Linux Weekly News

Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise news for all interests
Published August 6, 1998

Sections:
Linux articles
Security
Kernel news
Distributions
Ports
Software Development
Free/Open-Source Software
Commercial/Press Releases
Announcements
Links of the week
Feedback and corrections

Other stuff:
LWN Archives
Linux Links
Linux Events Calendar
Daily Updates

Leading items

The FUD factor. As the Linux wave continues to grow, it is surprising how little we are seeing in the way of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) attacks. This nice situation surely can not last. If the proprietary systems vendors are not yet on the attack, one must conclude that they do not yet see the magnitude of the threat that they face.

Interestingly, even what little FUD we have been seeing has been moderated recently. The flurry of press articles on Linux (this week's press section, below, is again overflowing) is almost entirely positive. Perhaps this is because "they" have lost their favorite bogeyman: the "no support" argument. Any journalist who now dares to write that Linux has no support finds himself buried in evidence to the contrary. Now, if they have to raise that issue, it's "no big companies are providing support." They may lose even that one soon.

One of the articles listed below says that Dell may be on the verge of jumping into the Linux market. The article is not entirely credible, but such a move seems inevitable, sooner or later. Might that be the straw that breaks Microsoft's back, the one that puts them on the offensive? Remember, Microsoft has often been slow on the uptake, but they also react quickly and decisively once they figure out that something is going on.

So what might Microsoft do? They could open-source their operating systems; the sad truth is that they would likely take a lot of wind from Linux's sails if they did. This course of action seems unlikely, however. More likely is a flat-out offensive: NT for $49, (old) IBM-like sales tactics (you don't buy from them, they go to your boss's boss), and, yes, big-time FUD.

How long until the first big Linux disaster story hits the press? Will we start seeing letters to the editor from people who fled back to NT's embrace? Will Linux security problems (and we know there will be more of those) start making bigger headlines? All of these may well begin to happen. How we handle them will have a big effect on the ultimate success of Linux.

So how do we handle the upcoming FUD? We must react to it calmly and maturely, and not like a bunch of teenage fanatics. We must get the truth out; fortunately, Linux has obtained a high enough profile that getting the truth out should be possible. And, most importantly, we must continue to build the best system we can. Technical superiority is not, in itself, sufficient to achieve World Domination, but will still likely be the enabling factor that makes it happen.

Eric S. Raymond has a new piece in issue 31 of the Linux Gazette, entitled "Open Source's First Six Months." It will evidently go into the November issue of the Linux Journal. It's self-congratulatory tone is perhaps warranted; as he says in his summary: "We're winning!"

No comment department...another note from Eric Raymond describing the terms under which the term "open source" may be used. Oops, that's "open source (R)"...

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[Articles]

Linux in the news

32BitsOnline has an interview with Ransom Love, General Manager of the OpenLinux Division at Caldera. They cover a number of topics, including Novell, OpenLinux 2.0, and the KDE/GNOME battle.

The German magazine C't has run an interview with Linus, published in German. They touch on Oracle, Merced and the GNOME/KDE battle; Linus points out that the competition between the two may have brought about a greater level of activity on both than would have happened otherwise. Those of use who don't speak German can go to babelfish instead; click "translate" once you get there and you'll get a version of the article in something resembling English. [Added later: the folks at c't pointed out to us that they have the original interview in English online as well. Most folks will probably prefer reading this version over the babelfish translation, though the latter does have a certain humor value.]

The San Francisco Examiner covers The Linux Revolution in a very positive article which emphasizes Linux's penetration into the corporate world.

Another San Francisco Examiner article: this one is an interview with Linus mostly regarding the history of Linux.

"Look sharp, Bill Gates. The Penguins are coming." The Economic Times has a brief but positive article about our favorite system. "...analysts say it has a fighting chance of upsetting Microsoft's monopoly."

OS News ran an article by a Linux newbie giving his impressions of the system relative to the Windows environment he was used to. He seems to have gone in with an open mind, and the article, while pointing out the deficiencies he sees in Linux, is quite positive.

The New Zealand Press tells us Support grows for Linux. It's pretty standard for the recent series of introductory articles; quite positive. "It is too early to say whether ... Linux is a real candidate for OS-of-the-next-decade, but a groundswell of support suggests something real is happening."

Here's a PC Week Online column saying that "Microsoft should take a lesson from the Linux community and Netscape and release chunks of its operating system source code."

