%% -------------------- Linux News # 11 TeX version -------------- %% % By Denise Tree, editor of Linux News January 1993 % % Hunter Goatley's fine newsletr.tex macros were used to % % do the fancy stuff in this newsletter... % % ask archie for newsletr.tex and gentle.tex, the TeX tutorial % % ---------------------------------------------------------------- %% \ifx\undefined\eoa\input newsletr \fi \font\titlefont=cmr17 scaled\magstep 5 \font\mottofont=cmr12 \font\littlefont=cmbx5 \pageheaderlinefalse \pagefooterlinetrue % I want a header line but % not on the title page \evenpageheader{}{}{} \oddpageheader{}{}{} \evenpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.12}{January 25, 1993} \oddpagefooter{Page \folio}{Linux News No.12}{Vol.\ 2\ \ No.\ 4} % Linux script thingey made from the Latex script thingey % Just for fun \def\LiNuX{{\rm L\kern-.15em\raise.8ex\hbox{i}\kern-.11em N\kern-.1667em\lower.5ex\hbox{U}\kern-.125emX}} \def\B{\par \noindent} %% ----------------headline for non-titlepage--------------------- %% % I want to make this a box with the \LiNuX NEWS logo CENTERED but % % couldn't get it to work right. \def\linheading{% \vbox {\hrule% \line {\strut \vrule \quad {Linux News \farright January 25, 1993} \hfil \quad \vrule}% \hrule}% } \newif \iftitlepage \titlepagetrue \headline= {\iftitlepage \hfil \global\titlepagefalse \else \linheading \fi} \titlepagetrue %% -------------------- headline for titlepage ------------------ %% \newspage % setup macro for the page \vskip 3pt \noindent {\titlefont L i n u x \hskip .2 in N e w s} \vskip 3pt \hrule width 7 in height 1 pt \smallskip \hrule width 7 in \vskip 4 pt \centerline{\mottofont Mottomme: ``H\"akker\"oida ja Auttaa''} \vskip 4 pt \hrule width 7 in \vskip 2 pt \noindent Linux News Number 12 \farright {January 25, 1993} \vskip 2 pt \hrule width 7 in \vskip 7pt %% ---------------------------------------------------------------- %% \begindoublequotes % Handle double quotes \ignoreunderfill % Ignore undervfill errors \parskip=0pt % Don't skip between paragraphs \parindent=18pt % Indent paragraphs 18pt \rm % Use tenpoint roman \begincolumns{2} % macro for double columns %% ------------------------ first article ------------------------- %% \centerline{\bf My Two Cents} \vskip 4 pt \noindent Hello Activists! It seems that almost everyone liked the \TeX{} version of the News last week \edots so I {\it will\/} continue to produce the \TeX{} version along with the ascii version. I actually beleive that the \TeX{} version has some value beyond the initial impression it makes: it provides a more tangible record of what is happening with Linux (assuming that it is printed out). People can hand it to a non--Activist and say ``See \dots here's what is happening with the Linux crowd''. Also, years from now I will be able to market the entire collection of {\it ``Linux News -- the Early Years\/''} in a handsome, nauguahide bound set of autographed volumes in a one time limited offer available only to readers of {\it ``L --- the Journal of the Linux Operating System''\/}. \ednote{We have here ample evidence of why the editor is not a business major\/!} Of course, none of this is possible if you don't have \TeX{} installed so I again urge everyone who has been waffleing on the issue to go ahead and try \TeX{}, but I will {\it not \/} cite the following reasons: \bgroup \listindent{8pt}\beginlist \item{1.}{\sl It is the way that proper Linux hackers do things on a proper Linux system\/!} \item{2.}{\sl Learning \TeX{} is a trial that will make you a better person.\/} \item{3.}{\sl We are ``manly hackers'' who do not wear flannel pajamas and who do not need any feelthy wysiwyg ``word processors''. \/} \item{4.}{\sl ``Science requires victims''.