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How do we come to terms with Richard M. Stallman? That question comes up again as a result of the latest Salon article about him, a follow up piece to a feature they had done the week before. In the followup, some strong opinions on rms are expressed by Tim O'Reilly and Eric Raymond. There are some serious disagreements here, and they are highly visible far outside the Linux community.

rms certainly has found the opportunity to upset a lot of people. While most of us were celebrating the announcements of support by Oracle and Informix, rms was claiming that they were a step backward. Those of us with a shelf full of O'Reilly manuals are generally glad to have them; Stallman's attacks on O'Reilly seem strange and misplaced. His behavior at the Open Source Developer Day was the most widely reported event of the day; it was used to great advantage to portray the free software community as childish and divided. His attempts to attach the GNU term to "Linux" seem petty, legalistic, and childish. His absolutist positions do not sit well with the majority of free software users, who tend to be more pragmatic.

Yet we owe Richard something. Free software is a great thing, it certainly would have caught on sooner or later even if rms had never championed the cause. But that probably would not have happened in this century. We are here because rms carried that torch over the course of many years when it seemed that he was nearly alone. He has honestly earned a great deal of the credit for our current successes.

The GPL alone is enough to secure rms's place in free software history. Because of the GPL, no large proprietary systems vendor can try to take over or derail Linux by producing a licensed version. Any company thinking to make money with Linux has to do it on the GPL's terms, and that means that Linux will always be free.

Richard Stallman is kind of like the eccentric uncle that everybody loves, or at least respects, but whose behavior means that nobody wants to take him anywhere. It seems quite possible that he will fade into irrelevance and obscurity. That would be unfortunate. He certainly still has much to contribute, much that is worth listening to. We have no idea what should be done about rms, but we do know that a solution needs to be found. We still need him.

We were pleased to see the press release announcing Corel's Netwinder WS, their new web server based on the Netwinder and running Linux. The Netwinder drew a great deal of attention when Corel first announced the machine and their plans to use Linux as the base operating system. Now we'll get a chance to see how well the first product does in the marketplace and how well the actual machine will perform. The price is as low as originally estimated (just under $800 for the low-end server).

The Internet Operating System Counter dropped us a note to let us know that their results for August are now available. Over 820,000 European ftp, web and news servers were queried and Linux consistently came up as the most frequently used OS for these specific services. What fun! And you can check out their Online OS Sniffer, which they've made available.

We have been getting occasional complaints from lynx users that the text on the lwn pages renders right-justified. Trust us, that is not the effect we were after, and it does not happen with the version of lynx we have here. We would like to ask that lynx users who see the right-justified behavior drop us a note and let us know what version they're using, and anything else that might seem relevant. We want to track this one down and get rid of it.


September 17, 1998

 

   

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See also: last week's Security page.

Security


This article, from the ISN mailing list, speculates that the U.S. Embassy bombings put an end to the prospect of legislation allowing the export of strong encryption, at least for this legislative year.

Frank Cusack posted a note to comp.security.ssh pointing out bugs in the way that ssh (and ssh2) handle shadow passwords. His note includes a patch for ssh.

Buffer overflow problems in tcsh have been found, similar to those recently fixed in bash. Wichert Akkerman posted a patch, but it is not a final version. No word on fixes from vendors as of yet. tcsh is a less likely candidate for shell scripts so the problems caused by the overflows are less likely to be exploitable.

The security audit program reported some problems with jidentd, an identd daemon which is not used or shipped by default by any of the distributions, but is apparently popular among IRC fans. The problems are basic poor programming problems; bug fixes are included in the link.

For people who have been following the reports and discussion of potential problems or exploits for identd programs, you might want to take a look at two different programs called secure identd. The first is a brand-new perl identd and the second requires kerberosIV.

Cisco has released yet another statement on the problems with Cisco PIX firewalls. It details what they plan on fixing and what they don't. Specifically, PIX Firewall 4.2(2) was scheduled to be available by Monday, September 14th. The PIX firewall problems involve denial-of-service attacks against the firewall and do not permit actual network intrusion.

A buffer overflow problem with Xylogics/Bay/Nortel terminal servers has been reported to be fixed in Version X6.0.1 of the Remote Access Concentrator software. If you have one of these servers, contact your local technical services group for more information.

