Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise news for all interests
Published August 20, 1998

Sections: Linux articles Security Kernel news Distributions Ports Software Development Free/Open-Source Software Commercial/Press Releases Announcements Links of the week Feedback and corrections Other stuff: LWN Archives Linux Links Linux Events Calendar Daily Updates	Leading items What a fine mess. Was it only a few months ago that the Linux Standard Base (LSB) project looked like it was going to solve some of our problems with inconsistencies between the distributions? Optimism was high for a while. But in the last couple weeks we've seen a whole series of events: Bruce Perens has bailed out of the LSB project, and, seemingly, out of the free software world altogether. LSB, which was already torn between two factions (called "Bruce" and "almost everybody else") is now leaderless and its future is unclear (though other members say it will go on). And the free software world has lost a leader who, for all his faults, did some really good things. We now have a Linux Compatibility Standard project seeking to define its own vision of Linux. Composed of ex-LSB folks, it appears to be a sort of "LSB-lite" with a focus on a written standard, as opposed to a reference implementation (the key point of contention in the LSB fight). As if that were not enough, this week the announcement showed up for the Linux Standards Association. They, too, want to create a standard for Linux distributions. Their approach, with membership fees, "we own all content" policies, founding members with veto power, and a web site created with Frontpage drew almost unanimous condemnation on Slashdot in the way that only Slashdot posters can do it. So what do we have here? Do we have a set of well-intentioned folks, each of whom are trying to define some standards in the way that they think is best? Because some standards really are needed if we want software vendors to make products available for Linux. Your author has been working with a local manufacturing company with a well-respected software product that they would like to bring into the Linux world. They have been dismayed at the work they have to do to make their product work with even the few largest distributions. Linux systems can and should be wildly different, but they need to provide a common underlying platform for added software; the lack of that platform is an obstacle to our continued growth. But do we maybe have something a little more sinister? This is beginning to look like a clear turf battle, with the stakes being control over the definition of "standard Linux." As Linux "turf" gets increasingly valuable, we can expect to see more of this kind of thing. We must deal with these fights carefully if they are not to tear the Linux world apart. So what is to be done in this case? Here at LWN, we cautiously recommend that support should go with the LCS/LSB projects. If nothing else, the endorsement of LCS by both Red Hat and Debian gives it a leg up with regard to adoption by the distributions. With achievable goals and a reasonable consensus behind what they are trying to do, LCS should be able to get somewhere. What operating systems are running on the Internet? The Operating System Internet Counter seeks to perform a census and answer that question. It appears to work by sending some funky IP packets and looking for quirks in the way the target system responds. With something over 500,000 hosts queried, they show Linux in first place. As far as we can tell, what they have done so far is to work through a list of European web servers. Since they are looking at web servers, they will of course produce a much higher Linux to Windows ratio; most of the Windows machines are hiding behind firewalls and not part of the experiment. Still, it paints a clear picture of what people are putting on their front lines. Unfortunately, this site is on one of those "free web page" systems, meaning that you get those delightful advertising popup windows if your browser does that kind of thing. It may move to friendlier turf before too long. SPI will be filing an amicus brief in support of Junger vs Daley, the lawsuit recently dismissed by Judge Gwin. This lawsuit upholds the development of cryptographic software as an example of free speech for those who write software and is of critical interest to the free software community. This posting contains a description of the history of the lawsuit by Peter Junger, and correspondence on the issue between him and SPI. Note, the posting is very long, but well-worth reading. Hopefully, clear, documented information from the Linux community can help educate the courts about this issue.	Got some feedback, some news to publish, or something else you would like to tell us? lwn@lwn.net is our address. Or would you like to be notified when new editions of the Linux Weekly News are published? Click here and send a blank message. Please see our contact page for other contact information. Here is the permanent site for this page.