\/} \endlist \egroup \noindent No \dots I will not try and convince anyone with these arguments. \eoa \articlesep %% --------------------- announcement stuff ----------------------- %% \coltitle{\centerline{--- Announcements ---}\break \centerline{The week in c.o.l. and c.o.l.a}} % Use dotitem macros to format Announcements \bgroup % Start a new group to keep local \listindent{2pt}\beginlist \dotitem January 18 Doug Evans ``I have updated my Xenix filesystem to 0.99.2 (yes, I know 0.99.3 is out). This patch provides an implementation of the Xenix filesystem for Linux. The implementation isn't complete in the sense that the following things are missing: divvy partitions, badtrk table support, mkfs, fsck, fsdb. To use this code with Linux, you must boot Xenix and run mkfs on a full partition. EG: mkfs /dev/hd03 ... This code can also be used with floppies (boot Xenix and do mkdev fd). In fact, I recommend testing the patch out on floppies first. Note that fsck, mkfs, and fsdb can't be run under Linux (they might work under the Xenix emulator, but I haven't tried them yet). I have added a simple implementation of symbolic links that won't send fsck into fits. See fs/xenix/symlink.c for more information. \par FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/patches/ \par \farright xenixfs.99.2.tar.Z \dotitem January 18 Qi Xia has released the ALPHA version of his Linux file system, based on the Minix Filesystem: `` LFS is a file system designed and implemented for Linux OS which is designed and implemented by Linus Torvalds with the help of many others all over the world. lfs is based on Linus' minix file system. Lfs provides following functions among others against minix file system: long file name. 248 chars maximum, large file system. 2GB maximum , multi-size block ready. (waiting for kernel support), defragment, support simple bootstrip. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright xia-lfs-0.6.tar.Z and Image.922.06 \dotitem January 18 Cory Minyard has announced his driver for the Sony CDU-31A cd--rom drive.`` This will drive the newer Sony interface (not SCSI) drives for audio and data. (\dots) The driver is mostly complient with the Sun driver (as described in the cdrom.h include file under include/linux) and will mount CDROMs and play audio CDs. I have included xcdplayer with it; the stuff to play CDs seems to work fine but a bug in the title stuff will cause a core dump. Since that is not related to the driver, I have not been too concerned with it. I will try to fix that as soon as I have time.'' FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright sonycd-0.1.tar.Z \dotitem January 19 Thomas Koenig has uploaded versions of the Unix\smallcopyright at(1) and batch(1) commands which do not contain the security bug of the previous version. FTP:tsx--1.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin/ \par \farright at-1.1.tar.Z \dotitem January 19 Chris Newbold ``Though the current SCSI drivers deal quite happily with SCSI-2 CD-ROM drives, the ioctls to play audio tracks, etc. were never implemented. I have implemented all of the Sun "standard" ioctls as defined in linux/cdrom.h. Also included are patches against the stock xcdplayer source to get it to compile under Linux. There are some rough edges in xcdplayer that are not the result of bugs in the ioctls. At some point, I am going to write a better cd-player, perhaps like the one that comes with Windows NT (it keeps artist, album and track names and lets you search for a specific track and other neato stuff).I developed and tested with linux 0.99-pl2/3 with the aha1542 driver and a Sony CDU-541 drive.'' FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/cdrom/ \par \farright scsi2audio.tar.Z \dotitem January 21 Peter MacDonald noted that many massive changes to his SLS distribution caused a few problems for early testers: ``RECAP: All of the 'a' series was replaced, either due to corrupt files, or to fixes. \par Also from the 'b' series: \par libm.tpz: /usr/bin/libhard.a \par tcpip.tpz: corrupt, but not critically so make.tpz: contains make.new (ok, so this stinks, see below) shlib41.tpz: This version of SLS removed all previous shared libs, but forgot that idraw and doc were linked with it -classic. The current kernel version is 99p2, but the login message claims to be 1.0 (I was banking on the xmas release). You can get the gzip file from the SLS root in Gzip.taz. You can get the new sysinstall from menus.tpz. It handles both the old .taz formats, and the new .tpz format. Some ask me why I choose .tpz. Well actually there is a very good reason. It was a typo \dots \par Ted suggested .tzp, and I agreed and added it to sysinstall. Then I made a script to convert all the packages and mistyped the name. I was so tired, I never caught it until after uploading to tsx-11 (just ask anyone who got the first a1 disk I put up). So now were stuck with it. Not that it matters too much to me what