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Leading items

• As had been expected, SGI announced a new server product: the 1400L. It takes up to four Xeon processors and comes, of course, with Linux preloaded. While SGI made its name in graphics, the truth is that they have been a strong performer in the server arena for a long time. The 1400L looks to be a well-designed, high-end Intel-based server system. And it runs Linux.

  There is, of course, an NT-based version available as well. Interestingly, it costs $1000 more than the Linux version.

• What happened to IRIX? SGI has let it slip that they have pretty much dropped the idea of porting IRIX to the Intel architecture - they will go with Linux instead. Thus, there will probably be no IRIX for the IA-64 ("Merced") processor either. According to Hank Shiffman, a "strategy technologist" at SGI, "Given the resources we have, we have to focus on just one [operating system] and that one is Linux." (Quoted in PC Week UK).

  LWN has been predicting for a while (along with many, many others) that Linux would end up displacing the proprietary Unix systems. There is little economic sense in a hardware company producing its own operating system when there is such a high-quality alternative that they can use for free. It is beginning to look like IRIX is the first of the proprietary systems to fall; it will not be the last.

  Partly as a result of SGI's announcements, the trade press is actually beginning to believe that Linux will have a large presence in a computing future that, apparently, will be dominated by IA-64 systems. Most still seem to think, however, that the strongest Unix on IA-64 will be "Monterey," a system being developed by IBM, SCO, and others. But by the time Monterey is both real and stable, who will still be interested?

• Something that should not be missed: while many computer companies are adopting Linux to some extent, most of them are contenting themselves with installing it on some systems, and maybe providing some support options. SGI is going beyond that by throwing in development resources and contributing back to Linux.

  The biggest example, of course, is the contribution of their XFS filesystem. Progress on XFS is slow, as had been predicted; it will not show up in a stable kernel anytime this year. SGI's contributions go well beyond XFS, however; a perusal of their pages turns up a list of kernel patches contributed by SGI to help with immediate performance problems. There is also code for 4GB memory support, a kernel debugger, storage management, and a number of other things. Finally, SGI has been a supporter of the Samba project for some time now. All of these projects are going out as open source.

(See also: SGI's open source page, their projects page, the SGI Linux page, this this News.com article with some good quotes on why SGI is attracted to Linux, the 1000 series press release, and this release about their partnership with Red Hat). Thanks to Ariel Faigon for pointing us to some of the information above.

Can the bazaar be original? Here's a brief essay from Eric Raymond, intended to be a new section for "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," which addresses the question of whether bazaar-style development can come up with original ideas. Eric, of course, believes that it can.

Eric has also made a new version of The Cathedral and the Bazaar available - the first in over a year. Eric evidently has a deal in place with O'Reilly to package up his papers into a cloth-bound book aimed at business readers.

The second LinuxWorld Expo is next week. LWN editors Elizabeth Coolbaugh and Jonathan Corbet will be present at the Expo, keep an eye out for us! (We will also be teaching a tutorial on Linux systems administration in large network environments on Monday, August 9).

Look to the Linux Weekly News (and the daily updates page) for our coverage of this event.

The Great Linux Giveaway. Eklektix, Inc., publisher of the Linux Weekly News, will be joining ASL Workstations, Inc.in their "Great Linux Giveaway" promotion. Somebody will be winning a AS-LT300 laptop and a seat in our Linux administration for Unix administrators class. It is a great combination of prizes; please see ASL events page for more information.

Red Hat's IPO is also scheduled to happen sometime next week. A lot of Linux folks can be expected to be watching the stock quote services if all goes according to plan....

This Week's LWN was brought to you by:

• Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
• Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh, Managing Editor

See also: last week's Security page.

Security

News

"The legislation was sponsored by a bipartisan group that included Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, who strongly criticized the practice of registering names in hopes of selling them.

Covering privacy-related legislation, but not specific to security issues, CNN also put together an overall report on Internet-related legislation, which is worth a look.

From Britain comes more concerns about the proposed Electronic Communications Bill. Apparently not only could failure to reveal your encryption keys result in a jail sentence, but complaining about it in public could as well. "Even discussing an investigation in public, such as complaining about alleged abuses of law enforcement to the media, may also be punishable by imprisonment, said Bowden.

Security Reports

CERT has issued an advisory regarding a security problem on Cobalt RaQ servers. If you are running one of these (Linux-based) systems, you probably want to pick up and install the update.

Netscape Enterprise Server's JHTML was the topic of this Bugtraq posting, examining possible problems with the built-in search engine, operational by default.

Updates

Debian has announced updated Samba packages, following recent mentions of Samba security problems.

Red Hat also updated their Samba announcement, mentioned last week. The new version includes notes about the post-uninstall script. Special install procedures for the updates are recommended.

Resources

IP defragmentation, TCP stream assembly and TCP port scan detection are provided functions of the Libnids shared library. Source, sample applications and documentation are available for download.

AntiSniff Beta 2 has been announced. [From Security Focus]

SARA, the Security Auditor's Research Assistant has announced version 2.0.6. It is based on SAINT and licensed under the GPL. Simultaneously, TARA, the Tiger Analytical Research Assistant version 2.2.6 was also announced. TARA is an upgrade to TAMU's 'tiger' program and scans a system for vulnerabilities. It has been tested on Red Hat 5.2, as well as other systems.

Events

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Secure Linux Projects
Bastille Linux
Khaos Linux
Secure Linux

Security List Archives
Bugtraq Archive
Firewall Wizards Archive
ISN Archive

Distribution-specific links
Caldera Advisories
Debian Alerts
Red Hat Errata
SuSE Announcements

Miscellaneous Resources
CERT
CIAC
Comp Sec News Daily
Crypto-GRAM
Linux Security Audit Project
OpenSEC
Security Focus
SecurityPortal

See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development

Linus has also proclaimed that a 2.3 feature freeze will probably happen in about two weeks. He is clearly serious about trying to get a 2.4 out in the fall. While there is little disagreement that 2.2 was too long in coming, one could well wonder if 2.4 isn't being a little rushed. By some accounts, 2.2 hasn't really stabilized yet (though it works great for most people); by the time it does, it may already be obsolete.