	Linux in the news Here is a crucial article in the New York Times which concerns itself with the risks of running software when the source is not available. It seems there is no way to know what kinds of bugs and security problems may be lurking therein. We think these people are beginning to get it. "...the industry's very tentative steps toward open source code -- a la Netscape and the Linux version of the Unix operating system -- become even more attractive. When a program's code is open to inspection by everyone, bugs are fixed and quality improves much more quickly because an entire industry of engineers is working on them at once." Read this one. [This is a registration-required site; you can use "cypherpunks" as both username and password if need be] As Linux grows, our internal discussions become more public, and more widely noticed. As an example, see this ZDNet article on the the whole Linux standards fight. Watch what you say, your words may travel more widely than you had expected... News.com now has an article about the LSA as well. They seem somewhat favorable to the whole thing. Frye's ran a TV commercial featuring Linux in California. For folks who would like to see it, there is a 2MB QuickTime file available for your viewing pleasure. You need a properly built version of xanim 2.70.7.3 or greater to view this file. (There is also a much smaller RealMedia version available). Network World Fusion talks about How Linux Got So Dang Hot. "the impetus is giving some supporters a reason to believe Linux could overtake Windows NT as the operating system of choice in the next few years." Please note that NWFusion is a registration-required site. Using "cypherpunks" as both username and password will get you in if you do not wish to register yourself. Found in Slashdot: Linux legitimacy rallies NT skeptics in LAN Times. This is a tremendously positive article, FUD free, of the type that we're starting to get used to. "Although developers at Microsoft aren't publicly worried about the budget OS just yet, maybe they should be. Many IS managers and vendors are now saying that Linux is both a model of reliability and a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows NT." Also in LAN Times: Linux apps gain momentum talks about the increasing availability of applications, with an emphasis on large database systems. Wired News has yet another article about NASA's use of a Beowulf cluster for law enforcement purposes. This one is reasonably complete, and, of course, very favorable. Quoting a NASA person: "We're not going out and investing millions of dollars in some vendor's proprietary system -- we have the power to control our own destiny, in-house. As a manager and as an executive, this is what I like about it." Sean McPherson pointed us to this column in Mac Times in favor of Apple releasing some of the MacOS source. "Let me say this here and now, so it's on the record. Linux is so cool it frosts Antarctica. Add the incredibly hip and unimaginably effective means by which it is produced, and you've got an OS with a big future." There is a clear lack of understanding of what "open source" means, however ("Note that while this source is 'given away,' Apple retains all commercial rights."). A pointer to this lovely article was posted to the Boulder LUG mailing list. Entitled "Missing the Whole Point of Linux", it talks about the Linux community for its finest points. Linux encourages neighborliness in a way no commercial operating system ever will, and this makes it "better" than other software in a way that transcends either technological or business concerns. (From OS News) No direct Linux content, but relevant anyway. Check out this Gartner Group report on NT 5.0. "Organizations should not consider deployment of NT v.5.0 prior to 2001. We believe organizations are better-served in the interim by evaluating the costs and benefits of using alternative products and not waiting on NT v.5.0 to emerge from 'vaporware' status." Most of us can probably think of a good "alternative product." Computer Currents, paying their piper, runs their Second Annual Microsoft Sellout Column. "Dear Bill: [...] as per your orders, we've praised Linux on repeated occasions. We even use it to run our intranet. If that doesn't kill this foreign-born OS, I don't know what will. " This Computerworld article by Dan Gilmore of the San Jose Mercury News, is written from the perspective of Linux two years ago to today. Enterprises are exploring Linux, and they like what they're finding. They're learning what webmasters and Internet jockeys already knew: Freeware - now called "open-source" software - is more than a cheap alternative to commercial products. In some ways, it's the equal of anything else out there; in others, it may actually be superior. (Pointer to this, and the other Computerworld links, from Peter Link). ComputerWorld has also put up a good list of Linux links. Well, we have to like it, since they included us! A lengthy article in VAR Business talks about the increase in interest in Linux, but pounds the support issue into the ground. Computer Retail Week says Linux Environment Offers Endless Possibilities but then doesn't really go into what those possiblities are. Evidently the biggest Linux vendor is Simon & Schuster? In a separate article they make the claim that not many copies of Linux are being bought. They seem to be talking about sales from bricks-and-mortar stores, but that is not made entirely clear. And in yet another article they point out that retail salespeople do not actually know anything about Linux, but do not correlate that with the low level of retails sales reported previously. Another article on the Solaris giveaway: this one in Internet Week reads like most of the others, including the references to Linux as the driving force behind Sun's action. Sm@rt Reseller published a review of Red Hat 5.1 that reads like a comparison between that system and Caldera's OpenLinux 1.2. They like Red Hat better. "Red Hat's no-brainer setup makes it the clear reseller winner this time around." This article in Network Computing is really a fairly technical piece about IP packet prioritization and Type of Service (TOS) handling. But, they do say: "... of all the operating systems we've used, the only two that offer high levels of support for the Type of Service byte are Linux and Digital Unix. These systems excelled in our tests not only because they supported these functions directly but because they incorporated these services into their bundled applications." In some ways, this is the best sort of endorsement we can get. This column in Sm@rt Reseller concludes that not only will Linux not achieve World Domination, but it won't even seriously challenge the proprietary versions of Unix. The reason? "...Linux still needs a credible provider of global support to really gain ground." InfoWorld ran a review of Caldera's Netware offering that was decidedly lukewarm. PC Week has a somewhat more favorable review, though with some of the same complaints. They complain that Caldera didn't release the source too! CMPNet discusses the Technauts server box, another "thin server" system based on Linux. Network Computing has a tutorial on how to resurrect an old PC by installing Linux (Slackware) on it. This week's Interview with Linus was done by ComputerWorld and they did an excellent job. There is an interview with Richard Stallman on developer.com. It seems mostly dedicated to finding differences of opinion between rms and Eric Raymond. There is an interview with Larry Wall on Amazon.com.