Here's another article on NASA's use of a Beowulf cluster for law enforcement; this one is in Federal Computer Week.

Yet another Beowulf story, this one in Government Computer News.

Ulrich Neumerkel pointed out this introductory article in the Austrian Die Presse. It's in German, but English-speaking folks can (once again) get an approximation of the article by heading over to Babelfish and hitting the "translate" button. "In wind hurry Linus Thorvald could in such a way create one in the association with its noble hacker friends scattered approximately around the globe after straight matured system nucleus, which until today as extremely stable, speak yourself: 'bug free' proved" [Note: the original link for this article rotated out. Many thanks to Anton Ertl for providing us with a permanent link]

Dave Whitinger's Linux news mailing list called our attention to a thing called "The DweebSpeak Primer" and an entry therein entitled Paradigm Shift The shift under discussion here is the one toward Linux and free software in general; it's a good description of this interesting wave that we are riding, and of how far it might go.

Wesley Darlington informs us that there is a review of Red Hat 5.1 in the September issue of the UK version of PC Magazine. It is a realistic and mostly positive review, with the criticisms in the right places.

Both Yoav Cohen-Sivan and Jon Bendtsen wrote in with a pointer to this column in Performance Computing which says that Dell is already working with European customers who want Linux, and may officially support Linux in Europe soon. Cool. Of course, the column also brings back the Red Hat/Caldera merger rumors, which have been pretty emphatically denied by Red Hat's Bob Young; this unfortunately lowers the credibility of the whole thing.

Yoav Cohen-Sivan also pointed out the August issue of SunWorld, which is dedicated almost entirely to Linux. Included is an interview with Linus and the free software poll which we had already reported. Oh yes, and you can also learn about the "tee" command.

The (Canadian) Globe and Mail ran an introductory article on Linux. It's positive, for the most part. "Somewhere in there, there has to be a smart marketing move and I really haven't seen that yet".

Linux vs. Windows NT: Engineers Speak Out, Part 2; ISD Magazine continues their series of articles comparing the two systems for design automation work.

Frank Hayes at ComputerWorld has put together his list of the top 100 IT products of the 20th century. Linux barely makes the list at number 81, but at least it beat the TRS-80...

Articles about the Caldera Netware announcement can be found in InfoWorld, News.com, and ZDnet.

David Shirley sent us a tranlation of the Belgian Standaard article on Linux that we mentioned last week.

According to EE Times, not many people are ready to buy EDA tools for Linux. They did find a few signs of demand, though. They also mention a mailing list for people interested in EDA and Linux.

Computer Reseller News talks about the rise of Linux, databases, and the GNOME project.

Just in case anybody didn't see this one in Slashdot: PC Week's editorial A Linux World? is certainly worth a read. "While it's difficult to conceive of a real threat to Windows dominance, we believe there is an opportunity to step into the wake that Microsoft has left in its rise to the top, pick up the pieces and build a new platform for the next generation of users."

 
    
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[Security] The latest version of the Security Audit Project FAQ is out. Give it a read and learn about what these folks are up to.

John Hardin has released a set of procmail filters that help defend against the Netscape/Outlook MIME attachment hole. This particular vulnerability does not affect Linux systems, but if your system serves up mail for PC clients you maybe need to worry about it. Use of these filters on a mail server can prevent the receipt of messages which attempt to exploit the hole. See the announcement for more information

Red Hat has produced security updates for the RealVideo and secure web server products.

 
    
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[Kernel] The current development kernel release is 2.1.114. This kernel has compilation problems for some, but nothing all that hard to work around. Patches can be obtained from LinuxHQ if you need them. The feature freeze remains in effect, so there's not much in the way of new goodies in recent kernels. There is also a 2.1.115 pre-patch available, for those who find the bleeding edge not sharp enough.

The second pre-patch for stable kernel 2.0.36 is available, read the announcement for more info. Users of the ISDN subsystem have been particularly invited to test this one out. (The patch has also been mirrored in the US).

One of this week's linux-kernel flame sessions as to do with a proposed feature addition: should the devfs patch go into the 2.2 kernel? Linus is said (third-hand) to be "considering" it. Devfs, which seeks to provide more rational naming for devices on the system, brings out intense opposition in some people. Words like "ugly" and "unnecessary" are passed around.