the extension is. \par Look also for the new 'd' or documentation series. Also coming soon is the 's' or source series, which will be a very small (2-3 disk) series containing sources that are central to the operation/configuration or are volatile and being worked on. These included tcpip, shadow passwd, getty, sysv init, etc. \par X11 1.2 should be out soon, with VT switching and hopefully jump table libs. After that, I would like to flesh out Interviews to include the development environment (jumpified). Also, metamail will be added, to give a MIME compliant mail capability. \par After that, I want to concentrate on just getting SLS more solidly configured/configurable, rather than letting it grow any more. I am pretty insistent upon trying to keep the size to $<$= 30 disks (thank you gzip). In particular, I want to stop putting links in tar arcives. I will use the install script capability instead, and use the force option, unless gnu adds such an option to tar. Also, want to improve the upgrade process. Finally, using the prompt option upon install, will printout the contents of an package, if such a description is contained in the "diskXN" file on each disk. So I will try to get those updated too. \dotitem January 15 Ken Wallace has made utree, the directory and file manager, binaries available. Utree is a neat curses based program with a lot of features \dots try it if you were used to using something like Stereo Shell or Xtree in MS-dos. \par FTP:nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu and tsx--11.mit.edu \par \farright utree-bin.tar.Z \dotitem January 15 Ray Burr announced the Amiga FFS filesystem for Linux: `` This is a patch relative to 0.99pl2 that will allow Linux to read (readonly) Amiga FFS filesystems. It should be OK for patchlevel 3 although I haven't tried it yet.'' \par FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/patches/ \par \farright amigaffs.tar.Z \dotitem January 15 Michael K. Johnson announced ``Yet Another Release of Yet Another Proc PS''. Michael asks all to upgrade in order to prevent continuing bugification. If you haven't installed /proc PS \dots {\it do it\/}. It will simplify your life. In the package are: ps, free (From Linus), uptime, tload (a hack), xload (from Drew), and fuser (perl script version). \par FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/procps/ \par \farright procps.tar.Z \dotitem January 15 Kevin Sanders has uploaded Chainsaw-2.2 (???). \par FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:pub/linux/incoming:(???) \dotitem January 15 Hannu Savolainen has made version 0.5 of his sound driver available. ``It supports AdLib, SoundBlaster (versions 1.0 to 2.0), SoundBlaster Pro/Pro 2, ProAudioSpectrum 16.It works also with some SB compatible cards such as ThunderBoard and Ati Stereo F/X.'' \par FTP:nic.funet.fi:/pub/OS/Linux/xtra/snd-kit \par \farright snd-driv-0.5.tar.Z \dotitem January 15 Romano Giannetti has released two more versions of the {\it utree\/} port. ``I have compiled utree (a nice PCTOOLS-like file browser) for Linux, and setup it's nice X11 version xtree (just a script and few more). I have compiled it on a Linux box with 0.99pl1 kernel, libc.so.4.2 and gcc 2.2.2d. I don't know if binaries will run smoothly with the new gcc 2.3.3 - libc release. Sources modified for Linux are here, if you want''. \par FTP:gwd2i.cnuce.cnr.it:/pub/pcserver/romano/ \dotitem January 16 Thomas Dunbar has uploaded linuxfs.tz, containing diffs for a minix--type filesystem with a thirty character limit on filenames. \par FTP:tasx--11.mit.edu, nic.funet.fi, sunsite.unc.edu \par \farright linuxfs.tz \dotitem January 17 David Engel announced his front end for all the filesystems and checkers now being created. \par FTP:sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming/ \par \farright fsutil-1.0.tar.Z \dotitem January 21 Peter Orbaek ``I have seen several people having problems compiling poeigl 1.7 with gcc 2.3.3. To those that want a newer version, that will compile with gcc 2.3.3. version 1.9a is available.'' \par FTP:ftp.daimi.aau.dk:/pub/Linux-source/poeigl-1.9a.tar.Z \dotitem January 21 Rik Faith has uploaded new utility binaries, also including Gnu tar1111B, which has support gzip, the Gnu standard compressor. \dotitem January 21 Donald Becker announced drivers for the ``common'' 8390 based