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Leading items and editorialsThe German Government voices support for Open Source. Siegmar Mosdorf, German Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry for Economy and Technology, voiced his government's support for Open Source at last week's LinuxTag conference. "I am convinced that open source development can form the European base model in the information age." His participation and comments underscore the beginning of the German government's realization that free software inherently better supports the political and ideological needs of any government than a proprietary, binary-only solution. China is believed to also be moving in this direction, though they are keeping their internal policy decisions quieter, at least for now. We take liberty to predict, as we have in the past, that this is just the beginning of the link between free/open source software and governments. Why? There are a variety of reasons:
Protection from the Government. It is deliciously ironic that, just as governments, no matter their ideological stances, are coming to see free/open source software as a necessity, others are working to use it to protect themselves from governments. We've spoken in the past about Gnutella and Freenet, which help protect the anonymity and freedom from censorship that has been at least the perceived hallmark of the Internet since its conception. This week, the AT&T Publius project was also announced. Publius is another effort similar to Freenet and Gnutella, that seek to build a distributed system for the distribution of content of any kind, including software or articles that might otherwise be banned. "Rubin said that he and Cranor saw the ideal user of Publius as 'a person in China observing abuses, on a day-to-day basis,' of human rights. In nations where freedom of speech is severely limited and people might suffer great hardship for speaking out, Publius could be an instrument of social change." The article also comments that the name Publius was chosen because it was one of the pen names used by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison to anonymously publish the Federalist Papers. The prevention of censorship on the Internet and the legal battle for exportable cryptography software have a lot of parallels. They have similar foes, people with real and understandable concerns, such as law enforcement officials and people concerned about protecting children. Those concerns should not be belittled, but we can't afford to give up basic freedom in the search for improved safety. Gnutella, Freenet and Publius, their predecessors, successors or potentially collaborative efforts, need to survive and thrive to help us participate in building a better world. June Netcraft Survey available. This month's Netcraft Web Server Survey is up and running. They've include a comment on why there appeared to be a slight decrease in Apache usage in May. "Apache gained well over a million sites from the May survey, and sailed past the 10 million sites threshold. Part of the strength of the gain came as a result of a depression in the May survey when sites at the large German hosting company xlink.net failed to respond." (Thanks to Fabian Wauthier). Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
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July 6, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
News and EditorialsHacking for the Common Good? (ZDNet). Lewis Z. Koch over at ZDNet discusses a supposed "white paper" from Rain Forest Puppy on how vendors and hackers finding vulnerabilities ought to interact. Note that we don't dispute the existence of the white paper -- though we find it annoying and irresponsible that ZDNet doesn't bother to provide a link to the paper they are discussing. The topic is just the same rules of the game that have been discussed on BugTraq many times -- act courteously, whether you have found a vulnerability to report or you are a vendor receiving a vulnerability report.
We actually found Alfred
Huger's recent comments on posting vulnerabilities more humorous
and a good reminder for novice and expert alike. Here is a portion
of his "rules":
Bar FTP and Telnet?. Simson L. Garfinkel recommended Universities bar the use of ftp and telnet, at a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania. "Mr. Garfinkel also urged the more than 300 residential-network managers and student-coordinators attending the conference to stop the common practice of using unencrypted passwords to secure network-user accounts. 'But you won't,' he chided. 'And so you're going to keep having accounts broken into.'" Security ReportsSSH 1.2.27+Kerberos vulnerability. It sounds like deja-vu: SSH 1.2.27 was originally released last year in response to a vulnerability present when SSH was compiled with Kerberos support enabled. Now Richard E. Silverman has reported another Kerberos-related vulnerability in 1.2.27. As a result, ssh 1.2.28 has hit the download sites and should contain a fix for the problem. Again, you are not affected if you are using ssh 1.2.27 compiled without Kerberos support, ssh 2.X or an alternate program, such as OpenSSH. imwheel. A vulnerability in imwheel were discussed in the April 27th Security Summary. This week, Red Hat published an updated version of their advisory, documenting multiple vulnerabilities in imwheel and recommending its removal under most circumstances. Here are the older imwheel advisories:
Debian Security Advisory - canna. The canna package as distributed in Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 can be remotely exploited to gain access. This has been fixed in version 3.5b2-24slink1, and they recommend that you upgrade your canna package immediately. makewhatis tmplink vulnerability. A tmplink vulnerability has been reported in makewhatis, part of the man package. This can be exploited to manipulate files without permission or elevate permissions locally. Check BugTraq ID 1434 for more details.This week's updates: vpopmail remote exploit vulnerability. vpopmail prior to version 4.8 can be remotely exploited to execute arbitrary code on a server. An advisory has been posted with details and information on upgrading to version 4.8. vpopmail is an extension to qmail for managing virtual domains and user accounts. Commercial products. The following commercial products were reported to contain vulnerabilities: Updateswu-ftpd. Check the June 15th Security Summary for a link to the mini-audit that turned up the latest set of problems with wu-ftpd.