Looking forward to 2.4, Joseph Pranevich has put out the first version of The Wonderful World of Linux 2.4, which describes the changes that will appear in that release.

The current stable release remains 2.2.10. Alan Cox has been passing around a set of 2.2.11 pre-patches, but Alan has been somewhat scarce in recent weeks and progress on that front has been slow.

If there are any Sparc users who are considering trying 2.3, our advice is to wait. Some of the memory management changes in 2.3 broke badly on the Sparc, with the result that the 2.3 kernels do not build. Work is underway to fix that, but it's going to take a little while yet. Unless you're willing to help out with the work, the best thing to do is to hold off for a few more releases.

Your backup is unsafe, but don't worry too much, it's just a Windows partition. So starts this note from Robert de Bath. Here's the problem: those who have dealt with the Windows "VFAT" file system know that there can actually be two names for a file. The file system supports long file names almost like a real operating system, but, underneath it all, there is a DOS 8.3 ("short") filename that really identifies the file. Thus "Program Files" becomes "Progra~1".

The Linux VFAT file system only makes the long file name visible to the user, on the reasonable assumption that it is the one they want to see. Usually all works just fine. But imagine that you back up this file system, then restore it at some future time. All of the long file names will go back the way they were before, but Linux has to generate new 8.3 names to go with them. Those 8.3 names will usually be the same ones that were there before, but not always.

Changing 8.3 names would not necessarily be a problem, if it weren't for certain programs (i.e. Office) which actually depend on them. Long and short file names also tend to get mixed up in the Windows registry, leading to serious havoc if they do not continue to match up together. Since there is no reason why a rational person would use VFAT if they were not working with windows software, this is a real issue.

Solutions to this one will not come easily. The Unix worldview is just not prepared to deal with two weirdly linked names for the same file in this manner. The most common idea was to turn the long file name into a link (either hard or soft) to the 8.3 file name, and present both in a directory listing. Since VFAT does not support links, this usage would be unambiguous, and seems like an easy way out.

But only until one really thinks about the problem. The short and long names are tied much more tightly than Unix links; who expects that, when you rename one link to a file, that the other would change too? Since directories, too, have long names, the use of hard links is out of the question; hard links to directories are a quick path to trouble in almost any Unix-like system. Even with symbolic links, trying to make everything actually work right would be slightly less fun than, say, being tied over an anthill.

So it's not clear that this problem will get solved. And one could indeed ask how important that is; it seems that almost all backup programs that run under Windows have the same problem. VFAT, in the end, is a piece of ugliness that is exceptional even in the Windows context; there is only so much that can be done to make it work right.

A few notes on SCHED_IDLE, the proposed new scheduler class (discussed in last week's issue) which would run low-priority cranker jobs only when nothing else wants to run:

• Rik van Riel noted that the patch has progressed since the version we published last week; see his kernel patches page for the current version.

• Artur Skawina posted a competing implementation which, according to him, works much better and imposes no costs on the normal (non-SCHED_IDLE) case.

• Victor Yodaiken, who fears the numerous deadlock and performance problems that SCHED_IDLE can bring, posted this note on alternative ways to deal with the problem. It is simultaneously humorous and convincing, worth a read.

Other patches and updates released this week include:

• Jens Axboe has set up a web page for Linux CD and DVD development. Information on CD-RW and DVD developments can be found there, and the current patches can be downloaded.

• Yann Droneaud posted a version of the boot code that has been rewritten for the gas assembler. Nobody much likes the as86 assembler currently used for this code, but there is not a whole lot of sentiment in favor of gas either. There is a third assembler (nasm) which seems to have more appeal; if as86 goes away, it may be nasm that takes over. (See also: the posting and, for the really curious, the new boot code).

• Etienne Lorrain posted an announcement for a new bootloader, which competes with programs like LILO. This one is different, however, in that it does not (yet) work...

• Rolf Fokkens posted a patch allowing the user some control over the mapping between SCSI devices and their names in /dev. Currently, adding or removing a device on a SCSI chain can cause all of the others to be renamed, leading to much tearing of hair among the system administration staff. This patch seems like a simple solution to the problem for admins who know that they will be making hardware changes.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

For other kernel news, see:

• Kernelnotes
• Kernel traffic
• Kernel Newsflash

See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions

The timing was amusing, coming as this editor was finishing up a talk on "Linux Distributions: Well-known through Unknown" for the Front Range Unix Users Group in Boulder, CO which addresses the same question. Clearly the topic seems to be of current interest. Please note that an updated and expanded version of this talk will be given at the Atlanta Linux Showcase in October, so comments, corrections and feedback on the slides will be welcome.

A comparison of major distributions was published this week by CPUReview.com. It is a followup to their reviews of the various individual distributions and compares RedHat 6.0, OpenLinux 2.2, SuSE 6.1, Mandrake 6.0 and Slackware 4.0.

MozillaZine's poll for the week covers the Distribution you use most. They took some flack for Red Hat-centric choices. A scan of alternatives mentioned in their forum that were not on the primary list showed up an unexpected (to this editor) number of LinuxPPC users, with Mandrake, mklinux and stampede being additional examples. The most used distributions from the actual list started with Red Hat, Debian, SuSE and Slackware, in that order.

Eridani Systems responded to our use of their distribution in our July 22nd Distribution Summary as an example of a distribution that did not appear to be adding value to the base Red Hat distribution. They give a list of 20 or so additional packages that have been added to the base distribution, including the FTP version of Corel's Wordperfect for Linux. Our apologies ... we formed a mistaken impression based on the original announcement.

