Topher writes "I've got a Dell Latitude XP 4100C. I got RH5 on there no sweat, but I can't seem to get X running. It wants the horizontal refresh rate in the setup, and says it's VERY important. unfortunately Dell doesn't seem to think it's important enough to tell me. Any ideas on how I'd find out? When I try and run X just guessing the Hrefresh rate, it puts up a zillion tiny horizontal lines on the screen, and I have to telnet in and shutdown. "

Ok, this is gonna be funny: the short story is we have a new server running Slashdot, the longer story starts by saying that its not the machine that was shipped to us. Click the link below to read what happened if you're actually curious...

It's about that time again folks:Tomorrow we make the big upgrade. First we went from an Alpha/133 to a P133, and now we migrate to a P2/266. And we're going from 64 to 128 megs the RAM, so hopefully things will perform much more spiffily come monday afternoon. And now the blatant plug:The server was bought for us by Llamacom: they are swapping us a new MoBo/CPU/RAM/Case for a bunch of advertising. Check them out. Tell them thank you! Anyway, tomorrow Dave and I are making the switch, and so we will have downtime (insert spooky chords here). We're gonna start when we get up (which will fluctuate based on how much of this Jack Daniels we drink), and hopefully it'll only take an hour or so (HardDrive/Eth/Video swap, plus maybe a kernel recompile). Then again, things might blow up. So anyway, don't have to much withdrawl tomorrow morning *grin* we'll be back in a few hours. I hope. Really.

This question came from the one and only Jamie Zawinski. Simply put, jwz wants to know what would make a good Unix laptop these days- let's face it, its hard. It took me a long time to make mine behave nicely under Linux (and APM and Sound is still flaky). Anyway, I've posted his full message after the link.

Couple of comments recently have popped up about article contents lately, and I just want to address them. First is the suggestion that I reply with a prefabbed message to each submission a reason why it didn't get posted: If this takes 10 seconds per submission, this would add 50 minutes of work to my day. I'm already spending more time on Slashdot than my job. If Slashdot becomes my full time job, I'd consider it, but until then, no way! Second, people have complained about articles not getting posted, or being late. If you don't make the article look interesting to me, I won't read it. I have 50-75 submissions waiting each day when I get to work, and If your subject is 'Hey Look at This!' I'm probably just going to delete it, because the subject next to it actually might have some sort of description. Third please use the submit form folks- I'm already getting 350 emails a day. The form puts them into a database that I can search/sort/organize as well as post very quickly. Last:Postive Stuff I just wanted to just say that Slashdot is really going well these days. You've been sending in great articles, editorials, and posting excellent comments, as well as making constructive criticism that will eventually help make the site even cooler. And I want to thank everyone out there for helping make Slashdot as fun to maintain as it is. Oooh, and we broke our single day hits record yesterday:120,000! Way cool.

Brock Sides writes "Is it possible (and if so, how) to configure the stand alone Netscape Navigator (under Linux and/or FreeBSD, of course) to launch a third-party email client, e.g. "xterm -e pine", when clicking on a mailto link? "

Allright Dave and I have been getting to much email, so I want to post a few things: First, check out index_F.shtml which will default you to flat mode on articles. Second, you can view any of the slashdot article types seperately. Currently these are Features, Books, Articles, and Ask Slashdot (each of these subdirectories also has an index_F.shtml). Lastly, I put up a Hall of Fame to list the most active stories for the curious, it's still kinda bare, but I'll get around to improving it sooner or later. Lastly, just FWIW, we're going to start deleting comments that are older than a month or 2 (we have 32,000 of them in the database- too many for poor slow P133 server). Just a warning... don't try to convince us otherwise unless you want to buy us another server to handle the load *grin*.

Here's a challange for everyone out there: Rob Williams has a a Sparc Station without a CD ROM drive, and asks "How do I remote boot and install SunOS 4.1.4 on an OSless Sparc from a machine running Linux? The RARP and bootparm stuff sounds doable, but how do you layout the tftp directory and exports to allow a full install of SunOS on the Sun disk? Is the SunOS disk even fully readable by Linux? Are there other considerations for serving diskless client SunOS machines from a linux box?" (Note:If you have a question for Slashdot, send them to Cliff Wood. Don't be shy!)

Clarence Washington jr. writes "Is there a LDAP server available for Linux? What I am looking for is an LDAP server that would enable a network administrator to have a central database for user, resource, and server accounts. The server would also need to incorporate a robust directory replication mechanism. Combined with Samba, I could use Linux as a file server platform in a Windows environment and NOT have to maintain separate user and resource accounts on every server (difficult to manage in a multiple server or enterprise environment). I would imagine that this would need Windows client software as well to enable directory authentication versus direct server authentication

Benny Simon contributed a question that might be a bit more tangible then the last one. He writes " Macintosh 8.0 and 8.1 clients which mount volumes exported by netatalk from the Linux server exhibit strange and mysical behavior (not the dancing icons or incorrect free space reporting). What happens is that many programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, sometimes Netscape, others) crash or exit when opening or saving a file to the mounted volume. In addition, when using the open or save dialog boxes to navigate around folders on the mounted volume, response from the server is *really* slow. " His System is Linux 2.0.33 (redhat5) running on a VAResearch PentiumII/233 with 128MB ram unning netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.0a18.2 and he has no problems with MacOS 7.5.5 clients. So guys, whats the word?

