See also: last week's Linux History page.

This week in Linux history

Jaroslav Kysela announced the "Enhance Linux Sound Architecture" project, renamed from the "Ultra Sound Driver," which was intended to produce a new, better sound system for Linux. Three years later...the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) project is going strong, having just produced its first beta release. It may reach a point of being ready for inclusion in the kernel sometime during the 2.5 development series.

The General Graphics Interface project also drew attention; this project hoped to build a new, kernel-based video system for Linux. GGI has always been controversial, however, with a lot of people strongly criticizing its design. Three years later, the project appears to still be active, but it has a low profile and not much seems to be happening.

Caldera OpenLinux 1.2 was released.

Two years ago (February 25, 1999 LWN): IBM made its first announcement of support for Red Hat Linux.

So why bother? The answer is actually very simple--services. Services have helped the IBM resurgence, even as its hardware sales are sliding lower. By shipping Linux with its hardware, IBM can now get additional revenues by providing Linux OS-related services to its clients.
-- Forbes.

The Debian 2.1 release candidate was made available, leading up to the planned March 2 release (which didn't quite happen as planned, but that's for next week's history section). PROSA Debian Gnu/Linux 2.1, a version of the distribution for Italian users, was released.

Linuxcare was busily preparing for its public debut at LinuxWorld; among other things, the company announced that it would be giving away a 1999 VW at the show. Nowadays, Linux vendors give away rather fewer automobiles...

One year ago (February 24, 2000 LWN): Eazel announced its existence and its plans to provide a better desktop for Linux users. Since the company is made up of a number of members of the original Macintosh team, this announcement drew a lot of attention. A year later, we're still waiting for our desktop - which is getting close; Nautilus 1.0 should ship "real soon now."

LinuxSecurity.com hit the net.

Development kernel 2.3.47 came out; among other things, it included, finally, the Linux Volume Manager patch.

If for example the capacity of a LV gets too small and your VG containing this LV is full, you could add another PV to that VG and simply extend the LV afterwards. If you reduce or delete a LV you can use the freed capacity for different LVs in the same VG. -- The documentation needed some work still...

Journalist Nicholas Petreley resigned as LinuxWorld's editorial director, and took a job with Caldera working with the Linux Standard Base project.

On Dec. 9, the company went public, and propelled by Linux mania, it shot off the launchpad, reaching an orbit of $239, up 698%, the biggest-ever first-day gain. The new year hasn't been so kind to Augustin, though. VA Linux' stock is now trading at about $115 a share, and there's nothing on the horizon that augurs for an immediate recovery.
-- Business Week was rather understating things

Ah yes, there was also a much-hyped release of a legacy system called "Windows 2000," but it didn't change much in the Linux world...

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