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

Linux in the news

Here's another article on NASA's crime-fighting Beowulf cluster. This one is in the Washington Post, and is more detailed than some of the others.

Speaking of Beowulf, Milan Hodoscek pointed us to this story in Government Computer News. This one discusses the LOBOS cluster running at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Software Magazine chose Linux for its cover article for September. Thanks to Stuart Luppescu for pointing this out. The article is in depth, clear and includes snippets from interviews with a large number of people, pro-Linux, pro-NT, pro-SCO and more. See also the editor's letter introducing this issue. "...be prepared for considerable fear mongering from your Unix vendors. Linux is their worst nightmare. It's delivering on all the promises that Unix vendors made but never kept."

India ready to toe Linux linesays Express Computer, an Indian weekly. "In the price-sensitive Indian market, Linux presents itself as an extremely cost- effective proposition." (Found on the Linux Reviews and Articles site).

The Australian APC Magazine has an extensive series of articles on Linux entitled "A penguin for all seasons." There is a section on history, a comprehensive review of distributions, and a discussion on the penguin.

A longish article in the Ottawa Citizen talks about Corel and their bet on Linux. It is a reasonably balanced article on whether such a move makes business sense. They predict that the heyday of Linux is still three or four years away. Meanwhile, "Linux has given Corel the promise of a fresh start that's all the sweeter because Microsoft is so far not a direct threat."

C|net interviews Sun's John McFarlane, talking mostly about the NT threat. McFarlane is pretty dismissive of the whole thing, while being very supportive of Linux. "A Linux desktop is not a Windows desktop."

Living With Linux (Part 2)in MSNBC is a surprisingly positive article considering (1) the source, and (2) the fact that the author subjected himself to the ordeal of installing Slackware entirely from diskettes. "In my opinion, Linux is just a few revisions and applications away from gaining broad acceptance." Thanks to Didier Legein for the pointer to this one.

Richard Stallman in the news: there is a summary of a talk he gave in Christchurch, New Zealand available. See also this lengthy article in Salon about rms.

PC Week has a review of Xi Graphics' "MaXimum CDE/OS" Linux distribution.

This article in Network Computing gives a rosy view of the future of Linux, and suggests that they will be increasing their coverage in the future. "Its architecture is a proven one, and there's little doubt in my mind that Linux will continue to add market share--particularly if it manages to stay pure and compatible. And if it does, we'll treat it exactly the same as we treat any other operating system in the enterprise. You'll see us do reviews on it and with it. It seems that the freebie's time has come."

FUD of the week: This "@lex" column in Smart Reseller. Ad hominem attacks often indicate desperation, so what is one to make of something like: "I'd like to listen to you explain how the client should bet his business on an application -- however good -- that's written by a snot-nosed high school kid with terminal acne and no social life"? Thanks to Sean M. Shore for sending this one in.

More FUD: The Death of Windows in Windows Magazine. "Still, Linux is not completely like OS/2; it has some fatal flaws of its own. For example, like UNIX, Linux comes in multiple and incompatible flavors, isn't backed by a blue-chip company and has very low awareness within corporations."

Yun Ye put us on to this article in the Far Eastern Economic Review. It's of the general "what is Linux" variety, mostly positive, though with the support FUD and some other inaccuracies ("There's even a downloadable program called Wine, which allows users to read Microsoft Word documents on a Linux system, though it doesn't always run smoothly.")

Last week we featured this article from The Press (Christchurch, NZ) as an example of FUD for their statement that the Linux community has no interest in standards whatsoever. Now they actually seem to have published a brief correction of sortsafter having received a number of responses from the Linux world. Said responses are not to be seen, but, based on the results, some of them, at least, must have been well done.

Jan Gruber wrote in about this editorial (in German) in c't. It seems to be arguing for a more user-friendly Linux. Those of us who are not German-capable can read the Babelfish approximation (hit "translate" when you get there), but it seems to be more impenetrable than usual. ("History does not repeat itself, at the most as farce - and Linux is in danger to increase this to the lubricant comedy and to repeat the history of Unix and of OS/2 at the same time. A view over the edge of plate does NOT.")

As a follow-on to the Motley Fool article mentioned last week, some "fools" have started doing informal surveys of shelf space in bookstores to see whether Linux is really growing or not. A couple of preliminary results can be found hereand here. Highly scientific it isn't, but interesting nonetheless. Thanks to Jonathan Day for pointing this out to us.

Last week's LWN included a pointer to an article in German in the Rheinische Post. For those of us who don't read German, M. Leo Cooper has not only produced a translation into English, but he got permission from the paper to publish it as well. Thanks!

This article in Embedded Systems Magazine is about using ethernet in, yes, embedded systems. They briefly mention RT-Linux as a possible OS to use in this context. Continuing with the ethernet theme, there is this article in Network Computing about gigabit ethernet. The interesting thing here is that, to test the various gigabit ethernet offerings, they employed a 48-node Linux cluster.

"Project Heresy" is back. This C|Net series was one of those "we'll try Linux for a month" exercises back in May. Now they "...are back to keep you in touch with Linux as it moves past the verge and into the mainstream." New audio broadcasts begin the day this newsletter is published, and continue every Thursday thereafter. See the Project Heresy web page for more.

Freeware phobia in ComputerWorld talks about the "lack of support" fear that some feel when dealing with free software. They do a credible job of discussing out the increased reliability of most free software, and they talk about the quality of free support. They do pass over the paid support options with just a brief mention, however.

MacWorld reviews the Cobalt Qube. They have some complaints, but like the system overall. "Even nontechnical users can set up the Qube, and Cobalt's clever software takes the pain out of administration. The Qube is a true winner."

Atul Chitnis wrote in to let us know that PC Quest, one of India's leading Personal Computing magazines, announces its 1998 User Choice Awards in the September issue, hitting the stands today. Linux, we hear, will be showing up as the number 2 "Network Operating System" for the first time, pushing Novell out of that spot.

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