ISC DHCP client. Check last week's Security Summary for more details. An upgrade to 2.0pl1 or 3.0b1pl14 should resolve the problem.
dump/restore. A security vulnerability in dump/restore has been fixed as of dump 0.4b18. Check the June 15th Security Summary for details. Netscape SSL. Problems in the manner that Netscape handled invalid SSL certificates have been fixed in Netscape 4.73. Check the May 18th Security Summary for the initial report. Also check the June 1st Security Summary for additional problems in Netscape 4.73. ResourcesWhite Paper: ICMP usage in scanning. Ofir Arkin has released a research paper entitled ICMP usage in scanning. "In this paper I have tried to outline what can be done with the ICMP protocol regarding scanning. The paper deals with plain Host Detection techniques, Host Detection techniques using ICMP error messages generated from probed hosts, Inverse Mapping, Trace routing, OS finger printing methods with ICMP, and which ICMP traffic should be filtered on a Filtering Device." EventsJuly/August security events.
Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
July 6, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel release is still 2.4.0test2, announced in last week's Kernel Summary. For those of you eager to stay on the bleeding edge, three new 2.4.0 prepatches were released this week, including 2.4.0test3-pre2, 2.4.0test3-pre3 and 2.4.0test-pre4. Both pre3 and pre4 were released today, pre4 within two hours of pre3. We've produced basic listings of all the modified files in each patch:
The prepatches include architecture-specific fixes for just about every platform, including the S/390. They also include large numbers of driver updates, some fixes/improvements for various file systems and even some pokes at the memory management system. Alan Cox has also released 2.4.0test2-ac2, with his patches against 2.4.0test2. The current stable kernel release is still 2.2.16. Alan Cox's prepatches for 2.2.17 are up to 2.2.17pre10. Since security issues forced him to release 2.2.16 earlier than he might have liked, his priority for 2.2.17 is to gain a high level of stability and reliability. That means just important bug fixes are going in at this time.
Low-latency Linux vs RT-Linux. On Wednesday, June 28th, Paul Barton-Davis and a large group of other programmers sent a note to Linus Torvalds asking him to include Ingo's low latency patches, currently only available for the 2.2.X tree, in the mainstream Linux development tree. They explain in detail why the current latency of Linux is causing severe problems for programmers working in the audio+MIDI. Ingo's patches have helped them tremendously, but they do not believe they can get commercial support from large vendors for applications in this area if the support is not integrated into the main kernel. This spawned an incredibly long, and sometimes acrimonious discussion on linux-kernel. One key point hammered on frequently was the question of why this same group could not use RTLinux for their needs. We won't try to rehash the arguments. In the long-run, the answer from Linus was "no", but a sympathetic one. His objection to Ingo's patches are not because he does not want to see latency in the mainstream kernel improved. He did not expect audio-MIDI developers to use RTLinux; in fact, he deprecated such work, since their needs are not truly for hard real-time. His concern is simply that Ingo's patch is currently too ugly (an opinion shared by Ingo as well). Ingo is now working on porting his patches to the 2.4.X series, where they can undergo more scrutiny and possibly some pieces of them may actually get incorporated, where deemed appropriate. In the end, Paul Barton-Davis seems to believe that he, and the other programmers who joined in the original proposal, got what they needed. "The task ahead of those who want 1-5ms scheduling latencies is clearly to measure exactly where the problems are, and propose specific changes starting with the worst cases. Hopefully, as the summer (US) progresses, we'll get to that, and then by fall/winter (US), it will be possible to see just how far the acceptance rate of such changes has addressed the issue." One interesting suggestion brought up was the possibility of creating a test for for drivers, similar to the "slab poisoning" test, to turn up poorly written or poorly designed device drivers that may be, driver by driver, adding to the latency problems in the kernel. In the long-run, the two goals being examined are both important: keeping the kernel free of ugly kludges and keeping latency in the kernel as low as possible, without making hard real-time guarantees that are inappropriate for a general-purpose operating system. Unfortunately, more time will be required to meet both of those goals at once. RTLinux availability. In case RT-Linux is something you've been considering, you may want to note that LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux will be including RTLinux 3.0 in their distributions soon, and for x86, the RTLinux folks offer a Red Hat ISO image with the RTLinux kernel and modules "ready to go". Of course, people also have the option of RTLinux's competitor, the feature rich Real Time Application Interface (RTAI). Enjoy! Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
July 6, 2000 For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page.
Lists of Distributions |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. News and EditorialsLinux Hebrew Support. Liz Coolbaugh was asked in December of 1999, at the Earthweb conference in New York, if she knew of any Linux distributions with Hebrew support. So far, she still has not found any fully-developed Hebrew Linux distributions. However, the following projects are working on Hebrew support for Linux. Clearly, if you are interested, they would probably appreciate assistance.