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	Cisco announced an error in Cisco IOS software which potentially allows unauthenticated users to cause the device to crash and reload. Separately, it appears the Cisco Resource Manager versions 1.0 and 1.1 create log and temporary files with potentially sensitive information. Meanwhile, no word from Cisco on this security problem in Cisco Pix, although it was reported to them six weeks ago. The problem allows a denial-of-service attack on hosts behind the firewall. "Yet another" ICQ bug has been reported. We also hear that Mirabilis had a patch out within 12 hours of the report. Red Hat has announced a fix for SVGAlib in response to some "minor" security problems. A vulnerability has been reported in rpc.nfsd in a recent bulletin from RSI. If you are running rpc.pcnfsd (which does not come with all distributions), you are affected. Patches for Linux were developed in conjunction with the Slackware Linux development staff. Rhino9 then followed with an additional list of problems. However, it has been pointed out that many of these problems have been known for at least two years (see this CERT Advisory) and many additional buffer overflows may lurk in the code. Maybe the increased publicity will encourage some work to clean up this package ...
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	The current development kernel version is 2.1.116. This long-awaited release integrates a lot of alpha and m68k stuff, fixes a nasty TCP lockup problem, and a bunch of other stuff. Meanwhile, according to Alan Cox, the 2.1.x showstopper list has actually gotten longer, but the number of problems with people working on them is growing even faster. That means that people are finding and working on the problems, which can only be a good thing. Prepatch 6 for the 2.0.36 stable kernel release is available, you can read about it in Alan Cox's announcement. There are a few little things yet to be cleaned up, so a pre7 patch may well happen before the actual release. Tim Hockin has released a version of the pset command for multiprocessor systems. Pset allows the binding of processes to specific processors. See his announcement for more. What should the kernel do when a user kills an X server? The problem, of course, is that doing a "kill -9" on an X server will likely leave the console in an unusable state. Opinions vary on how much of a problem that is; "don't do that" was a common response. Those who see a problem here were not agreed on how to resolve it; the discussion began to look much like the old GGI debate, even though those initials appeared rarely. A likely solution was put forward by Linus: have a process that is not killable by normal users handle the console mode. That approach handles the problem purely in user mode, no kernel changes needed. However, as Alan Cox points out, some sort of kernel support for video cards will have to happen at some point. The hardware is evolving in a direction that requires it. The other big discussion this week had to do with what Linux does when it runs out of virtual memory. Current 2.1-based systems go into hard thrash mode and become unusable. Some people see this as inappropriate behavior. This problem can occur because Linux, like a number of other systems, overcommits its virtual memory. Linux systems commit memory the way banks commit to the money you have deposited: if everybody tries to claim all of their resources everything falls apart. But, in either case, the system works because people (or processes) do not normally do that. And the result is vastly more efficient use of resources. A Linux system without overcommitting would need much more swap space to run the same set of processes. So what do you do when you get a run on the memory bank? A number of schemes based around putting processes to sleep and letting the user sort them out were proposed, but making that approach workable seems difficult. More straightforward, though perhaps less aesthetically pleasing, is to simply kill some processes to free up memory. Rik van Riel posted a patch which does this, applying in the process a set of heuristics to try to pick the best processes to kill. The idea, of course, is to try to avoid killing something like the user's X server; while that would certainly free plenty of memory, the user would be unlikely to be grateful. Rik is looking for testers; if you have a system to pound on, give it a go. NFS in 2.1.x is still in a somewhat unstable state. See Alan Cox's scary list of problems to see what's going on. A rock-solid NFS implementation is clearly a necessity for 2.2, even if, disappointingly, NFSv3 will not be supported. Fortunately, Alan has made fixing NFS a priority, so improvement should happen quickly. It is unfortunate, though, that so many of these things seem to fall on Alan's shoulders. Yet another version of Joseph Pranevich's "Wonderful World of Linux 2.2" document is out. This is the "really final" version, though he has already admitted that it probably is not. Check it out and see what's coming.	Since we're a weekly publication, chances are we'll be behind a rev or two on the kernel release by the time you read this page. Up-to-the-second information can always be found at LinuxHQ.
