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Leading itemsThe pre-2.2 kernel series has begun with five pre-releases having been done as of press time. For details on the almost-2.2 kernels please see the kernel section. But a couple of things warrant mention here:
Version 1.0 of our 1998 Linux timeline is available, here is the permanent site for this page. Many thanks go to the numerous people who sent in suggestions for this page; it is much improved as a result. This page has also been translated into French by Roland Trique and Gael Duval; it is available via both linux-center.com and linux-france.com. We got queries as to whether we plan to compile similar timelines for previous years. Alone, it is unlikely that we ever will. The amount of time required is great, and we would not have the benefit of a year's worth of the Linux Weekly News to draw on. To build such a timeline would have to be a community project. Which leads to an obvious question: does the Linux community need some sort of ongoing history project? The end result of such a project would probably not be a simple HTML timeline, but a proper database well populated with historical information from many sources. It could be a great resource for people interested in how all this came together. It could also be a motivating factor for developers; proper credit matters a lot to many free software writers, and a well-developed history database could help to ensure that credit remains where it is due. Some of the pieces are already in place. Consider, for example, the Linux kernel history project recently put together by Riley Williams. He has created a very nice timeline - with downloadable tarballs - of almost every Linux kernel ever released. We have created a mailing list - history@lwn.net - for discussion of a possible Linux History Project. The purpose of the list is to determine whether there is interest in such a project, and to begin to define its scope and structure. If you have an interest, please subscribe by sending a blank message to: history-subscribe@lwn.net Speaking of history, Eric Raymond has invented some history of his own with the release of Halloween IV. Read it, and be glad we don't live in such difficult times....right? A couple of interesting attempts to influence government: the Minnesota Public Digital Network is trying to ensure high-speed Internet access (and access to government) for all Minnesota citizens. Their goals include "Establish a cost reduction plan that will result in the elimination of spending on non-free software." Ambitious. Check out the MPDN web sitefor more. Also, the petition to the U. S. Government asking them to consider use of open source software continues to rack up signatures and attention. The organizers have put out a press releaseregarding this petition and its progress. |
January 7, 1999
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityPeter W wrote in to point out that he posted a wrapper script to the Bugtraq list that assigns the $TMPDIR environment value to a subdirectory of the user's home directory (and creates it, if necessary) in order to run Word Perfect 8 in a safer manner. Sendmail 8.9.2 has been announced. This new version fixes a potential Denial-of-Service attack for Linux systems as well as including several other minor fixes. Expect to see new sendmail packages from your favorite Linux distributor soon. Pete Gonzalez posted a note asking questions about SRP, the Secure Remote Password Protocol protocol developed at Stanford. He got a lot of responses and followed up with a summary. More information on SRP can be found in the SRP documentation. References to additional articles on SRP and other encryption techniques can be found at this site, which summarizes SRP as "a variation of password-authenticated Diffie-Hellman." Michal Zalewski reported a security flaw in pam_unix_passwd.so in the pam-0.64-2 release. For more details, see his posting. He provides a command to quickly test whether or not you are vulnerable. If you installed pam by hand, following the instructions, you are likely to be. Andrey V. Savochkin followed the report up quickly with a patch. Note that the patch, as posted, had not yet been widely tested, though no reports of problems with the patch have cropped up. Red Hat has put out updated RPMs to fix this problem. On the browser front, Oliver Lineham has created a web site with a working demonstration and analysis of a security flaw in the implementation of cookies which affects most browsers. In addition, the grandson of the Cuartango Hole, impacting Microsoft WebBrowser Active X objects. The note from Juan Carlos Cuartango indicates that Microsoft has issued a "Frame Spoof Fix" to correct this. HD Moore announced the availability of nlog 1.1b, a set of Perl scripts that can be used to analyze nmap 2.0+ log files. This version fixes a couple of security holes that were pointed out after the release of 1.1. Speaking of nmap, version 2.02 has been released. Jason Ackley reported a potential problem with Oracle8 on Linux and NT. No confirmation or denial of the problem has been seen so far. Sami Lehtinen reported an ssh2 security problem to comp.security.ssh (pointer is to the same article forwarded to Bugtraq). The bug in ssh2 allows a user to request remote forwarding from privileged ports without being root. Credit for finding the problem goes to Niko Tyni. The patch to fix the problem is available here. A bug report and a fix for random.c was posted to Bugtraq by Andrea Arcangeli. The patch is against Linux 2.1.132. Aleph One posted a Happy New Year from Bugtraq message to the Bugtraq mailing list. In it, he mentions that the Bugtraq list has grown to more than 26,000 and credits the Brown University Netspace Project for supporting this important list. For those of you unfamiliar with Bugtraq, it is a moderated list addressing security issues, with a long list of highly talented people who read and post to it. Archives of Bugtraq are available; our favorite is on geek-girl.com. The latest issue of the Phrack magazine is available. This note lists a variety of locations where the magazine can be "harvested". Soon after the publication of Phrack54, Silvio Cesare provided a URL to a page containing a couple of articles on UNIX ELF Parasites and Virus and Runtime Kernel KMEM Patching, which he stated were excluded from Phrack54. Be forewarned; a large chunk of unrelated material is prepended to each article, the reason for the exclusion of the articles from Phrack. If you don't mind wading through that, the articles may be of interest to you. |
January 7, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe 2.2 prerelease series has begun; as of this writing, the current version is 2.2pre5. Your editor, typing on a 2.2pre4 system, is quite content with the results. This kernel is clearly getting closer to release quality. A snapshot of the things remaining to be fixed can be seen on Alan Cox's 2.2 jobs list, but it tends to run behind at times (Alan is busy, fortunately, doing real work!). Testing of 2.2 has brought out a few surprises thus far, including:
One other area of pre-2.2 activity is in tuning the virtual memory system for better performance, especially in tight memory situations. Andrea Arcangeli has been rapidly putting out patches, one of which, hopefully, will get folded in before 2.2 comes out. (Your editor is running arca-vm-8, the latest patch as of press time, with no ill effect, though the performance gains are hard to quantify). The Linux Kernel Archive Mirror System is now active; see the announcement for more. The system seems to be working quite well, providing generally faster access for kernel downloads than going straight to ftp.kernel.org. The one complaint that has been raised is that not all of the mirrors have both the '.gz' and '.bz' kernel images. If that is truly a big problem for you, pick a server name like: ftp.gz.us.kernel.org, orThe first case connects to an FTP server in the U.S. which is known to carry '.gz' files. The second goes to a WWW server in the U.K. that has '.bz' files. Kudos are due to H. Peter Anvin and all of the maintainers of the mirror sites for having set up a highly effective mirror system. Please make a point of using it when you grab your kernels. The fourth 2.0.37 prepatch is available with lots of new updates; see the announcement for details. The Linux-MM (memory management) page has moved. Update your bookmarks to the new site when you get a chance. A new version of the international kernel patch is out, so that you can now add cryptographic capabilities to your 2.2pre kernel. See the announcement for details. |
January 7, 1999
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. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsDebianA security alert for netstd in Debian has been posted. If you have netstd installed, they recommend picking up a newer version of the package.Joey Hess has issued the first edition of the Debian Weekly News. The latest edition of the Debian Weekly News will be made available always at this URL. Joey has done an excellent job of summarizing activity on the Debian lists this week, as this editor can verify, having scanned through all of them before finding his work. Look for yourself to hear about the primary topics on the lists this week. He noted the increased presence of Richard Stallman on the debian-groups, plans for a Debian presence at various upcoming Linux conferences and the reaction to a suggestion that the slink release be skipped all together, since it has taken so long to come out that many packages are now obsolete. On that last topic, it appears that slink is very close to being ready for release, with approximately 50 release-critical bugs left. Hopefully a push will be made to get it out soon, even if that means removing some of the packages if their release-critical bugs cannot be resolved. IndependenceProject Independence has announcedthe first release (version 5.2-0.1) of their distribution. Independence has as its goal the creation of a distribution aimed at home users; thus ease of use and applications are high on their list of priorities. This distribution is based on Red Hat's, with additions such as KDE, some ease-of-use wrappers around PPP, and "software for everyday life." (Found in NNL).Update: evidently, despite the presence of an announcement on