ethernet boards: `` Currently "common" is defined as: \par 3Com Products: \par * 3Com 3c503 Board loaned by Chance Reschke, USRA.edu (thanks!) \par 3Com 3c503/16 and excellent documentation provided by 3Com. \par Clones-n-things \par NE1000 Novell and Eagle are useless for documentation, \par * NE2000 but copied the designs directly from NatSemi. \par * Alta Combo(NE2000 clone) \par Aritsoft LANtastic AE-2 (NE2000 clone w/ extra memory) \par D-Link Ethernet II \par Cabletron products: \par E1010 No ID PROM and sketchy info from Ctron means you'll \par E1010-x have to compile-in information about your board. \par E2010, E2010-x \par WD/SMC products \par WD8003 \par * WD8013 Board loaned by Russ Nelson, Crynwr Software. Thanks! \par * I've seen it work myself! \par There is support for the following boards, but since I've only been able to borrow a thinnet of an HP ethercard I haven't been able to test it: \par HP LAN adaptors \par ** HP27245 \par ** HP27247 \par ** HP27250 \par If your 8390-based ethercard isn't on this list please send me email and, if possible, documentation and an evaluation board. \par FTP:usra.edu and super.org:/ftp/pub/ \par \farright linux/ethercards/* \dotitem January 22 Chris Newbold ``Well, since I got so much response to my first announcement about writing a better CD-ROM audio tool for X windows informing me about WorkMan, I decided to port it to Linux. It's got album/artist and track title memory and many, many nifty options. Check it out. The port was trivial, but it uncovered a couple of subtle bugs in the ioctls, hence the new release of that package too. The driver package (scsi2audio-0.2 at tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/cdrom) contains patches for xcdplayer, WorkMan 4.01 (original sources at sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/X11/Openlook/workman.401.tar.Z) and a replacement sr\_ioctl.c for 0.99-pl1 and newer kernels. FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/BETA/cdrom/ \par \farright scsi2audio-0.2 \dotitem January 21 Here's the latest from Linus ``patch'' Torvalds: ``As you can see, I'm back to the old ``once or twice a week'' kernel version cycle. The reason is the existence of some silly bugs in pl3 that don't always show up, but can lock up your machine or result in other weird errors (parse errors in gcc etc). It depends on your hardware setup - specifically what kinds of interrupts your motherboard sends, so I (and many others) actually never saw it. 0.99pl4 is a small diff (1300 lines of diff - and it sounds more than it actually is), and contains only bug-fixes. The changes are: - include/asm/irq.h: fix the irq handling bug by adding a missing initialization of a segment register, console redirection bug fixed, Makefile fixes, support for more than 64 tasks - it was there before, but the GDT overflowed with NR\_TASKS more than about 120.. , ptrace() - the bogus ESRCH bug is corrected (fix by Branko Lankester? Hope I haven't messed up the attributions *again*), flock() support by adding two new ioctl() values - hlu, seagate.c patches (Eric Youngdale) to fix the problem with some disks off the ST-0x controller, tcp/ip volatile fixes (sorry - lost the attribution), remount patches by almesber. Linus \dotitem January 24 Werner Almsberger has released a new version of the DOS filesystem as an ALPHA release because there are many changes. It is not a part of the official kernel yet. \par FTP:tsx--11.mit.edu and sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/ \par \farright /linux/Incoming/dosfs.9.tar.Z \endlist \egroup \articlesep % -------------------- end Announcement stuff -----------------------% \endcolumns %\noindent \articletitle{Linux News Interview: Michael K. Johnson}{johnsonm@stolaf.edu} \articlesep \begincolumns{3} \definefigs{4} % Reserve boxes for up to 3 pages of figures. \handlefigures \definefig{2}{1}{middle}{\Quote{% Read the kernel}{Michael K. Johnson}} \noindent {\sl Michael K. Johnson has been an active contributer to the Linux community and a Linux enthusiast since Linus released version 0.02 of the kernel. On a whim I asked Michael to do an interview and he agreed, quickly providing me with answers to all my questions. I think the following interchange will be interesting to hackers in general, particularly those who may be geographically isolated from other Linux users. There are a million stories on the Internet \dots this is just one of them.