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	Caldera If you're trying to use the KDE CD Player from Caldera's site and it immediately closes after it opens, try making the directory "/opt/kde/share/apps/kscd/cddb" and see if that clears up the problem. Debian The press release for the Debian GNU/Linux ARM distribution has been posted. Discussion continues on debian-devel on changing the Debian development and release cycles to guarantee more frequent releases. All suggestions so far indicate that some newer version should be available by the end of November. This first effort will be the hardest; everyone will be watching carefully to see if Debian can achieve this goal. Now that Bruce Perens has left SPI, as well as the Debian project, a new representative for SPI to Linux International is needed. Check out Ian Jackson's posting for information on the task. Red Hat Red Hat has started releasing development versions of their distribution. These intermediate distributions, dubbed "Raw Hide," are clearly an attempt to get some more community involvement in the development and debugging of the distribution so that they have a better product faster. It's hard to see that as anything but a good thing; maybe this way 5.2 will have fewer updates than its predecessors. You can read their announcement, or attempt to go directly to the Raw Hide directory on Red Hat's busy FTP site. A list of mirrors will be put out later. A new version of the Red Hat User's FAQ is available. It continues to grow, and contains a lot of useful information. See the announcement for a list of mirrors where the FAQ can be found. Red Hat has started a new mailing list for important announcements only. It is called "redhat-watch," and limits itself to security and bugfix notifications. As such, it is a subset of the "redhat-announce" list. To subscribe, send a note to redhat-watch-list-request@redhat.com with "subscribe" in the subject. Slackware Patches for the rpc.pcnfsd security problem mentioned in our security section were developed in conjunction with Patrick Volkerding and the rest of the Slackware Linux development team. S.u.S.E. If you're interested in the S.u.S.E. 5.3 package descriptions, you can find them at http://www.suse.com/Product/lx53/pak_e/. A very preliminary version of a S.u.S.E. FAQ for the suse-linux-e mailing list has been created. Note that it does not cover installation problems, for which answers are documented in S.u.S.E.'s on-line Support Database.	Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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	Sparc Jakub Jelinek has a new version of SILO available for testing. If you have a Sparc machine handy, and especially if you have had trouble with previous versions of SILO, please give it a try. You'll find it in his testing directory. Alpha Questions have been increasing about to improve floating point performance on Alpha machines. It seems time to issue a reminder that there is a faster math library available which can greatly improve performance for number crunchers. Jay Estebrook posted a good answer to the frequently-asked question on debian-alpha of why MILO, when booted from the SRM console, gets the memory size wrong. A patch for this problem exists, but is unofficial, at least for now.
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	It appears that egcs-1.1 release is on the horizon. They are looking for testers, particularly people with experience building glibc and the linux kernel, and with knowledge of the x86, alpha, sparc and powerpc platforms. Java The Open Group JDK version 1 has been released. Note that, although the OpenGroup JDK is free to use, it is dynamically linked with Motif so you'll need to have Motif installed to use it and it has a more restrictive license than the other JDKs. In addition, they have chosen not to share their diffs with the other JDK developers, in spite of the likelihood that they have benefitted from and possibly used some of the diffs from those other efforts. As a result, we hear that the blackdown JDK plans to divert some effort to make their own native threads port which can then be contributed back to the community. The latest JDC Bulletin provides a URL where you can give feedback on whether or not you find these bulletins useful. It also includes some Java migration success stories. Perl Andreas Koenig posted recent changes and additions to the Perl Module Database. Joseph Ryan posted some photos from the 1998 Perl Conference. Python Andrew Kuchling sent us a pointer to an interesting article by Guido van Rossum, covering JPython and why you might want to use it. Tcl/tk The 6th annual Tcl/Tk conference is coming up in September. An on-line version of a tcl-java tutorial has been posted by John Reekie. John and Christopher Hylands will be presenting this tutorial at the upcoming Tcl/tk conference in San Diego. A Tcl/tk resource site in Bulgaria has been recently announced. JWalk, a Tcl-based tool, automates various jobs involved in processing Java source code.
