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See also: last week's Linux in the news page.
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This week's recommended reading:
- Here's an
article in the National Post about a new attempt to encourage
competition in the operating system market. "The Canada Europe
Round Table, launched yesterday, wants governments to take the lead
in using operating systems such as Linux instead of Microsoft's
proprietary Windows. The group of 28 companies -- which includes
Bombardier Inc., Nortel Networks Corp., Corel Corp.,
DaimlerChrysler AG and Ericsson AG of Sweden -- suggests
'competitive systems' such as Linux should be endorsed at the next
round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks." (Thanks to
Richard Lamothe).
- The Economist covers
Linux IPOs in one of the best articles on the subject (even if
it is titled "Venture Communism").
"Hackers are naturally suspicious of business. Accusing Red Hat
of trying to make its version of the program a standard, some Linux
buffs are already scolding the firm for behaving 'like Microsoft'-a
hackers' curse. To discourage such attacks, VA Linux Systems' board
includes Eric Raymond, who is the unofficial spokesman of the
open-source movement. He saved the company some embarrassment by
vetoing the name 'Linux.com'..."
-
According to Information Week, Tivoli Systems is not only considering
supporting Linux, they are thinking about making it the only
platform for part of their "Enterprise" product line.
"Enterprise consists of three tiers: endpoints, gateways, and
management servers. Tivoli is considering packaging the gateways,
which do the job of collating data from agents at the endpoints, as
Linux-based systems management appliances."
- Jesse Berst declares
Windows 2000 to be a failure. "Those environments that
demand high reliability and high availability -- financial
applications, big Web sites and so on -- must still turn to Sun,
Linux and other Unix variants, or even to mainframes." (Thanks
to Marc Davis).
- Bob Metcalfe predicts the death of Linux in
this insultingly disdainful InfoWorld column. "The Open Sores
Movement asks us to ignore three decades of innovation. It's just a
notch above Luddism. At least they're not bombing Redmond. Not yet
anyway."
Linus in the News:
- PC World
interviews Linus Torvalds. "There's never really been a road
map. In
the sense that the Linux user base has been changing fairly
rapidly, making a five-year plan just would not work."
-
Linux Expected To Steal Show At Lotus DevCon '99 says Computer
Reseller News. "A special guest appearance by Linus Torvalds at
Lotus Development Corp.'s Developer's Conference'99 in San
Francisco next week marks an about face in the vendor's platform
support strategy."
- TechWeb has yet
another article about Linus's BALUG talk. "Torvalds said
that he will continue to be heavily involved in Linux for at least
eight and a half more years, making reference to the fact that he
created Linux eight and a half years ago."
Microsoft:
- News.com
reports on Eric Raymond's upcoming talk at Microsoft. "Windows NT,
the industrial-strength operating system for corporate networks,
can't handle heavy, constant computing loads without crashing
because of poor design, Raymond said. A fundamental flaw is that
Microsoft keeps its computer source code closed to outside
developers, unlike Linux, which is openly available."
- Dave Winer has
some advice for Microsoft. "Find out what developers want to do
with Linux, then provide tools that make that easy. Create bridges
from Microsoft desktop apps to servers running on Linux. Invest in
WINE so Windows developers have a clear path to Linux without
creating new source code bases. I can hear Bill Gates now saying
'Never!' But until he embraces the Internet, in its latest
incarnation (Linux), without trying to own it, he'll keep
losing."
- Wired News
discusses the new version of Kaffe. "Microsoft is now indirectly
supporting open-source software, and for a very interesting reason:
Java. Redmond has taken the unusual step of funding an open-source
software company that is writing Java code similar to that which
landed the company in court with Sun."
- Here's
an introductory piece in SunWorld. "As for Microsoft ...
It appears that you're just going to have to coexist with
Linux and the open source developers. Forecasts show that even
though it has been making inroads, Linux is still not anywhere near
ready to put you out of business." (Thanks to Cesar
A. K. Grossmann).
Business news:
and finally:
- Salon Magazine has put up a page with
all of their Linux-related stories. It's a good overview of
what their coverage has been over the last year or so.
- PC Week has
an article about the Mindcraft benchmark rematch, which is being
held in the PC Week labs. The article gives the impression that
the tests are being substantially changed to address some of the
complaints from the Linux side. "One of the modifications was
to reduce the number of processors used in the test server from
four to one, which will show how these operating systems operate on
lower-end hardware. For this test, we also reduced the server's
memory from 1GB to 256MB."
-
Passer a Linux is a lengthy series of articles (in French) in Vnu|Net
France that starts with the advantages of Linux, passes through
choosing distributions and installation, and even gets into a bit
of system management. English text is available
via Babelfish. (Found in NNL).
- Here's
a set of letters to the editor in the San Francisco Chronicle;
they are in response to an "installation difficulties" story that
they ran. "...I will admit that Linux is still not really ready
for the beginner to install. But then, if you look at any other OS
(even Windows), there's nothing on a PC platform that is."
(Thanks to Michael Wittman).
- The Fort Worth Star Telegram asks:
is Linux right for you? The result is an introductory article of
sorts. "Yet OS/2 is all but gone from general consumer
computing, proof that something better doesn't necessarily mean
marketing success. So why should Linux fare any better than an
OS/2? It's not even owned by a big-name company . . . And that may
prove to be its salvation."
- PC World has run a
long, detailed article on the Red Hat installation process.
"...if you arrive at a question you can't answer, press
Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot, load Windows, hunt for the information
you need in Device Manager or on the Web, and then start the
installation process all over again."
-
This article in the (Louisville, KY) Courier-Journal is a
combination introductory and "installation nightmare" piece.
"Taking my business card and handing me a CD-ROM of his
company's -- Caldera -- Linux package, the fellow smiled and said,
'I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.' He was half-right. I
was indeed surprised . . . that I didn't take a sledgehammer to my
computer after squandering two days trying to get the
point-and-click Windows-like desktop to show up on my monitor."
(Thanks to Chris Short).
- Here's a
confusing article about open source politics in Internet Week.
"The most recent suggestion is to create something like a 'GNU
Inside' logo to be issued with every Linux (or other Unix variant
operating system) that makes use of GNU software. I don't mean to
belittle the issue, but I can't imagine it could seriously
undermine Linux's momentum if the GNU name was left out (sorry,
Richard)."
Section Editor: Jon Corbet
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June 24, 1999
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