<EDITORIAL> Your editor has spent many years dealing with Unix systems, including many that use devfs-type naming schemes. Yes, to go from, say, /dev/sda1 to /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 may look ugly, but the simple fact is, it's better. There should be a direct mapping between a given SCSI ID (say) and a /dev name; it should not change when other hardware on the system changes. If Linux is going to move into the realm of larger systems, it will have to adopt some of these conventions that make the administration of large systems an easier thing to do. Devfs should really be part of the 2.2 kernel when it comes out. </EDITORIAL>

This week's other big fight had to do with whether a non-executable stack should be an option in 2.2. Taking execute permission off stack pages makes it much harder for "buffer overrun" attacks to succeed, since most of them work by tricking an application into putting some unfriendly code on the stack and "returning" into it.

Those opposed to the no-exec patch claim that it is a kludge in the system, that it buys no real security (since other buffer overrun attacks are possible), that it breaks some applications, and that the real problem is buggy, insecure applications. Proponents, instead, say that the patch provides a defense against "root kit" hackers (those who use downloaded exploit code with no real understanding of what they are doing), that logging of stack execution attempts provides early warning of an attack, that many potential users of Linux want to see this feature as a sign that we are serious about security, and that even a partial shield is helpful in the scary environment that exists in parts of the net.

Both sides have perfectly reasonable arguments, both are right, no consensus seems likely. This situation will be resolved by our Benevolent Dictator, and he is strongly opposed to the non-executable stack.

Alex Buell has folded his vesafb HOWTO into a more general framebuffer HOWTO for 2.2. You can see his latest version here.

Real-time Linux release 9 is now available; this release brings RTLinux up to kernel 2.0.35 and simplifies the installation process.

Version 0.37 of the Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) FAQ is out. You can get it at its home in France or at the U.S. mirror.

New versions of the FTape driver and tools are available. FTape is now at version 4.x-beta-11, and with it comes ftape-tools 1.03. There is also a new version of the ftape HOWTO in the works.

RAID version 0.50 has been released, see the announcement for details. This release contains a number of changes, new features, and incompatibilities, so approach it carefully. RAID sets created with 0.50 can not be backported to earlier versions. One useful new feature is that the kernel can detect RAID partitions and assemble the device automatically. Among other things, this allows the root filesystem to be on a RAID device.

To close out the beer-drinking penguin boot logo discussion, Jakub Jelinek posted that he has replaced the Mac logo Sparc logo offending logo with a set of architecture-specific ones. The change should make its way into the 2.1 kernel shortly. If you have images turned on, you can see the Mac (left) and Sparc (right) logos here. It's a shame, really, that the penguin lost its beer, and probably irrelevant as well. What distribution or VAR will ever be able to resist the temptation to replace the standard logo with their own?

Since we're a weekly publication, chances are we'll be behind a rev or two on the kernel release by the time you read this page. Up-to-the-second information can always be found at LinuxHQ.
    
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[DISTRIBUTIONS]

Debian

Those who do not regularly watch the activities of the Debian project may not have a feel for just how much is usually going on. So, for those who are interested, here are their weekly change reports for the Alpha, I386, PowerPC, ARM, m68k, sparc, and HURD distributions.

Debian 1.3 ("bo") has disappeared from ftp.debian.org, and that has a number of people unhappy. Objections vary, from those who simply feel that all of the old history should be available; those who think that 2.0 is young and thus 1.3 should be available for a while yet; through to those who claim that removing the 1.3 distribution violates the GPL, since source is supposed to be available for three years. The simple problem is that Debian in all its versions is too big to keep on the FTP server, and too big to mirror across the net.

Some of the mirrors still have 1.3 around. Places to look if that's what you are after include:

Others certainly exist as well.

Red Hat

Red Hat's Robert Hart sent out a public response to all of the recent complaints about their installation support. Turnaround time is currently seven days; they intend to reduce that to one day by the end of the month. Red Hat has been making noises on a few fronts that they are putting some effort into getting their act a bit more together in the quality control and support areas; that is certainly a good thing.

William Henning has written an article describing the difficulties he went through in getting StarOffice to install on a Red Hat 5.1 system. Included is the winning set of commands, for those who would like to follow in his footsteps.

 
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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[Ports]

Alpha

The question came up: where is "Uncle George's" Java development kit (JDK) port for the alpha?. The links in his Java for the Alpha page are broken. Turns out that the version numbers have changed, but the index page did not. Go directly to the containing page and you'll see the JDK files there.