the net, this release has not yet been made, and will not be for about another week. LinuxPPCThe LinuxPPC folks have put up a new LinuxPPC 5.0 betawhich includes the pre-2.2 kernel.This Techweb article talks about the reception LinuxPPC received at MacWorld. The response at the show has been enthusiastic, said Jason Haas, Web and marketing director for the company. MkLinuxA new MkLinux kernel ("GENERIC-06") has been released; it's based on 2.0.36 and has a bunch of new good stuff. See the MkLinux kernel pagefor more. (Thanks to Roberto Murer).Red HatAvailable new updates for Red Hat include New Boot Images, a fix for the pam problem mentioned in our Security Section and an update to the 2.0.36 kernel that contains updated drivers (including one for the Adaptec 7xxx cards and the 3Com905B ethernet card).Our December 24 issue reported that Red Hat was no longer slipping updates silently onto new CD pressings, with the result that all 5.2 CD's are the same. Some folks at Red Hat took exception, however, to our statement that as a result it is no longer possible to get CD's with the updates included. In fact, for $499 per year, one can join the RHMember More program and get updated CD's in the mail every six weeks. Since updated CD's are offered "exclusively" to participants in this program, they remain unavailable to most users of Red Hat's distribution. Still, the current situation is better than what came before. SlackwareThe slackware-current changelog indicates that a small number of changes were made on January 5th, 1999, including the removal of the now-obsolete /etc/ttys file, the removal of '.' from the default paths (a result of a long series of discussions on the Bugtraq archive) and a change to /etc/securetty to restrict root logins to the console.Please note that slackware-current is an unstable snapshot of Slackware, provided to allow developers to retrieve and test new versions of packages. Once stable, the packages are then merged into the current stable release. S.u.S.E.The German SuSE Linux page notes that their 6.0 release is already "Ausverkauft" - sold out. It will become available again on January 20. While frustrating for SuSE's customers, it can only be good for the company to have been so surprised by their sales. The page also notes that the international version of 6.0 will come out at the end of the month. (Babelfish translation here). (Thanks to Morten Welinder). |
January 7, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed. |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development toolsJavaA review of the "Java Language Reference", by Mark Grand has been written by Rob Slade. While agreeing that the book might have shortcomings for those inexperienced in object-oriented programming, he finishes by commenting, For the serious programmer, an essential tool.PerlO'Reilly has announced the release, at last, of "Perl in a Nutshell", by Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan.Rob Slade has posted his review of the book "Learning Perl", by Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen. There are some good reports, but also some specific criticisms, particularly directed at the lack of examples of "quick and dirty" perl scripts, something for which the language is well reputed.
PythonMike Orr appears to have been the editor for this week's Python-URL!. He comments that it has been a quiet week. He goes on, though, to provide pointers to a couple of new updated python packages, including PyMat 1.0 and pyslang 0.1.0. There are also pointers to some useful websites and to some humorous postings that improved this editor's mood.SmalltalkTravis Griggs dropped us a note in December with some pointers to some interesting Smalltalk-related items, including The Land of Smapplets which he promises is totally cool, as well as Kai Boellert's work on Aspect Oriented Programming in Smalltalk, available here, and John Brant and Dan Roberts latest version of their Refactoring Browser. Many thanks, Travis, for the excellent pointers.Tcl/tk
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January 7, 1999 |
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Development projectsBarry Kwok wrote to let us know that many Chinese Linux fans in Taiwan and Hong Kong are working to localize Linux in Chinese and to provide a pointer to one project he recommends highly, the Chinese Linux Extension (CLE). An English version of the site has also been started as well. GNOMEMiguel de Icaza announced version 0.99.1 of GNOME on December 31st. Elliot Lee has provided some 0.99.1 rpms.The above announcement was followed by announcements of 0.99.1 versions of gnome-admin, gnome-games, gnome-media, gnome-objc, gnome-utils, and LibGTop. Since then, althought a full 0.99.2 release has not been announced, 0.99.2 versions of several packages have appeared, including the GNOME core, gnome-libs, and LibGTop and Gtop. New versions of the Gnumeric spreadsheet, the Midnight Commander file manager and the gwp word processor have all been announced. All of them include some new features and a variety of bug fixes. A new version of gnome-ppp fixes the mysterious segfaults. A web site has been set up to support