Wietse Venema reported that VMailer should be coming out soon, within a matter of days or weeks, once the source code had been reviewed by his employers "Intelletual Property" people.

Rootshell issued their Security Bulletin #23, which outlined some flaws found in the TCP/IP stack of the Osicom Technologies remote access router products for 56K-T1 users.

Bay Networks has responded to Bugtraq messages from July, 1998, which reported the PING and LAND Denial of Services attacks against Annex terminal servers. They have an "X Release" patch available to address these problems, which is available free of charge.


September 17, 1998

   

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See also: last week's Kernel page.

Kernel development


The current development kernel release is 2.1.122. This version, just out, includes yet another set of fixes, and moves the APM (power management) code into the "kernel" directory. As we remain in feature freeze, there are no new, exciting features to report.

Version 10 of the 2.0.36 stable kernel pre-patch is available on Alan Cox's FTP site. This patch fixes one last bit of obnoxiousness with pre9 and is likely to go out as the real 2.0.36. (Reminder: the pre8 announcement contained a set of release notes describing the changes in this kernel release).

There have been some complaints about the 2.0 kernels not supporting compilation under gcc 2.8 or egcs. Alan Cox has refused to add such support, on the basis that the 2.0 kernel needs to be highly stable and nobody can guarantee that stability with the newer compilers. For those who wish to push their luck, Florian La Roche (at S.u.S.E.) has put together a web page with the patches needed to build and run a 2.0 kernel with egcs. (Note that 2.2 will support egcs).

Intense work continues with NFS under 2.1. H. J. Lu has been pounding on knfsd problems. He is looking for testers for his latest version of knfsd; interested parties can find it in his FTP site. There is a patch to the kernel NFS code in that directory which should be applied as well.

Red Hat snarfs another one. We're not sure just when this happened, but Stephen Tweedie, prominent kernel hacker, is now working full-time for Red Hat. The scope of his work includes the implementation of a journaling file system, but evidently goes beyond that to kernel support in general.

The devfs patch is up to version 59, the announcement is here. There is also a new version of the devfs daemon to go with this release.

When important features break, people complain. In this case, the penguin boot logo does not work with the current development kernel. The reason is that Linus removed a global variable ("initmem_freed") which had been used to tell whether a driver (the console driver, in this case) was being initialized at boot time. The logo, of course, should only print at boot time, so the driver was checking initmem_freed. Linus takes the position that no driver should know where the system stands in the boot process when it runs, that such knowledge leads to problems when things change in the future. See his strongly-worded message for the details.

Meanwhile the penguin logo is gone for now. It will certainly be back, once the proper fixes have been done.

William Henning wrote to let us know he has updated his kernel compilation benchmarks to include Cyrix M2 result for the PR300 and PR333 rating processors. Here is a direct link to his benchmarks.


September 17, 1998

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 atLinuxHQ.

   

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See also: last week's Distributions page.

Distributions


Caldera

Joel Hammer reported a problem where LISA mounts a CDROM drive to /mnt instead of /mnt/cdrom, causing problems since the other mount points under /mnt are obscured. The problem was confirmed and is being officially reported.

Erik Ratcliffe posted a description of how Caldera boots, in response to a question by another user. The outline in his post is pretty nice, so if you are not already familiar with the Linux boot procedure, you may find this of interest.

Debian

Debian put out a pointer to this article on Virtual Network Computing, including both German and English versions of the article as well as information on Debian packages for VNC.

The German Magazine c't compared six Linux distributions in issue No. 19, which came out September 14th. The article is not yet available on-line, but Michael Below provided an English summary of how well Debian did. The article had some valid, specific criticisms to make, but did apparently end by describing Debian as a solid distribution for users well accustomed to Linux, offering a big choice of software and no license problems.

Mandrake

The Linux-Mandrake News for September 10, 1998 is in both French and English. It outlines plans for a "Linux-Mandrake Soho" version of Mandrake (Soho = Small Office/Home Office) which will be highly tailored and configured and will not be released until it can include the Linux 2.2 kernel. The news also reports that Linux-Mandrake has been ported to Sun Microsystems' hardware, though no details are included. Other bug fixes or upgrades planned for the next release are also mentioned.