Searchable Linux distributions database. Ratatosk is a new, searchable database containing information on Linux distributions. Martin Skjoldebrand finally got tired of waiting for us to get up a database of our own, to track information on all the distributions we monitor, so he created Ratatosk. He also allows distribution maintainers to create and maintain their own entries in the database. Project Vine partners with Red Hat Japan. Project Vine announced, on July 4th, a partnership with Red Hat Japan (in Japanese). Red Hat Japan will be taking charge of sales and support of Vine Linux. Correspondent Maya Tamiya commented that the cooperation would include:
Embedded LinuxHard Hat Linux pSOS transition kit. Montavista announced today the availability of a pSOS-to-Linux transition kit, to aid in the movement of legacy code from the pSOS proprietary embedded operating system to Linux. A similar kit is planned for VxWorks. Like all the tools from Montavista so far, the pSOS transition kit has been released as an open source project and is expected to continue to improve with feedback and participation of the pSOS community. Due to the acquisition of Integrated Systems Inc., provider of the pSOS embedded operating system, by Wind River Systems, the pSOS community is currently faced with the need to transition to VxWorks. Last week's announcement from Lineo (see the Distributions Summary) and this week's announcement from Montavista are a clear call to that community to consider a transition to Linux instead. Lineo, LynuxWorks face off in embedded market (Upside). Upside took a look at the press releases over the past couple of days and noticed a bit of competition between Lineo's Embedix distribution and LynuxWorks Blue Cat Linux. Tynux Linux. Tynux Linux is a new, embedded distribution designed to support Internet-Ready Portable Devices, such as PDAs, smart mobile phones, and set-top boxes. More information on the application of Tynux to cellular telephones and the availability of boxes running Tynux is available. Note, however, that we have not yet found a link on the site to allow the distribution to be downloaded by itself. (Thanks to Martin Skjoldebrand). e-smith server and gateway 4.0b10. The e-smith Linux distribution has been upgraded to Red Hat 6.1, according to their latest announcement. e-smith is a small distribution targeted at server and gateway appliances.Caldera OpenLinuxHere are the latest FAQs from Caldera.ConectivaConectiva support for high availability projects. Conectiva has put out a press release with details on their involvement in free software projects for the development of high availability solutions for Linux. "The proposed solution by Conectiva for High Availability, in two steps, is composed of four basic modules: Node Administration, Disk Replication, Service Monitoring and Robust File System. Conectiva participates actively in the development of two of these projects, Node Monitoring and Disk Replication. " Debian GNU/LinuxAnthony Towns posted a Test Cycle 3 update and things are looking good. "By the looks of things we've just about got potato tidied up, now. There're only 16 outstanding release critical bugs against potato [0] most of which will have to be ignored (no fix is known, no workaround is known, and the package can't be removed), or are already largely fixed and will be uploaded soon.There is still a short list of items that need to be completed before Test Cycle 3 officially begins, but now it looks like they have a distribution ready for release; they just need to ensure no major problems have been missed. Debian GNU/HurdThis week's Kernel Cousin Debian Hurd contains an interesting discussion about how Unix or Linux-like the Hurd really needs to be. While a commitment to POSIX-compatibility has been made, no commitment to duplicating Unix or Linux has, leaving open the possibility of experimenting with new ideas or ideas from other operating systems. "No-one would like [to] use Debian GNU/Hurd if it were just [a] Debian GNU/Linux emulator over [a] Mach microkernel."Linux-MandrakeMacmillan USA is packaging up Linux-Mandrake 7.1 in their "Complete Linux" product, which also includes the recently released Star Office 5.2.Red Escolar LinuxRed Escolar Linux 1.0-14 has been announced. A transparent squid configuration has been added, along with other minor bugfixes. Red Escolar Linux is a distribution containing only free software, with applications, services and configurations for the Red Escolar school servers and workstations being implemented in Mexico.Slackware LinuxNo big news from the Slackware folks this week, not too unusual, given the release of Slackware 7.1 last week. They moved their primary ftp server to the east coast, but everything appears to be back up and available now.Storm LinuxWeathering Stormix (GNULinux). The GNULinux staff took a look at Storm Linux from Stormix. "After fielding a few questions from our visitors about Storm Linux we decided to take a closer look. This is not so much a review of the distribution as it is a review of our experience. We encountered a few bumps along the way and in the end decided to scrap the install. But, we still think Storm Linux is worth checking out." TrustixTrustix Secure Linux 1.1 has been announced. This is a maintenance update that includes some security fixes and the Linux 2.2.16 kernel.New DistributionsGNU Circle MudLinux. Circle Mud Linux is a mini-distribution (three disks) specifically built to support the Circle MUD server. It is based on libc5. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
July 6, 2000
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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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsBrowsersTap the power of Mozilla user style sheets (O'Reilly). Andrew Wooldridge from O'Reilly Network has written an article on using Mozilla Style Sheets. Examples are given for customizing various aspects of the appearance of Mozilla itself and web pages that it displays. Extending the Mozilla editor (O'Reilly). O'Reilly has also run an article by Brian King on Extending the Mozilla Editor. " As browser vendors have added proprietary tags to their spec in order to extend their capabilities, web page designers have been caught in the middle of these browser wars. HTML editing tools had to ultimately address this issue. Another cause of concern was the corruption of existing markup when opened in editing applications. Users found that finely tuned markup was mangled, sometimes beyond recognition, when opened in another editor. The Mozilla Editor seeks to address both of these