Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise
news for all interests
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page
Other stuff:
Recent features: Here is the permanent site for this page.
|
Leading itemsEric Raymond has updated his latest paper, The Magic Cauldron, adding an appendix to specifically address why closing the source for a device driver loses money for the vendor. "If you stay closed you will usually get the worst of all worlds -- your secrets will get exposed, you won't get free development help, and you won't have wasted your stupider competition's time on cloning." We actually think Eric has missed many of the best reasons why closing the source for a driver is economic bad judgement. Losing free development help is certainly one of the best reasons, which he does mention. However, he forgot to mention no longer having to pay your internal staff to rewrite, test and distribute new binaries for each new kernel as it comes out. In fact, open source drivers are a whole lot less likely to break with new kernel releases, partially because of Linus' well-known dislike of closed source drivers. The best reason, though, is because selling hardware is what makes money for you. If your drivers are hard to find, have to be updated frequently, or worst, run poorly, it reflects badly on your hardware and you will sell less of it. Fewer sales, less revenue. Period. Continuing our discussion of open source in vertical markets, Tim Cook from the FreePM project sent in an editorial to us, entitled "Open Source: Going Vertical. It sums up some of his thoughts and planning that went into the June 28th announcement of the FreePM project, concerning the promise of vertical open source software and some of the potential difficulties of managing such projects. "Many open source vertical market applications are actually started as either in-house or hobby projects. In these cases, one of the most difficult things to do is create the required emotional detachment." Comdex Canada is underway and Dan York has sent in a report from Day 1 of the event. "Packed in the back corner of the large North Hall of the Toronto Convention Center, the Linux Pavilion proved once again that Linux will draw a crowd. During much of the first day, the aisles were filled, almost all of the presentations in the Linux Theatre were standing-room only, and the questions were coming fast and furious." Expect pictures from the event tomorrow and compliments to the members of the Canadian Linux Users' Exchange (CLUE), the group that organized the Linux Pavilion. This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
|
July 15, 1999
|
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNewsThis year marked the first time that the annual DefCon hacker convention became a mainstream media focus instead of an obscure event ignored in more "professional" circles.. The number of articles produced in reaction to the conference were prodigious. Clearly the congressional testimony of several well-known hackers earlier this year changed the tone of the media, always in search of a story people will actually read. Here are a few of the articles:
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno testified against efforts to remove encryption export controls. Some comments and the full text of her testimony are available. Her concerns echo the standard concerns put forward by law enforcement professionals, but fail to understand that export controls are not actually limiting access to encryption. "The widespread use of encryption, however, will effectively eliminate these exceptions and prevent law enforcement, even with an order obtained from a court under procedures established by Congress, from obtaining information which may be critical to protecting public safety." Last week, we mentioned new legislation in Britain intended to give police and intelligence agencies more power, but implied that the legislation had already passed. Bruce Stephens pointed out that this is incorrect; the legislation has been proposed, but not passed. In fact, it is unlikely to pass in the current session. Here is a followup article which talks about why the Opposition Party is currently blocking the legislation. "Alan Duncan, Conservative Party IT spokesman, said on Thursday night his party would not agree to the legislation in its current form. It's "too long and too heavy for its purpose," he said, with 30 pages of complex text where there should be three." SecurityPortal has a nice overview article on internation encryption policies. "Most crypto friendly region in the world? Latin America". Security ReportsNetscape 4.6-0 does not correctly enforce "originating server" cookies when Javascript enabled, according to this note, posted to Bugtraq. This can cause a privacy violation when a user has chosen the setting "Only accept cookies originating from the same server as the page being viewed". In this case, third party ads not originating from the original HTML page should be automatically rejected, but instead are silently accepted. This can allow a third party to track your web movements through completely unrelated web sites. Netscape has not yet responded to this report.This report generated a couple of other postings, including this mention of a bug Netscape acknowledged, claimed was fixed in 4.51, but actually chose not to fix because of repercussions for Yahoo Mail. A patch to fix a problem with "Custom" memory configurations and the 2.0.37 kernel has been made available by Solar Designer. UpdatesNo security reports have been released by Caldera, Debian, Red Hat, Slackware or SuSE in the past week.EventsSANE 2000, the 2nd International SANE (System Administration and Networking) conference, has been announced. It will be held May 22nd through the 25th in Maastricht, The Netherlands.ToorCon, "San Diego, California's ONLY Comprehensive Computer Security Conference", has been announced. It will take place September 3rd-4th, 1999, in La Jolla, CA. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