Alpha folks have noted that the Alpha FAQ is far out of date. Barrett Lyon has offered to start work on a new one. Concurrently, Jonathan Vafai has set up a new FAQ using FAQ-O-MATIC at his site, in the hopes that numerous people will produce something new and good. Let's hope that these two can find a way to work together on this project.

Sparc

Sparc users may find a 2.0.25 kernel snapshot with some additional fixes on vger; here's Derrick Brashear's announcement if you want to get a copy.

m68k

The latest m68k user statistics have been posted. According to the results there are 1252 registered m68k users.

PowerPC

MkLinux DR3 has been released. This release is based on Red Hat 5.0, and includes such amenities as the ext2 file system.

Wesley Joe is working on a new install guide for LinuxPPC. He is asking for help, especially with regard to the boot variable settings that people are using on different systems.

 
    
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[Software Development] Geoff Eldridge wrote in to inform us of the Eiffel Struggle '98 Competition. Grand prize is $2000, so Eiffel folks should check it out. His note also describes several interesting new libraries for Eiffel, and seeks to enlist the support of the Linux community in the improvement and promotion of the Eiffel language.

Java

JDK 1.1.6 V3 for the PowerPC is available. This release includes a number of bug fixes, and has a just in time compiler, Hot Java, and Swing as well.

Linux fared quite poorly in JavaWorld's server benchmark tests. Read the results and weep. Some of the problems clearly result from the lack of a JIT compiler with the Linux JDK, but they also hit an early limit in the number of simultaneous connections that could be handled. Linux should really be able to do better than that; it would be interesting to figure out what was going on.

Perl

The full set of perl documentation for v5.005 has been released; see Tom Christiansen's announcement for more. At more than 1200 pages, this does not qualify as light reading.

Perl Scripts/Modules Announcements:

Python

The folks from the Casbah project are putting together a new distributed object system. Their goal is to be language-independent, which is best tested by working with many languages. They currently don't have any Python people helping them out. This would be a good opportunity for an interested Python programmer to help make something useful. See their note if you're curious about what they are doing, or would like to help out.

The python.org web page has been reorganized; they have added a bunch of "recent news" space to the front page.

The Python cookbook is a user-maintained FAQ with examples of how to do interesting things. Have a look.

Also available now is the Python to-do list. This list contains all of the things that people would like to see done - it's long! It is also user-editable, so if your wish isn't present, you can add it.

Oliver Andrich has put together a new version of his Python Linux distribution. Read his announcement to see what's changed.

A call for demos and posters for the 7th Python Conference has been issued; check it out here.

 
    
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[Free/Open-Source News]

Free/Open-Source Software News

The GNOME software map is now available. You can check it out here. Word is also that the GNOME folks are heading toward a new release, 0.25. GNOME is moving in a hurry...

A new version of the Mozilla Release FAQ is available, check it out here. They are up to the "fifth tarball" release now...

You can also read the July 30 version of the Jazilla progress report.

 
    
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[Commercial
        News/Press Releases]

Linux and the Commercial World

Joel Moses called our attention to CDC's IntraStore product. This seems to be an enterprise-scale email server with various sorts of file-sharing and other features...an "intranet server." Interestingly, their Linux version is free.

There is another T-shirt design contest underway, to be followed, of course, by the opportunity to buy shirts with the winner's artwork. Check it out if you wish to participate.

Michal Gomulinski sent us a link to a questionnaire from AVS which is looking for people who are interested in seeing AVS5 ported to Linux. If you want this tool, check out the questionnaire. Note that it is posted on the Polish Linux Users Group homepage, so you'll need to skip past the initial introduction in Polish (Piotr Mitros sent us a translation of that text). The questionnaire itself is in English.

Press Releases:

 
    
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[Announcements]