gtk/GNOME development; you can find it at http://gdev.net. GGIThe GGI project has resurfaced with a new libGGI release. GGI, of course, is trying to produce a better graphics subsystem. The libGGI release, the first in some time, brings the library up to version 2.0 beta1. This is an entirely user space library, no kernel patches needed.GhostscriptGhostscript 5.10 has finally been released under the GPL; here is the announcement for this release. The next GPL release will be 5.50, due out in September, 1999. (Those interested in free software politics may want to check out this note from Richard Stallman which mentions the ghostscript announcement. Evidently he called up the gnu.announce moderator to complain, since the announcement makes mention of the less-free version, a no-no).Mozilla/NetscapeAndy Tripp reports that he has made the ICEBrowserLite renderer available in Jazilla and gives details on how to get around the fact that the Jazilla broke as a result.Andy Noble wrote up a little history on his process of doing a complete, and successful, install of jazilla, finding one bug in the process. He's extremely happy with the result. For more news on the Mozilla front, remember to check out the latest MozillaZine. Postfix/Secure MailerIBM's alphaworks issued a press release announcing an update for Secure Mailer (also known as postfix) which repairs a directory permission mistake and "several other defects". It is interesting to hear about open source software updates in this type of forum ... as you might expect, real hard facts tend to be missing.From following postings to Bugtraq, it is clear that Wietse Venema reconsidered his design and will no longer be using a world-writable directory. Check the Bugtraq archives or the postfix mailing lists if you are interested in the details. WineAdam the Jazz Guy posted a note warning that as of January 3rd, compiles of Wine will not work for people running old versions of ncurses. From the note, it appears to be a temporary problem. | |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessAlta Technology has announced a new line of rack-mounted Linux cluster systems, built with either Intel or Alpha chips. Their announcement has details and some pictures. These systems feature a small footprint, scalability up to "thousands" of nodes, and a gigabit ethernet interconnect option. Now if only we could get one of those to build kernels on... SSC is now announcing the availability of "The Artists' Guide to the GIMP", by Michael J. Hammel. See their news page for some info and a cover photo. Hammel knows his stuff; check out his web site for examples of his GIMP work. This book should be eagerly awaited by many. Computer Literacy Bookstore says the book is not in stock, but, according to this LinuxToday storythe books have been shipped to them. Thus they should be hitting mailboxes shortly. Lest anybody think Microsoft is failing to take full advantage of the existence of Linux in its antitrust trial strategy: here is a press release from them trashing the testimony of Tuesday's witness: Professor Franklin M. Fisher, who evidently defended IBM in a similar action almost twenty years ago. "Not since Judge Robert Bork, who abandoned his long-held views on antitrust when hired last year by Netscape, has the world of antitrust law and economics seen a more dramatic ideological reversal. Professor Fisher's testimony would give readers of his 1983 book whiplash. Professor Fisher's economic theories also conflict with the realities of America's competitive and dynamic software industry. He makes much of the fact that there are numerous applications available for Microsoft Windows, alleging that this is a barrier to market entry -- a claim that is at odds with real- world events such as the remarkable rise of Linux." Linux is mentioned a couple of other times as well. As a postscript, see this PC Week article where Microsoft sneeringly claims to have proved that Prof. Fisher doesn't know what Linux is... WebCMO has published the results of their survey on the demographics of Linux users. These results can be seen on their web site. We're an awfully masculine crowd... StarOffice Wars? Here is a lengthy document on a (mostly) unsuccessful attempt to refit an Australian office with Linux and StarOffice. The "VirSim" VeriLog debugging environment will be supported under Linux, according to this EE Times article. The dearth of electronic design tools for Linux is finally beginning to fade. IBMackey posted an unofficial Word Perfect 8 Install FAQ. It has received very favorable comments and some suggestions for improvement. It is definitely something to check out before you start your Wordperfect install. Press Releases:
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January 7, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsHere's this week's recommended reading:
Once again, the press this week was dominated by articles of the "retrospectives and predictions" variety. Here's a selection:
We had the usual assortment of introductory articles:
Business-oriented articles:
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January 7, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page.