July 15, 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 current development kernel version is 2.3.10. Pre-patches for 2.3.11 continue to fly around. The current stable kernel is 2.2.10. Meanwhile, Alan Cox's release of 2.2.10ac10 is believed to have fixed the file corruption problem. The fact that 2.2.11 still has not been released, though, is probably a measure of how confident they want to be that the problems are fixed, before they move on. For those that want to catch up on the messages related to file corruption with 2.2.9 and 2.2.10, all related articles (with hardware-related problems deleted) can be downloaded in a single file from this site. Resource management issues started annoying Linus, so he took some time out of his schedule to rewrite the resource management package (kernel/resource.c). "I got tired of the problems with the resource management - lack of hierarchy, and the stupid and utterly horrible static allocation. Instructions and patches for getting NFSv3 working on Linux are provided at this web-site, maintained by Michael Kaminsky. Michael also pointed out a couple of problems with the current NFS code. The source code for NwFs 1.4.5, the Netware Filesystem (FENRIS), is now available for download. Of course, to play with NwFs, you'll need to be able to create a Netware partition ... NWDISK is the tool needed, but it has not yet been released. Tomasz Motylewski released mbuff-0.5 for 2.2 and 2.0, announced in this note. Mbuff is a character device that implements the mmap method on any size of vmalloc'ed kernel memory. It is heavily dependent on the bttv.c driver, though, which Alan Cox pointed out was changed heavily in 2.3.10pre5 in order to support the Ultrasparc. Mbuff patch author Tomasz Motylewski commented that the new bttv does not work with the Intel architecture as a module, so he stuck with the older version to maintain portability.
Patches/Releases over the past week
Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
July 15, 1999
For other kernel news, see: |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsUsers of any RPM-based distribution might want to note that, with the release of RPM 2.5 and later, the -F option can be used to conditionally upgrade an rpm file, that is, install the upgrade only if the package is already installed, unlike the behavior of the -U option. This option is undocumented in 2.5, but documented in the latest release, 3.0. [Thanks to George Sexton] Back to new distributions, we promised a couple of weeks ago to give some brief descriptions of some of the distributions we added to our list but did not cover at the time. So here's a sprinkling for your pleasure this week! DLite, also known as Debian Lite for ISPs, is a mini-Linux distribution. Not floppy-based, DLite contains around 200 Debian packages to make up the core of an Internet-based server, such as might be used by an ISP. Eonova Linux is based on the "pkg" package manager, a variant of RPM. Pkg packages are the same format as rpm packages. It is intended to be a highly stable distribution, with a stated goal of "Lag-Behind" releases, estimated to be about six months behind the current Linux leading edge. Thus, Eonova 0.90, the current stable release, is based on 2.0.36 and libc5, while 0.92, currently in development, will be glibc-based and yet still run the 2.0.36 kernel. Eurielec Linux is a Spanish distribution, based on Red Hat, and maintained by a student club (the best, they say proudly) at he ETSI of Telecomunicaciones (UPM). Their current version is 3.0 and CDs are available. They created the distribution so that new students coming to the University would have an easy-to-install Linux system available for their use. To cut down on the costs of downloads, they included a wide variety of packages, so the distribution is now quite complete. The installation is in Castilian, as well as many of the programs and much of the documentation. DebianThe July 13th issue of the Debian Weekly News is out. Freeze and release plans are starting to be discussed. Given past history, that would pinpoint the actual release date in six to nine months. However, the intention is to release more frequently, so the opportunity exists to prove that estimate wrong. Other topics this month include the internationalization of the Debian init scripts, generating package diffs to reduce downloads and news from the Debian-JP project.A test install of Storm Linux was described by DWN Editor Joey Hess. Storm Linux is based on Debian. MandrakeInternationalization of Mandrake is an upcoming focus, mentioned by Gael Duval in this note. "We want to make Linux-Mandrake available in as many languages as possible, with as many keyboards flavors as possible..."Mandrake is the preferred version of Linux recommended by this article in Christian Computing Magazine. The Duke of URL reviews Linux Mandrake 6.0. Red HatNew packages released in the last week include updated NetKit-base and traceroute packages. These were updated due a problem on the Alpha, so installation of the updates on non-Alpha architectures is not required. For more information, check the Red Hat Errata.In addition, new rpm and rpm-devel packages have been released. These upgrade Red Hat's distribution from rpm-2.5 to rpm-3.0.2, which provides more functionality. Note that upgrading these packages will require that users of the rpmfind, rpm2html, gnorpm and kpackage will need to upgrade these packages as well, to ones that have been linked against rpm 3.0.X. For more information, check the Red Hat Errata. Last, the rdist package has actually been downgraded, not upgraded, from 6.1.5 to 6.1.0 due to a change in the license that prevents commercial distribution and use of rdist 6.1.5. SuSESuSE released version 6.1 of its Linux distribution for Alpha processors. This version uses kernel 2.2.9 and comes with glibc 2.1, XFree86 3.3.3.1, KDE 1.1.1, and GNOME 1.0, and other software packages.An English version of the announcement of the creation of the SuSE Linux Labs is now available. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