S.u.S.E.

We mentioned last week that many people were reporting problems with the installation of S.u.S.E. 5.3, something that caused a great deal of concern, since S.u.S.E.'s reputation in general has been for having very high quality, well-tested releases. This week, we spoke to Scott McNeil, president of SuSE's North American group, about S.u.S.E.'s subsequent decision to stop shipments of the International version of 5.3.

Scott explained that, in addition to the sound problems we mentioned last week, there was a severe problem with the fdisk shipped with this version of S.u.S.E. which showed up only when S.u.S.E. was installed on a virgin disk (no partition table, no previous file systems) and then again, only with specific vendor hardware. They estimate that the problem affected only 3 percent of their customers, but this was enough to cause grave concern for S.u.S.E. We are anal-retentive. We sell lots of S.u.S.E. Linux to European business and they demand security and stability."

The problem with fdisk has been caught and fixed. New copies of disk 1 of the 5.3 installation disks have been pressed. These should be available either by the end of this week or by September 21st. Any customer who purchased 5.3 is entitled to the new updated disk 1. If you purchased a copy of S.u.S.E directly, you should have received an e-mail message about this. If you purchased through a reseller, either contact your reseller or fill out your registration card so that S.u.S.E. will know how to contact you.

Lenz Grimmer posted an easy fix which you might want to check out if you have a problem recompiling the kernel under S.u.S.E. 5.3.


September 17, 1998

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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See also: last week's Development page.

Development tools


Java

James Howe proposed that this week be Show Your Support Week, where people take a little time off from wrestling with the JDK to thank the Blackdown team and many others who provide the free service of porting the JDK. Many notes of thanks were posted to java-linux and we add our voices to theirs. Great job, guys, and we appreciate it!

Uncle George announced his JAVA JDK 1.1.6 for the Alpha platform. Unfortunately, Uncle George has been getting "nastygrams" from his ISP due to the traffic on his site, so an alternative is recommended, such as Paul Tomblin's site, Cornelius Creedon's site, or LSL.

Xsql-2.1.7, , developed on Linux with Blackdown's JDK 1.1.6v3, allows a user to connect to a relational database such as MySql, Sybase, and Oracle and submit SQL queries. It was announced this week.

JConfig 1.2, a commercial class library which supplements the core Java API, has been released. They promise some special deals for developers coming up next week.

Perl

comp.lang.perl.moderated (now fondly known as clpmod) is on-line and an FAQ describing the group, why it exists and what is an an appropriate posting is now available.

Python

A comment by Guido van Rossum this week indicated that Knowbots, the project currently being worked on by Guido and five others at CRNI, should see its first public alpha release soon, possibly as soon as this week. This posting by David Miron, gives a brief description of what Knowbots are.

Tcl/tk

The Tcl/Tk Consortium has introduced a new CD-ROM, containing "everything you need to get started with Tcl/tk". They call this Tcl Blast!`' - the Ultimate Tcl CD-ROM Resource.

Jultaf, called a "Jumble Library for Tcl and friends", is a collection of Tcl scripts and loadable extensions now released at alpha version 0.0.5.


September 17, 1998

   

 

Development projects


lm_sensors is a hardware monitor module that provides access to the hardware monitoring devices available on almost all newer mainboards. These sensors report the currently measured voltage levels, temperatures and fan rotation speeds, as well as some other things. Version 1.4.2 has just been announced, but development activity is very high and a newer version may already be available.

The DOSEMU team proudly announced DOSEMU 0.98.1, along with a reminder that this is ALPHA software. The new version promises a simpler configuration, better security, support for per user DOSEMU directories and more. They also announced their new home, which is sponsored by S.u.S.E.

Netscape/Mozilla

The Mozilla newsletter has thrown in the towel, tossing the job of keeping everyone current with the project to the Mozillazine. This site, with a format similar to slashdot.org, provides more than daily newsbits related to Netscape and Mozilla. They should be moving soon to a new home at http://www.mozillazine.org, but at press time for this edition, the new domain was still not available. Mozillazine looks to be excellent and we recommend you check it out.

