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Linux in the newsLots of Linux press this week. Of course, now there's lots of Linux press every week. Sometime when you have some time, consider wandering into the archives and seeing what the press section looked like last winter. What a year.
Oracle OpenWorld coverageLinus led a panel at Oracle's OpenWorld conference, and a certain amount of coverage came out of that. Oracle made no exciting announcements, but did express strong support for Linux there.C|Net covers the Linux panel. "'What Oracle wants to do with Linux is help it dominate the world,' said Oracle's Miner." (Found in Slashdot). InfoWorld ran a lengthy article about the panel. But critics -- not least among them large software vendors such as Microsoft -- portray the freeware community as a semi-organized rabble of hobbyists, and question whether such a group can be trusted to act as caretakers for software used to run mission-critical applications.(Found in LinuxToday). ZDNet UK devotes some space to the call that went out for Sun to open-source Java. Quoting Oracle's Kevin Walsh: "Linux is in many ways a reaction to Java. Open source is a different development model then what Sun has been pursuing, but it still merits consideration." (Found in Linux Reviews). LinuxWorld ran an article of their own. "Linux's days as upstart younger brother to the old guard commercial Unixes are over."
General and introductory articlesAn interesting mix this week.Jesse Berst thinks that Intel is scheming to overthrow Microsoft through its support of systems like Linux. Dave Winer talks about the way forward for Linux. "Windows pretty much defines the market for customers who want things to work out of the box. If Linux wants this market, then it must do a better job of working out of the box." Brief mention: Pundits wrestle with the future in PC World asks some folks where they think things will go. "Moritz and Dyson assert that the Linux operating system could prove to be one of the most important innovations of all as 'hordes of programmers' work to develop applications for the so-called open source operating system, which is more accessible than Microsoft Windows since its source code is freely available. 'Open source turns your customers into your developers,' says Dyson. 'It's a fundamental change.'" That's Esther Dyson, of course, along with Michael Moritz. (Found in OS News). FUD of the week? Here's a good one in Network World Fusion. Rather than interpret this article as true FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), one should probably see it as an attempt to look at the detractor's point of view. NW Fusion has been pretty supportive of Linux in the past. Nonetheless... "...the skeptics believe that only fools rush in to a bet-your-business relationship with an operating system that is still primarily controlled and supported by its user community - no matter how skilled and committed that community is - instead of going with a brand-name vendor with a proven track record." Exactly whose track record are we concerned with here? (Thanks to Marty Leisner). There is also a forum area associated with this article. Note that NW Fusion requires registration. Robert Graziani sent us a pointer to this CNN article. It's of the basic introductory variety. "...expect to hear more about Linux, an OS that's gaining in popularity for several reasons that have at least one competitor on guard. It rarely crashes, it's not owned by anyone -- and it's free." Sm@rt Reseller takes an ever more serious look at Linux as a business opportunity. In The Linux Preachers they look at resellers going with Linux and emphasizing services. "'I don't worry about margins,' says Paul A. Franz, owner of PAF Consulting Engineers, which targets the Linux market. In consulting, 'every dollar I bill is 100-percent margin.'" Then, in Money for Nothing? they look at the costs and benefits of maintaining Linux expertise. "...an informal salary survey conducted by Sm@rt Reseller found that Linux techies are paid similarly to other Unix professionals." Will Linux be center stage in Las Vegas? asks PC World, referring to next week's Comdex. The bulk of the article is actually about BeOS. (Found in OS News). Red Hat's Bob Young continues to become more of a media figure. Here's his appearances for this week:
This article appeared in the (NT-centric) ENT Magazine. It's a surprisingly positive piece about open source, but they just had to end it this way: "The religious fanaticism of Linux proponents may not be as effective as the billions of dollars Microsoft is investing in developing NT." (Thanks to Marty Leisner). Forbes has a lengthy article entitled Bill doesn't live here any more. It motivates the use of Linux, then goes through the install in a fair amount of detail. "Running WINE on a Linux box is a contradiction. Linux makes the most of your hardware and runs extremely well on hardware with little horsepower. Trying to get Windows to run on the hardware that Linux typically runs on is like pushing an elephant through keyhole." Paul Griffith was the first of many folks to clue us into this one. As a side bar to the above Forbes article: Linux + recycled 486PC = NC talks about what you can do with an old machine under Linux. "Nothing special has to be done to an application for