Now chromatic has stepped through another couple of books, in addition to the nine in the previous parts of this series on books for the Linux newbie-to-semi-newbie. Actually, the selections this time go on the assumption that you've taken a few weeks (or some very intense days) to absorb the information you need to accomplish some basic tasks, and they take on the challenge of going beyond the basics. Note: here are links to part one, part two, and part three of this series.

Sam "Criswell" Hart asks: "I have been using Red Hat on my machines since RH4.2. The reasons were largely due to bandwidth issues and the fact that I could always get the latest RH ISOs for free. However, since 6.2 I have been disappointed with RH, and 7.0 with its not-quite compatible GCC would be very bad for my free-software projects. I have been thinking of switching to Caldera or possibly to Mandrake. However, I am spoiled by the fact that I can just pop in a new RH CD and upgrade my existing system quite painlessly. Because there are so many other RPM-based Linux distros out there, and they have update options, are there any (esp. Mandrake or Caldera) which can relatively easily update systems based on other distros? For example, anyone have any success or troubles trying to upgrade a RH6.2 system with Mandrake 7.2? Is it possible, or is there something significant blocking such a thing?" While updating a system with software intended for another distribution isn't necessarily good idea, are there utilities out there that can perform the necessary operations needed to convert an existing system from one flavor of Linux to another?

smcavoy asks: "Hello, I am working on a growing network (30+ now, more added daily!). We do a lot of development on Linux (Redhat/Debian) and use Remote X a lot. Currently the network is all static IPs, each server has a /etc/hosts file, containing all name/ip mappings. I am looking to use DHCP to make it easier to add systems quickly, but we use many scripts that use system names for remote displays (xterm -display [systemname]:0). So I need to integrate name resolution with DHCP. Any Ideas?"

Kevin Lawton writes: "Plex86 just reached the 'Linux squared' state. I just got plex86 running on a Linux Mandrake 7.1 host, to boot an old RedHat 5.0 disk image file (installed with bochs some time ago). CVS updates coming in the next few days. Next on the chopping block are the MS Windows OSen! "

PhracturedBlue asks: "There are lots of ways to encrypt a filesystem (via loopback, ppdd, CFS or CryptFS), but all of these options appear to have their faults, be it poor performance, lack of features, or not being actively maintained. So are there any other options out there, that provie quality FS encryption with reasonable performance? So, are there any other viable options, besides the ones I've found? Are there any actual benchmarks of actual performance for the viable options above (I guess the viable ones are loopback, CFS, TCFS, and PPDD)? How about systems using the AES-winner Rijndael (I know Loopback Encryption and possibly TCFS and PPDD can use Twofish, but isn't Rijndeal supposed to be one of the faster encryption methods?). I've seen the recent Slashdot article, and it didn't really address the above questions."

Bob Young, Chairman of the Board for Red Hat has written an open letter to the Community, in response to some of the recent criticism of Red Hat 7. If you've been following these stories at all, or the Linux scene, this is worth checking out.

Herz writes: "I got this email today from Red Hat. RH7 will crash out of the box in 3 weeks! The new Update Agent provided with Red Hat Linux 7.0 contains a daemon, rhnsd, which periodically polls Red Hat Network for updates. This daemon leaks file descriptors. On a default installation, all available file descriptors will be used by rhnsd in approximately three weeks, making the system unusable." The Red Hat folks have also provided a fix, though -- updated packages for those who want to use their update network, and the two-line method of disabling per machine for those who don't. After all, everyone wants uptime > 3 weeks, eh? And you don't need to wait for a "service pack," either.

John E. Cosgrove writes "I read in this article that IBM signed a deal with Red Hat to include RedHat linux on all of their mainframe servers. It's a little short, but worth the look."

theridersofrohirrim writes "Linuxtoday has a very interesting summary and some interviews with redhat staff, regarding redhat 7, gcc 2.96, and more. It also includes some embarassing (but justified in my opinion) comments for Slashdot's redhat 7 bug story. Linuxtoday's article can be found their site."

Scooter[AMMO] was one of the first with this report: "According to Turbolinux CEO Paul Thomas, the future will see Linux boiled down to one generic distribution. Catch the scoop here. How can this claim be made? How can a system like Debian throw away all its guidelines to create a generic distribution? I won't give up apt, and I sure don't see RH accepting it. Why should Peter let the uber-stable power user-oriented Slackware head towards the bug infested hail-the-script-kiddies Red Hat? Standards are great, but aren't the ideals of different distributions what give Linux its flavour?"