\/} \articlesep \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl How did you get into hacking, Michael?\/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} Until about two and a half years ago, I was mostly an end-user, and didn't do much programming. However, I knew I wanted to do more, and I knew that I wanted 32-bit internals, so when I bought my new computer, I got the best I could afford (actually, more than I could afford, but that's beside the point \dots ): a 386 sx 16Mhz, with 4MB of ram and an 80 MB SCSI hard drive. I plunged into learning as much about computers as I could from that time on.} I had DOS on my computer at the time, and Turbo C$++$, and learned to program in C by writing a C program for the speach-theater department here at St. Olaf. It was a really bad program, but was better than the batch file that my boss thought that I should write. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl How did you become interested in Unix? \/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} Because St. Olaf was the first site west of the Mississippi to get unix, or so I've been told, there is a strong tradition of hacking unix here, although the computer center is doing its best to kill the ``hacking'' part of that \edots So I had enough exposure to unix to know that I wanted it for my own computer. I looked at prices, and tried to figure out how to get \$1200, but deep down, I knew that two things were true:} \par \item{ 1)} I didn't want to pay that much \item{ 2)} If I did, I would spend all my time playing with it. \par \noindent Both were true \dots I knew that I liked using unix, though I really didn't know why, and so when Coherent 3.1 came out, I eagerly bought a copy, and thus found out that my SCSI adapter wasn't all that great... I almost bought minix, but I understood that it wouldn't work with my SCSI adapter either. So I got QuarterDeck's Desqview (I {\sl WANTED\/} multitasking) and dealt with that. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl So how did you stumble upon Linux? \/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} I was reading comp.os.minix and saw Linus's announcement of Linux .02, and I { \sl knew\/} what I wanted to do. I assumed that pretty soon, Linux would be a self-supporting environment, and I knew that I wanted to be ready. I started eagerly reading misc.forsale.computers, and when I saw a 100MB { \sl IDE\/} drive for a price that I could afford, I jumped at it. Well, the drive was defective, and it took a long time to get a new one, and by the time I got the new one, Linux was at version .03, and could be installed with just the minix boot disk (to make the filesystem) and a linux boot and root combination.} I have been using Linux as my main OS ever since. I occasionally have to use DOS or even windoze for work, but one person I am working for is even thinking about switching over \edots I started reading kernel source as soon as I got linux on--line. I have James Turley's excellent book on the '386 (given to me by a hacker--friendly prof here), and this was a great boon to understanding the memory management code, especially. For the first few weeks, I lurked, but I couldn't lurk for long. When someone asked for a buglist maintainer, I volunteered. However, the speed at which bugs have been fixed in linux soon made this an obsolete idea. In the meanwhile, I had been volunteered to keep up a set of unofficial patches for linux. I said, ``Well, I'd love to, but I would have to have an account on someone's ftp site if I were to do that, and (understandably) no one would want to do that.'' The next day, Ted Ts'o sent me mail saying that he would certainly be willing to give me an account on his machine, tsx--11.mit.edu, to do that. And although my patches directory there is no longer {\bf the} site for patches, as many are instead in ALPHA and BETA subdirectories, I started helping Ted maintain the whole /pub/linux area at tsx--11 about a month after getting my account there, and I have helped maintain that area ever since. I have also very much enjoyed answering as many questions as I can. I do find, however, that it is a lot easier to answer questions that are asked in an understandable way, so ``My computer does $<$foo$>$ when I boot, then stops. Here's my configuration'', is more likely to get an answer than ``My computer doesn't work. Why?'' \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl What are some of the programs you've worked on?