it to serve multiple users--it's just the Linux way." Also in Forbes: this article on thin servers. "These machines run thin web server software that needs less processing power, smaller hard drives and less memory. The software is based either on freeware programs like Linux..." Internet Week covers the Jay Jacobs Linux deployment. "Analysts who have watched the nascent Linux market agree that the price of the open-source OS, which is available for free on the Internet or for $50 from packagers such as Caldera Inc. and Red Hat Software Inc., is probably less important to Linux's success than it would seem at first blush." Also in Internet Week: an interview with Michael Dell. "We get some interest from customers and we do custom integration for Linux, as well as Solaris and OS/2 and SCO and Banyan. It seems to be a highly vocal group of users but not necessarily very large." Computer Technology Review ran this article about NT 5.0, Unix, UDI, and, yes, Linux. "The popularity of Linus Torvalds' version of Unix seems to have exploded over the past year and next year promises to be the breakout year for the OS." (Thanks to Marty Leisner). ABC News discusses how to set up Linux on a dual-boot system. A good operating system is hard to find in High Technology Careers is a fairly standard introductory article. "As more people learn about and fall in love with Linux, the number of users will grow exponentially. Far from appealing only to hacker elitists, Linux truly offers a uniquely egalitarian platform." (Thanks to Eric Rahn Nolen). This ComputerWorld articletalks about the coming availability of Netscape's servers on Linux. Here's another article in C|Net, this one about the return of linux.org. "Michael McLagan, who operates the site, said today that he and his Internet service provider, US Net, have resolved their contractual differences, and that the site went back up Thursday evening." Sm@rt Reseller discovers John Kirch's Unix vs. NT site. (Thanks to Paolo Sedrez). Here's a Wired News article about the Mexican Scholar Net program. Unix: full speed ahead in PC Magazine discusses the fact that Unix appears to be on the rebound. "So why isn't the increased deployment of Unix on the part of large corporations a given? ... it doesn't help that the most popular version of Unix of late, Linux, is free and doesn't come with technical support--a necessity for any corporation concerned about getting quick access to technical problems." Most of us have no trouble "getting quick access" to problems...it's the solution that can be hard... Clipping the Penguin's Wings in Web Review continues the discussion of what Microsoft could do about Linux. "Clipping a bird's wings is a way to keep it from flying. But while you can clip a penguin's wings, to do so would be an exercise in futility." Craig Goodrich and "Benji" both pointed us to this column in Intraware SubscribNews. "If Linux is to ever threaten Microsoft in a larger mainstream commercial sense, then it will have to become, well, mainstream and commercial. Corporations will look for higher levels of support, which cost money, and will drive up the selling price." PC Plus Magazine has published a review of Word Perfect 8. They seem to like it. Here is an interesting MSNBC article by an author who went out and bought one of those cheap Alpha-based systems that we mentioned in this week's newsletter. "Speedwise, Linux runs much faster than NT on this machine with the same 64MB of memory." Linux operating system drawing rave reviews is an introductory article in the Edmonton Journal. "After all, unless your next-door neighbour is a information technology guru, he or she isn't likely to be running Linux on a home computer. And Tux, the penguin, isn't dancing on television to catch your attention. As well, the kids aren't lobbying for a Linux machine under the tree next Christmas because of all the neat games." Non-English pressHere is an introductory piece (in Portuguese) that is, evidently, tied into a TV segment about Linux that was run in Brazil. There are some serious accuracy problems in this one, but it's a positive thing anyway. (Babelfish translation available here). (Thanks to Augusto Campos). The folks at MultiMédium have launched another one of those "try to work for a while using only Linux" experiments. Here is the page (in French) describing the experiment, and leading to articles on their experience so far and to a forum area. Non French-capable folks can make use of the Babelfish translation. (Found in NNL). Here's an article (in French) in Le Monde Informatique about how the French National Science Research Center (CNRS) has gotten Dell to sell them computers without an operating system preinstalled. (Babelfish translation available here). (Found in NNL). Jean-Louis Gassée discusses ancient Microsoft and Apple history in this Liberation column (in French). He talks about a (hypothetical) open-source Windows as "the Linux of the year 2000". Rick Moen was nice enough to send us a translation of this column. Halloween articlesThere were, of course, an awful lot of articles having to do with the Halloween leaks. Anybody who reads them all is nuts. This is the voice of experience speaking...
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November 12, 1998
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