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	Free/Open-Source Software News Dan Kaminsky has posted an early version of his expansion interface design, Cluehunting. Stephen Carpenter has posted a pre-release copy of his Poor Man's X-terminal documentation. He's looking for comments and input. Netscape/Mozilla From the latest Mozilla newsletter, we learn that a new RDF-based mail client has been checked in. A Screenshot is available. Also, the big move to auto-conf is underway and is making some people pretty happy. Some good news on the jazilla GUI front are available as well. Wine The Wine FAQ was updated on August 8th, so if you have a question, you might want to give it a quick scan ...
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	Linux and the Commercial World The CEO of Altrasoft, Inc. wrote us to point out that their products are available for Linux and come with full source. They sell a software development product and a variety of productivity tools. Press Releases: Technauts eServer 150, a Linux-based "thin server" box. PC Plus Magazine will be distributing S.u.S.E Linux 5.2 with their upcoming issue, as well as increasing their coverage of Linux Vital, Inc. has a new version of their CRISP editor out. Boundless has a version of their "Viewpoint TC" thin client that runs S.u.S.E. Linux. Debian has officially announced their ARM distribution, which will port Debian GNU/Linux to the Corel Netwinder (and eventually other ARM architecture hardware)
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	Software Package Version Description aa3d 1.0 ASCII art stereogram generator Abacus 0.9.3 Spreadsheet for Linux/XWindows written in Tcl/Tk and C/C++ Alien 6.15 Converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats Amcl 0.3 A simple Mud CLient for X written in GTK libs. arla 0.9 Free AFS client for Linux/*BSD Arrow 0.6 An elegant, powerful, graphical interface to electronic mail asapm 2.0 X11 application with AfterStep look for monitoring APM on laptops ascp 0.9 A Control Panel for the AfterStep window manager AtDot 1.8.5 Web based e-mail system auth_ipc_module 0.1 Shadow password authentication module for Apache Batalla Naval 0.70.1 Networked BattleShip game BeroFTPD 1.0.9 FTP server program based on WU-FTPD binutils 2.9.1.0.10 Provides programs to assemble and manipulate binary andobject files. Blackbox 0.40.4 WindowManager for X11 written in C++ BladeEnc 0.60 Freeware MP3 Encoder Bomb Squad BETA 3 Team17's worms like game Bzflag 1.7b 3D multiplayer tank battle game CCF 980814 Virtual environment for distributed computation cdcd 0.3.9 A no-nonsense CLI CD player that actually has features, like CDDB and CD-ROM cha CDM 0.27 Offers copying, mastering and manipulation of CD tracks Code Crusader 1.0.0 complete code development environment, inspired by MetroWerks CodeWarrior comedi 0.5.0 Linux Control and Measurement Device Interface Command Line Masqdialer 0.0.1 Command Line Client for Jeff Meininger's Masqdialer Server CVS 1.10 Concurrent Versions System DDD snapshot Common graphical user interface for GDB, DBX and XDB Dia 0.12 gtk based diagram drawing program. Much like Visio. egcs 19980816 Experimental set of enhancements for the GNU tools ERC 1.1 Emacs IRC client Eterm DR0.8+PL3 An X11 VT102 emulator with Enlightenment features expat 1.0 XML Parser Toolkit FAIM 0.03 An open source client for America Online's Instant Messenger service fonted 0.9 Linux WYSIWYG Console font editor and utilities. FOX 0.1.0 C++-Based Library for Graphical User Interface Development Freebuilder 0.7.3 Free Java Integrated Development Environment Frontpage extensions for Apache 1.3.1 FrontPage server extensions patch Ftape 4.01 A driver for tape drives that connect to the floppy controller FTP4ALL 2.21 FTP server program for UNIX systems Gamora 0.60.3 Java based server construction, hosting, and adminstration architecture. Gcdplay 1.1 GPL'ed CD player with local and server-based cddb support. geg 0.05 Simple GTK+ 2D-function plotting program GHX 98/08/17 GTK clone of the Hotline software GICQ 0.21 GTK based ICQ client gIDE 0.0.6 gtk-based Integrated Development