See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

Another Linux news and articles site is Matts's House. Matt recently sent us a note stating that he is looking for folks to contribute articles for his site. Have a look at the site, and help out if you like.

Letters to the editor

Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 09:29:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Zack Brown <zbrown@lynx.neu.edu>
To: editor@lwn.net, will@localhost
Subject: Free Commercial software? Not quite yet, thanks.

Amid all the whooping for joy about the various commercial programs
being ported to linux, people seem to have forgotten about one of the
basic flaws in most commercial software, including WordPerfect: their
essential unfriendliness to other programs.

Ever cat a WordPerfect file to the screen? Pretty messy. They didn't
have to do it that way. It was done specifically to tie users to their
particular piece of software by making it difficult to use other
programs with that data. Most commercial software venders do
this. That's also why they keep changing their data formats.

IMHO, this completely goes against the purpose of having a powerful
system in which pipes and whatnot can transform data in arbitrary
ways. It limits productivity to the small set of functions that the WP
(and other proprietary) venders think is important to include in the
binary itself.

This is one of the reasons Microsoft systems are so much less useful
than linux systems: because they all desperately want to lock each
other out, each vender must duplicate the code of each other vender in
order to get the same functionality, with the result that much less
software can fit on the harddrive.

This very real, very ugly nightmare is about to come to Linux, full
steam ahead. And while we may all be cheering now, we may not be so
happy a year from now when our sleek, powerful linux systems have
grown top-heavy with 30- and 40-megabyte packages that really don't
give anything back to the system they live on.

Drag-n-drop will only make it easier to invoke these huge beasts. The
beasts themselves will remain virtual black-boxes in terms of
automated usability and advancing functionality. While things like TeX
may not be everybody's wet dream, TeX does at least understand the
need to put (or allow) real power in the hands of the user: The power
to transform data in arbitrary ways.

Now I'm not saying everyone should run out and learn TeX. That system
has its own problems and limitations. But people should keep in mind
that up until now Linux has remained a fully integrated system, with
everything talking to everything else. Why should office and
productivity suites be above all that? Why should the linux community
allow linux to become just a cheaper and more stable version of
Windows 98?

In the coming months, let's learn to put open file formats and
scripted automation on a par with open source. The gimp is a good
example of something that does these things already. Let's let the
commercial venders know that if they want to run on linux, they have
to let linux run on them.

Zack Brown

Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 13:28:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Peter Teuben <teuben@astro.umd.edu>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: GNU struggling?


In your significant development list of the year "The bazaar approach
shows its viability for large projects":

I didn't like your wording that GNU has been struggling along for 10
years in comparison with the sudden hype about the bazaar approach and
open source. GNU has been a major major force in the bazaar's success,
as Eric and most of us will probably agree with. If GNU had failed,
the bazaar approach would have never happened, I believe. The reason
the bazaar approach is suddenly working is conditions are just
right. Good overall internet acccess, good websites to serve educating
the people (remember open source has been around as long as GNU, there
is nothing new there, just a new name in a slightly upgraded jacket)
with a lot of computer users outside just academia. Going back 15
years when I saw "open-source" work for the first time on uucp and
newsgroup one can understand why growth was so slow. All what we see
is a natural outcome of this whole growth process.

I don't disagree with your final conclusion, but it takes a lot of
work and utilities to get the KDE and GNOME developers to even start!
So to just push GNU in the struggling camp, is understatement in the
least.

Peter Teuben

From: Barry.Randall@minnesotamutual.com
To: "editor(a)lwn.net" <editor@lwn.net>
Subject: FUD
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 09:58:27 -0600

Dear Linux Daily News

I'm a dedicated reader, and I appreciate your work in assembling all
the Linux info. It sure makes my life easier.

One suggestion: please stop referring to any criticism of Linux as
"FUD." You seem to do this reflexively, which makes you look bad. It's
ironic too: many people (including myself) see Linux as being more
robust because it is continually subject to the "peer review" of many
independent programmers. Yet you seem unable to tolerate any viewpoint
but your own, which makes you seem pretty thin-skinned. It's a healthy
attitude to believe that a) Linux is imperfect; and b) constructive
criticism is part of the process of making it less so.

Of course there is FUD in the world, but counter it with thoughtful
rebuttals instead of teenager-ish defensiveness, and you will take the
higher road.

Good luck, and thanks again for your work.

Sincerely,

Barry Randall
Equity Technology Analyst
Advantus Capital Management
St. Paul
barry.randall@minnesotamutual.com

Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 15:16:59 -0800
From: Jason Tuomy <tuomy@glyphix.com>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Linux Win!

I would like to report that we have successfully
installed/configured/tested Oracle8 on RedHat Linux 5.2.  ODBC from MS
is working and the Oracle8 Client for NT sees it and works perfectly.
It is now our database server, immediately replacing our Microsoft SQL
Server 6.5.  It was not hard at all making the decision to move.  We
will be using a third party tool on NT to port all of our databases
from SQL Server to Oracle8.  Our prelimenary tests show that
connecting to Oracle is already faster than SQL Server.  We are
already in the process of moving our file serving from NT to Linux.
We have a mix variety of workstations; Linux/Mac/Windows.  Linux has
already proven to work as a file server using Netatalk and Samba.  And
is very stable.  I would like to let you know and hope this is
encouragement for other Linux Enterprise pioneers.