Slashdot readers discuss a report that some Microsoft employees are
unhappy that the Myth servers ran on Linux, after Myth-maker Bungie Studios was acquired by Microsoft earlier this year. The original article is at InsideMacGames.com.

MandrakeSoft, the publisher of the
Linux-Mandrake operating system, announced that it intends to
reinforce its image to both individual and corporate users. In order to offer
them the most suitable solutions, MandrakeSoft will be launching strategic
partner programs designed for different market players including software
and hardware vendors, as well as with systems integrators. Check out the press release at LinuxPR.

The Linux Journal has a how-to article on “tweaking old Tux for fun,
performance and a better knowledge of the innards of your Linux system.”

Jabber, the only open source,
extensible instant messaging platform, today surpassed 10,000 server
downloads with more than 1,000 of these servers now actively deployed on
the Internet. This marks a 100 percent increase in the number of
downloaded servers in the last two months and an increase of more than ten
times the number of servers in active deployment in the same period. The press release is at LinuxPR.

Slashdotters discuss a review of Debian 2.2 on the dukeofurl.org.

Reuters is reporting (OK, this gets a bit strange: Inter@ctive Week has a Reuters story that reports on a Washington Post story) that the FCC is backing the AOL-Time Warner merger. The FCC’s staff has recommended the agency approve the $183 billion merger, if the firms agree to conditions on Internet access. Here’s the actual Washington Post story. The FCC later denied the report, according to Bloomberg News.

Perl.com has an interview with Dr. Ilya Zakharevich, a long-time contributor to the Perl5 Porters mailing list. Zakharevich, a math professor at Ohio State University in his free time, contributed Perl 5’s
operator overloading feature, much of the current shape of the regex engine, the OS/2 port, and the FreezeThaw,
Devel::Peek, Math::Pari and Term::Readline modules. He talks about Perl 6, among other things, in the interview.

Humancasting is a peer to peer video personal video streaming system currently under development. The system will be totally open and support open standards. Developers are currently seeked. — Submitted by Oliver Willis

By Tina Gasperson
News Editor
On Oct. 13, a terminally cute Dust Puppy could be the next new model for Quake III players. That’s the day Loki Software and Userfriendly.org announce the winners of their Quake III Arena skins and levels contest in which contestants will vie for prizes in one of three categories: maps, skins, or models.

All entries must have a UF theme, and sorry guys, no vulgarity is allowed. The contest ends on Oct. 11, and the winning entries will be displayed at the Annual Linux Showcase in Atlanta on the 13th.

To create designs, Linux users can take advantage of Loki’s Linux SDK, which includes the port of Q3Radiant, a program that previously was only available for Windows.

Loki Entertainment is well-loved in the community for its dedication to bringing the best in gaming software to Linux, as well as its sponsorship of several development projects intended to increase the number of tools available to open source game developers.

The Quake games are immensely popular among geeks, an audience that makes up most of Userfriendly’s readership, probably because the comic strip takes a hilarious look at life from the viewpoint of the Un*x/Geek community.

Most of the characters are human, but Dust Puppy, with his fuzzy head and stringbean legs, is unarguably the cutest and most identifiable denizen of the strip.

Since Userfriendly character AJ (among others) has been known to drool over Quake III from time to time in the strip’s history, coming up with the idea for the contest was just a matter of time.

“Because there have been so many Quake references made in the strip and the characters and fans all love the game, we knew it would be a big hit,” says Erik Loptson, PR coordinator at Userfriendly.org. “[We wanted to give them] the opportunity to use their creativity and skills to actually bring the characters into the game.”

The sponsors don’t expect the Quake contest to become an annual event, mainly because there are so many other games slated for porting to Linux in the future. “We hope to work with Loki on these as much as possible,” says Loptson.

Loki and Userfriendly aren’t expecting to be overwhelmed with entries for the contest, so your chances of winning may be pretty good — if you’ve got the talent. “Our best guess is that we will receive 30 to 40 entries in total across all of the categories.” Loptson adds, “The skins category will see the highest response, as it requires the least amount of time.”

Entries will be rated on a scale of zero to 10 “frag puppies,” and the top winners in each category will receive two games of their choice from Loki, an autographed copy of each of the two Userfriendly books, and a real live (OK, maybe not alive) Dust Puppy. Second place winners get one game from Loki and a Dust Puppy, and each honorable mention will also get one of the cute little critters.

Quake is not the only game Loki has brought to the Linux community. Some of the applications the entertainment software company has ported to Linux include SimCity 3000, Heroes, Heretic, Railroad Tycoon, and Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns.

In fact, Loki CEO Scott Draeker made a point of announcing that the Kohan game for Linux was slated for release at just about the same time as the Windows version.

Now, if Loki could just get the big name game developers to look at Linux first.

Linux PR: Digital Creations, publishers of the Open Source Zope Applications Server, and Kaivo, a leading Open Source solutions provider, announced that Kaivo will be developing and delivering Zope training worldwide.