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

Linux in the news

• Doctor Dobb's Journal has awarded its "Excellence in Programming Awards" to Guido van Rossum and Donald Becker. Guido, of course, is the creator of the Python programming language (used much internally here at LWN); Donald is the author of a great number of Linux networking device drivers. Congratulations to both, who deserve far more recognition than this. (Found in Slashdot).

• Switzerland's ComputerWorld has run an article (in German) about the use of Linux at CERN. The article suggests that CERN is highly enough respected that its use of Linux may be sufficient to cause the barriers to fall elsewhere in that "overcautious" country. An English translation is available via Babelfish, with the usual amusing results. On the Mindcraft report: "While the NT Testanlage an intensive Tuning experienced by Microsoft specialists, at the Linux version one did not screw." (Thanks to Germán Cancio).

• Forbes Magazine writes about VA Research. "Augustin and his six-year-old startup, VA Research, want to eat Dell and Sun for lunch. And he wants to do it soon."

• Evan Liebovitch writes in ZDNet about viruses and why Linux systems tend not to have problems with them. "...it's very safe to say that Linux is more immune to virii than Windows. People who've had their disks wiped out by Chernobyl or something else might consider taking the opportunity to load Linux instead. They may find it was just what the doctor ordered."

A few articles came out about specific products, usually Red Hat 6.0:

• The South China Morning Post ran an article about Corel's moves. "Corel believes Linux could pose a real threat to Microsoft's dominance of operating systems. The Canadian company is throwing attention - and resources - into this rebel OS."

• Here is a closer look at the Cobalt Qube in Web Review. The author seems to mostly wish for more documentation, and a better way to justify the purchase to his wife. "The Qube is meant for the masses-the small-office, small-school, small-is-beautiful crowd like myself. Yet it still requires knowledge of Unix, the Internet, and routing to do many of the basic administration tasks, even with such a nice interface."

• ZDNet covers the Red Hat 6.0 release and other associated vendor announcements. "Linux's well-documented momentum shows no signs of slowing; indeed, it appears to have entered a cyclical phase, where vendors announce support for the open source platform, which brings more large enterprise administrators to investigate the technology, which in turn attracts more vendor support."

• The (New Zealand) Press has an articleabout the Red Hat 6.0 release. It also talks about Linux-related businesses in Christchurch. "Linux advocates swear by the system's simplicity, technical purity, robustness, and speed. They also see it as their best opportunity in years to be freed from the shackles of Microsoft. Opponents say fanatics are being caught up in the excitement of a new technology. Strip away the hype, they say, and Linux (and its followers) still has a lot of growing-up to do before it can become a serious system for mainstream use."

• C|Net's Game Center ran a brief article about the release of the Quake III test demo for Linux. "Who would have thought that Linux would become the OS of choice for a Quake player?"

• Open Source IT reviews VMWare for Linux. "All things considered, VMware is an unbelievable product. When it was first announced, my colleagues debated whether such an application is even possible. With its near-native performance and excellent stability, VMware is indeed a must-have product for Linux users who occasionally need to use Windows."

Other business-related articles:

• Performance Computing's Unix Riot column talks about Dell and Linux. "Given Dell's worldwide presence and excellent brand recognition, it's possible the company will become the biggest UNIX and Linux systems distributor before the end of 2000."

• This lengthy Internet Week article talks about applications as the key to Linux's future success in the commercial world. "What's clear is that-technical merits aside-Linux is in the hands of application developers and IT managers, who must decide if the upstart OS is worth the risk. With such a strong price/performance case and business apps on the way, the question of what's next for Linux will be interesting for some time."

• Here's an article in the Ottawa Citizen. It's mainly about the Puffin Group, but goes into a lot of introductory material as well. "To some extent, the Linux community is uncomfortable with its newfound fame. The prospect of $50-billion corporations climbing aboard a bus that has been held together with chewing gum and string is prompting worries the new heavyweight passengers will nudge the whole thing off course."

• Here's a ComputerWorld story about Beowulf clusters in the oil industry. "Saddled with low oil prices and a need to cut costs, global oil giant Amerada Hess Corp. is saving millions of dollars by replacing a costly IBM supercomputer with high-end parallel clusters running Linux..."

• Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins has invested in LinuxCare, according to this News.com article. "We've made a strategic investment in Linuxcare because of its central position in the Linux market and clear focus on enabling the adoption of Linux in the enterprise."

• New Media News has a general piece about Linux, and about VA Research and LinuxCare in particular. A video clip is included. "VA Research's growth curve is stunning. Revenues increasing 45 percent every quarter and 1999 sales will be ten times what they were in 1998. And these people dream of someday taking on industry giants like Dell." (Found in NNL).

• Maury Wright, a journalist for EDN, a magazine for electronic design engineers and managers, wrote an article last year predicting that Linux would have no place within the future of electronic design. Response to his article drew out a list of people who disagreed with him, including electronic design engineers who were already using Linux, preferred Linux and would love to have tools for EDA on Linux. He's back this year with an extremely long article, describing his efforts to get Linux installed and give it a fuller review. His article contains new praise for Linux, "Strictly from an OS perspective, the possibility exists that Linux could replace both Unix and Windows NT on engineering desktops." However, he still strikes a note of caution about its future within the EDA community. "The companies are clearly reluctant to spend more money on a support infrastructure when most haven't recouped the money they've invested in NT."