issues." EducationLinux in Education report (July 3). This week's Linux in Education report contains a nice, lengthy report from the Red Escolar project, an on-going implementation of a Linux server/client system throughout the Mexican school systems. "All of the states showed themselves to be interested. All of them want to continue with what we call "stage 2", which consists of returning and staying one week with them, to train them and give them the CD. Jalisco and Nuevo Leon immediately asked for the "stage 2". Arturo is this week in Guadalajara, Jalisco and the next one he'll be in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon." Having watched the Red Escolar project since they first announced their goals and design, it is very exciting to see the implementation of the project taking shape. GamesAtlas Tutorial from Worldforge. A t utorial for Atlas has been published as part of this month's Chopping Block. Atlas is an object-oriented protocol for communications between processes, a key component of the Worldforge architecture (for game development). GCompris. A new game known as GCompris (French for "I Have Understood") has been released. This game is intended for the 3 year old and up audience. The game has a screen with various items falling down. The player has to click the mouse, type a letter, or type in a word for each item. Embedded SystemsOpening Handhelds (eWeek). Jason Brooks from eWeek writes about various projects on porting Linux to Palmtops. "The project will enable developers to take advantage of the flexibility and openness of Linux to speed development of new handheld applications. That flexibility and openness have largely failed to dent the dominance of Windows-based software on the desktop, but the still-young handheld space presents Linux developers with plenty of opportunities." High AvailabilityMajor, stable release of heartbeat. Heartbeat 0.4.8 has been announced. Despite the numbering scheme, this version is labeled a a major, stable release. "As a bonus, the tar includes the code for the Stonith reference implementation, and the beginning of the heartbeat API (these also on the CVS repository)" InteroperabilityWine Weekly News for July 4, 2000. This week's Wine Weekly News is out. Topics include Wine at the Linux Tag conference and results from a poll of Wine users on what the Wine project's top priority should be. Network ManagementOpenNMS Development Update. The latest OpenNMS Development Update reminds people to send bugs to their new Bugzilla, rather than in personal email. Also included is a brief list of coding projects underway and a longer list of events where someone from the OpenNMS project will be attending, in case you want to get together. Office ApplicationsAbiWord Weekly News. This week's AbiWord Weekly News is out. Topics include scripting languages, Win32 word count, and page numbering. Last Week's AbiWord Weekly News discussed what to use for a scripting language for AbiWord. Suggestions ranged from Guile to CORBA to Visual Basic. You Say You Want an Evolution (Linux Planet). Linux Planet looks at Evolution 0.1 on Gnome. Evolution integrates the mail/calendar/address book functions into a single GUI. "There's a certain positive sense to the GNOME project on the whole that's as entertaining as it is invigorating. The project has never been particularly concerned with keeping things under wraps until they were ready for the end user, which has been a boon for the curious, and people who don't mind a few bugs along the way." On the DesktopXFree86 4.0.1 announced. XFree86 4.0.1 has been released. This maintenance update for the XFree86 4.0 tree has been eagerly awaited, since minor problems with the initial XFree86 4.0 release have kept it from being adopted as a default by (or even shipped with) most Linux distributions. Hopefully, this new release will have shaken down well enough to become widely deployed. (Thanks to John Kodis). New Features in XFree86 4.01 include drivers for several AGP video cards, bug fixes, security fixes, and continuing work on the new xf86cfg configuration tool. Helix GNOME 1.2, how an upgrade/install SHOULD work (Linux Orbit). Linux Orbit has run a review of Gnome 1.2, the Helix release. "...but for some reason, I went ahead with the installation and hit "Enter". From that point on, I've never seen a smoother installation/upgrade for ANY software on ANY platform. And even more amazing, this is a "preview" of the final product." Linux users: Upgrade to Helix Gnome!(Tech Republic). Tech Republic has also reviewed Helix Gnome and gives the installation process good marks. "All because of a desktop update, I have become a big supporter of the Linux revolution. And it is because of a very simple thing: ease of use." New GNOME file manager. Miguel de Icaza sent out an e-mail announcing the new GMC: "So, we got a trashcan for the GNOME desktop now." You can get the new file manager from the usual place ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/mc. Also, there is now icon support on the windows if you have a recent enough gnome-libs, available from the same ftp site. Unofficial RPMS are also available (thanks to Kevin Breit). ScienceNew release of Linux for Astronomy. David Mills dropped us a note to point out that the Linux for Astronomy CD set has been updated. It now includes over 3Gb of Astronomical software precompiled for the Linux (x86) operating system. "Applications include a wealth of general purpose image and signal processing tools, as well as the state-of-the-art algorithms in use at observatories and universities worldwide. Facilites for processing the data products of the major space-based instruments (Hubble Space Telescope, EUV, Einstein, ROSAT, IUE, etc) are also included." Web-site DevelopmentZope Weekly News out. The June 28, 2000 edition of the Zope Weekly News is out. Topics include Zope at the recent Linux Tag conference in Stuttgart, Germany and the release of Zope 2.2b3. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
July 6, 2000
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Development toolsC/C++Software Carpentry Competition News. The latest news from the Software Carpentry competition has announced the on-line availability of all second round entries in the `build', `config', and `track' categories. Second round winners will be announced July 31st, 2000. GNOMEnclature: The wonders of GLib (IBM). George Lebl from IBM's developer works has written an article on Using Glib. In this second of two articles, topics addressed are Hash tables, the iterator, GScanner, and tokens. JavaIBM, Sun Settle Java Licensing Dispute (InternetWeek).
