“It’s open, so anyone can grab it, whip it, and beat it into whatever shape or function they desire.” “It” is Linux, and anyone can experience the passion, pleasure, and joy of this operating system in one place with Prima Tech’s newly released The Joy of Linux, A Gourmet Guide to Open Source.

For those living the Linux life, those who want to live the Linux life, and even bystanders, The Joy of Linux answers the “why’s” of Linux and provides insight into communities vital to Linux. With chapters such as “The Penguin on Top,” “The Joy of Toys,” and “The Linux Sutra: Resources,” and cartoons by Nitrozac and Snaggy, readers will be entertained and treated to useful information. In brief, The Joy of Linux is a cultural history book, a field guide, and a love song.

“Linux is, ultimately, all about putting control in the hands of the user,” write authors Brian Proffitt and Michael Hall. “The true driving force seems to be the chance to make something really special with our hands and minds. In the old days, we’d be the ones whittling or writing in a journal. Today, we play with computers.”

Proffitt, contributing editor to Linux Today and a professional author and computer consultant whose works include Install, Configure, and Customize Corel Linux; Sun StarOffice 5.1 for Linux; and Install, Configure, and Customize Red Hat Linux for Prima Tech, has developed more than 50 computer books and provided technical editing for dozens more. Hall was bit hard by the UNIX bug before discovering Linux. He divides his time between writing for Linux Today, playing with Linux, “sneaking Linux onto laptops where it doesn’t belong, and maintaining a really mauve database.” Illustrators Nitrozac and Snaggy are the creators of GeekCulture.com, a high-tech humor website and online community for geeks and geek wannabes. GeekCulture.com is also the home of their hilarious daily webcomic The Joy of Tech, and the remarkable cartoon epic After Y2K.

The Joy of Linux complements Prima Tech’s popular and trusted Linux series, which was launched in 2000 in response to the growing needs of the Linux community and is designed to meet the specific requirements of all Linux users. Divided into four categories-Programming and Development, Networking and Administration, Installation and Configuration, and Applications-the series provides quality information to Linux users of all levels on topics ignored by other publishers.

Published and upcoming Linux titles by Prima Tech include PHP Essentials; Integrate Linux Solutions into Your Windows Network; Install, Configure, and Customize Corel Linux; VMware 2 for Linux; DocBook Publishing for Linux; Run Your Office with Applixware for Linux; Emacs for Linux; and The New XFree86.

Prima Tech, a division of Prima Publishing, publishes advanced and comprehensive reference books for programmers and other computer and business professionals as well as tutorials on popular software applications. Prima Tech, which has offices in Indianapolis and Roseville, Calif., delivers up-to-date coverage of operating environments, desktop applications, Internet and desktop publishing, programming, networking, and enterprise resource planning.

Prima Publishing, one of the country’s largest independent book publishers, was founded in 1984 and has its headquarters in Roseville.

Submitted by Jennifer Breece

Contact: Jenni Breece, (317) 488-4338; jenniferb@primapub.com

Slashdotters discuss an announcement at debian.org that Ben Collins is the new Debian project leader.

ZDNet has a review of Mac’s OS X, saying “the reports of kernel panics, unexpectedly low performance, and other manifestations of .0 malaise
are many.” An Associated Press writer likes OS X, but says it lacks some essential support.

“The new operating system (that X is a Roman numeral) is my old Macintosh on steroids. Its
underlying guts, which afford rock-solid stability, are a version of BSD Unix that Apple calls
Darwin.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “Microsoft wants bad drivers off the Windows highway.

With the next version of its consumer Windows operating system,
Microsoft is trying to make computers less daunting and prone to
crashes. To reach that goal, Microsoft not only needs to clean up its
own code, but also all the third-party drivers, little bits of software that
help the system communicate with peripherals and other add-ons.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “Many IT workers are now asking
themselves this question with increasing frequency and for good
reason. In the past month ZDNet has reported on the loss of several
thousand technology jobs in the UK — and this trend looks set to
continue as the tech recession bites deeper into the hardcore tech
industry, having already devoured the fluffier dot-com sector for its
first course.”

The Register: “The Unix business has never been known for the simplicity of its business
alliances, and in that tradition one of the most complicated deals of all was
concluded this week. Finally.”

The Register: “Pierret, who made the comments in an interview with magazine 01 Informatique,
seems to have made a convincing bid for Open Source pin-up status whle he was
about it. “I support Linux and free software,” he said, “because they allow faster
and more robust development to put public administration systems online.
Commercial software raises security issues, because one doesn’t know what’s
inside it. This is why I am against software patents in Europe.”

ZDNET.co.uk: “A newly discovered bug in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web
browser could let malicious hackers read the e-mail and computer
files of some unsuspecting people.

Bug tracker Georgi Guninski said the exploit is activated when a
surfer using Internet Explorer 5 loads a malicious Web page. The
surfer’s network also must be running Microsoft’s Exchange 2000
server for the bug to show up.”

“More than three in four Linux developers use Red Hat’s distribution when selecting a Web server or Web application server, a
survey revealed today.” Read more at FairfaxIT.

“Maybe it was the weather, which has been unrelentingly miserable here in the Northeast. I was going to sit down and write about the tremendous
improvements David Faure has made to KWord by backporting much of the upcoming QT-3.0’s rich text engine to the KWord CVS. And at the
same time I thought I’d talk about the exciting new KPrinter that will be part of KDE-2.2, and which promises finally to get a grip on printing in
Linux. But I just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm.” We’re not sure what all this has to do with Linux and Open Source, but it *is* on LinuxPlanet, after all.