Debian

The latest information on Debian's perl upgrade was posted on July 29th. It seems the perl upgrade is nearing completion with only a few packages left to be converted.

The /usr/doc vs /usr/share/doc issue apparently continues to rage unabated in debian-policy, according to this note from Joey Hess. As a result, developers are urged to wait before modifying their packages to use /usr/share/doc.

The Debian Weekly News for August 3rd is available and covers the past two weeks, since no issue was released last week.

Enoch

Mandrake

Red Hat

Non-security related updates from Red Hat over the past week will require quite a bit of disk space. Over 31 packages are included in their GNOME, gnumeric and enlightenment updates. There is also a linuxconf update. Atul Chitnis pointed out that they have now released updates for over 30% of the original 6.0 release. Please note that security-related updates will be mentioned on our Security Summary.

Slackware

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.

Lists of Distributions
Kernelnotes
Woven Goods
Known Distributions:
Apokalypse
Bad Penguin Linux
Bastille Linux
Best Linux (Finnish/Swedish)
Black Cat Linux (Ukrainian/Russian)
Caldera OpenLinux
CCLinux
Chinese Linux Extension
Complete Linux
Conectiva Linux (Brazilian)
Debian GNU/Linux
Definite Linux
DLD
DLite
DLX
DragonLinux
easyLinux
Easylinux-kr
Enoch
Eonova Linux
Eridani Star System
e-smith server and gateway
Eurielec Linux (Spanish)
eXecutive Linux
floppyfw
Floppix
Green Frog Linux
hal91
Hard Hat Linux
Independence
Jurix
Kha0s Linux
KRUD
KSI-Linux
Laetos
LEM
LinuxGT
Linux-Kheops (French)
Linux MLD (Japanese)
LinuxPPC
LinuxPPP (Mexican)
Linux Pro Plus
Linux Router Project
LOAF
LSD
Mandrake
Mastodon
MicroLinux
MkLinux
muLinux
nanoLinux II
NoMad Linux
Open Kernel (Russian)
Plamo Linux
PLD
Project Ballantain
PROSA Debian GNU/Linux
QuadLinux
Red Hat
Rock Linux
ShareTheNet
Skygate
Slackware
Small Linux
Stampede
Stataboware
Storm Linux
SuSE
Tomsrtbt
Trinux
TurboLinux
uClinux
UltraPenguin
Vine Linux
Xdenu
XTeamLinux
Yellow Dog Linux

See also: last week's Development page.

Development tools

C

A new stable release of the GNU Gcc compiler has been announced. "This is the first release of GCC since the April 1999 GCC/EGCS reunification and includes nearly a year's worth of new development and bugfixes."

A program to help find Y2K-related problems in C programs has been released. Version 1.0 of Carillon was announced on August 1st.

Java

Cryptix, a clean-room implementation of Sun's Java Cryptography Extentions (JCD) has released version 3.1.0 and now runs on both the JDK 1.1 and 1.2.

Following up mentions of Java Interactive Development Environments in last week's Development Summary, Peter Moulder pointed out that calling AnyJ free software was incorrect, because the software is free for use under Linux, but is not redistributable.

In addition, our list of available IDEs did not include the beta of IBM's Visual Age for Linux, noted by Tom Janofsky, which was ported to Linux in response to "937 Linux developers who signed Scott Stanchfield's petition requesting that VisualAge for Java be ported to Linux." Ivar Vasara capped that by pointed out that blackdown.org has a much more complete list of Java IDEs.

Perl

The Perl Bug Database is now on-line, thanks to Richard Foley, the perlbug administrator.

Development releases for perl are coming out in rapid order, with three releases in the past week in preparation of an expected beta release around August 19th, in time for the O'Reilly Perl Conference. Check perl.org for information on these development releases.

Perl CD Bookshelf is a CD from O'Reilly containing six popular Perl books, now available to provide easy lookup and cross-referencing.

The list of Perl refereed papers for the upcoming O'Reilly Perl Conference has been made available.

Python

1500 threads in a Python program? That is evidently a reasonable thing to attempt if you are running with the Python microthreads patch. The author, Will Ware, appears to have set up an efficient user-mode threads implemention within the Python interpreter. He warns that the code is new and probably buggy.

Tcl/tk

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

Development projects

Version 2.5 of Ted, an "easy to run and easy to install Rich Text Processor for Linux/Unix released under the Gnu Public License", has been announced.

CoffeeCup 4.0, an HTML editor has been released for Linux for the first time.

phpAds 1.0.0 was announced on August 1st. This is a banner management package, released under the GPL. More information can be found on the phpAds homepage.

Gnome

KDE

KDevelop 1.0 beta 1 has been announced. KDevelop seeks to provide "a good, stable and useful environment that can compete with modern graphical software development tools." They report that their team has grown from the initial three members to seven, plus a translation team ...

Midgard

Mozilla/Netscape

"... this comment says nothing about Allaire or Allaire's committment to working with Mozilla in our products. In fact, HomeSite now uses Gecko as an internal browsing engine for previewing content, and we are hopeful that the editing working group makes enough progress with their editing control, built on NGLayout, so that we can use it for semi-WYSIWYG design.

Even further, the visual tools team at Allaire is extremely excited about Mozilla and it is their expectation that they will over time become contributors to the project, based on work we do in HomeSite. "

XFree86

Wine

Zope

Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh

See also: last week's Commerce page.

Linux and business

It is a good thing that IDG/LinuxWorld is recognizing the FSF in this way. Let us hope that the rest of the conference will treat the FSF with respect as well. Last March's event left them somewhat marginalized, trying to be heard among the glitz, smoke, and lasers. Without the FSF, the LinuxWorld conference would not be happening; they deserve both this recognition and a high-profile presence at the event.

