under Linux?"

SuSE has announced that they are going to release a beta SuSE Linux for IBM's S/390. A beta version will be out in late June. TurboLinux has signed an agreement to port their Linux distribution to S/390 as well. The only major distributor that is missing here is Redhat. What do you think about Linux distributions and the S/390??

negaPLuCK writes: "i just mounted my first reiserfs partition. When the reiserfs.o module loaded into the kernel what popped out but ads for SuSE, MP3.com and Ecila.com." I've attached the exact text in the read more: it's more like sponsorship than ads, which on one hand is a cool way to finance development, but where is this gonna end?

Well, as the title says - SuSE 6.4 Evaluation version is now available. Before you start using it seriously, take a look at some of the updates that SuSe already released for this version, such as the Netscape update which you need to install over your installation. Credits for this story goes to Linux Weekly News.

troc writes: Here's the "info on this year's Linux Beer Hike sponsored by SuSE (and others). It's a European event, where Linux users wander around a nice hilly area, drink beer and exercise their minds of an evening doing Linuxy stuff. " I wanted to go last year, but my flabby ass probably shouldn't be goin' on ye old hacker hike ;)

In our third and final part of the 'Making Music with Linux' trilogy, we try to make sense of the alphabet soup of the Linux sound world by exploring OSS and ALSA, and we investigate musical notation systems and software available for Linux.

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.

Earlier we announced that Walnut Creek CDROM and BSDI are merging. Obviously, this will shake up the BSD playing field considerably, and will doubtless have knock on effects with the Linux and other open source communities too, to say nothing of the various commercial organisations that already rely on FreeBSD or BSDI on their servers. Here, to answer questions about the merger, is Bob Bruce, president of Walnut Creek. Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD core team member and release co-ordinator, and Gary Johnson, CEO of the new company, also contribute.

MrEfficient writes, "ZDNet UK has a story in which Dirk Hohndel, the chief technical officer of SuSE Linux, clears up an earlier statement made by the chief executive, Roland Dyroff, about Linux's readiness for the desktop. "

t-money writes, "The Helix Code Web site went live this morning. They have a pre-release of their Helix GNOME desktop, which includes the latest development version of GNOME (gnome-core 1.1.5). " Thanks to all the people who wrote in about the Helix Code launch - I've got also got some information from Nat Friedman of Helixcode about what they are doing, so read more. And can I say Wow. This looks cool.

A lot of people have been submitting the interview with SuSe CEO Roland Dyroff, in which he states the Linux is not ready for the desktop. Sounds bad, right? Well, if you read the interview, it makes much more sense - he talks about company adoptions of Linux, but also addreses issues of hardware drivers and such. But with the upcoming release of the GUI Managers and the rising number of pre-installed Linux boxen, I think we're getting closer.

radja writes: "The SuSE chameleon has a new name: Geeko. E-mail to the winners was sent yesterday, so if you joined the contest, check your mail." Radja was pleasantly surprised to receive such mail, and looks forward to getting a plush Geeko and the coming 6.4 distro. Check out the results on the SuSE news page.

Syn Ack writes, "SGI and SuSE announced at CEBIT that they are going to team up to bring Iris FailSafe to Linux. Linus is quoted as saying that this is a "piece of the puzzle" that Linux is missing. Here is SGI's press release." The press release says FailSafe for Linux will be open source, but doesn't say under what license.