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AnnouncementsResourcesJim Severino has put up a "Linux for MCSE types" document on his web site. It's an introductory piece aimed at folks with the mindset of that other operating system.For those of you wondering what to do with those CD's you have lying around with old versions of Linux, this is a reminder that you can register to give them away via the Free Unix Give-away List. Donations of CDs, literature and even hardware are welcome. The first edition of the ARLAN 2Mbit/sec Wireless HOWTO has been published, the authors are looking for comments. Have a look and let them know what you think. Richard Stallman has put out a call for folks with good writing skills to help out with the documentation of GNU packages. See his note if you think you may be able to help out. The FSF has put out a new noticeabout the Wassenaar agreement and its effect on free crypto software. Even though the agreement seems not to apply to free software, they think that continuing to make preparations is a prudent move. (Thanks to J.H.M. Dassen). A new Linux publication ("Linux User") is starting up in the UK, with the first issue coming out on March 1. They are looking for participants in this project, writers, editors, etc. See the announcement for details and a mailing list you can subscribe to. Rob Slade has provided a review of "The Indispensable PC Hardware Book", by Hans-Peter Messmer. The author insists that even beginners could read this book--and he has every right to do so. If you are interested in the hardware at this level, the explanations are clear and well sequenced. He also reviewed "TCP/IP Network Administration", by Craig Hunt. This one can only be described as glowing. In spite of the nature of the topic, Hunt has done a superlative job in ensuring that the content is not only clear, but readable as well. EventsThe SANS Institute is sponsoring an interview with Stephen Northcutt, chair of the National Intrusion Detection & Response conferences, which will cover the topic of `Emerging Patterns in Intrusion Detection'.Linux Expo is looking for speakers for their business track, see their announcement for more. If you can talk for an hour on some sort of interesting Linux business topic, drop them an abstract by February 26. Linux Expo has also extended its call for papers - interested authors now have until January 14 to get an abstract in, and March 1 for those giving a talk without a published paper. See the revised call for papersfor details. Web sitesThe Corporate Desktop Linuxproject is "a new open initiative to make Linux the premier choice for the enterprise desktop." They are, not surprisingly, looking for help. Check them out and consider giving them a hand. After all, what do you want to be working with in your cubicle? Linux Archives is a new site with a simple goal: "...to have all software ever released for general download." It's heavy with advertisements, but may develop into something useful. User Group NewsRik van Riel sent us a note about the European University Linux User Groups project, which is designed to bring together user groups from Universities all over Europe into a wider community. There is a web page and a set of mailing lists; see Rik's note for the details. The UCLA Linux Users Group, in Los Angeles, California has recently been formed. The general public is welcome; it is not restricted to students. Their web page provides more details, which mentions that they will be providing classes on a variety of subjects, including "UNIX basics, the vi text editor, Emacs, HTML, PHP, CGI, Perl, and Tcl/Tk, perhaps even Qt and/or GTK+." |
January 7, 1999
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Software AnnouncementsLast week's software announcements were made available via the daily updates page, but, since the weekly newsletter did not publish, may not have been seen by all. Those who missed them may check them out here.