• News.com reports on the VA Research/VA Linux acquisitions and reorganization. "VA acquired the companies chiefly for the personnel, Augustin said."

• Jumping on the Linux Bandwagon is the title of a positive article on Linux by Chrystie Terry . "The numbers indicate that Linux is most certainly gaining ground. Shipments of Linux for use on servers jumped an estimated 212 percent in 1998, the fastest growth for any operating system, according to International Data Corp." (Thanks to Benji Selano).

There were a couple of negative pieces out there (beyond those mentioned in the kernel section):

• Daemon News has run a harsh criticisim of the GNU General Public License. "It is my opinion that the General Public License is not so much about ``keeping free software free'' as it is about forcing us to accept the extreme Communistic political philosophy of Richard Stallman and others at the Free Software Foundation. The very spirit of the GPL is to attack the very concept of Capitalism and individualism." Please, if you respond to the author, do so in a polite and coherent manner. Flaming doesn't help... (Thanks to Joe Orton).

• Jesse Berst says that open source strategies could backfire, and uses Mozilla as an example. "Don't get me wrong. There's much to be gained from the open-source movement. Better products first and foremost. But using an open-source strategy to usurp Microsoft's powerful grip is a long shot. You put your company at risk if you assume this latest fad approach will work better than all the others."

There were also a few introductory pieces this week:

• Linux: your next OS? asks Internet Week. Pretty standard "Linux is up and coming" fare. "While the prospect of buying a relatively inexpensive Intel server and slapping a free operating system on it beats shelling out $10,000 for a proprietary Unix server, Linux still isn't ready to support critical applications."

• Here's an introductory article in the Christian Science Monitor. "If Hollywood ever made a movie about software, even the most gifted scriptwriter wouldn't dream up the real-world battle now taking place behind your computer screen."

• And here's a highly introductory article which appeared in the Computer Shopper. "...it's the commercial deals like those spearheaded by Red Hat that have done so much to elevate Linux's profile and make it a viable alternative to OSs like Windows NT. That may go against the free-spirited nature of Linux, but it does make a cool technology available to more people."

Linus's talk in Berkeley drew a couple of articles:

• Linus Torvalds gave a talk at the University of California Berkeley campus; it was coveredin the local student paper. "On Campus, Linus Torvalds Predicts Future of Artisan Couch Potatoes" (Thanks to Michael J. Miller).

• Here's a News.com story about remarks made by Linus at a conference in California. "Linux has been successful because it's the product of programmers looking for entertainment and society rather than money, Linux founder Linus Torvalds said today." (Thanks to Damon Poole).

And here's the rest of what we were able to come up with:

• The Dallas Morning News interviews Jon Hall. "Most people think Windows is easy to install because they've never installed it. Or if they have installed it, it has come with all the device drivers that exactly fit their system because somebody ... has gone through and actually made sure that it would work." (Found in NNL).

• ComputerWorld ran four letters to the editor (first, second, third, and fourth) about whether Linux "is here to stay."

• Bill Cory pointed out this column on Jerry Pournelle's site which contains a bunch of Linux commentary and hints from Moshe Bar.

  See also Linux in your family network by Mr. Bar in the May issue of Byte. It is a lengthy diary documenting the process of setting up a household network around a Linux server.

• The May issue of Troubleshooting Professional is dedicated to the "heros" that built the computing world we know now. A number of familiar names (Linus, Richard, Larry, Guido) appear in the list. "...next time time you're at your Linux User Group meeting, look around the room. That guy sitting next to you just might be the next hero. Or maybe the next hero is even closer. Think about that the next time you look in the mirror." (Thanks to Wari Wahab).

• Heise Online has put out a brief article (in German) about some performance testing done with SAP's R/3 under Linux. Performance was "comparable to another operating system supported by R/3." English translation available via Babelfish. (Thanks to Christian Ide).

• Several Linux articles appear in Digi.no, the Norwegian daily general news site (In Norwegian). (Thanks to Arno Mong Daastol).

• The Danish morning newspaper "Politiken" has a series of articles on Linux, including an interview with Linus, an installation review and more (in Danish). (Thanks to Esben Nielsen).

• ABC News picked up the Mindcraft story. There isn't a whole lot new here, except there are some details on Mindcraft's plans to re-run the benchmarks. From the comments, it looks like they've set up conditions so that they will be able to claim that "unimpeccable Linux experts" tuned the machine, but still produce similar results to the first benchmark. 'But Torvalds has his doubts that the second go-round will go any better. "I still don't think that another test will make this right," he says. "We helped them out, gave them a few more things to tune, but they wouldn't let us in the lab, and they wouldn't answer our follow-up questions. It became so opaque for us, there wasn't much we felt we could do."' (Thanks to Damon Poole).

Section Editor: Jon Corbet

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