\/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.}I have hacked on several little packages all over the place, but I have made a few larger--sized contributions. I spent many hours trying to optimize the lp device for polled operations. Happily, someone else has made a interrupt--driven driver, which co--exists wth the polled driver, so we have the best of both worlds. I extended the proc filesystem over Christmas break, and am writing and collecting an entire suite of proc--based ps--style programs, including uptime, w, free, fuser, et. al. Well, almost all \edots} I have also worked on documentation, one way or another, since late February 1992. Right now, I am maintaining the LaTeX style file for the linux documentation project, and am the editor of the Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide, which is really meant to do two things: \item{ 1)} document the structures that exist in the Linux kernel, so that hackers can deal with them more easily, and \item{ 2)} give kernel hacker wannabe's a step up into hacking the kernel, including explanations of a lot of simple OS concepts. \noindent So, a lot of Real Kernel Hackers won't care for it, 'cause it will be too cluttered for them, but that's OK --- they've gone without it for long enough that they can get along without it. And hopefully the rest of us will use it. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl Technically, why did you choose to go with polling for the printer driver instead of interupts? \/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} Because quite a few cards don't even allow interrupts. DOS doesn't use them, and so many vendors didn't bother. This has caused much stress to many trying to print under OS/2 2.0. However, it is a good thing that someone also provided an interrupt-driven driver, so that people whose hardware is not brain-damaged don't have to suffer.} It is worth noting that a polling driver can output data { \it faster\/} than an interrupt--driven driver for some of the most modern printers, I think. I have not tested this, but since the HP laserjet 4 can take characters almost in a tight loop from the processor, I have a feeling that it would really thrash an interrupt--driven driver. Fortunately, with the new system, this is {\sl dynamically configurable\/}. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl Have you been able to (or interested in) getting other people at your school to look at Linux?\/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} Yeah --- There are several people who are installing Linux on their computers, and the CS department and the Computing Center would both like to make Linux networks, or at least would consider it, if there were much money floating around. Or so they tell me. I know that there are several individuals who would certainly like this to happen. However, documentation needs to get better before a lot of this could really happen.} Just today I helped a friend (my cousin, actually) remove about 25 MB of junk from his HD so that he can install Linux in the near future. (Finding four 5MB bitmaps that weren't necessary or even wanted sped up the process \edots) A guy upstairs also is really interested in installing it, and there are several people who graduated last year who now are running Linux. My father hasn't converted, but a small law firm that I have worked for in the past is considering it. They { \bf do} have mission--critical dos apps, so this would depend on a { \it good\/} dos emulator, but the guy with the purse strings likes the idea, at least in principle. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl Any special references or advice to those who are interseted in writing system/device driver stuff?\/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} A few references. The first is a plug for vaporware: ``{\em The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide\/}'' which I am writing should be very helpful. Also, one of the appendices to the guide is an annotated bibliography. Books that are in that bibliography, and which have helped me, are:} \bgroup \listindent{5pt} \beginlist \item{1.