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

Linux in the news


Out of this week's recommended reading, two of the articles are about the Mindcraft benchmark rerun. Both brought out interesting things about the Linux community and how it is perceived.
  • Salon Magazine reports on the Mindcraft benchmark rematch. "If there's one thing that the open-source programmers can definitely match Microsoft at, it's in their absolute certainty, at least in public, of their own unassailable rightness. No doubts, no hesitation -- the Linux programmers didn't appear to really care that the numbers that will result from the PCWeek Lab tests will probably show Windows NT in a positive light. That's the present, soon to be the past. The future is theirs."

  • The San Jose Mercury looks at the rerun of the Mindcraft benchmarks. "In fact, the Linux community's response to the original Mindcraft tests had already demonstrated, once again, one of the open-source movement's most valuable assets. When the tests pointed up a genuine flaw in Linux under certain operating circumstances, Linux programmers quickly came up with a fix that is now being tested -- and showed the remarkable speed with which improvements make it into the code."

  • The Red Herring says that Microsoft is in trouble. "In order to turn the Internet into one great Microsoft LAN, the company requires a share of the Internet server market similar to its share of LAN servers. Then Internet developers would write server applications that ran only on Windows, and Web developers would design sites that took advantage of specific features in Windows. But the success of Linux means that this will probably never happen. In Linux, the Internet has found an OS commensurate with its needs."

Linus Torvalds gave a talk in San Francisco that drew a few articles:

  • ZDNet caught Linus's talk to the Bay Area LUG. "Torvalds also predicted that the next version of the Linux kernel would be out by the fall, though he said the date could slip." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

  • InfoWorld has coverage of Linus Torvalds's BALUG talk. "Torvalds also said he plans shorter intervals between releases of the OS. The release date for Version 2.2, a predecessor to Version 2.4, slipped by a year as the growing popularity of Linux prompted developers to take more time to write code, Torvalds said. 'What happened was people became more careful, he said."

  • Inter@ctive Week also covered the talk. "[Torvalds] declined to predict when changes needed to get Linux more acceptable for the desktop and portable devices could be implemented. 'I'm a really poor planner,' he noted, saying some previous releases have come out as much as a year behind his own expectations."
There is still a trickle of IPO stories coming through:
  • Here's a VAR Business article on Red Hat's IPO. "VARs say Red Hat's IPO increases visibility of Linux and legitimizes the OS in the corporate world, but it won't result in more business. They hope Red Hat uses its new resources to lead the market by improving its software."

  • Here's an article about Red Hat's IPO filing in the (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer. "This passage speaks volumes about Red Hat's unusual burden as it prepares for its Wall Street debut in a couple of months: convincing investors that it has a strong business model based on impressive market share while assuring techies that it's not like 'some companies,' particularly one based in the Pacific Northwest."

  • US News and World Report covers Red Hat's IPO filing. "For most of the 1990s, competing head-on against Microsoft was a singularly stupid thing to do. Entrepreneurs who dared to try were treated like modern-day Don Quixotes begging funds for a windmill-demolition start-up. It wasn't just hard for them to find venture capital financing. It was practically impossible. Now comes Red Hat, a tiny company out of North Carolina with the temerity to put Microsoft and its Windows operating system smack in its cross hairs."

  • Inter@ctive Week looks at Linux-related IPO's. "...the former Pacific HiTech, renamed TurboLinux after its distribution of Linux, said it was keeping its options open as well. TurboLinux already is dominant in Japan, and its operations in Beijing now are up and running and distributed 110,000 copies of Linux in their first two months of operations..."

  • This ZD Net story speculates on the future of Linux IPOs. "Whatever the reasons, one thing is clear. Linux isn't just getting into big business. Linux is becoming big business."
We had just a little bit of negative press this week:
  • Here is an amusing editorial on osOpinion. "The bottom line is that Linux does not have the interface consistency to make it appealing to end users and it uses a software philosophy that makes it a very poor choice for developers. If Linux truly were a good choice for everyone, it would have been popular a long time ago." As always, please try to be polite and professional in any responses to the author.

  • Here's an anti-Linux article in Internet Week. "Linux is a college student's project gone astray. The version that will be supported by Sun Microsystems and IBM on its hardware will fall far short of each of these company's own Unix operating systems in features and capabilities. If you're responsible for operating system selection in your company, be wary of the Linux play." (As always, if you respond to this author, please do so in a polite and well-reasoned way).

Lots of business-related articles, as usual:

  • The Ottawa Citizen reports on Corel's Linux plans. "Although he admits the reality of Linux as a commonly found desktop is as far as four years away, [Corel CEO] Cowpland is confident the growth of the system will continue to accelerate."

  • Sun will be making its Java 2 server platform available to the Apache project under an open source license, according to this Wired News article. "Sun will be releasing the source code to Apache shortly, after the licensing issues are hashed out..."

  • ZDNet's Interactive Investor has an article about VA Linux Systems and the linux.com web site. "VA also announced that Linux.com...received more than 25 million hits and 5 million page views in its first month....The number one Linux.com visitor in the month of May was Microsoft Corporation, with over 15,800 hits in the first two weeks." They also note that VA has hired Jon "Maddog" Hall into its marketing group.

  • Computer Reseller News has an article about the SourceXchange. "Just as every consumer is a potential merchant at [online auction site] eBay, SourceXchange can turn every open-source-code developer into an enterprise software contractor."