VA Linux Systems is on a roll They have announced that sales for the second quarter of this year were up 220% over the previous quarter, exceeding the 212% growth rate for Linux published by industry analyst firm International Data Corporation. They have also announced the opening of ten new sales offices, spread throughout the U.S.

It also appears, from the rumors going around, that their IPO filing will be happening in short order. The initial filing could happen, perhaps, by the end of this month.

IBM plans a large set of announcements at LinuxWorld, according to a number of sources. This was expected; there have been rumblings coming out of IBM for some time. The announcements should include a new Linux-based Netfinity server, the "official" announcement that DB2 is generally available, and a partnership with SAP to bring their high-end "R/3" ERP package to Linux. IBM seems to be truly interested in our favorite system; it is going to be interesting to watch where they try to go with it.

HP is not standing still either. It has announced that its OpenMail messaging system will run on Linux. A freely-downloadable beta version is available now; the full product is expected to be released in September. OpenMail is a big-deal product, used by millions of people in many large corporations. The availability of OpenMail provides another opportunity for Linux systems in "enterprise" environments.

Linux and the European server market. IDC has issued a release containing some of their predictions for the server market in Europe. They had some nice things to say. "Linux is expected to become a viable alternative to current operating systems in many user environments. Even if it is not yet fully standardized and represents only a small proportion of server sales, its positioning as a free source code product heralds a whole new business model for the server market."

Hardware Products:

The first software modem for Linux. PC-TEL has announced the availability of its software modem for Linux. Software modems work by shifting most of the signal processing work to the host system CPU. While such an arrangement is not suitable for a lot of systems, there can be advantages to this mode of operation. Companies building low-end Linux systems, for example, will certainly be pleased to have a less expensive modem available. Having that sort of signal processing capability available can, in the longer term, lead to any of a number of interesting telephony applications; whether that will happen with this particular modem depends on how open PC-TEL is with their driver software. There is, unfortunately, no indication in their press release that source will be made available.

Alpha Processor, Inc. and The Linux Store announced an agreement to offer API's next-generation motherboards based on Alpha processors through The Linux Store's e-commerce storefront.

Perhaps to make room for all those fast, new Alpha systems, The Linux Store is "giving away" the last of their huge pile of 166 MHz Multia systems. $29.50 for shipping will get you one. These are "bare bones" systems, so expect to have to invest more, in both time and money, before you have something that actually works...

A new Linux systems VAR. Cumetrix Data Systems Corp. announced that it is selling consumer and business computers that are pre-configured with the Red Hat Linux operating system. They are aiming at the low end, with their cheapest system starting at $399.

Software Products:

Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc., the developer of the BRU Backup & Restore Utility for Linux systems, announced the release of BRU 15.1. The most significant enhancement to BRU 15.1 is the release of CRU (Crash Recovery Utility) for Linux under an open source license.

Game maker Epic announced that the Linux port of Unreal Tournament is complete and in working condition. It's expected that Epic will include this free with UT upon it's release, on a second CD. Linux is the most popular operating system for game server administrators, and with both a Linux client and server port for Unreal Tournament, it's poised to become a major player in the online gaming community.

Press Releases:

• Andover.Net announced the launch of a new e-Tool, HTMLWorks.

• Excalibur Technologies Corporation announced Excalibur RetrievalWare 6.7, which, for the first time, supports Linux.

• Fischer International announced the release of its new TAO Internet Messaging server.

• InternetWeek, announced the debut of its InternetWeek Online Resource Centers, one of which is for Linux.

• LINMOR Technologies announced version 5.5 of its web-based performance management system, NEBULA Performance Monitor (PM). The Data Collector portion of NEBULA PM 5.5 is available on the Linux platform.

• The MathWorks, Inc. announced a new Student Version of MATLAB which is available on Linux.

• Netcop Software announced the introduction of @Netcop.com, a secure web-based email service which runs on Linux.

• ParaSoft announced that they will be exhibiting at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Jose.

• Penguin Computing announced that it will become the first Linux company to offer a full line of computers backed up by the new Ecrix VXA-1 tape drives.

• Penguin Computing has joined the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES).

• Red Hat, Inc. named Thomas V. Butta Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

• Siemens Computer Systems has extended its commitment to the Linux operating system by porting two of its enterprise software management products - openUTM and openFT - to Linux.

• SSH Communications Security, Inc. announced the additions of Rodney Thayer, director of technology and Anne Carasik, consulting engineer. They also announced the release of Carasik's new book on network security, "Using Secure Shell," published by McGraw-Hill.

• VERITAS Software Corporation announced a "backup support initiative" for Linux.

• Vovida Networks announced the availability of another free commercial release of source code running on the Linux operating system - H.323 Annex F.

• Workfire.com, Inc. announced a demo of its Genetic Caching technology, which will be available for Linux.

• X.Org announced the successful completion of an arrangement with Metro Link, Inc., of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., as the official X.Org development partner. As part of this arrangement, Metro Link, Inc., will provide specific services to the X.Org member companies, and the general public as a whole.

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol.

See also: last week's Linux in the news page.

Linux in the news

Salon Magazine ran an article about all the folks who have found themselves "ineligible" for the Red Hat IPO. "We coders had been abruptly disenfranchised, after having had silver carrots waved in front of our noses. I'd opened my first money-market account just now, in order to take part in the commercial future of something I believed in -- and the door had been slammed in my face." (Thanks to Doug Everitt).

The San Jose Mercury News has another story on Linux developer's reactions to Red Hat's IPO offerings. "Many of the developers were unaware of the fine print, which cautioned recipients of the offer that E*Trade could reject applicants not able to meet its IPO investment criteria. When the programmers tried to acquire their shares on E*Trade, they were indeed rejected. Venting their anger in Web discussion groups, some blamed Red Hat while others sounded off against E*Trade, which was caught in the middle of the dispute."