A recent Netscape Press Release [thanks to Karl Smith for the URL], covered the Preview Release 2 of Netscape Communicator 4.5 and Netscape's plans to aggressively leverage the popularity of Netscape to bring Netscape Portal and other services to users. ZDNet also published a review of 4.5PR2.

And we must highly recommend this Dr. Dobbs' Telecast, featuring an interview with Tom Paquin and Lloyd Tabb, from mozilla.org. It is a fun, highly-technical, look at the actual Mozilla development process (pointer also from Mozillazine).

Here is the latest Mozilla FAQ.

The Jazilla group landed on the front page of www.javalobby.org. The paragraph gives a plug for Java developers interested in the project to lend a hand. We also hear that the Jazilla group was mentioned in a short blurb in this month's Component Strategies magazine. No on-line version is available as of yet.

When java.sun.com featured this interview with Giao Nguyen, the Jazilla group was extremely pleased. The article covers the Jazilla project in detail. This is a very pro-Java article, obviously, and Giao is a good spokesman for the project.

 
   

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Linux and business


Minoru Development Corporation has made a strong commitment, moving from proprietary to open source development. The announcement states that all future Minoru products will be made available under the GPL. We are particularly interested in the future of open source software in the health care market and are looking for opportunities to deploy open source software for health care providers, manage the release of internally developed software under open source licenses, and manage new open source projects in this field. No actual products are yet available but it will be interesting to watch Minoru's progress.

Red Hat has announceda partnership with the folks at Frozenriver to improve documentation for the GIMPand to work on Linux graphic design tools in general.

Paul Iadonisi sent in a note about improved support for the Rex PC Companion under Linux. For those of you that haven't checked out this fun toy yet, you might want to. Of course, the public release of 1.0 of the software isn't scheduled until September 21st, and schedules like that are known to slip, so don't count on using the Rex immediately ...

The German Language version of Star Office 5.0 is now out in a pre-final version. One rumoured ship date for the English version is October 15th.

Some questions were posted recently to one of the newsgroups about Linux-Canada, a Canadian firm selling Linux products which they had tried to contact without success. Linux-Canada provided this response, explaining the recent problems and giving some background on their company.

The folks at Amazon.com have put together a list of recommended Linux book, all of which, of course, they would be delighted to sell to you. See their Linux books page for more.

Novell and Caldera plan to tighten up their relationship, according to this news.com article. Among other things, that should mean a port of the new "Novell Directory Services" (NDS) to Linux.

Press Releases:


September 17, 1998

   

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

Linux in the news


Here is some of the best press we have seen in a while: Linux: The Back Door Is Open in ZDNN. The days of "Linux is hot, but poses no threat to Microsoft" are over. Even though it looks like we're heading into prime FUD: "Yet, the idea that Linux could become a serious alternative to Windows still seems absurd, a dream born of desperation. How could any responsible company think about putting an operating system with no unified marketing or support organization to work in 'mission-critical' situations?" But read on..."...Linux's rise to prominence could prove exquisitely timed: Get Linux onto servers; wait for a decent interface and better office applications to develop; then, move onto the desktop. All the while, keep emphasizing that support will come from the thousands of Linux developers -- all who understand its inner workings and who don't work for a single monolithic software company." This guy also has a clue as to what "free software" really means. The Must Read article of the week. (Found in Linux Reviews).

Moshe Vainer sent us a pointer to this PBS Online article which is also some of the most positive press we have seen in a long time. "But what scares Microsoft most of all about Linux is the defection of developers, which are beginning to make Linux a very popular platform for server applications." No support FUD here either: "...if you saw the story that flew around the 'Net recently comparing Microsoft tech support with the Psychic Friends Network, you'll realize that just because Microsoft has a big support operation doesn't mean you'll actually get a solution to your problem." Give this one a read.

On the other hand, "Stormbringer" sent us a link to this San Jose Mercury articleentitled "Linux Muxcles In", yes, spelled that way. This is a tremendously low-clue introductory article, and rather disdainful at best. "...I believe the operating system was developed to give old, retired UNIX devotees something to do..." The term "shareware" is much used in this article, followed by "Also, I've been told that Oracle Corp. is planning to release Oracle 8 for Linux, which could be another big blow to Microsoft's dominance." He has "been told"? One would think that a quick trip to Oracle's web site might not be a bad idea before sounding off. (Please, if you respond to this guy, do so in a polite and rational way).

