Another 2000 bucks is on the table, and you get to decide who gets it. The nominees for 'Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application' are Pine, Lynx, Mutt, Emacs and Midnight Commander. Go vote to see who gets the money.

So the 2000 Beanie Awards have now entered phase two: Intense Voting. The nominees have been chosen in each category by you readers, and now you get to choose who wins the money in exciting catagories like 'Best Designed Interface in a non graphical application' and 'Best Newbie Helper'. Each category has a discussion so you can talk about your choices all you want. You may change your vote whenever you like. And the final winners will be announced at LinuxWorld in NY in feb.

This is the big one. $30k to project that has improved the most. The project that is making Open Source dominate. The nominees are no surprise: GNOME, Mozilla, KDE, LiViD, PHP and Wine. Go Talk about it. Vote. Repeat until satisfied.

The kernel always gets a lot of credit... but we decided to create an award for the most improved module to try to give some creds to those little components that make it all worthwhile. The nominees you selected were USB, ALSA, ReiserFS and Video4Linux. Discuss the nominees and feel free to change your vote until you have it right.

This is a tricky category. Advocacy is hard, and everyone has a different way to address the problem. Each of the nominees has a different viewpoint on Open Source/Free Software. And each has a different way of being an advocate for their ideals. Vote for the guy who has done the most to advocate this stuff: Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, and Linus Torvalds.

Open Source can be a charity just as much as it can be a business model. And several charities have sprung up to help fund the effort. The nominees you selected for this category are the Free Software Foundation, Software in the Public Interest, The Apache Software Foundation and the XFree86 Project. Vote for the one that you think deserves it most.

We were all a newbie once, and each day there are more of them then there were the day before. These are the guys that are doing the most to turn the newbies into competent Linux users. They answer questions on IRC. They write documentation. And they are as important for the future of Linux as the hackers who write the code. The nominees in this category are Sensei, Matt Welsh, Havoc Pennington, and Tom Christiansen. You know what to do.

The Unsung Hero is the guy that has done so much work to help make this Open Source thing great, but he just doesn't seem to end up getting his share of the spotlight. The nominees are Alan Cox, David Dawes, Donald Becker, Jordan K. Hubbard and Brian Paul. Vote for that you think hasn't got the credit he deserves for all his hard work.

The GUI has revolutionized the desktop. It made computers accessible to the masses, and even today it keeps getting cooler. Our nominees areeach carving out new territory in the realm of the graphical user interface. You can Vote for the best interface between The GIMP, Mozilla, XMMS and Enlightenment.

A wise man once said that graphics are just bloat anyway. A real man can survive quickly and efficiently using nothing but a VT100 terminal. And why not? With applications like Pine, Lynx, Mutt, Emacs, and Midnight Commander to choose from, its a wonder someone even bothered inventing X. Vote for the best.

So I admit it, I'm a perl junkie. This wonderful little scripting language is the duct tape of the Internet. So the question is which module can you not live without? The leaders are DBI, CGI, CPAN, and LWP. But in the end there can be only one!

A good desktop has a voice too these days. This is the software that makes your desktop sound good. Your nominations revealed the following contenders: XMMS, mpg123, ALSA, and EsounD. Discuss the nominees and vote.

Theming was where I got started. Of course back then you didn't have nearly the flexibility that todays modern window managers allow. You had to edit dotfiles, or even hack the code itself to make it look 'just right'. But these days themes like BlueSteel, Blueheart, AbsoluteE, BrushedMetal and Cyrus each help to make your desktop a cause of significant drool from our coworkers. Which one is the best?.

In all honesty I just thought it would be cool to have a category that had no real point except to give some money away. Of course the most popular entry in this category was 'Me'. Apparently everyone seems to think that they were the most deserving... but a few wise guys took it seriously and nominated Alan Cox, Debian, Linus Torvalds and LiViD. Who deserves $2k?.

So I'm kinda filling in for Hemos here since I've only read like 6 books in the last few years. Strangely enough tho I've read each of the following: Open Sources, Programming Perl, The Perl Cookbook, and The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Which is The best?

Like the kernel, Apache has a powerful core, but its really the modules that extend its functionality so much that we can't live without it. The nominees for the Best Apache Module are mod_perl, mod_php, mod_ssl, and mod_rewrite. Pick your favorite.

Few programs arouse the advocacy that the simple texteditor can. Its the software that we run all the time, and it needs to fit us like a glove. Except when you take off the glove and slap the crap out of someone using an inferior text editor. This category really exists just because we like flamewars. The nominees are of course Vim, Emacs, XEmacs, Pico and Joe. Fight it out for the winner and Vote for the one the deserves it.

Face it, if our desktops were ugly, our retinas would melt and then what would we have? Buckets and buckets of melted retinas. That would be disgusting. So this award is for the the part of your desktop that just makes it look pretty. vote at will... the nominees are Enlightenment, Propaganda, XScreeSaver, GNOME and KDE.

The nominees are in for Part II of the 'Why The Hell Not' awards. The nominees for 'Best Slashdot Comment Poster' are Anonymous Coward, Tom Christiansen, Bruce Perens, John Carmack and BOredAtWork. The nominees for 'Favorite Slashdot Author' are CmdrTaco, roblimo, Jon Katz and Hemos. The nominees for 'Best Slashdot Story of 1999' are the Hellmouth series, Suckdot and Quickies. In a surprise announcement, the sole nominee for the 'Hemos' award is none other than... Hemos. Go vote for your favorites now!

The nominees are in for Part One of the 'Why The Hell Not' section of categories. For 'Best Dressed,' the nominees are Rasterman, Tux, RMS, Larry Wall and Alan Cox. For 'Big Dumb Patent Bully,' the nominees are Amazon.com and Unisys. For 'Big Dumb Domain Bully,' the nominees are Etoys, Network Solutions, Microsoft and Archie Comics. For the 'Cluestick Award for FUD in Journalism,' the nominees are ZDNet, Jesse Berst, John Dvorak, Bob Metcalfe and Microsoft. Go vote now to determine who will win a Slashdot 2000 beanie and a hug from CowboyNeal.