Obviously this is only part of the story. This story in Wired News provides a bit more balance.

Kevin Lyda complains in osOpinion about the reporting in LWN (and elsewhere) on Red Hat's community stock offering. "All of us are the 'Linux media,' and our community will grow better if we make reasoned contributions to it. It is not helpful to flame journalists, nor is it helpful to incorrectly (or incompletely) report facts."

Also in osOpinion: this response to Keven Lyda's piece. Other lead stories:

The Free Software Foundation's Richard Stallman says the U.S. Congress threatens to establish a new kind of monopoly in this article in LinuxToday. "Companies that want monopoly powers to control public use of the information we get from data bases are trying to pass a law this year in the U.S. -- creating, for the first time, a private monopoly over repeating publicly known information. They are using the "good bill, bad bill" method; the "bad" bill is HR 354; the "good" bill is HR 1858."

This InfoWorld story is not really about Linux, but it will be of interest to software developers. [found in LinuxToday]

"A U.S. group that works to unify state laws on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a controversial proposal to adopt common licensing rules for software and other information technology transactions that critics contend would hold IT companies hostage to the whims of software vendors.
...
The UCITA deregulates product licensing and covers software, multimedia interactive products, data and databases, and the Internet and online information. It further allows vendors to disable software remotely as a means for repossessing products; makes shrinkwrap licensing terms more enforceable; prevents license transfers from one party to another without vendor approval; outlaws reverse engineering; and lets vendors disclaim warranties."

The UCITA was a leading item in the June 3 edition of LWN.

InfoWorld's Bob O'Donnell uses his final column on a set of predictions. "...the open-source movement will implode as its community-based approach is crushed under the weight of the movement's popularity. Egos will weigh in and the result will be splintering into multiple factions, which will greatly reduce the movement's effectiveness."

SGI, VA Linux and IBM:

Here is an InfoWorld story about 'Lintel', a Linux variant for Intel's IA-64 chip. "The "Lintel" effort, known as the Trillian Project and funded by Intel, is currently being cobbled together by a consortium led by Linux developer V.A. Linux Systems. It includes Hewlett-Packard, SGI, Intel, and Cygnus, and will soon include IBM. The first open-source code should be available early next year, or about the time Intel's IA-64 chip -- Merced -- is ready."

Performance Computing's "Unix Riot" column looks at SGI's moves. "The 1400 L will come with Linux and cost about $8,000; the M will ship with Windows NT and run you near $9,000. The price difference, one SGI source said, is due to the 'tax' Microsoft imposes for its OS."

Here's an InfoWorld article about the effort to port Linux to the IA-64 "Merced" processor. "HP, for example, is contributing operating system kernel expertise to the project, and SGI is pitching in with operating system and compiler technologies designed to extend the robustness of the operating system. If Linux is to compete on an enterprise level with the other offerings that will be available, such as IBM's Project Monterey, that robustness could be key."

News.com comments on SGI's plans to emphasize Linux on their Intel-based server computers. "Windows NT just won't be ready in time for what SGI has in mind. The company needs an operating system that can run on machines with dozens of processors, said Jan Silverman, SGI's new vice president of marketing for computer systems. "

Network World Fusion ran this article about SGI's new Linux-based server. "The release of the SGI 1400L shows the company's commitment to providing Linux solutions, and SGI intends to add more value to the Linux system by providing it with more support..." (NW Fusion is a registration-required site).

For those who do not want to register, it turns out that ComputerWorld has the same article available.

TechWeb looks at SGI's plans to offer multiprocessor systems with Linux installed. Quoting an analyst: "They are making it easier for their customers to do more business with them. They are really looking at Linux as their long-term operating system of choice"

Here's a Forbes article about VA Linux Systems. "Larry Augustin, the chief executive of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based VA Linux Systems (VA) wants to build a billion dollar company selling Linux-based computers. And this past quarter, he got one step closer to that target."

Computer Reseller News has an article about VA Linux Systems' plans. "VA Linux Systems plans to unroll a formal channel program soon and also is considering an initial public offering in the near future..."

VA Linux Systems will be opening ten new offices across the U.S., according to this brief News.com article. (Thanks to Richard Myers).

IBM is looking more and more like a big blue penguin proclaims this PC Week article about IBM's upcoming LinuxWorld announcements. "IBM's Linux leader, Mike Riegel, said the company is ahead of projections in Linux sales and sees no tapering of interest on the part of users." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann)

This ZDNet article gives a good overview of the many ways IBM is supporting Linux. "Among the major server vendors, IBM is emerging with a clear story of end-to-end support for Linux that can't help but give the operating system a boost in the eyes of corporate information technology managers."

News.com ran this article about the release of IBM's DB2 for Linux. "...the introduction of a Linux version of one of Big Blue's most prestigious software products is another sign of the gradually increasing respect given to the upstart Unix clone."

Other Business:

The Triangle Business Journal reports on Red Hat's IPO and how Linus Torvalds feels about it. "Analysts are predicting that Red Hat, which has priced its shares between $10 and $12, will spike up to as much as $60 to $100 in its first few days and stay there for a while. With more than 67 million shares outstanding after the offering, Red Hat's market cap could top $5 billion after the first day of trading."

PC Week reports on Motorola's entry into the Linux world. "Motorola... will target embedded devices, a market that not many have addressed. That would bring Linux to the appliance market within and beyond the traditional IT infrastructure..."

