Bob Cunningham asks: "Is there any US Federal and State Income Tax software for Linux? Normlly, I would just snag the evaluation copy of whichever Win9x product appeals to me (i.e., lowest cost). This year I'd like to try something different: Do my taxes under Linux. My initial searches have failed to uncover a single native tax package for Linux, nor even rumors of any related development being underway. Right now, it seems my only option will be to run a Win9x package under Wine, and hope it is well behaved. Is Win9x/Wine my only option? If so, are there any packages that have already been tested under Wine?" Financial software has traditionally been lacking under Linux, but I'm hoping that someone will soon step up and write something like this.

There are over 500 Debian maintainers today, up from 100 only a few years ago. Wichert Akkerman has been Project Leader for this brilliant, sometimes unruly (but always interesting) gang since February. Monday you posted questions for Wichert. Today you get answers. (Lots more below)

Yesterday, I posted a story speculating that Corel might drop WINE in favor of (what isn't really) a competing product. This was a huge mistake on my part, and I hope Corel, Wine developers, and the Slashdot readership in general will accept my apology. Normally on a blooper like this, I'd update the story, but I think this needs to be noticed by everyone who read the original.

Nathan Ehresman writes "According to this "Corel Corporation will use GraphOn's Bridges(TM) software to allow access to Windows applications from Corel's(R) Linux desktops." Does this mean Corel is dropping support of WINE? " I sure hope not. They've put a lot of effort in to the project, and I think they raised a lot of peoples hopes and expectations...

Egonis Similaris writes " WINE 991031 (Hallowine) has been released." My main personal WINE wish is to use it to run Quickbooks. Has anyone else gotten QB to work reliably under WINE?

Anonymous something something writes "Warcraft 3 has been announced. Check blizzard's site. No plans on doing a linux port but I'm sure we'll get it to work under wine. " Looks like quite a departure from WC 1&2 - "Role Playing Strategy". 6 races, too. Could the release of C&C: Tiberian Sun hurt sales when the game finally is released?

Douglas Ridgway writes "Alexandre Julliard, leader of the Wine project, will be moving to Silicon Valley to work full-time on Wine. See the press release for details. "

The Ottawa Linux Symposium has come and gone. It was a superb, very technical, conference that was also a great social event. Dana has put up her pictures, and the lovely Alix has put up hers. Last but not least, Alan Cox has put up his large collection. Finally, I've included my report below.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Australian government passed legislation yesterday guaranteeing the right to reverse engineer software for the purposes of diagnosing and fixing problems and for interoperability." Looks like WINE and other Windows emulation projects ought to be headquarted in Australia, doesn't it?

ghjm writes "I just got back from the Inprise/Borland Developers Conference in Philadelpha, where some results from the recent survey--as well as some actual products--were announced." Click below to read ghjm's full report on the results of their surveys, the performance of their C compiler vs GCC and more.

Ethan Butterfield writes "Looks like the days of wine and roses are over for @Home subscribers. A global 128k upload rate cap is @Home's solution to their chronic bandwidth problems. Man, I'm glad I have DSL. " Even 128k seems fast to me, but this article will definitely raise your eyebrows.

knarf noted a story linked from LinuxToday about Red Hat's IPO called Red Hat's Charity Case at Andover News. Several people noted that the story has many errors. Fortunately knarf has written a pretty good summary of what he considers wrong about the article. Several of them are a bit extreme, but many are good points. If you read the original, this is a good rebuttal worth reading.

mecca writes "CodeWeavers has announced they are in the process of merging the Willows TWIN code and Wine code in order to help port Windows software." Interestingly this project is being spear-headed by Rob Farnum, the key architect of Twin. The resulting code will be under the LGPL (Twin is LGPL'd, Wine is BSD'd. So the LGPL wins).It would appear that the Wine guys are cool with this. Some Twine code is available now, and more should come soon. Codeweavers is offering employment including to people who don't want to move to cold Minnesota.

C|Net Radio is at Linuxworld Expo, and they have now the keynotes in Real Audio. First is Dr. Michael Cowpland, President & CEO, Corel Corporation, who talks about Wine and Quattro, Word Perfect, and the Second is Mark Jarvis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Oracle, who speaks about Oracle 8i and Linux. The third Real Audio clip will be Linus speaking about Linux on past, present and future and it will be at 6:30 PM (clip will be posted a bit later, and information can be found here. I hope ZDNet will have clips with higher sound quality (and maybe Video), but currently they don't have anything yet (you can check it here for updates). Enjoy. Update: 03/03 12:08 by CT : Linus also broke the keynote attendance record- it was Steve Jobs with 6,000. Linus had 7,000.

Mark Lipson wrote in to tell us that Michael Cowpland of Corel will give a speech about Commercial Software and Hardware in the Open Source Marketplace and a demo of the Quattro Pro spreadsheet running under Linux, at LinuxWorld on March 2, 9:30-10:15 AM. The speech will be webcast on Wednesday. In related news, Eugene Lacey wrote in with an article claiming that IBM is dissing Corel's Wine plans.

ZDNET UK made an Interview with Corel's executive vice president of engineering Derek Burney, he's talking about Corel helps the Wine Project. But the biggest surprise is that Corel is going to release a new Distribution which is aimed to the "avrage windows user". (thanks to Linux Today for the news

Several people have written in with assorted notes about LinuxWorld Expo. I've heard rumblings of prizes for the show including a VW Bug from LinuxCare and even a Harley. I've attached a blurb from Robert McMillan about the show. Also, I've written up a bunch of notes about the Slashdot Booth at the show including a wish list: We need a few contacts in San Jose to help us find some stuff for the show. Somebody has to have this stuff just sitting around, so hit the link if you wanna help.

An anonymous reader pointed us a a wired news article where you can read that the authors of the UltraHLE N64 emulator has had its source code released. The article talks about Nintendo considering Legal Action against the authors of the emulator, as well as the Sony/Connectix suit and the fact that another company is working on a Playstation emulator for windows. Update: 02/12 03:51 by CT : My bad. The source code wasn't actually released by the authors- the code is a disasembled bit posted by someone else. It doesn't compile. Will the real UltraHLE authors take the hint? Update: 02/13 03:04 by S : The code has been removed, although anyone could make it again with REC. In the mean time, Dextrose has an UltraHLE-on-Linux Howto which reveals that the combination of UltraHLE-Wine-Linux is faster than the original UltraHLE-Win98: with Zelda running at 21.3 fps under Linux versus 19.6 under Win98.

Well, it seems a person nicked GossiTheDog has released the sources of UltraHLE (a good Nintendo 64 emulator). It's written in C++. This person has released the source to see a Linux port and to see this emulator still "alive". Anyone or any group to port it to Linux with SVGA/DGA/GGI support?. You can also find instuctions of how to run UltraHLE under Wine. Enjoy.

Note: This is a repost of Linux Companion for System Administrators