Software

Package Version Description
Ampctl 1.0.0 A nifty little tool to handle and control the mixer and the dsp device
Android 0.1.5 Digital knowledge base
Anti-Filtering-Proxy-Proxy 0.02 HTTP Proxy Software Helps Circumvent Censorware and Filtering Proxies
AudioMixer 1.2 Xforms based audiomixer
aumix 1.9.4 Color text mode sound mixer with GPM support
BashPrompt 0.4b Makes your bash prompt look good by writing and modifying an rc file
Batalla Naval 0.59.44 Networked BattleShip game
Beautifier 1.0.3 Free, small and fast automatic indention for Java source files
BeroFTPD 1.1.1 FTP server program based on WU-FTPD
Bezerk 0.3.2 IRC client written with the GTK toolkit
Blackbox 0.40.2 WindowManager for X11 written in C++
Blackmail 0.28pre16 Highly configurable SMTP mail filter
Blender 1.36 Extremely fast and versatile 3D Rendering Package
Bnetd 0.3 Emulates a StarCraft Battle.net server
BurnIT 1.0 Java front-end to cdrecord and mkisofs
Byte Dump 0.0.1 Inverse of Octal Dump
cccd 0.3alpha1 A CDDB capable CD player using GTK+
CCF 98.07.30 Virtual environment for distributed computation
CDM 0.23 Offers copying, mastering and manipulation of CD tracks
Comanche 0.6a Multiplatform configuration manager for the Apache web server
Cook 2.4 A tool for constructing files, and maintainingreferential integrity between fil
Cooledit 3.6.2 Full featured text editor for the X Window System
CVS 1.9.29 Concurrent Versions System
DDD snapshot 19980803 Common graphical user interface for GDB, DBX and XDB
DECnet for Linux 0.0.9 DECnet socket layer and applications
Drall 0.5.4 Allows users to access their directories and files remotely via a web browser.
egcs 19980803 Experimental set of enhancements for the GNU tools
Embedded Perl 5 Language (ePerl) 2.2.14 Embedded Perl 5 Language
Exim 2.02 Message Transfer Agent for Unix systems
Fetchmail 4.5.5 Free, full-featured, robust, well-documented remote-mailretrieval utility
Flight Gear 0.51 Flight simulator
fltk 0.99 C++ user interface toolkit for X and OpenGL
Freeciv 1.7.0 Implementation of Civilization II for UNIX/X released under the GPL
FreeWRL 0.15 Free VRML browser for Linux
Gcdplay 1.0 GPL'ed CD player with local and server-based cddb support.
GICQ 0.20 GTK based ICQ client
gIDE 0.0.5 gtk-based Integrated Development Environment for C
Gifsicle 1.3b1 Command-line tool for creating, editing, and optimizing GIFs and animations
GNU make 3.77 Controls the generation of executables and other non-source files
GNU PSPP 0.1.22 SPSS compatible statistical analysis software
GnuCash 1.1.13 A program to keep track of your finances
GNUS 5.6.28 Emacs news/mail reader
GnuSheet 0.1 Free spreadsheet (LessTif/Xbae front end to GNU oleo)
got_it 0.35b Simple URL grabber
gstalker 1.0b3 Stock charting viewer and tracker
GTK+ 1.1.1 Library for creating graphicaluser interfaces
GtkSQL 0.2 Interactive query tool for PostgreSQL
GXedit 1.10 Simple GPL'ed graphical editor using GTK
icewm 0.9.11 Window Manager designed for speed, usability and consistency
Installfest 1.0 Graphical compilation and installation tool
ipchains 1.3.5 Linux packet filter control utility (replaces ipfwadm for kernels 2.1.102+).
jail 1.5 Just Another ICMP Logger
jbc 1.3.1 Displays the time in BCD (Binary Coded Decimal)
jCVS 4.7.2 Java implementation of client-server CVS (version control for team projects)
kcrontab 0.2.0 Crontab editor for KDE
Kticker 0.2 News ticker widget that downloads news headlines and displays them periodically
ktuner 0.4.5 KDE program to control a radio card connected to your pc
Licq 0.40pr2 ICQ clone for linux with most of the functionality of the official Java version
LilyPond 1.0.0 The GNU Project music typesetter
Linuxconf 1.11r18 Sophisticated administrative tool
LyX 0.12.1pre7 Advanced LaTeX-based typesetting and text-editing program for X11
minicom 1.82b4 Serial communication program
mount 2.8a Programs for mounting and unmounting filesystems
Mp3Make 0.32 Automates ripping and encoding of mp3's, using cddb to name them.
MpegTV Player 1.0.6.7 A realtime MPEG Video+Audio player
MSWordView 0.1.0 Microsoft Word 8 document viewer
Mutt 0.93.2 Small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operatingsystems
News Peruser 3.15 An offline newsreader for Linuxand X11
ntop 0.4 Network usage monitor
Obsidian 1.9.1a OpenSource 3D network game for Linux and SGI
OSS 3.9h Provides sound card drivers for most popular sound cards under Linux
ORBit 0.2 Thin/fast CORBA ORB
perfs 2.5.2 A tool that helps dispatching processes over a network
PGPHTML 3.2 Generates PGP signed web-pages
ProFTPD 1.1.6pre4 Advanced, incrediblyconfigurable and secure FTP daemon
Prometheus Truecolour (PTC) 2.0.1 A lowlevel framebuffer access library with fast on the fly conversion
readline 2.2.1 A set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command line
ROOT 2.00/10 Comprehensive object oriented framework
Saint 1.2.7 Security Administrator's Integrated Network Tool
Sather 1.2 Beta Object Oriented Programming Language
sed 3.02 GNU Stream Editor
Selonian 0.1.0 Little script to help small systems handle dynamic DNS service
Sharity-Light 1.0 CIFS (formerly SMB) to NFS converter
SMB2WWW 980727 Windows Network client that is accessible through a web browser
SNMP Sniffer 0.8b SNMP promiscuous packet sniffer/decoder.
Squid 1.2beta23 High performance Web proxy cache
ssystem 1.3 OpenGL Solar System Simulator
sticky_notes 0.8 Postit note application for GTK and/or GNOME
suck 3.9.4 Grabs news from a remote NNTP news server
The Monitor 1.0.0 Small file monitoring program
TimeMan 0.1 Time manager, calendar, alarm
tin 1.4pre980802 Curses based threaded NNTP and spool based UseNet newsreader
tircproxy 0.3.4 Transparent IRC Proxy with DCC CHAT and DCC SEND support
WebLog 0.98 Logfile toolkit for Python
Webmin 0.61 Web-based interface for system administration for Unix
Website META Language 1.6.7 Webdesign HTML-generation toolkit
wmakerconf 0.6 GTK based configuration tool for WindowMaker window manager
wmapm 1.2 Small dock-app that shows continually-updated APMstatistics
wmlm78 0.3.0 WindowMaker utility to display system monitor information from a lm78 chip
wmss 0.5 WindowMaker Sound Server Configurator
wxWindows/GTK 1.90 GTK port of the cross-platform wxWindows C++ application framework class library
X-Mame 0.33rc1.1 The Un*x version of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
XawTV 2.19 TV application and a few utilities
XDELTA 0.22 Binary delta generator and prototype RCS replacement.
xdiskusage 1.0 Graphical display of disk usage
XFCom_3DLabs 4.11 XSuSE X Server for 3DLabs Chipsets
XQF 0.8.3 QuakeWorld/Quake2 server browser and launcher for Linux/X11
XRoads 0.3 A 2D maze/shoot-em-up game for X
Xterminal 0.3 Object Oriented User Interface with a client-server architecture
Xwhois 0.1.7 Small and fast GTK+ X11 client for the whois network services.
ZipCracker 0.0.3 Cracks password protected zip archives with brute force(TM)