Wherehouse (a U.S. music chain) will be deploying a system in its stores that allows consumers to listen to sample tracks from any CD in the store, according to this ComputerWorld article. The system? An IBM Netfinity server running Linux. "The cost of the bandwidth and the servers will be offset by the lower cost of Linux compared with other systems, such as SCO Unix. Beyond the lower cost, Wherehouse preferred to use Linux because it's an open standard with substantial support from a vast, albeit loosely affiliated, online community of developers..."

This Doctor Dobbs Journal article worries about Linux fragmenting under pressure from large corporations. "What if [Microsoft] tried to do to Linux what it did to Java: introduce a free version that was missing some important components, and had some other, custom parts, added?" (Found in Slashdot).

Linux vs. Microsoft:

This LinuxToday opinion piece talks about the war between Linux and Microsoft. "Like it or not, we are at war. Wake up and smell the Kaffe. Sound the alarm, but do it with a clear head. And don't be lulled by kind words about us all "just getting along". I'd like to see it someday, but judging from past experience, it's going to be quite a while, if ever, if it involves Microsoft."

Will Linux Replace NT? asks Seybold Publications. It's a very positive report, but it sees, like many others, a stronger role for Linux in the server role. "It is important to keep in mind that open source involves a cultural phenomenon as much as a technology. It's advocates revel in the process of developing, sharing and updating programs that are equal to or better than their commercial counterparts." (Found in NNL).

Worth Magazine ran this introductory article by Robert X. Cringely. "But the most threatening part for Microsoft is that Linux debunks parts of the Microsoft story that makes the company worth so much: that only Bill Gates can make a good product and that it takes thousands of programmers and billions of dollars to do the job. Linux redefines, by placing it in a different context, the very idea of software quality. And Microsoft comes out on the losing end of most quality comparisons." (Thanks to Alexander V. Voinov).

News.com has an article about improvements to Linux which will make it more appealing to desktop markets. "Linux is derived from Unix, which got its start in servers. As such, it competes with Unix, Novell Netware, and Windows NT. However, Linux has a growing popularity in desktop machines, where it competes with Windows, MacOS, and other operating systems aimed at average consumers."

Finally:

ZDNet writes about Time's "Person of the century" poll. "Microsoft CEO Bill Gates currently is No. 16 in Time's poll. That fact alone might inspire Linux participants. What Linux supporters wouldn't be pleased to see their man ranked above Mr. Windows?" (Linus is currently at number 15). (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

Evan Liebovitch writes about the "post-FUD era" in the context of Bob Metcalfe's recent anti-Linux articles. "This new stuff is a very different animal. Incapable of confronting Linux based on what it actually is and does, this new generation of Linux-bashing hauls out various piles of suspect and irrelevant minutiae, and chooses to attack the creators rather than the creation."

LinuxPower interviews Hakon Wium Lie, the leader of the project to port the Opera web browser to Linux. "Personally, I'm a fan of the Mozilla project. I know some very smart people working on it, and they have understood the need to fully support standards. The new layout engine has great support for CSS, and the Opera programmers will have to work hard to make a better product. But we work very hard :-)"

The Atlantic Monthly has an article detailing the author's experiences with Linux. "But it is clear that living with Linux, which I have been doing for a while now, is not at all like spending time with Windows or Mac OS. Whereas Windows and Mac OS are intended in part to shield users from their machines, Linux forces people to grapple with their relationship to technology -- an experience that was for me both salutary and disquieting. "

The article also includes a sidebar comparing KDE and GNOME.

This Performance Computing column checks out recent Linux releases - especially GNOME and Enlightenment - and is most pleased. "The troika of GNOME, GTK+, and Enlightenment creates a wholly engaging graphical environment that looses the bonds of tradition." There is also a review of Windows NT 2000 beta 3 for comparison.

Found in LinuxToday is this article about Mandrake 6.0 and a program called Lnx4win.exe. "Hidden away, however, is a program called Lnx4win.exe. I'm certain the Linux purists among us will recoil in revulsion, but the idea behind Lnx4win is very good. Many current MS- Windows owners have powerful computers with plenty of hard drive space, but are understandably confused about the repartitioning involved to install Linux on an ext2 partition. Next to ppp issues, partitioning seems to be the source of much frustration from new-to-Linux users. "

CPU Review has run a review of WordPerfect 8 for Linux. "...I was pleased that WordPerfect's import capabilities did not extend to Word virii..."

Linux is just an ordinary program says an article (in French) in Le Monde Informatique. The author claims that Linux is well adapted to the market economy, even if its development model seems strange to some. English translation (of a sort) available via Babelfish. (Thanks to Fabian Rodes).

Here's an article in Hindu Online about clusters which mentions Linux briefly. "He put together 140 standard computers running on 533-MHz Alpha 21164A processors, on an ethernet; loaded the system with the ``rogue'' operating system Linux, added 35 GB of memory and ended up with a system that gave him 48.5 giga flops." (Thanks to Radha Krishna).

Here's a pessimistic editorial along the "Linux will fragment" lines. "To stabilize Linux, corporations should weigh in now, emphatically pushing for vendor-neutral standardization and application support. If they hit roadblocks, they should avoid Linux vendors and their add-ons altogether and opt only for entirely open-source Linux distributions." (Thanks to Dylan Griffiths).

Here's an introductory article in The Philadelphia Inquirer. "With the stamp of approval of the major computer vendors in place, Linux's budget price and reputation for reliability are starting to catch the attention of large corporations." (Thanks to Chris Fearnley).

Linux, Linux: Enough Already says ENT Magazine. "I have something close to an ethical problem here: These enthusiastic Linux developers seem in some ways exploited, in that someone else is deriving the economic value produced by their work." (Thanks to Ron O'Rourke).

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements

Events

Linux Standard Base update. On July 24, Stuart Anderson gave a presentation to the Suncoast Linux Users Group about the Linux Standard Base. SLUG has now put up a detailed transcript of the talk, which contains a lot of information on what the LSB is trying to do. Worth a read.