Computerworld has a brief article about Oracle and Linux. "Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said it is possible that Linux will become the standard Unix for PC-based systems."

The Irish Times continues its Linux series with a description of the author's (somewhat difficult) experience installing OpenLinux on his machine.

Informix speaks up about why it chose to port to Linux and the promise they see for the future. Steve Lambright, from Informix, comments, We believe there will be a wave of Linux moving into the enterprise. Apparently feedback from their user group was the primary reason for going ahead with the port. All you Informix on Linux advocates can pat yourself on the back for your success.

This article in The Register brings a more critical view to the news that Dell has been selling Linux-installed machines. "More cynical observers are suggesting that in a few months, Dell will be able to say that it tried Linux, but too few people wanted it."

This Internet Week article talks about how simple, "good enough" standards tend to win out over complicated, centrally controlled ones. "And what about Microsoft? The tea leaves say its Windows- and COM-centric empire could eventually come crashing down. Perhaps the open source Linux operating system can be the next wild card to win by the Web rules."

"Intel Corp. is planning to offer support for Linux on Merced at the same time as it supports Windows NT, which will be as soon as the 64-bit chip becomes available in mid-1999, said an Intel spokesman Wednesday at a San Francisco panel on Linux." This quote, coming from this ZDNet article is the clearest indication yet from Intel that they want Linux on their new chip.

This short ZDNet article entitled "Linux Builds Momentum" covers some recent events without adding a whole lot. "[Intel manager] Saxena confirmed that Intel's own engineers are enthusiastic users of Linux". There is also a variant of the same article in PC Week.

Here is a rumor column in an Amiga magazine describing the author's discovery of Linux. "But now I see what all the fuss is about. Linux really is what it's cracked up to be - a sleek, fast, powerful, technologically sound OS that takes real advantage of PC hardware you'd never think of running Windows on. Unfortunately, it's also what it's cracked up to be - difficult to install, too complex for a casual user, and forget about user interface design." (Found in Linux Resources).

Infoworld's Laura Wonnacott gave building a kernel under Linux a try and reported back. This process is lengthy but fairly painless, so we thought we would share the steps involved. It is good to see this type of technical information being shared in one of the more prominent magazines.

A fairly straightforward article in PC Week talks about embedded databases and Linux as a good solution for medium-sized applications.

Didier Legein told us about this article in LAN Times. This one, like some mentioned in this week's newsletter, talks about the sort of feedback they have been getting from Linux users. "These letters ranged from those with a beer-addled 'Woohoo! Linux ROCKS!' approach to academic dissertations on technological history and the overall relevance of platform independence and freedom in general. But there was consistency in that they were nearly all positive, with very few that disagreed with our decision to run the article, or to its premise that Linux is, in fact, making waves in the corporate setting."

Alistair Gunn wrote in about this article in Unix & NT News. It's a lengthy introductory article with a few minor accuracy problems, but not too bad overall. "Many ISV's will be attracted to Linux because it provides them with a market in which they don't have to rely on Microsoft's goodwill."

An article in Computer Dealer News, Linux Gains High Profile, talks of the increasing interest in the system. The total message is mixed, but you can't beat something like this: "[Apropos] estimates that Linux will add US$250,000 to its bottom line, while saving its customers an equal amount in the next year." (Found in Linux Reviews).

The French La Tribune has a whole series of articles on free software ("logiciels libres"). French-capable readers will simply want to go to the La Tribune page that ties in all the articles. For the rest of you, here's a set of Babelfish pointers; click on "translate" once you get there.

Thanks to the NNL mailing listfor this one.

Susanne Schmidt and Juergen Quade wrote in with pointers to a couple of German-language articles. This one in Der Tagesspiegel is another introductory article, quite positive. And this in Die Zeit is mostly about Linus and free software. For non German-capable readeers who are willing to brave the Babelfish translation: Der Tagesspiegel and Die Zeit. (Click on "translate" when you get there).