InternetWeek takes a
look at how Microsoft's release of C#, and submission of the
languages to the ECMA international standards body, may have given
the nudge necessary to resolve some Java licensing disputes between
IBM and Sun. "Quinn said he believes the existence of C# and
Microsoft's backing will prompt Sun to open Java even further to the
industry. 'They're going to want to open up a little faster
just to preempt anything that Microsoft wants to pull,' Quinn
said. 'I think you'll see Sun, just for the purpose of pre-empting
some of Microsoft's initiatives, becoming a little bit more
licensee-friendly and working more closely with [the] open source
[community].' Pilot Bean Project. IBM has announced the Pilot Bean Project, which is a collaborative project with the goal of improving the suite of Java Beans for the Palm Pilot. Pilot Beans is released under the IBM Public License. PerlThe Poop on persistence (PerlNews). Perl News talks about two new mailing lists for Perl Object Oriented Persistence (Poop). This is an effort to encourage communication between module authors and to address redundant object persistence issues. Also read about the latest Perl modules. Unicode and Perl. Perl.com has information on Perl Unicode handling. Unicode is an extended character set that improves upon ASCII by supporting characters from many languages. Also, IBM's DeveloperWorks has run an article on globalizing E-commerce with XML and Unicode. PHPPHP 4.01pl2 available. PHP 4.01pl2 has been released, this fixes some problems with readdir() and error_reporting() that were present in PHP 4.01. PythonPython 2.0 to be released soon. Python 2.0 is scheduled for release sometime in July. For those of you who are itching to start working with Python 2.0, you can download a beta version. Python, Random Numbers, and Monte Carlo Simulation (LinuxDev) . LinuxDev decided to demonstrate the usefulness of Python in situations other than web programming. This article takes a look at the Python randon number generator, using a few Monte Carlo simulations as examples. PyUnit 1.2.0 Unit Testing Framework. PyUnit is a unit testing framework for Python that is derived from JUnit for Java and an earlier Smalltalk testing framework. PyUnit 1.2.0 has been released as of July 2, 2000. Shell ScriptingShell Skills (Linux.com). Linux.com has run a two-part series on working with shell scripts. Part one discusses basic shell concepts and part two delves into I/O redirection and pipes. If you are new to shell scripting, this would be worth checking out. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
Language Links Guile Haskell Blackdown.org IBM Java Zone Perl News PHP Daily Python-URL Python.org JPython Smalltalk |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and BusinessIt's been a relatively slow week this week, no doubt due to the fact that many U.S. companies were closed both Monday and Tuesday for the Independence day holiday. That said, here's a few interesting items:
Yahoo! Selects Google. Yahoo will start using Google as its default research results provider within the next thirty days, according to this press release. "'Google's search services help individuals find the information they're looking for on the Web with unprecedented levels of ease, speed, and relevancy,' said Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google." Remember that Google is a Linux-based site. [From Slashdot]. AbriaSoft announces MySQL distribution. AbriaSoft has announced Abria MySQL Lite. This "distribution" of MySQL contains RPM files for MySQL 3.22, Apache Web Server, PHP3, Perl and PhpMyAdmin to ease installation and upgrades. It is available for free download (as it had better be, now that MySQL is under the GPL). With its announcement, AbriaSoft joins the list of companies now available to provide MySQL support. They are also promising computer-based training for MySQL some time in July. Free Download of Corel Photo-Paint for Linux. Corel has announced the availability of a free download of Corel Photo-Paint for Linux. A retail version of Corel Photo-Paint will be included in the CorelDraw Graphics Suite, scheduled to ship later this summer. Linux NetworX hires Greg Denault. Linux NetworX has announced the hiring of Greg Denault, a former scientist for both HP and GE. "As senior scientist for Linux NetworX, Denault will be responsible for developing computational algorithms for embedded and cluster products as well as leading a special project group on the East Coast." Press Releases:Open Source Products.
Commercial Products for Linux.
Products Using Linux.
Products with Linux Versions.
Java Products.
Training.
Partnerships.
Personnel.
Other.
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
July 6, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the NewsRecommended Reading. This ZDNet article revisits Microsoft's manipulation of the Kerberos standard, an example of their "embrace and extend" practices. "In my opinion, Microsoft has a right to claim it is improving an existing standard by filling in the blank. But it must fully air what it has done and seek its acceptance by a standards body. Microsoft has not done so and should be charged with co-opting a standard in a manner that reflects its business interests. Such a move is making unfair use of its Windows monopoly." (Thanks to Jeremy Allison).