The tenth Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy will be held in Toronto on April 4-7, 2000. They have issued a call for participation for that event, with the deadline being October 15, 1999.

User Group News

Software Announcements

Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat

See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

Why be interested in software modems? Have a look at Russ Nelson's linmodems.org site. Russ is working on developing Linux support for the various software "winmodems" out there, and includes a list of reasons as to why that might be a good thing to have.

If, instead, you would like to talk with your Linux system, have a look at LinuxTelephony. This one is a Linux news site with a strong emphasis on telephony and communications issues.

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

Letters to the editor

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 14:41:24 +0200
From: Andrew McGill <andrewm@datrix.co.za>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Software announcements (quirk issues)

Walt Smith make an excellent point about software announcements not
explaining products.  lwn.net has been eulogising zope for quite a
while.  Despite having visited the zope site and having read how good it
is, I still don't know WHAT it is.  Anybody care to explain? (in one
line or less).  &:-)

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 17:39:01 +0200
From: Ul f Dambacher <ulf.dambacher@mach.uni-karlsruhe.de>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: LWN990727: Blue Screen of Death

Dear lwn authors, dear linux users, dear linux fanatics

Following linux competing against windows in nearly every situation, I here
raise the question if we shall do compete on this seriously interesting
topic, too.

On the M$ sites you see a highly configurable BSOD filling the whole screen
and giving useful information at infrequent time intervals, on linux you
only get a kernel panic message filling only one single line of the screen,
colored in black and white and only on few occasions.

Where is the kernel hacker writing a patch to configure the kernel panic
messages to show up on timed basis (or depending on system load or user
interaction frequency), giving a little picture and some debug
information (maybe the last two tasks running) and some useful words of
advice what to do next.

Naturally one should be able to configure color and picture and text
contents (I suggest via the proc-filesystem, as modules are not suitable
in this special task).

I welcome any serious aproach,
yours faithfully
    Ulf Dambacher
--
Ulf.Dambacher@mach.uni-karlsruhe.de

Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 11:39:44 -0400
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To: editor@lwn.net
Cc: kevin@suberic.net
Subject: Kevin Lyda piece in OSO

In his piece in OSOpinion, Kevin Lyda takes the Linux reporting
community -- comprising such sites as Linux Weekly News, Slashdot, and
Linux Today -- to task based on his perception of their reporting as
"suboptimal".

Now, leaving out for the moment the fact that Slashdot isn't really a
_news_ site to begin with, its name notwithstanding, let us first speak
to his primary complaint.

E*Trade, he says "has reportedly changed it's policy with this share
offer since that time."  He links to a posting at Slashdot... which, as
far as I can see, says nothing of the sort.

The problem here, for those who weren't following the matter, is that
RedHat attempted to make a 'Friends and Family' stock offering to a
small group of notable Linux developers.  Apparently, as far as anyone
can tell, E*Trade failed to properly understand that this was the
posture RedHat wanted them to adopt with respect to this group of
people, and E*Trade instead treated them as normal investors --
subjecting them to an "eligibility profile", which, if the
"E(star)Trouble" site is to be believed, the vast majority failed.

This site, at http://www.concentric.net/~mrsam/etrouble/ and linked
earlier this weekend from LWN, is the saga of one such developer, who
with a $120K income and $60K liquid cash, did _not_ pass their test.

The whole point, of course, is that given RH's desire to make this an
F&F offer, no eligibility guidelines are really applicable; the people
climbing on board for this are _not_ general investors in the vast majority
of cases.

The worst part is that RH is in a very bad position to even apologize
for it, because of the SEC's 'quiet period' regulations.

But, coming back to the thesis of this note, Mr. Lyda's assertions that
the reportage on the matter was inaccurate "because E*Trade has changed
their mind" appears to be itself inaccurate: I can find no evidence
that E*Trade has reversed itself on the eligibility issue (except for
implying that potential participants should lie), nor that they've
restructured the offer in the Friends and Family fashion RedHat
intended.

So, Mr. Lyda; how was this reportage inaccurate again?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Buy copies of The New Hackers Dictionary.
The Suncoast Freenet            Give them to all your friends.
Tampa Bay, Florida     http://www.ccil.org/jargon/             +1 813 790 7592

Date: Tue, 03 Aug 1999 01:36:08 -0400
From: Joe Drew <hoserhead@bigfoot.com>
To: metcalfe@idg.net, letters@lwn.net
Subject: FSF freeloaders?

In response to your July 26 column (
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/metcalfe/990726bm.htm ):

Ok, it's increasingly obvious you're hostile to Linux. I don't
particularly understand why, but that's not the point of this e-mail.
What I really want to know - and I really, truly want to know this - is
how you can possibly call the FSF a gang of freeloaders. Saying
something like that puts the whole fiasco into perspective: you truly
have no idea about that which you're writing.

In case you weren't aware, and it's highly possible you weren't, Richard
Stallman created the GNU project when he was finally fed up with the
proprietary nature of most software, with one goal: to create the first
fully Free (in both senses of the word; market-types might call it Open
Source) operating system, GNU. Shortly aftewards, in 1985 or so, he
created the Free Software Foundation, whose stated goal was to create
GNU. They would pay people to write it. It's from the FSF that such
works as GNU Emacs, gcc, and lesser-known projects like gzip, make,
autoconf, and the myriad of other tools which make up the basis of a
GNU/Linux system. The Free Software Foundation is the reason most
distributions exist; if anything, everyone else should be called a
freeloader off of /their/ hard work.

I truly would like to know how you can justify calling the FSF
freeloaders. If it was a mistake, correct it - because the Free Software
Foundation, along with all the programmers who wrote code for it, are
the reason Linux is in the limelight today.

