We have a great issue for you this month. To help you get connected, we have an article about a GUI that makes setting up PPP easy, as well as articles explaining how to set up PLIP, NFS, NIS and qmail. I think you will find something of interest in each of them.

We are also fortunate to have an article from Peter Braam about the CODA file system with excellent illustrations by Gaich Muramatsu. Also, John Blair interviewed the Samba team for us to find out what's new in that arena.

The Silicon Valley Linux User's Group scored a coup by having Linus Torvalds as their guest speaker in March. Chris DiBona not only wrote it up for us, but sent along pictures too.

Next month also promises to be a great issue. Our focus will be Science and Engineering, and I think you may be surprised at some of the places Linux is being used to do research around the world. For example, Linux is being used in high-energy nuclear studies being done in Geneva by CERN and in ocean surface studies by the British Antarctic Survey.

A couple of events not to miss are coming up. Linux Expo looks to be bigger and better than ever. The list of speakers found at their web site, http://www.linuxexpo.org/, is quite impressive. Linux Expo will be held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, May 28-30.

Then June 15-19 there will be the 23rd Annual USENIX Technical Conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana. Now there's a fun place to hold a technical conference. For details, see their web page at http://www.usenix.org/.

In our April issue, James Shapiro posed a problem concerning the best way to accept lottery winnings in his article “Financial Calculation Programs for Linux”. We feel we've kept you in suspense long enough, so the answer to that problem is included here (see sidebar).

Lottery Answer