"Linux is ready for the enterprise" according to this news.com article. It's mostly a summarization of recent events: Oracle, Dell, COMDEX, ...

Here's a column in Mac Opinion about the U.S. military, Windows NT, and what Apple has to do to be positioned to compete when NT fails. "The second lesson for Apple is that, whether they know it or not, they are in a Tech War with Solaris, Linux and perhaps HP-UX for a future, superior Unix product. When the U.S. military gets tired of failing with NT, someone needs to be there to pick up the pieces. Apple can't just throw MacOS X out there as a 'better client OS'. They have to think about the strategic implications of how their Unix OS will compete against Linux and Solaris if NT 5 stumbles."

Microsoft has dropped a couple of hints recently that they may open up parts of the source for NT. But this article in TechWeb makes what they have in mind a bit clearer. "Although some source code will be released, 'We are not going to be letting people make modifications to Windows NT at this point,' said Tanya van Dam, group product manager for NT Server at Microsoft." Look but don't touch...

There is a brief, introductory mention in the "Star-Telegram." "The good news is that Linux is far more stable than Windows and can be run even on older PCs." Just don't follow their strange download link...it does not lead to any place which actually has Linux.

Dave Whitinger's Linux news mailing lists received a very favorable review in TechSightings.


September 17, 1998

   

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See also: last week's Announcements page.

Announcements


Contests

The Official SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) Logo Contest was announced on the linart list this week. Information on the requirements is included in the announcement, but no mention of prizes! Ah well, apparently being a winner is the best prize ...

Projects

Olivier Mueller sent us an announcement for a new sub-project for the LDP (Linux Documentation Project), called the "Linux Internet Server Administration guide" (LISA). Here is the homepage for the project, which has a form for adding new ideas to the outline.

Events

Lenz Grimmer sent in a report on the "Offene Systeme" (Open Systems) Congress being held in Wiesbaden, Germany which mentions some of the offerings so far. The Congress was organized by the German Unix Users Group. He has even posted pictures of IBM's Netfinity running S.u.S.E. Linux.

Registration for the LiMe conference (Rome, October 7-9) has started; see the announcement for registration information and the conference program.

Web sites

The LinuxLinks site announced that it has been updated. In addition, they would like to expand their local content by reviewing all major Linux applications and are looking for people interested in writing capsule reviews.

DLD is a new Spanish Linux site with an index of many Linux-related pages. This is a volunteer site and additional helpers would be welcomed.

User Group News

A new user's group has formed in Alava, Spain. The name of the group is Grupo de Usuarios de Linux de Alava (GULA) and here is their official web page. [Editor's note: there may be a DNS problem accessing this site.]

Evelyn Mitchell posted a report on a recent Linux Installfest held in Fort Collins, CO to the Boulder Local User's Group mailing list.

On the same mailing list, we found a report by Wayde Allen on the last BLUG meeting.

The first meeting of the Linux User Group at the University of Delaware will be on September 24th and will include a presentation on Beowulf systems and projects by Dr. Robert Dalrymple and Chris Morrone.

The Boston Linux and Unix Installfest will be held Saturday, September 19th, and is specifically oriented for those who have been unsuccessful getting Linux installed on their machines.

Google was at the recent Bay Area LUG meeting. Well, we presume the authors of Google were there, though that's not what the announcement says ... sounds like a fun time, with a $10 Chinese dinner thrown in!


September 17, 1998

   

 