-- 

Joe Drew
http://www.woot.net

Don't watch your back - you'll never see me coming anyways.

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 00:16:11 +0400 (MSD)
From: Khimenko Victor <khim@sch57.msk.ru>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Linux fragmentation ? It WILL happen :-/

So far I was optimistic on subject of Linux fragmentation. Since source is
open and all changes can be incorporated in mainstream version without big
effort then what's the need for proprietary branches ? Except of cases where
maintainers of mainstream version are constantly reject much-demanded patches,
of course...

Recently I downloaded libgcj and now I' MUCH less optimistic. Reason ? Ok,
libgcj uses Boehm's GC. Version from http://reality.sgi.com/boehm/gc.html was
not "good enough" for them and so version from libgcj is different. Just how
different ? Well, comparing with gc 4.14 there are one two simple functions
added (GC_debug_object_start and GC_debug_generic_malloc), support for Linux
Alpha & Linux Sparc, support for QUICK_THREADS, autoconf and shared libraries
support but there are no support for for Linux/M68K, no support for Watcom C,
no support for SMALL_CONFIG and no new revision of gc_alloc for SGI STL
versions > 3.0... Nothing spectacular in both versions and merge can be done in
day or so (without full testing of course): I was able to use SGI's version
with libgcj after less then hour of tweaking since I'm not need suppot for
neither Alpha nor Sparc nor M68K. But still we have two INCOMPATIBLE branches
of Boehm's GC. One from Cygnus (even if it's internal version for libgcj 
users of Linux/M68K will suffer, for example) and one from SGI. BOTH companies
are very supportive in regard of Linux (Cygnus -- for long time, SGI -- vocally
only recently) but still we have one small (yet sophisticated enough) library
fragmented for no justified reason. And branch was created by company with
LONG relation with free software community (Cygnus) what makes situation even
worse :-/

If we can not keep ONE SMALL LIBRARY from fragmentation then how we can even
hope to keep full linux suite from fragmentation ? As we can see there are
MUCH LESS incentive to keep unfragmented codebase when corporations are
involved.

And I'm not sure now if Linux community we'll be able to keep Linux
unfragmented under pressure from "big boys" in corporations :-(( Not at all.

P.S. If you have some idea about why it's not common trend but rare exception
I'll be happy. So far I can not find such reason...

Date: Tue, 03 Aug 1999 12:17:05 -0700
From: Anand Srivastva <anand@nmi.stpn.soft.net>
To: bob_o'donnell@infoworld.com, letters@lwn.net
Subject: Bob O'Donnell makes a few startling -- and final -- predictions

Hi,

I don't agree with you on the fate that you have prescribed for linux. I
don't know why people forget how MS became big in the first place. Why
IBM could do nothing against MS, even though MS wasn't bigger than a fly
compared to them. They are still bigger in the revenue sense than MS.
Why could MS win. It won because of two things, IBM-PC was open, and
PC-DOS was also open. Anybody could make a compatible, and write
software for it. The compatibles drove down the prices, and lots of
developers created software for DOS. That's how Lotus, Borland came
about.

But now MS is in the wrong position. Other hardware vendors are becoming
open, Alpha and SGI and IBM. Linux is as open as anything could ever be.
MS can't compete because it is a huge behemoth, gone are the days when
it could move fast. People talk about the turn around in its internet
strategies, but they forget that it has not made even a little money on
that front. It has only made IE free, which is money down the drain,
because there is a deadlock with Netscape. It could only succeed as
compared to Netscape till the time that Netscape was not free. But now
their IE investment is gone. MSN is also not working.

People should start understanding that Internet is a very different
beast, Open Source is a revolution. These two things are actually
different faces of the same coin. And they are akin to the discovery of
the printing press. Open Source movement has been at the center of an
explosion. And it will keep on growing at the same exponential rate as
it has been growing till it covers the whole world, for the next ten
years. The factor which is letting them become this big is the same
openness which had allowed MS to win over IBM twenty years ago.

The reason why Open Source will not splinter is GPL. Some people think
that it is a bad thing to restrict open source with GPL, but it is the
shield that protects all open source software from splintering. If you
look at the history of open source software which are covered by GPL,
you will find that very few have splintered, and those have they have a
very definite reasons, and many like the GCC have also had their
splinters get merged back.

GPL avoids splintering by removing the money motive. You cannot make
money on a GPL software other than providing some added value. And you
cannot make money more than the value that you have added. It also makes
life difficult for a splinter group because it has to improve faster
than the central group, otherwise they lose the value add that is being
provided. This makes it easier to just provide patches to the main code
base, than maintain a splinter base. It is still difficult, but is
easier. The best way is to open the code and let it go in the main code
base. The code released is properly integrated when in the main code
base, so that the vendor has to just add their improvements.

I am predicting that rather than split, open source will force all the
proprietory general purpose OSs out of the market. You are already
seeing a couple of them happening now as I am writing. You are seeing
that the Amiga OS is now becoming just a shell over Linux. You are
seeing that SGI is willing to abandon IRIX in favour of Linux. These
things will become more pronounced as maintaining an OS will become
non-profitable, and without any benefits. You can expect Apple to go
this way in the near future and even IBM to do something like this for
OS/2. This is just the beginning. The two companies which will come to
the fold last are MS and Sun. They are very very closely tied to their
OSs, which will make it very difficult for them to come to terms with
reality.

This forcing out of proprietory software will not be just for OSs. It
will slowly encompass all software that is in general use, or is
interesting enough, or is mission critical enough. There are a few
office suites, there are a few graphics tools, and there are a few
database software. These will keep on getting better and better, till
eventually they will get better than every proprietory software. The
open source software has another property of improving overtime with
use.

I am not saying that all software will become opensource, but mostly the
above three types. Software that is not above three will require some
company to do it, and that will be proprietory.

-anand