Our first question comes from john beale who writes "I like Linux and use it for graphics and some development/hacking. However I have some nifty toys (Kodak DC120 digital camera, Turtle Beach Fiji soundcard) which are not supported at all under Linux and others (eg. HP Photosmart film scanner) which have very limited support. Much as I'd prefer not to, I have to boot Win95 to use these devices. Question: how can we encourage hardware manufacturers to either support Linux directly (ha) or release info so others can write drivers?" Hit the link below and let's see what you have to say about this.

Allright, I've sort of informally decided that I'm going to post SlashNET related stuff in the evenings so we don't clutter the normal news each day to badly. Let me start off by saying that opening night was pretty cool. Nice to see everybody in there. Hit the link below and read a few of my comments about the network, as well as a poll on services.

Allright folks, it's ready. Join on SlashNET (irc.slashdot.org for a random server, hit the link below for the full list). It's not out to compete with other networks, but rather to provide ya'll with a place to hang out and talk about "Stuff that Matters". Eventually Slashdot will have some nutty IRC based i/o, so hang in there, and we'll start having some real fun. I think that might be what I do after I wrap up the Mystery Project (which is also RSN).

Is it just me, or has today been looong as heck? Allright, first off, the Slashdot Q&A thing is still coming, and we have a (ahem) Victim to start routing questions. Contact Clifton Wood with your questions. Linux, or other. Easy or Hard, Bring it on. We'll post it, and let the Slashdot Readers try to answer it! Next, Sam Smith sent me A Psion 5 Review thingee. It's funny and interesting if you need a distraction. Lastly, Matthew Miller Sent us a link to some interesting info about MacOS 10.

Well folks, today it would be the twenty second anniversary of the day of my birth. Happy Birthday to me. (if you really want to give me a present, buy CD-Now CD for yourself! If, say a thousand of you do, I'll have enough credit to buy tunes until I'm 23!) More importantly, we're looking to get a couple more servers onto the SlashNET in the next few days. If you're interested, please contact Weez. I'm hoping to have the network up rsn. Virtual cake and ice cream for everyone *grin*

Once again, don't be surprised if you see errors this afternoon. Dave and I are meddling again. Something new- check out the 'code' link to the left. This is going to be where I link anyone using 'ultramode' (if you don't know, don't worry). Currently there is a perl module ready, but when everyone gets their URLs in, it'll be much more complete. Lastly, hopefully in the next few days we're going to have a small IRC network running for Slashdot readers. If you're interested in running a server, you should contact Weez. Web pages will be up soon for that too. Oh, and if you have a good name for the Slashdot Q&A thingee, I'm still looking for one...

wil suggested an excellent. If people have questions (on Linux, Unix, or whatever) they could send them in and we'll post interesting questions in a Forum for Slashdot readers to try to help with. Good idea? Bad idea? My code can be extended easily to add another story type (along with features, book reviews and articles) so we can keep them seperate from the actual news. It would be a cool way for all you who voted 'skilled' or 'guru' on the poll to help out all those people who voted 'newbie' *grin*. Updated The feedback has been very positive. I want to find someone to help coordinate the effort on the Slashdot team. If you think you can handle it, and are interested in hard work, send me some mail.

Allright let it never be said that I can't take a joke: Scott James Remnant sent us a link to his Nerd News Generator. Basically, its another generator, but this one (ahem) generates moderately humorous slashdot-esque news articles. It needs some refining (I've actually been toying with creating a parody of Slashdot called Dotslash, and writing fake news purely for fun, but generating them automatically is pretty cool too)

So now I'm finishing up the mess I started yesterday. Lots more minor stuff that needs fixing and tweaking. So don't be surprised if you see any errors today. I'm not pulling the cron job offline, so things should function normally.

Oh, and don't be surprised by the book reviews that follow this article on the homepage. We are reorganizing the book reviews now, and so we are reposting them. Under the new system, you can post comments to them as well.

Another interesting side note- you may or may not care, but as of this minute, we have 25,142 comments posted on Slashdot, as well as 1,053 stories (we lost several hundred of the older stories after the rewrite). It's pretty crazy. Updated Hardcore readers will want to read this. Updated Again! Cookies are fixed now. And just in time for The Simpsons :)

Dave and I are spending the afternoon fixing up Slashdot code today, so you may notice a few things. First, the cron job which updates Slashdot is offline this afternoon, so comments won't update every 60 seconds- we will run it manually every once and a while so things keep going though. Hit the link below if you're curious whats changing. Updated