Want an update on how Linux is doing in China? This
article from Australian Financial Review has the best, most
detailed information we've seen in several months. "According
to figures released by Federal Software, and published in the
Keji Ribao science journal, the largest computer software
retailer in China, Linux already outsells authentic Microsoft
Windows programs by a significant margin. Federal Software last
year sold nearly 200,000 sets of Chinese Linux software, about 200
times the number of Chinese Windows systems sold in the same
period. Companies. Upside takes a look at Cobalt's improved stock performance. "If anything has contributed to the company's market turnaround, Hill says, it's the investment market realization that application servers represent the future direction of the marketplace." Here is a CNet article on Penguin Radio's recent receipt of an equity investment from Internet Partnership Group. " Penguin Radio hopes to have its radio design finished by late summer or early fall, Leyden said. "The easier we try to make it, the more time it takes," he said." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann). SpeechWorks plans to release the source code for its "voice XML code", according to this article in the San Jose Mercury News. "In a move that resembles the Linux open-source software programming code movement, SpeechWorks is making public a system companies could use to develop and interconnect sites on which people call in by phone and use their voice to request news information that is then read back to them, or conduct transactions such as buying stocks and airplane tickets." Andover.net has picked up this Newsbytes article on NEC Solutions. "NEC Solutions has become the first Japanese company to join the IA-64 Linux Project - an international association of computing companies that is developing the Linux operating system on Intel's IA-64 processors." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann) Business. Open Source in the upcoming US presidential campaign? ZDNet reports on Gore's website and its use and understanding of open source software. "The site and servers use Linux, Apache and a variety of free, customized administrative tools such as PHP, an open source language. View the home page source code and you'll get a friendly hidden message from Al Gore himself". The Seattle Post-Intelligencer takes a look at the decision to open source the rules for the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), announced a few months ago. "Under Wizards' "d20" open game license, created in consultation with the software community that helped create the open source license, companies can take Wizards' core rules and create any kind of game around them, from an elves-and-dwarfs fantasy game compatible with D&D to a horror or science-fiction adventure." This ZDNet article looks at the desirability of being able to run killer apps from KDE or Gnome under either desktop and lobbies for recent, tentative efforts at cooperation between Gnome and KDE developers to continue and become fruitful. "Software developers, who have so far been forced to take sides, are also interested in a resolution. As a result of the dueling desktops we have fantastic apps coming out of both camps -- such as KDE's Konqueror browser, and the Nautilus file manager being developed for GNOME by Eazel." The KoreaHerald ran this article about a Korean venture firm that has developed a Linux-based software for smart phones. "The company has recently succeeded in developing a Linux operating system, called "Tynux," for use in wireless Internet access terminals including cellular phones." The Australian Financial Review looks at a deal between Australian firm HarvestRoad and Red Hat. "The deal, signed yesterday, entitles Red Hat to bundle HarvestRoad's web collaboration software with its Linux server operating systems in Australia and Asia and HarvestRoad to bundle Red Hat support with its software." Here is an article from ZDNet UK on why some Linux companies just don't seem to be doing too well right now. "These companies are trying to salvage dead or dying products by recasting them as Linux essentials. They're going so far as to tweak Linux and make parts of it proprietary. This clearly is not the way of Linux life." Arne Flones, formerly of Linuxcare, has resurfaced over at OpenSales. He's got a couple of new feature articles up already, primarily dealing with Apache and AllCommerce, a GPL-based e-commerce Internet application.
It really isn't a Linux or open source story, but for those of you
following the Microsoft flap with interest, here is this
ZDnet article on Oracle's involvement in exposing some of
Microsoft's tactics. "As Microsoft faced the antitrust fight of
its life, a group called the Independent Institute bought full-page
newspaper ads citing 240 academics who criticized the government's
antitrust attack on Microsoft. Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL)
suspected the institute wasn't so independent, and decided to find
out. It hired a Washington detective firm called Investigative Group
International Inc. Events. Leon Brooks is already predicting in this osOpinion editorial that the "security contest" being sponsored by eWeek will produce "sucker-bait benchmarks". " You would have to have your head in the sand to not know that last time this was tried, Microsoft was able to essentially tailor their own system, but that the supervisor of the Linux system not only failed to apply as much as one security patch but used a proprietary system for the guestbook, which subsequently proved to be the Achilles heel. How fair is that? " Boston Globe reporter Stephanie Stoughton takes a look at the eWeek hacker challenge. "The public hacking contest is unusual in that it mimics a real Web site. Industry observers say many hacking contests sponsored by computer firms involve only a few pieces of the system -- only the parts they want to test. But openhack.com includes an online storefront, a back-end database, firewalls, and Web servers." TechWeb covers Jon 'maddog' Hall's keynote at PC Expo. "Hall also recalled the first time he used Linux himself, likening the experience to that of a musician who sits down to a piano that has a particularly good feel. "
The PC Expo needs renaming, claims this
ZDNet article. "They call it PC Expo, but it's not. We
already said it should have been named Appliance Expo. Little did we
know just how right we were.