  • IT Managers Shouldn't Be Afraid Of Linux says Internet Week. What the article really seems to be about, however, is Linux's firewalling capabilities. "Linux makes a great firewall, especially those boxes built around the new SuSE 6.0 Linux package. This version includes all the firewall tools available in any other Linux distribution, plus they added really useful firewall scripts. So even Linux-challenged network administrators can quickly learn to set up a robust firewall."

  • Inter@ctive Week covers the release of IBM's Java Development Kit for Linux. "The early release Virtual Machine for Linux is based on an outdated version of the Java Development Kit, release 1.1.6. After collecting feedback from developers, IBM plans to release an updated version of the VM for Linux based on JDK 1.2, now popularly known as Java 2."

  • Fortune Magazine has decided that VA Linux Systems is cool. "Last December the company had 17 employees; now it has 132 and has outgrown its office space in Sunnyvale. VA won't disclose its revenues, but Augustin says that sales are doubling every quarter and that he wants to be selling more than $1 billion annually in less than five years." (Found in Slashdot).

  • News.com discovers Compaq's Itsy. "...Linux's presence in the teeny Itsy computer can be seen as a proof point for the Unix-like software. Linux may not be as good as operating systems designed from the ground up to run handheld devices, but does provide a workable alternative--royalty free." (Thanks to Damon Poole).

  • Linux's existential moment in ZDNet looks at when and how corporate CIO types will look at adopting Linux for desktop use. Not quite yet, apparently. "But most IT managers aren't ready to act just yet. The time is not yet right to convert most corporate desktop environments from Windows to Linux. But in due course, the time will come--if the correct events occur."

  • News.com reports on Wyse and its new Linux-based thin client computer. "The product uses a version of Linux based on the Slackware version of the Unix-like operating system..." (Thanks to Neal Richter).

  • For our Swedish-capabile readers: an article in Elektronik i Norden about how the company Axis is using Linux in their server systems. (Thanks to Erik Johansson).

There were just a couple of introductory pieces this week:

  • Here's an introductory article in Computer Telephony. It is not one of the more accurate ones we have seen recently. "Support aside, Linux has other problems that it must surmount if it is to come anywhere near playing a truly leading role as an alternative OS. For starters, it needs to get itself a GUI. Current versions of Linux rely solely on line code, making it somewhat inelegant as a front end - except it seems in Asia, where Linux as a front end has been adopted with gusto." (Thanks to Edmund Grimley Evans).

  • There is a series of articles (in French) in Le Monde Informatique, including an introductory piece and a several-part interview with Linus Torvalds. English text available via Babelfish. (Found in NNL).

And here's the rest of what we came up with:

  • Read about Jon "Maddog" Hall's travels in his July column in Performance Computing. "CeBIT cannot be imagined, only experienced. Huge buildings placed on a fairground, along with the support services (infirmary, laundry, flower shops, post office, banks) needed to support thousands of vendors and hundreds of thousands of attendees.... The booths at CeBIT range from the small pod to the super-large, two-story power booths of companies such as Kodak, Samsung, and others. There is a three-year waiting list for vendors to get space at CeBIT."

  • Eric Raymond is giving a talk at Microsoft on June 21, according to this TechWeb article. "Raymond said he had no idea what Microsoft is hoping to get out of the talk. 'I wish I knew,' Raymond said. He added that he does not think Microsoft has any big open source plans in the near future, despite hints the company has made in the past few months."

  • Justin Maurer interviews Miguel de Icaza, Nat Friedman, and Matt Loper of the GNOME project on Linux.com. "So Microsoft has a number of good ideas that we can build on.... The Internet Explorer web browser, for example, is a paragon of the component model. When you use IE, what you're actually using is about 70 tiny little COM components working together. No matter how ecumenical you are about free software, you can't deny this is a good idea; it makes debugging easier and makes the code more reusable. So there's no reason we shouldn't use this technique in GNOME. And that is our plan with Bonobo."

  • The San Jose Mercury's Dan Gillmor writes about the proposed new software licensing law. "About the only good result I can imagine from this proposal, should it become law, is that it could boost open-source software, a genre in which the programming instructions are available publicly and can be modified by the user. Thumb-screw restrictions on commercial products inevitably would make open source a much more attractive option for businesses and, ultimately, consumers."

  • Apparently the Brazilian magazine Veja has published a brief note claiming that the Brazilian Science and Technology Ministry will be funding a "technology center" to work on Linux development. Many details, including where the center will be, how big it will be, or just what it will work on, are missing. The note (in Portuguese) may be found on the Linux in Brazil site; unfortunately Babelfish chokes on this one. (Thanks to Augusto C. Campos).

  • Wired News goes to Usenix and reports on the state of open source software. "At an annual advanced-computing summit this week in Monterey, California, academics, hackers, geeks, and network administrators shared their growing ardor for collaborative coding, Apple, and basically anything not Microsoft."

  • C|Net has put up a the decade in computing article. It's a typical top-ten list; Linux comes in at number 5. "Although proprietary software may never go away, we're willing to bet that in five years companies will no longer charge for operating systems. And for that we can thank Linux." (Thanks to Benji Selano).

  • Concerns about "profane" comments in the Linux kernel source are not new - see, for example, the October 15, 1998 LWN (scroll to the bottom). This time, though, the discussion warranted an article in Wired News. "Torvalds warned against sanitizing Linux code. He said profane lines only become a problem when they begin to hog too much memory."

Section Editor: Jon Corbet


June 17, 1999

 

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