Software Announcements


Package Version Description
3dom snapshot 980910 A general purpose 3d object modeler.
AfterStep 1.5beta4 Window manager for the X/Windows environment with NeXT look and feel
Alien 6.17 Converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, andslackware tgz file formats
Amcl 0.4.1 A simple Mud CLient for X written in GTK libs.
APRIL 3.9 Agent Process Interaction Language
ascp 0.9.1 A Control Panel for the AfterStep window manager
AtDot 2.0.0 beta 1 Web based e-mail system
Backup Copy 1.09b Copy program designed to quickly and efficiently store data.
CDRDAO 1.0 Disk-At-Once Recording of Audio CD-Rs
Cool Notes 0.3.3 Gtk/Gdk based 'notes-program' like xmemos
Cryptonite 0.09 Pure Java Strong Encryption Package
curl 4.8.3 Tiny command line client for getting data from a URL
dennis 0.09alpha Automated DNS builder
DLDialog 0.7-8 Displays dialog boxes in terminal and X11 mode to interact with scripts
DNi 0.4 DNi is a IP Filtering Firewall script generator for dial-up users.
egcs snapshot 19980914 Experimental set of enhancements for the GNU tools
Eterm 0.8.6 An X11 VT102 emulator with Enlightenment features
ezbounce 0.70 A very configurable IRC Proxy
FFTW 2.0 The Fastest Fourier Transform in the West
fltk beta-19980910 C++ user interface toolkit for X and OpenGL
FxEngine 0.31 Fxengine is a 3d graphics library that uses the Glide API.
gIDE 0.0.7 gtk-based Integrated Development Environment for C
Gifsicle 1.4 Command-line tool for creating, editing, and optimizing GIFs and animations
GMem 0.1 A tool to monitor the memory usage of your system
GNU Privacy Guard 0.3.5 GPLed PGP replacement tool
GNU Robots 0.8 Robot construction game
GnuCash 1.1.17 A program to keep track of your finances
GnuJSP 0.9.2 A free Java Server Pages implementation
Goose 0.0.2 Statistical library.
Gpasman 0.9 Keeps track of all your passwords in a secure way
gsula 0.02.99c2 Programmable multiple-server IRC Client for X with Guile extension
Gtk-- 0.9.15 C++ interface for the popular GUI library gtk.
HCP 0.1 A protocol for every form of human communication over networks
hexedit 1.0.0 View and edit files in hexadecimal or in ASCII
ht://Dig 3.1.0b1 Complete world wide web indexing and searching system
HTTPGate 1.0 beta 3 A Filtering HTTP Gateway
InfoPrism 0.0.3 A General Document Processing System
JSBeautifier 1.0.6 Free, small and fast automatic indention for Java source files
JSFormatter 0.3.0 Free style-formatter for Java source files
Jultaf 0.0.5 Jumble Library for Tcl and Friends
KBiff 1.0.2 New mail notification utility for KDE
KLyX 0.9.8 A modern approach of writing documents with a computer
Kmp3te 0.7 MP3 tag editor
KNewMail 2.0 KDE application designed to check multiple pop3 servers for email.
KOffice 19980915 An integrated Office suite for KDE
KSirc snapshot 980914 Full features X11 IRC Client based on sirc
KuickShow 0.5 A fast, comfortable and easy-to-use image viewer/browser
LEAP RDBMS 1.2.2 A free Relational Database Management System
LinPopup 0.9.2 Linux port of Winpopup, running over Samba.
Linux joystick driver 1.2.10 Provides Linux support for joysticks
Linux Logo 2.10 Displays an ANSI or ASCII Linux penguin, along with some sytem information
Linux-Kontor Build 10 A free Commodities, Bookkeeping, Accountancy and Inventory Management software
Listar 0.110a Mailing list managementsoftware
lm_config 0.0.4 GUI to configure Alexander Larsson's lm78 kernel module
lm_sensors 1.4.2 LM78 and LM75 drivers
Loki 0.0.1 A webserver written in Java specializing in multiplayer games
McClone 0.1 MacOS source-compatible library
mgetty 1.1.18 Intelligent getty and fax support
minicom 1.82 Serial communication program
modutils 2.1.121 Linux module utilities
mod_ssl 2.0.9-1.3.1 Apache Interface to SSLeay
moodss 4.4 Modular Object Oriented Dynamic SpreadSheet
MpegTV Player 1.0.7.0 A realtime MPEG Video+Audio player
MpegTV SDK 1.0.7.0 Powerful Software Development Kit for real-time MPEG-1 Video
MSToNS 1.0 Convert Outlook Express/Internet E-Mail folders to Netscape folders
MSWordView 0.4.3 Microsoft Word 8 document viewer
mUH 2.0 Full-featured IRC bouncing tool
myODE 0.2b Online Database Editor for mySQL databases using PHP 3