July 15, 1999
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
Lists of Distributions |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development tools"Due Diligence: Do it on your Linux box first", is the title of one section from Troubleshooting Magazine's July issue, which focuses on CGI. GuileVersion 0.2.0 of guile-fltk has been announced. "guile-fltk is a Guile binding to the C++ Fltk widget set. It is still a work in progress but it is already very useable and I have re-written many of Fltk's test suite applications in scheme." Comments are requested and additional information can be found at this site.JavaCreating an open-source presentation program is the goal of this new project, which plans to develop it in Java. They're early in the design stages, so now is the time to put in your two cents.The Known Bugs with the JDK 1.2_pre-release-v2 webpage was updated on July 9th. None of the other JDK 1.2 Status pages have been updated recently. PerlThe third edition of Perlmonth is now available. Eight new articles are included, ranging across topics from embperl, pod and perl sets, to Apache and XML.A mailing list for MIDI-perl has been created. For more information, send a note to midiperl-request@maths.ex.ac.uk . PythonA Python implementation of the SEMI Equipment Control Standard protocol for equipment used in semiconductor fabrication has been announced.Alfajor, a configurable cookie filter, was recently announced. gimp-python 0.4, a set of python modules for writing plug-ins for the Gimp, was announced. The new version now supports gimp 1.1 (as well as gimp 1.0). The third alpha release of PIDDLE (Plug-In Drawing, Does Little Else) is now available. The new version adds a unified testing framework as well as bug fixes. And our favorite "unusual" project, Stackless Python, is now up to version 0.3. SmalltalkRelease 2.3.11 of the POC (Portable Object Compiler) is now available. POC is an Objective-C preprocessor that translates Objective-C to C. The new version has Objective-C class names that correspond better to Smalltalk.Tcl/tkTcl-URL! is back! This week's edition covers several bug reports and some HOW-TO questions. Comments on Tcl/Tk 8.2 are due in by July 23rd, they remind.The TkGS project now has a mailing list. TkGS will define a new graphics subsystem for Tk with device-independence in mind. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
July 15, 1999 |
|
Development projectsWhy would a screensaver for Windows 95/98/NT be of interest to you? Maybe because it shows a nice collection of screenshots from Linux ... just the thing to introduce your friends, family and co-workers to Linux! This is from Marco Iannacone, best known as the author of the Italian Linux FAQ. No, there is no version of Front Page for Linux. Tight on time for publication last week, we mentioned that a file called fp40.linux.tar.Z was available for download from ftp.microsoft.com. However, we didn't have the opportunity to download and examine the file before we published. Many people have written in to verify that the file just contains the Front Page extensions for Linux that have been around for a while. Sorry for the confusion. FreePMThe FreePM project has moved its home page to http://www.freepm.org.GanymedeGanymede 0.99.4 has been released. "Ganymede is a GPL'ed network directory management system written in Java, providing support for team management of NIS, DNS, etc."GnomeThe Gnome Summary, July 4-11, is now available. Coding has begun for GScript, the GTK+ framework for Unicode text. Check here for information on the Gnome API documentation, in case you want to sign up to produce some yourself. Gnumeric now supports printing, one of the remaining major features that it was lacking. Most importantly, for anyone that missed it, http://developer.gnome.org is on-line with lots of documentation, white papers, etc.ht://DigGeoff Hutchison wrote in with some status on the ht://Dig project. He reports that major architectural changes of the version 3.2 development should be nearing completion in the next week or two. Database support for phrase searching and support for multiple transport protocols will be finished as of this week. He also reports that they're looking for people interested or knowledgeable helping out with Unicode/UTF-8 support. Anyone interested should e-mail the htdig3-dev@htdig.org developer's list.icecastIcecast 1.3, the "next-generation audio streaming server" has been announced. Multiple streams can now be supported from a single server, new administration tools have been added, and meta-data streaming, "a new, robust method for displaying information about a stream without corrupting or interfering with the actual music data" is now supported. It is mentioned that meta-data streaming is a new standard, just emerging, developed in cooperation with the makers of the Sonique, K-Jofol, FreeAmp, MacAmp and XMMS MP3 players.KDEThe July 8th issue of the KDE Development News from Navindra Umanee is now available. It seems in general KDE is within its schedule for the next release, though with some caveats in regard to the