}\book{The C Programming Language}, by K\&R, of course. \item{2.}\book{Advanced Programming in the UNIX(tm) Environment}, by W. Richard Stevens \item{3.}Tanenbaum's texts (as much bad as he has had to say about linux, there are good things in his texts \dots) \item{4.}\book{Operating Systems}, by William Stallings \item{5.}\book{Advanced 80386 Programming Techniques}, by James Turley \endlist \egroup \noindent And I am sure that Bach's book would be helpful if I could stomach the \$60+ price \edots \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl How about some advice for Junior Kernel Hackers.\/}} \vskip 7pt \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} Read the kernel. Read the kernel. Read the kernel. Really. You will pick up understanding, piece by piece, and bit by bit. Don't be discouraged if you don't understand it the first time through. Then, as you start to understand, fix your knowledge firmly by { \it doing\/} something. It doesn't have to be sent to the world, and it { \it doesn't even have to work\/}. The important thing is to start coding, and you will learn by doing. Try writing a new filesystem, or a new device.} Then, if you decide to release your changes, be ready for a lot of good and bad criticism, as well as praise. Listen to it, and learn. Don't take it at face value. Question both the advice and yourself, thinking about it, reading about it. And also read. Keep up on the field. And although there is a lot of trash on comp.os.linux, the worthwhile stuff is really worthwhile, in my opinion. Join the mailing list. (linux-actvists@niksula.hut.fi) Join the effort, and start doing stuff that people need. \vskip 7pt \noindent{{\bf L.N.} {\sl To finish up, Michael, how about a few words about your other interests and future plans?\/}} \noindent{ {\bf M.J.} I love to write (can you tell?) I currently have a movie script on the back burner. It will never be produced, I am sure, but that is hardly the point. I am actively writing two books right now, as well. I come from a family of writers: although few write for a living, many write for fun. As a child, I read a real book or more each day, and still love to read. I also enjoy Bible study, woodworking, teaching, mathematics, juggling, and cooking.} I am getting married in June. My fianc\'e is going on to grad school for her PhD in Math, but we don't know just where yet. This of course makes it difficult for me to find a job. However, I hope to find a job, preferably dealing with something at a reasonably low level, like kernel hacking, but really anything involving interesting hacking. In the far distant future, I don't know if I want to work in the computer industry (probably getting a MS) or if I want to get a PhD and teach computer science, so I am waiting to see how I like the ``Real World'' first. \eoa \endcolumns \articlesep I made a little mistake in not telling everyone where the input file was located, in case someone needed to print on a non--Linux machine. Well, Hunter Goatley's mondo macros may be found in the file {\it newsletr.tex\/} and, of course, archie can tell everyone where to find {\it newsletr.tex\/}. {\bf If{}f\/} you do not have a way to ask archie where to find {\it newsleter.tex\/} or {\it gentle.tex\/}, the \TeX{} tutorial by Michael Doob, send me mail and I'll help. Try archie first though, if you are able. I was considering putting a section at the end of the News telling people where stuff could be found but \dots it might seem too much like a Jerry Pournelle column. The motto is in Finnish again this week because I spelled it wrong last time \dots thanks again to the many people who sent translations and other mail. If you sent me mail and I did not reply, go ahead and mail again if you wish. In typical Navy Brat fashion I may have lost your correspondence in a fit of ``throwing stuff away'' because my mailbox is so full. As usual, suggestions etc. to: \break \centerline{Denise M. Tree} \par \centerline{tree@cs.jhu.edu} \par \centerline{tree@midget.towson.edu} \articlesep %% This cool shadowbox was provided by Thomas Dunbar \vbox{\centerline{\shadowbox{% \hsize=4in \vsize=.5in \vbox to\vsize{\vfill \centerline{\titlefont Happy Hacking} \vfill}}}} %\smallskip %\hrule width 7 in \vskip 8 pt \centerline{\mottofont to everyone!} % \bye