Nevermind Who 0.0.1 GUI for rwho with face/image display for each login
News Peruser 3.30 An offline newsreader for Linux and X11
One Step Beyond 0.1 Simple Print Filter
PalmPython 0.5.4 PalmPilot interface library for Python
pavuk 0.9pl2 Webgrabber with an optional Xt or GTK GUI
PC/ET 0.1 PC Emulator
perlmoo 0.014 lambdamoo style moo written in perl
PRCS 1.2.9 Provides a way to deal with sets of files and directories as an entity
ProFTPD 1.1.7pre1 Advanced, incrediblyconfigurable and secure FTP daemon
Prometheus Truecolour (PTC) 2.0.8 A portable, lowlevel framebuffer access library with very fast on the fly conver
ptk-phone 1.0 Phonebook application in Perl/Tk
PySol 1.01 A Python-based Solitaire card game
Quake2 3.19a commercial 3D action game from the makers of Doom
Quick Image Viewer 0.7 A very small and pretty fast GDK/Imlibimage viewer
Replay 0.48 GTK-based MP3 player for X11
ripperX 0.9b A graphical interface to cdparanoia and 8hz-mp3
ROADS 2.00 A free Yahoo-like system written in Perl
rpm2html/rpmfind 0.99 Utilities to create HTML pages and solve dependancy problems of RPM packages
rsync 2.1.1 File transfer program to keep remote files into sync
Services 4.0.0 Provides nick/channel/memo services for IRC networks
Siag Office 3.0.4 Free office package for Unix
sidentd 0.3 Secure identd written in perl, allows per-user fake replys
ssystem 1.4 OpenGL Solar System Simulator
StarOffice 5.0 PreFinal Office Package from Star Division
The Board 0.1.1 BBS Software for Linux
tinyproxy 1.1 A small, lightweight, easy-to-configure HTTP proxy.
WindowMaker 0.19.3 X11 window manager with NEXTSTEP look and feel
Wine 980913 Emulator of the Windows 3.x and Win32 APIs.
wmapm 2.0 Small dock-app that shows continually-updated APMstatistics
wmlm78 0.14.0 WindowMaker utility to display system monitor information from a lm78 chip
wmsound 0.7.5 Sound server package for WindowMaker
wnmysqlauth 0.9.0 mySQL authentication module for the WN web server
WWWThreads 2.8 WWW based discussion forums
wxWindows/GTK 1.94 GTK port of the cross-platform wxWindows C++application framework class library
X-Chat 0.1.2 GTK+ Based IRC Client. Alot like AmIRC (Amiga).
XawTV 2.25 TV application and a few utilities
Xlogmaster 1.4.4 Tool to monitor logfiles and hardware status
Xmahjongg 3.0b4 Colorful X solitaire Mah Jongg game
XQF 0.8.6 QuakeWorld/Quake2 server browser and launcher for Linux/X11
Xsql 2.1.7 A Java based interactive SQL editor which uses Swing/JFC pluggable GUI
yarec 0.33 Console based sample recorder/player
 

Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat

   

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Linux links of the week


Want to build your own Beowulf cluster? The best instructions we have found are in the SCL Cluster Cookbook. From selecting your hardware through making it all work, you'll find it here.

Surprisingly enough, we have never gotten around to pointing out the Linux Laptop Home Page. Here is where you will find definitive information on getting Linux (and X) working on all those strange portables out there. Don't even think about buying a laptop without checking it out here.


September 17, 1998

   

 

Feedback and corrections


Well, we got several long letters from people this week. A couple of them would like to see the Linux Weekly News take more action in interacting with the mainstream press. Well, either us or someone else! They include letters from Rahul Dave and David Hamilton. We appreciate their faith in us. There are other Linux advocacy projects out there; perhaps now is the time to review how they are doing and see what can be done by all of us to help.

In addition, a couple of people copied us on their letters in response to various Linux articles, presumably to let us know that some well-written, mature views were being expressed. The letters include ones from Chao-Kuei Hung to Mr. Grote and Craig Goodrich to the LanTimes article, It's impossible to ignore joyand in response to the comment in the San Jose Mercury article (see the press section this week) that Linux was developed to give old, retired UNIX devotees something to do.

 
   
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