Regrettably, we had to increase our subscription price as of September 1. While paper costs have risen steadily for some time, we have until now kept our original subscription price. But our last printing bill increased 20 percent because of higher paper prices, and we are no longer able to absorb the extra cost. The price for a one-year subscription in the US is now US$22; outside North America it's US$32. See the new insert card for other subscription rates.

Digital has released a preliminary “end-user” release of Linux/Alpha, called BLADE—short for “Basic Linux/Alpha Distribution Eyesore”. As you can probably tell from the name, the “end-users” in mind are developers. It is designed to install on a “NoName” AXPpci33 motherboard with a SCSI drive. Networking is not completely working as of this writing, although some capability, including telnet, ftp, and rlogin are now working. X-Windows functionality is not yet ready to be included in the distribution, but work on both networking and X-Windows is progressing.

Following are the minimum hardware requirements:

One of the most requested products to be ported to Linux is a WYSIWYG word processor (see “Reader Survey Results”, this issue). Caldera has announced that it has contracted with Novell to port and develop WordPerfect 6.0 for Linux. According to Caldera, their native port for Linux will be available some time during 4Q95 and will include HTML authoring tools to allow users to prepare documents for the World Wide Web.

Caldera is also porting the OpenDoc engine to Linux, and will be providing it and their own ORB (“Object Request Broker”, an important facility upon with OpenDoc is built) as part of the Caldera Network Desktop.

OpenDoc provides a vendor-independent way for applications to work together. For those familiar with Microsoft's proprietary OLE (“Object Linking and Embedding”), OpenDoc provides all the services provided by OLE, and more. It is developed and endorsed by a large consortium of companies, including Novell, IBM, Apple, and now Caldera, and it runs on Unix and Unix-like operating systems as well as MacOS, MS Windows, and OS/2.

Mark Komarinski, author of Linux Journal's “Linux System Administration” column, is writing a book on Linux, and so has suspended his column for a few months. We expect to welcome Mark back at the end of this year.

Open Systems World (OSW) is hosting its Second Annual Linux Conference at OSW '95 in Washington, DC. As we did last year, Linux Journal will be sponsoring and organizing the event, which will be held on November 13 and 14. OSW will continue through Friday, November 17.

Like last year, the two-day conference will include one day of sessions and tutorials and a one-day class for novice and intermediate Linux users. This year, the schedule is more streamlined, with more time allotted for questions and answers than last year, as so many attendees requested.

The sessions on Monday will include a panel of several companies which are commercially involved with Linux in different ways. They will present what they do with Linux and then participate in a panel discussion. Linux International, a group which promotes Linux for both personal and business use, will give a presentation detailing its activities and its plans for future activities. Author Matt Welsh will give a short class on porting Unix applications to Linux, and there will be several other presentations as well.

Monday night, a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session will be held. Those intending to attend the conference who wish to also attend the BOF session are encouraged to send e-mail to osw95-bof@ssc.com so that we can schedule an appropriate and convenient meeting space.

Tuesday, there will be an all-day tutorial entitled “Linux for the New User”. Topics will range from “What and Why Linux?” through choosing a distribution, installing networking, installing and configuring the X Windows System, and finding the Linux applications you need.

On both days, the format will be open, and questions from the audience will be gladly accepted. Time has been set aside for Q&A sessions, as well.

Details are available on the WWW from www.mcsp.com/OSW-FedUNIX.html, or you can send e-mail to oswinfo@mcsp.com. Otherwise, you can send mail to Open Systems World, Inc., 10440 Shaker Drive, Suite 103, Columbia, MD 21046, fax 301-596-8803, or phone 301-596-8800.