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Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat
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Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekIf you haven't seen it already, check out the new design of FreshMeat. The new arrangement is far more readable and easy to deal with; a definite improvement. (For some coverage of the furor that erupted when the new site was unveiled, check out this LinuxToday article). Another Linux news and articles site is Matts's House. Matt recently sent us a note stating that he is looking for folks to contribute articles for his site. Have a look at the site, and help out if you like. |
January 7, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to editor@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. | |
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 09:29:13 -0500 (EST) From: Zack Brown <zbrown@lynx.neu.edu> To: editor@lwn.net, will@localhost Subject: Free Commercial software? Not quite yet, thanks. Amid all the whooping for joy about the various commercial programs being ported to linux, people seem to have forgotten about one of the basic flaws in most commercial software, including WordPerfect: their essential unfriendliness to other programs. Ever cat a WordPerfect file to the screen? Pretty messy. They didn't have to do it that way. It was done specifically to tie users to their particular piece of software by making it difficult to use other programs with that data. Most commercial software venders do this. That's also why they keep changing their data formats. IMHO, this completely goes against the purpose of having a powerful system in which pipes and whatnot can transform data in arbitrary ways. It limits productivity to the small set of functions that the WP (and other proprietary) venders think is important to include in the binary itself. This is one of the reasons Microsoft systems are so much less useful than linux systems: because they all desperately want to lock each other out, each vender must duplicate the code of each other vender in order to get the same functionality, with the result that much less software can fit on the harddrive. This very real, very ugly nightmare is about to come to Linux, full steam ahead. And while we may all be cheering now, we may not be so happy a year from now when our sleek, powerful linux systems have grown top-heavy with 30- and 40-megabyte packages that really don't give anything back to the system they live on. Drag-n-drop will only make it easier to invoke these huge beasts. The beasts themselves will remain virtual black-boxes in terms of automated usability and advancing functionality. While things like TeX may not be everybody's wet dream, TeX does at least understand the need to put (or allow) real power in the hands of the user: The power to transform data in arbitrary ways. Now I'm not saying everyone should run out and learn TeX. That system has its own problems and limitations. But people should keep in mind that up until now Linux has remained a fully integrated system, with everything talking to everything else. Why should office and productivity suites be above all that? Why should the linux community allow linux to become just a cheaper and more stable version of Windows 98? In the coming months, let's learn to put open file formats and scripted automation on a par with open source. The gimp is a good example of something that does these things already. Let's let the commercial venders know that if they want to run on linux, they have to let linux run on them. Zack Brown | ||
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 13:28:03 -0500 (EST) From: Peter Teuben <teuben@astro.umd.edu> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: GNU struggling? In your significant development list of the year "The bazaar approach shows its viability for large projects": I didn't like your wording that GNU has been struggling along for 10 years in comparison with the sudden hype about the bazaar approach and open source. GNU has been a major major force in the bazaar's success, as Eric and most of us will probably agree with. If GNU had failed, the bazaar approach would have never happened, I believe. The reason the bazaar approach is suddenly working is conditions are just right. Good overall internet acccess, good websites to serve educating the people (remember open source has been around as long as GNU, there is nothing new there, just a new name in a slightly upgraded jacket) with a lot of computer users outside just academia. Going back 15 years when I saw "open-source" work for the first time on uucp and newsgroup one can understand why growth was so slow. All what we see is a natural outcome of this whole growth process. I don't disagree with your final conclusion, but it takes a lot of work and utilities to get the KDE and GNOME developers to even start! So to just push GNU in the struggling camp, is understatement in the least. Peter Teuben | ||
From: Barry.Randall@minnesotamutual.com To: "editor(a)lwn.net" <editor@lwn.net> Subject: FUD Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 09:58:27 -0600 Dear Linux Daily News I'm a dedicated reader, and I appreciate your work in assembling all the Linux info. It sure makes my life easier. One suggestion: please stop referring to any criticism of Linux as "FUD." You seem to do this reflexively, which makes you look bad. It's ironic too: many people (including myself) see Linux as being more robust because it is continually subject to the "peer review" of many independent programmers. Yet you seem unable to tolerate any viewpoint but your own, which makes you seem pretty thin-skinned. It's a healthy attitude to believe that a) Linux is imperfect; and b) constructive criticism is part of the process of making it less so. Of course there is FUD in the world, but counter it with thoughtful rebuttals instead of teenager-ish defensiveness, and you will take the higher road. Good luck, and thanks again for your work. Sincerely, Barry Randall Equity Technology Analyst Advantus Capital Management St. Paul barry.randall@minnesotamutual.com | ||
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 15:16:59 -0800 From: Jason Tuomy <tuomy@glyphix.com> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Linux Win! I would like to report that we have successfully installed/configured/tested Oracle8 on RedHat Linux 5.2. ODBC from MS is working and the Oracle8 Client for NT sees it and works perfectly. It is now our database server, immediately replacing our Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. It was not hard at all making the decision to move. We will be using a third party tool on NT to port all of our databases from SQL Server to Oracle8. Our prelimenary tests show that connecting to Oracle is already faster than SQL Server. We are already in the process of moving our file serving from NT to Linux. We have a mix variety of workstations; Linux/Mac/Windows. Linux has already proven to work as a file server using Netatalk and Samba. And is very stable. I would like to let you know and hope this is encouragement for other Linux Enterprise pioneers. | ||