Stewart Rosenberger has written an interesting piece about what the success of Linux means for the users out there who are currently using it. Will it mean that the pioneers will move on to other places? Is this already starting-rather then Linux fragmenting, the user base fragmenting? Click below to read more-it's well worth it.

Desperado wrote in to tell us that according to This InfoWeek Story, the 6.2 release of SuSE is scheduled for August and will have new/updated packages including IBM's ViaVoice, XF86 3.3.4 and VMware 1.0.

Chuck Milam writes "Red Hat has announced Red Hat Europe. Interesting--I wonder if they're going to give SuSE a run for the money? " Looks like they are opening a German and UK office, and have announced that Colin Tenwick (of Sybase) will be in charge.

RelliK asks: "I have a small LAN at home, 4 workstations and a gateway sharing a cable modem. My workstation is running SuSE 6.1 and the gateway is running Debian 2.1. Both machines are using the 2.2.9 kernel. The problem is that telnet and rlogin from my workstation to the gateway is slow to the point of being absolutely unusable. It takes several seconds for a character to appear on the sccreen after I type it. FTP is also jerky: It transfers files fast, but it appears as though it's constanly "hitting speed bumps", so to speak, especially when it's about 95% done. I've tried everything I could think of to fix the problem, but no luck. I'd *greatly* appreciate it if any of you could help me." Now this just sounds downright strange. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's causing this? Click below for more.

Philipp Rumpf writes "SuSE began shipping the first official version of their SuSE distribution for Compaq's (former Digital's) 64-bit Alpha architecture this week in Germany. " I'm glad to see SuSE finally expanding into non-x86 platforms. With any luck, it'll be available in the states soon.

Lost in the Corporate Maze writes "SUSE rides the Linux Cash Cow!. I guess someone asked SUSE to "Show me the money!". What's the breakdown between US and World sales? Where is this revenue coming from? Enquring minds want to know. " We mentioned this before, but its interesting seeing to appear in a major pub. Amusing step in the rivalry between the major distributions. This is getting fun, but its also further proof that Linux is getting bigger.

SuSE has formed SuSE Labs, an effort to contribute to free software projects. The press release (which can be mangled by Babelfish for all you non-German speakers) mentions projects like XFree86, KDE, and ISDN4Linux which SuSE has already worked on, and says that they will be working on them in the future, as well as other projects like ALSA. This seems pretty cool - I know Jaroslav (the ALSA guy) was hired by SuSE awhile ago.

ulissesr asks: "After purchasing the SuSE 6.1 version of Linux, I installed my preferred window manager (WindowMaker) and GNOME. Now, each time I try to initialize GNOME (gnome-session) under WindowMaker (let's say, in xterm) i get the following error: "Unable to connect to server port 35091". I tried to initialize the esound daemon (esd) by putting a call to it in my ~/.xinitrc file, but i get an /dev/dsp error too. My sound card, is a Creative Labs Sound Blaster PCI 64, w/ the ess 1370 chipset. Is there anyway i can run GNOME under WindowMaker with this hardware configuration?"

kris writes "German c't magazine has a story about SUSE (english site: suse.com) reporting a larger turnover that RedHat (26.6 Mio. DM == 15 Mio US$ vs. RedHat with 11 Mio. US$). Suse also reported earnings, while RedHat reported a loss of $130,000 during the same time." kris has translated the article below if you want. Else use babelfish.

The folks over at LinuxWorldExpo have announced the keynote, presenters, and such for this August's show in San Jose. No big surprises - Linus as keynote, but also folks from Burlington Coat Factory and Intel for keynotes as well. Click below for the full screed.

ulissesr asks: "Hi there! I just bought SuSE Linux v6.1 featuring linux 2.2.7 and had no problems installing it. My problem is my ISDN adapator, which is a pcbit-d by Octal! I just haven't found a way to get it to work with the new kernel or could it be the new ipppd verion? Can some good soul point me to a dial-up script for ipppd with PAP authentication?"

knarf noted a story linked from LinuxToday about Red Hat's IPO called Red Hat's Charity Case at Andover News. Several people noted that the story has many errors. Fortunately knarf has written a pretty good summary of what he considers wrong about the article. Several of them are a bit extreme, but many are good points. If you read the original, this is a good rebuttal worth reading.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us about a new expanded distribution for the SuSE distribution- it will now appear in places like CompUSA, Fry's, Microcenter, Waldenbooks, Borders, and Best Buy. Always nice to see those shrink wrapped boxes up on the shelves.

Drizzeth writes "Today S.u.S.E. Linux 6.1 will be released, this is what's new: Kernel 2.2.5, XFree86TM 3.3.3.1, Support for all 3Dfx cards: Voodoo I + II (accelerated) Voodoo Rush (accelerated) Voodoo Banshee / Voodoo III (beta), KDE 1.1 with koffice, GNOME 1.0, Ghostscript 5.10, ijb (non-cacheing HTTP proxy server that filters contents as described in the configuration files), freeamp (MP3-Player), netbeans (Cross-plattform Java IDE, Demo) And lots of updates."

Stacy Doster writes "Linux Expo '99 Finalizes List of Keynote Speakers". To check out the information on who it is, click below. We're looking forward to heading South again, and being at LinuxExpo. And I licked enough bloody envelopes for the free exhibit only passes that I better have a good time.

MadMan2 has sent us a report from CeBIT. Little bits about bigass Samsung Dimms, Not so upgradable Palm Pilots, SuSE, AOL-Scape and Applix. Hit the link below to read MadMan2's machine gun of little bits to read.

Gracchus writes "SuSE has announced they will release the Euro edition of ver. 6.1, with the expected inclusion of the Linux kernel 2.2.3, XFree86 3.3.3.1, KDE 1.1 and GNOME 1.0, on April 12th, with the North American version scheduled for May release. This page is in German, but you non-Deutschlanders can get yer translations at Babelfish . Watch "permissions" get translated to "Permian eating ions"! Can I get fries with that? "

Surplus Baggage writes "Caldera is planning to release the beta of OpenLinux 2.2 at Novell's BrainShare conference. It's the first distro to be based on a 2.2.x kernel. ZDNet has the story. " I've been reminded by people that Stampede has the first 2.2 out. As well, SuSE 6.1, out in a couple days will have a 2.2 based distrib. /me slaps own face.

Tom Christiansen, the Perl deity who once kick/banned me from #perl for asking a question about socket programming (not that I'm bitter *grin*) has written a feature called "Free Linux, Support the Demon Penguin" where he argues with the FSF and RMSs stance that Linux should be referred to as GNU/Linux because it is mostly GNU. Tom includes some numbers that you might find revealing. This one is worth a read.

Matt writes "Much hype has followed the release of latest version of SuSE (6.0), and judging by the review over at Ars Technica of this hot distribution the hype is well justified. While packing a big bang, SuSE incorporates tools like YaST, SaX, KDE, StarOffice 5.0, and so forth to get users of any experience level up on their feet and running productively. As a long time user of RedHat I find SuSE to be a worthy competitor, as well as a strong indication that distributions as a whole are continuing to do positive things to stimulate the growth of the desktop OS user base for Linux. Definitely a worthy read, check it out!" CowboyNeal swears by SuSE. I'm itching for a new Debian CD.