SuSE Linux has announced that SuSE Linux 7.1 for Compaq's AlphaServer systems will be available by the end of May. By porting the latest SuSE distribution to Compaq's 64-bit technology, SuSE proves itself again as a leading provider of Linux server solutions. Apart from the Alpha platform, SuSE Linux also supports Intel and PowerPC CPUs as well as the SPARC and S/390 architectures.

Linux has finally made it onto the business map in the area of database benchmarks, helping

take the wind out of Microsoft's continued contention that open-source operating systems don't

make good business sense.

Nokia and Loki Software have announced an agreement to make Linux games from

Loki available on the Nokia Media Terminal. Linux-based games from Loki

will be pre-installed on the Media Terminal. Anticipated roll out of

the Media Terminal will be early Fall in Europe. Both the companies have

made a firm commitment to support the open source community by developing

open tools and standards making such a collaboration a natural fit.

Evolution 0.10, the Outlook-like mail client and PIM for GNOME, is out with a lengthy feature list and changelog. check it out.

Argentina was in the news recently with a proposed law that would mandate the use of Free Software in government. This article gets more behind the story and takes a look at Diego Saravia, the professor who developed a boot-from-CD Linux distribution he calls "Utoto" and was the key to the recent proposed law.

Linux Standard Base is in the final stages of the LSB written specification for Linux. LSB v0.9 written specification, after the 30 day Request For Comments from the public, will be submitted to the Free Standards Group for adoption. The LSB is built on pieces of existing standards that are widely used by the industry and supported by the development community. Its goal is to develop and promote a set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant Linux system.

Casio is releasing a small (2.1 lb.) Crusoe-based laptop, Fiva MPC-206E notebook, that runs a curious hybrid of Windows ME (for the bulk of the time) and a "partial version" of Linux (for MP3 "tunes or read certain files"). It can be converted to an all-Linux machine. Tunning these applications on Linux cuts boot-up time and can incrementally extend battery life. And this new notebook from Casio is forcing Windows and Linux operating systems to live together.

Acucorp, Inc. has announced plans to deliver extend 5 with ACUCOBOL -GT on Linux for IBM S/390 in the second quarter of 2001. Extend 5 allows software developers to leverage their investments in COBOL applications by transforming these applications into modern systems. Currently available on over 600 platforms, it includes products and services for enabling Internet deployment, graphical COBOL development, data access, distributed computing, and increased programmer productivity.

PlugSys's Max 2.0 Free Edition, the 32-bit Xbase compiler for Linux and Windows providing free registration to application developers worldwide, provides unlimited DBF access-at no cost to the developer or the organization using the application. To ensure scalability, Max also connects to all popular SQL databases.

Mundie questioned the wisdom of commercial and government entities embracing GPL'd software, claiming that by doing so, they could find their own intellectual property no longer protected by law. Caldera has some similar misgivings -- not about the GPL model being the optimal one for open-source development, but about how appropriate the GPL is for open-source software that is sold commercially. As a result, Caldera is seriously looking at and considering different models like BSD and others that would be truly open source but still allow folks to influence the (development) process.