The Gentoo Linux 1.4 release is planned for some time in late December 2002. Thanks to our first corporate sponsorship, I'm now able to work on Gentoo Linux full-time. Right now, I'm catching up on a big back-log of work like our transition to a new server infrastructure, which included a move to a new mailing list manager (apologies for the bumpy ride, searchable mailing list archives will be online soon) and new AxKit XML application server for the Web site. The most significant task remaining before 1.4 is released is the creation of an enhanced version of our LiveCD for x86 systems. The x86 LiveCD is one of the few parts of Gentoo Linux that is still developed by me exclusively. As my back-log of work gets whittled away, I'll have time to get x86 LiveCD-ng ready and then get our capable development team involved in its development and maintainance.

Recent developments in the Gentoo Linux world include the addition of "fakeroot" (non-root building) to Portage by J. Robert Ray, as well as continued expert maintenance and development of Portage by Nick Jones. Stefan Jones (unrelated to Nick, as far as we know :) is spearheading an effort to add flexible and safe library prelinking support to Gentoo Linux, which will likely be an option for Gentoo Linux 1.4. In addition, Dan Armak and the KDE team are getting ready for KDE 3.1, and it looks like 3.1 may be included in Gentoo Linux 1.4 as well. On the "future plans" front, there is discussion about using XML for our ebuild ChangeLogs, as well as plans to get Gentoo Linux Security Announcements available on the Web site.

On the articles front, Part 2 of my EVMS series is now online at IBM developerWorks. Also, I am now writing articles for Intel. To find them, go to http://www.intel.com and search for "Daniel Robbins". You may find my two-part Stateful iptables firewalls series to be useful if you'd like to learn how to design a stateful Linux firewall from scratch -- and what all those netfilter iptables commands actually do :)