Environment for C Gmp32cinta 15081998 Adjusts the times of MP3's to make them fit perfectly onto an audio tape GNOME 0.27 GNU Network Object Model Environment GNU Robots 0.77 Robot construction game GNUS 5.6.37 Emacs news/mail reader GQmpeg 0.3 A front end to the mpg123 mpeg audio player GQview 0.4.0 X11 image viewer for the Linux operating system gRunlevels 1.0 A SYSV Runlevel Editor gtkfind 0.3 GTK+ version of find(1) gTuring 1.0 A Turing Machine simulator for GNOME. Gush 0.0a GNU User's Shell IceConf 0.1.1 A graphical configuration program for IceWM ImageMagick 4.0.9 Package for display and interactivemanipulation of images for X11 IMP 1.5 BETA-2 IMAP and PHP3 based webmail system imwheel 0.2 Support for the Intellimouse wheel in X11 IsinGlass 1.12 Firewall setup script designed to protect dial-up users. Javascript Debugger 1.1 Fully featured Visual Javascript Debugger jCVS 4.7.3 Java implementation of client-server CVS (version control for team projects) Joy2Key 1.4 Translate joystick movements into keyboard events (X and console) JX 1.1.17 C++ application framework and GUI widget library for X k-ftes 4.6b5-V4 KDE port of the FTE editor KDat 1.99b Tar based tape archiver kdbg 0.2.1 A KDE front end to GDB. Keystone 0.22.02 Web-based problem tracking system, rewrite of an older system called PTS kfortune 1.11 Shows a furtune every time KDE is started KIllustrator 0.4 Vector drawing program for KDE KLyX 0.9.7 A modern approach of writing documents with a computer Kmp3te 0.4.2 MP3 tag editor krepton 2.0 Clone of the old BBC Micro Repton game krubik 1.03 A 3D model of a Rubik cube that you can rotate attempt to solve. KSirc snapshot 980813 Full features X11 IRC Client based on sirc KSlide 0.5.1 Simple slide puzzle game ktalkd 0.8.5 KDE-aware talk daemon KTelnet 0.62 Frontend for telnet, rlogin and secure shell for the KDE Desktop KWebWatch 0.5 Utility to monitor web pages, looking for updated content kWorldEd 0.0.0 3D Modeller for KDE LFTP 1.1 Sophisticated command line based FTP client LibVRML97/Lookat 0.7 Open VRML97 Toolkit and Browser Licq 0.40pr4 ICQ clone for linux with most of the functionality of the official Java version linleech 2.1.2 Program that automates the processof downloading USENET articles LinPopup 0.9.0 Linux port of Winpopup, running over Samba. Linux-Kontor Build 9 A free Commodities, Bookkeeping, Accountancy and Inventory Management software lpswitch 0.1 Control devices connected to a pport-relais-card Lynx 2.8 fully-featured, text-based World Wide Web browser LyX 0.12.1pre8 Advanced LaTeX-based typesetting and text-editing program for X11 M 0.01 alpha Powerful, user-friendly, scriptable mail/news client Micq snapshot 980816 Publically available ICQ clone for the console Midiplay 2.0 Midi synthesizer application and netscape plugin + more mm.mysql 0.9 JDBC Drivers for MySQL mod_ssl 2.0.4-1.3.1 Apache Interface to SSLeay MyNMS 0.1.2-alpha Simple network monitoring system, useful to detect when links go down (and up!) Netscape Communicator 4.06 All-in-one browser and communicationssuite ObjectTeam for Linux PE 8.1.0.9 beta Object-oriented modeling and design for Linux Open Group Linux JDK 1.1.6v1 A port of the Java Development Kit to Linux using native linux threads ORBit 0.2.1 Thin/fast CORBA ORB OSS 3.9.1b Provides sound card drivers for most popular sound cards under Linux p910nd 0.2 Non-spooling printer daemon for diskless hosts perl 5.005_51 High-level, general-purpose programming language PHP 3.0.3 HTML-embedded scripting language Pizza 0.39g A small, fast and free compiler for Java Prometheus Truecolour (PTC) 2.0.4 A portable, lowlevel framebuffer access library with fast on the fly conversion Queue 0.21a Innovative load-balancing/batch-processing system and rsh replacement RabbIT 1.2 Mutating, caching webproxy to speed up surfing over slow links Replay 0.34 GTK-based MP3 player for X11 rungetty 1.0.0 Minimal virtual console getty capable of running arbitrary programs Saint 1.2.10 Security Administrator's Integrated Network Tool sdr 2.5a5 Multicast Session Directory Tool Shutdown Commander 0.2a Curses-based console shutdown utility