32bitsonline has a story on running Linux on laptops, in this case an NEC Versa LX. “It didn’t grow hair on my chest or whiten my teeth, but having a functioning Linux laptop has already
made a favorable impact on my social life. Seriously! The ability to do real work in cafes and
bookstores means I’m spending more time where women are. I’m just waiting for the day when a
pretty woman looks over and exclaims, ‘Wow, you’re running Linux!’ “

LinuxWorld.com has a story about Omaha Steak using Linux to bump up its online sales. “A three-tiered architecture (data on the back end, middleware to translate, and a Web server to present it) is one
reason Linux is becoming increasingly accepted in the corporate world. The architecture doesn’t absolutely
require Linux, but it doesn’t require anything else either. Each level of the architectural wedding cake is
conceived and executed as a separate modular system. Designers can mix and match operating systems instead
of having to use the same operating system in the front and middle layers that they use in the back end. That level
playing field opens the door for Linux to compete in the things it does best, such as price performance.

That’s what happened at Omaha Steaks: an inexpensive Linux server won hands down over much more
expensive systems.”

Sciam.com looks at the issue of content protection for recordable media. “Free-software guru Richard Stallman
predicted in another Register story that CPRM would kill off open-source software by fragmenting it into two camps, one
supporting the copy-protection regime and one not. Andre Hedrick, who represents the Linux (or GNU-Linux, as Stallman
insists, because Linux incorporates aspects of GNU, a free software clone of UNIX) community on the technical committee
considering the idea, proposed changes to the implementation that would make turning on the copy-protection system optional for
users.”

A BBC story answers questions about the next steps for Napster after Monday’s court ruling. Questions include, is this the end for Napster, the company? “Napster has promised to appeal the decision, and so the current
court battle will continue. It is possible that Napster in its current
form could live to see another day.” A CNet story also tries to explain what’s next.

Anonymous Reader writes: “With monthly security patches, feature enhancements, and bug fixes, how do you keep up to date? Well in this article we are going to take a look at various package management programs that can automate this process. These various package managers allow you to sync your OS to the latest patches automatically or manually, and also offer ways of keeping a whole network up to date. Sounds pretty cool, right. So lets take a look at the various options available.

Depending on your distro the package management selection differs. Currently, most distro’s use either the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) or Debian Package Manager (DPKG). I’m not going to debate, which is better, but I am simply going to take a look at some good choices for both managers.” The article is at osfaq.com.

Posted at LWN.net: “Chris Evans, Joseph S. Myers, Michal Zalewski, Alan Cox, and others have
noted a number of problems in several components of the X Window System
sample implementation (from which XFree86 is derived). While there are no
known reports of real-world malicious exploits of any of these problems, it
is nevertheless suggested that you upgrade your XFree86 packages
immediately.

The scope of this advisory is XFree86 3.3.6 only, since that is the version
released with Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (“potato”); Debian packages of XFree86
4.0 and later have not been released as part of a Debian distribution.”

From a story at BSD Today: “Wasabi Systems, Inc., a company founded by key members of the NetBSD project, released a
CD-ROM with over 1,600 popular applications that run on the NetBSD operating system,
available for purchase at www.wasabisystems.com.

In addition to the standard two-CD set containing the NetBSD operating system, the Wasabi
NetBSD 1.5 Package Release includes two supplemental CDs featuring over 1,600
precompiled, ready-to-run third party software for the x86-based PC platform. The CDs
contain a suite of applications prepared by the NetBSD ‘pkgsrc’ team, which maintains a
database of two thousand third party software packages available for easy integration with
NetBSD.”

The announcement is at LWN.net. It merges with Linus’ 2.4.2pre3, has more net driver clean up, and further maxiradio fixes. Here’s 2.219pre10.

From LinuxPR: eProcess, a French software company specialized in
embedded multimedia solutions, announces the immediate release of popCorn,
an open source MPEG-1 streaming player for Linux.

popCorn is a desktop-oriented MPEG-1 audio and video software
capable of playing data streamed directly from the network. Compatibility with
existing media servers is provided by the
support of the industry standard RTSP protocol (Real Time Streaming Protocol).

From InternetNews.com: “A new caching solution created for speeding up content delivery was launched at DEMO 2001 in
Phoenix, Ariz. Monday.

Billed as the go-to product in FineGround Networks Inc.’s fledgling arsenal, FineGround Condenser is
the end result of a new technology that enables content and service providers cut down on costs while
granting clients extremely fast content delivery.” It’s targeted at Linux users.