We scanned the crowds; we walked the floor and the only sign we saw
of an honest to God PC vendor selling desktop boxes was
Gateway. That was it. Period. No Compaq. No Dell. And those little
guys with big boxes and bigger hopes? They're not here. LinuxMall's Michelle Head talks to the organizers of this week's LinuxTag conference, currently underway in Stuttgart, Germany. "'LinuxTag started five years ago as a small exhibition of students with roughly 50 attendees,' the organizers explained. 'The organization has become more professional for each new event, and they acquired new people to help them. Last year, there were about 7,000 people visiting LinuxTag. This year, we expect some 20,000 people to attend the show.'"
B2B is the buzz-word that Wallstreet liked just before Linux. Now
the PC Expo is combining B2B with Linux, according to
this ZDNet article. " 'To B2B or Not B2B: Linux Puts on Its
Work Clothes,' webcast live from this page on June 29, from 11:30 AM
to 12:30 PM Eastern, will feature Mark Bolzern and Jon 'Maddog' Hall.
They'll discuss Linux's growing role in business-to-business
applications. Companies naturally want the best software at the
cheapest price, and increasingly, Bolzern and Hall argue, Linux can
deliver applications, support, and integrated systems. Resources. ZDNet has provided a list of links to Linux handheld porting projects. Here's a GNULinux how-to article. "But if you're a business person using a Palm Pilot, you wouldn't want to adopt Linux until you could sync your PDA to your desktop. What if I told you that you could, and it was easy? Okay, almost easy. This is Linux, after all. Read on and learn how." Interviews.
InformationWeek interviewed IBM's
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, currently VP for technology and
strategy, to discuss why Linux is important to IBM.
"Wladawsky-Berger:The Linux movement has been independent
of anything Microsoft is doing. It's one of those cosmic movements
in the industry, like the emergence of the Internet, or
microprocessors. InformationWeek: That's heady talk, to
be sure. Do you really see Linux having the same impact on the
technology world as the Internet? Wladawsky-Berger: It
has that Internet-like quality of helping to create standards that
in the end will benefit everybody. OLinux has published an interview with Russel Pavlicek, dubbed "Compaq's Linux Evangelist", who talks about Compaq's marketing strategy for Linux. "Today, we have an Linux Program Office focused on the success of Linux on Compaq's platforms. There are many people working hard to make sure that Linux works well on both our Proliant systems and Alpha systems. We have had engineers working on Linux Alpha since 1994." Finally. OSO Webmaster Kelly McNeill brought forth an issue that has been concerning him for a long-time: "One might expect copyright to be enforced by old world media outlets like ZDNet, CMPnet, C-Net and all the others, but I would never expect to see such styles of on-line business from the web sites most responsible for the open-source-centric attitude that brought the movement to the forefront. Of course, I'm talking of the Slashdots, the Linux Todays and the Linux World-like web sites. It is THESE sites that have preached the "open" mindset more than any others, yet still cling to the old-world style of media publishing. The fact that these sites are the product of reader contribution (like osOpinion) would make them prime candidates for this style of content distribution and also makes me wonder even more." Please note that LWN does not enforce copyright on any portion of our content that is contributed, e.g., letters to the editor, announcements sent directly to us, or information gleaned from publicly-available mailing lists. Our copyright is placed only on content we develop ourselves. In turn, for other open source sites (such as osOpinion), we generally provide links directly to the site rather than reproducing their content. Nonetheless, the issue of how to "handle this properly" within an open source context has been discussed internally many times, without a final resolution. We welcome reader feedback on the issue, though we do ask you keep in mind the need to develop sufficient revenue from LWN in order to keep the site alive and healthy. Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
July 6, 2000 |
Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsNew BSD Downloads site. Tucows has announced the launch of their BSD downloads site. "Located at http://bsd.tucows.com or through http://www.tucows.com,the site is the first to support all of the OpenSource BSD titles...FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD." New on-line Linux magazine: ShowMeLinux. FirstLinux.com has announced the launch of ShowMeLinux, a new on-line magazine promising "rich, beginner friendly content". ShowMeLinux Magazine is seeking products to review. www.showmelinux.com would like to include product reviews in future issues. If you're interested in submitting your product for review visit the web site or email info@showmelinux.com. SystemLogic.net contest. SystemLogic.net is giving away an Intel Celeron II 533. Enter at the contest website. ResourcesLinux Buyer's Guide. Are you looking for new hardware to upgrade your Linux system? Check out the Linux Buyer's Guide #2 at the DukeOfURL. Embedded Linux newsletter. The June 30 edition of the Embedded Linux newsletter is now available from LinuxDevices. July LinuxGazette. The July LinuxGazette is now available. You'll find Deep, Dark Secrets of Bash, Bluefish HTML Editor and much more. July issue of Troubleshooting Professional Magazine. This issue of Troubleshooting Professional Magazine tackles issues of Linux troubleshooting that a newbie or recent convert from the Windows world might face. It's part 2 of the "Making it in a Post Microsoft World" series. EventsThe Embedded Systems Conference Summer. Here's a reminder about the Embedded Systems Conferencea in Boston, July 10-12. Caldera Announced OpenLinux Power Solutions Tour 2000. Caldera Systems Inc. announced its upcoming OpenLinux Power Solutions Tour 2000. Sun Microsystems, IBM, Lotus, Compaq and Tarantella are joining Caldera July 11 in Toronto and will continue on the tour to its final destination in Dallas, on July 27. Jornada GNU/Linux in Argentina. Jornada GNU/Linux is a LUG-organized event scheduled for August 3rd, 4th and 5th in Rosario, Argentina. Richard Stallman is the keynote speaker and admission is free of charge. "There is mounting excitement towards the event from the whole Linux community of the country who is really looking forward to this meeting and an attendance of 2,000 people is expected. To achieve this, other LUGs from the country have provided their help and support in the advertising of the event as well as in the arrangement of the means of transport to reach the place where it will be held." Report from LinuxTag (Carsten Zerbst). Carsten Zerbst was kind enough to send in a full length report from LinuxTag. "The motto of the LinuxTag was ``where .com meets .org'', so it began with a non-free tutorial track on Thursday, touching many aspects of open source in business. Managing goods, personnel or customers was a pain several years ago; several applications are available now. The focus is not only on small to medium-sized companies. With SAP R/3, even bigger companies needs are fullfilled." Tidbits from LinuxTag.