Sulawesi 0.2.1 Multimodal wearable/ubiquitous agent development environment Synaesthesia 1.4 Program to reperesent music from CD or MP3 graphically. tdetect 0.2 Traceroute Detector think 0.0.4 Outliner and project organizer tin 1.4pre980818 Curses based threaded NNTP and spool based UseNet newsreader tk_Brief 0.1 GUI for writing letters with LaTeX Trinux: A Linux Security Toolkit 0.3 2-disk distribution that includes network security tools and runs in RAM TuxTime 980814 Control power-saving options on Toshiba laptops twz1jdbcForMysql 0.9.3 A type 4 JDBC driver for MySQL up 0.1 Replacement program for uptime. vcron 1.1 Graphical interface to cron and at Vim 5.2k Popular vi clone that features syntax highlighting and an X11 interface Visual DHTML   Visual DHTML is a free Web-based authoring tool that lets you create interactive VM 6.61 Emacs-based mail reader WIDD 1.0.2a Front-end application to manage databases through an X11interface WindowMaker 0.18.1b X11 window manager with NEXTSTEP look and feel Windows 95/NT Masqdialer Client 1.0.0 Win95/NT Client for Jeff Meininger's MasqDialer Server wmlm78 0.10.0 WindowMaker utility to display system monitor information from a lm78 chip wmss 0.7 WindowMaker Sound Server Configurator WWWThreads 2.7.3 WWW based discussion forums wxWindows/GTK 1.91 GTK port of the cross-platform wxWindows C++application framework class library X Northern Captain 4.0.6 Filemanager for X Windows X-ISP 2.5p2 X11 and XForms based visual interfaceto pppd and chat xautolock patchlevel 13 automatic X screen locking/saving XCopilot 0.6.5 Emulator for the 3Com/USRobotics Pilot/PalmPilot XFCE 2.0.3 Easy-to-use and easy-to-configure environment for X11 Xlogmaster 1.4.2 Tool to monitor logfiles and hardware status xnodecor 0.1 No-decoration windows under wmx Xwhois 0.1.8 Small and fast GTK+ X11 client for the whois network services. XwinAllegro 3.0 Game programming Library for X11 xwpe-alpha 1.5.11a A programming environment for UNIX systems Yard 1.16 A suite of Perl scripts for creating rescue disks for Linux ZipCracker 0.0.4 Cracks password protected zip archives with brute force(TM) Zircon 1.18.172 An IRC client written in tcl/tk zJSP 0.1 JavaServer Pages translator which produces Java servlets. Resources Calling this a resource is stretching the word boundaries, but we found Dan Kegel's way of measuring the growing popularity of Linux highly amusing. He's tracking the number of times that Microsoft itself mentions linux on its web site ... Events Folks in Canada are staging a nation-wide installfest on September 26. Installations will be happening in Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and a number of other places as well. This appears to be an ambitious undertaking, we wish them luck. Web sites Mats Rynge has announced his Linux Programming site. Here is his announcement. The LinuxAce website has recently been updated. The check-ps security program now has its own web site. Here is the announcement. User Group News Dave Finton sent us this report which covers very recent activity towards building a LUG in Duluth, Minnesota They are making good progress. If you are in Duluth, this is an effort you will want to support. Good luck, Dave!	Our software announcements are provided courtesy of Freshmeat.
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	Linux links of the week The Linux Software Encyclopedia by Steven Baum is an extensive encyclopedia of the packages available for our favorite system. Each entry contains a paragraph or more describing the package, URL's, and cross links. The organization is alphabetical, so this may not be the best place to go if you do not know what you are looking for; he is, however, beginning to add some categorical indices. The information is extensive, and this site will be useful for those trying to pick a package for a particular task. I would like a bound copy on my desk. Curious about Beowulf systems out there? Do you run a Beowulf cluster? Here is an online survey of Beowulf systems which includes a summary of the answers received so far.
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