Resources

Version 1.0 of the Linux Quake HOWTO has been released. They are looking for feedback for the next version; check it out and let them know what you think.

Web sites

The Linux Games Development Center has moved to a new site.

A new version of the Linux Sound Applications page is now available, with lots of new entries.

 
Our software announcements are provided courtesy of Freshmeat.
    
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[Links]

Linux links of the week

Christopher B. Browne's Linux Operating System pages tend not to appear in lists of Linux links. It is hard to understand why; Christopher has assembled, organized and annotated pointers to a great deal of Linux information from history through VAR's and year 2000 compliance. His is certainly a top-tier Linux site. If you have not been there, head on over and check it out.

Hardwire is a site dedicated to the testing of interesting hardware. They have recently moved beyond testing under only Windows - they now also test hardware under Linux. Let's hope they stick with it, they should become a useful resource for people trying to decide what to buy.

 
    
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[Feedback]

Feedback and Corrections

We received a number of responses to last week's editorial (what happens to our community when Linux goes mainstream?). Thanks for writing back, it's nice to know that people are reading what we write! :-) A couple of selected responses: Jae Chang writes that Big Blue will dole out the blues. A more positive viewpoint came in from Eric Kidd, who thinks that the pains of success will be worthwhile.

Last week we said that only the Intel version of Debian 2.0 had been released; Joey Hess wrote in to correct us: the m68k release also went out at the same time.

We also got a note from Michael Callahan asking why there was no coverage of the SigGraph Linux 3D BOF. It was a busy week, and that one fell through the cracks; our mistake. We'll not try to make it up now, but it's worth mentioning (1) according to Michael, Metrolink will have an accelerated OpenGL implementation this fall, and (2) a summary of the BOF is available here.

 
  
 
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