Thomas Meinders sent us in a couple of short bites from this
week's LinuxTag:
SAP shows a complete R/3, which runs under Linux on Intels new
64-Bit-Processor Itanium (IA64). The hardware consists of a dual
Processor computer from Compaq with two 400-MHz-Itaniums and 1 GByte
RAM; the database used by SAP is IBMs DB2. The system runs with the
IA64-Distribution of TurboLinux.
User Group NewsGuido speaking in Columbia, Maryland, USA. Randy Schrickel dropped us a note to announce a new LUG forming in Columbia, Maryland. They've got a special speaker for their next meeting: "Our next meeting will be Tuesday July 11, with Guido van Rossum as our special guest speaker. Full info on the group and the meeting can be found at www.calug.com". |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux Links of the WeekSPECweb99 Results. Everyone loves a benchmark, right? Well, only if your side wins. So enjoy this one. LinuxToday took a look at the results from the SPECweb99 Benchmark and discovered two Dell machines with "almost" identical hardware. Yet they turned in vastly different performances. "The W2K machine received a score of SPECweb99 = 1598, which means that it was able to handle a median of 1598 Conforming Simultaneous Connections. The Red Hat Tux 1.0 machine received a score of SPECweb99 = 4200, which means that is was able to handle a median of 4200 Conforming Simultaneous Connections." Woo hoo for our team! Aren't benchmarks great? Isn't that what we've said all along? Ah well, maybe not, but we might as well enjoy the results when they happen to run in our favor. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
July 6, 2000 |
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This week in historyTwo years ago, July 9, 1998. Registration for the 2nd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase was announced. This event is alive and well, the call for papers for the 4th annual event went out last March. The current development kernel release was 2.1.108. The voting for comp.lang.perl.moderated ended with an overwhelming yes vote. Today the site is still alive. It has less flames than comp.lang.perl, but also tends not to get the best material. These days our developement editor monitors websites like Use Perl instead. One year ago, July 8, 1999. Security web site Packet Storm was taken off-line by Harvard University on July 1st. Packet Storm was described by SecurityPortal.com as "gigabytes of open source and free security software, categorized in a well thought out manner. We could find nearly all the tools we needed there, from network analyzers and intrusion detection utilities, to firewalls and encryption solutions." Today Packet Storm can be found at http://packetstorm.securify.com/. The current development kernel was 2.3.9. Stormix Technologies sent us this press release about their new distribution, Storm Linux. See this week's Distributions page for an article about Stormix. A company called Hard Data Ltd. contested MontaVista Software's use of the name Hard Hat Linux. Today, MontaVista's distribution is still called Hard Hat Linux. Hard Data Ltd. is still around. They focus on providing hardware systems, which come with a choice of operating system, including Linux. | |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Plan 9 license From: Nathan Myers <ncm@nospam.cantrip.org> Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 21:09:58 -0700 There has been lots of activity lately regarding the Bell Labs Plan 9 operating system release and its license. The short summary is that the license is "not there yet". Here are some links, in order of appearance: My article on Advogato, "The Problem with Plan 9": http://www.advogato.org/article/117.html Richard Stallman's "The Problems of the Plan Nine License": http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-07-02-007-04-OP-LF-SW (Note that the proper name is "Plan 9", not "Plan Nine".) IMHO some of RMS's objections miss the mark, but most are deeply insightful if read carefully. As always when we discuss freeing software, the issue is not what the authors "owe" us, but what is needed before Free Software developers consider the code safe to invest their own time into. Nathan Myers ncm@nospam.cantrip.org | ||
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 02:32:03 +0100 To: letters@lwn.net From: Robin Becker <robin@jessikat.demon.co.uk> Subject: Penguin on wrong track Linus apparently said > As if wanting to re-assure me that yes, it really =was= the holy penguin, it finally > added "Do you have any Herring?" before fading out in a puff of holy > penguin-smoke. Only a faint whiff of rancid fish remains as I type in these words.. it seems the holy penguin has developed a taste for fish from the wrong hemisphere! -- Robin Becker | ||