Well, as the title says - the AMD X86-64 simulator is shipping (for Linux only - for now). You can go here and read the details. It is called SimNow!. Unfortunately, the kernel 64 bit port is not done yet, but hey, you got a nice simulated machine to play with! It's available as RPM for RedHat 6.2 and SuSE 6.4. NOTE: - you'll need PLENTY of RAM to operate this simulator! (384MB RAM is minimum) and disk space - 4 GB! So think before you download this beast!

A reader writes: "Linux and MacOS versions of Parsec LAN-Test have been released! Windows version will follow soon. The game will also be included on the European version of Red Hat Linux 7, with more than 50 minutes of music by Stefan Poiss. You can download the game here. Please use the mirrors."

TBHiX writes "Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history." Red Hat's point-oh releases have been historically been pretty bad over the years, so I the only thing that surprises me is that people didn't realize it before they downloaded it. The point release has typically been fine, but the bugzilla report lists over a thousand bugs: 200 appearing this week. Take this as a warning folks: didn't 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 teach you anything? *grin* But a DB with 2500 bugs in it doesn't necessarily mean a buggy distribution either.

HerbieTMac writes "Congrats to FreeBSD for a new single day download record. Two terabytes (that's 2 trillion bytes!) from a single machine (ftp.freesoftware.com). This was brought about by the simultaneous release of RedHat 7 and FreeBSD 4.1.1."

Mike Dubreuil writes: "When I went to download Red Hat Linux 7.0 for Sparc I was disappointed to learn RH is dropping support for the sparc processor line. They are claiming that there is a low demand for sparc versions This may be a major blow to the Linux community because Red Hat is the top vendor for commercial copies of Linux. Not to mention that they have the support in place to handle what large companies demand." Update: 10/02 09:43 PM by CT : Bernhard Rosenkraenz wrote in to say "It is true that we will probably not release Red Hat Linux 7.0 for sparc. However, this does NOT mean there won't be a Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2 for sparc. If, at some time, we decide to discontinue commercial sparc support, we will turn Red Hat Linux for sparc into a community effort."

musicmaster asks: "Do you know what happened to OpenCCVS (Open Credit Card Verification system). Originally it was built by Dave Cinege (original homepage). After he stopped working on it about mid-1999 it was taken over by BlackHoleSun, whose site now contains the message that work has ceased since 'many legal snags and licensing issues' didn't justify the effort. OpenCCVS is a clone of CCVS (originally located at www.hks.net, now taken over by Red Hat and placed here). Although Red Hat publishes some of the source to buyers it is not Open Source." Are there any other free software projects developing credit card verification systems?

A curious Anonymous Coward wrote in with this important issue: "RedHat Linux 7.0 does not include libc5 compatibility libraries. Trying to run an old binary (RH4.2 or earlier) generates a "no such file or directory" error. To what extent does Red Hat commit to binary backward compatibility? Is it possible to get libc5-based programs, such as MATLAB, working under RH 7 without recompiling?"

a2800276 asks: "The story that XFS has gone beta raised some questions in my mind. There are now four journaling filesystems available under various OSS licenses and being actively developed for Linux, there being (in estimated order of maturity): SuSE/Namesys's reiserfs, SGI's XFS, IBM's JFS and Tweedie/Redhat's ext3fs. Avoiding the obvious question of why can't the effort going into four different projects be channeled into one, I think a discussion of the particular merits of the different fs's would be interesting."

Warren Vosper asks: "As I sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the RedHat mirror sites to finish pulling down RH7, I ponder the need for this. Why can't we use the MBONE to update the mirrors? I could satisy my burning need for instant gratification *so* much sooner. Hell, why couldn't I tune in to an MBONE broadcast from RedHat and get it at the same time as the mirror sites? As I looked over the ancient (5-6 years ago) online info regarding MBONE I understand that it's used mostly for video and audio, but why not software distribution?"

weeble writes "Red Hat 7 is now out. The updates to the Red Hat web site have been made; however the ftp site has not yet been updated." Remember to use mirrors folks. Its gonna be a bit before they all catch up so be patient.