high-colour icons, which are not yet ready.Mozilla/NetscapeA few weeks back, we mentioned a news.com article which seemed to imply that Netscape's licensing future was unclear. From MozillaZine comes a clarification. Apparently the original article was a masterpiece of journalistic ineptitude. AOL, not Sun, has jurisdiction over Netscape still and has expressed complete support for Mozilla.MidgardA new major release of Midgard, version 1.1 (also dubbed "Iron River"), has been released. Midgard is a PHP-based, freely-available Web application development and publishing platform. The new release features enhanced URI mapping, PHP 3.0.11, and renamed functions to make Midgard "play" better with PHP.VirtuaLawVirtuaLaw is another open-source project in a vertical field, this one focusing on legal case management. Note that, although a Linux version is also planned (according to this page, VirtuaLaw was originally built with Microsoft Access and Visual Basic and therefore runs only on Microsoft systems (or under VMWare) for now.WineThe Wine Weekly News for July 13th is available.Quotes from Wine Headquarters webmaster Douglas Ridgway are featured in this article about a planned competitor to Windows NT (not Linux!). "'Microsoft has known about us for a long time, so surely they would've said something by now if they had a problem with our project,' said Douglas Ridgway, webmaster for Wine Headquarters". ZopeThe Zope Weekly News, July 15th edition, is now available. It mentions that another Zope alpha release is out and Zope 2.0 beta is getting close.Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh | |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessMore software goes open-source: Boulder Software Foundry announced that it is embracing the Open Source model of software distribution and will extend the capabilities of its Flashpoint Application Server Technology to the Open Source community. Flashpoint is currently available for Linux. Lamar Owen sent in a nice summary covering the July 9th announcement that AOL had released the source code for AOLserver under an open source license. The summary covers the development history of AOLserver, its functionality, and, of course, the license under which it has been released. "AOL ammended the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and called the result the AOLserver Public License (APL). One of the clauses states that derived works can be released either under the APL or under the GPL -- programmer's discretion." Linux in embedded systems and other small devices: Linux as a great prototyping tool for embedded-hardware designs is the subject of an article in the June issue of Electronic Design. "This article describes how MCG plans to use Linux as a proof-of-concept tool on our new high-availability (HA) CompactPCI-based systems. (HA systems are defined as systems that are running 99.999% of the time.)" The new Pia (Personal Internet Appliance) will be unveiled before a live national (USA) network television audience on Good Morning America, Thursday, July 15, 1999. Here's where you can find the press release about the EBIZ Enterprises' Linux-based PIA. Rebel.com is set to unveil the first server computer based on the diminutive NetWinder line the company acquired from Corel. NetWinder computers use Red Hat Linux and are based on Intel's StrongARM chip, lauded for being powerful without requiring a lot of electricity. The NetWinders themselves are 9.5 inches tall and 2 inches wide, though rack-mountable versions also are available. More support, service, and training: Penguin Computing, manufacturer of reliable Linux systems, announced that it will begin offering sales and technical support in Spanish, French, Japanese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Italian, Hebrew, Chiuchow, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Cambodian, German and Russian as well as English. Linux vendor Red Hat Software announced a partnership with training specialist Global Knowledge that is aimed at establishing Linux credentials for developers. The training will be available in 15 cities across the U.S. and Canada starting in September. Other stuff:
Borland has created a Linux developer survey, intended to help them shape future Borland Linux development tools. The survey will only cover Linux development. You can get more information, and find a link to the survey from here. Amiga chooses the Linux kernel for the core of their new Amiga Operating Environment (OE). Apparently the concept didn't fit too well with many in the Amiga community. Here's an example of the feedback. And here's Amiga's respnse. "I simply don't believe we can gain enough momentum without tapping into the Linux momentum. Linux will give us continuous access to new technology and components as they are released. " [Thanks to Robert Knop] IDC Japan's prediction of continued growth in market share for Linux was described by the Andover News Network. "On an estimated 2,200 machines in 1998, IDC predicts the Linux user-base will expand to 10,000 servers in the current year, 22,000 in 2000, 34,000 in 2001, 50,000 in 2002 and 65,000 in 2003. The predictions represent a compound annual growth rate over the next five years of 97 percent." Press Releases:
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
July 15, 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 picks:
From Federal Computer Week - Linux reviews:
From ISPs to SMPs:
and the rest:
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
July 15, 1999 |
Sections: Main page Linux in the news Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesLANshark Systems, Inc has announced their fall training class schedule.EventsThere will be a Linux Users Party during the "Fiestorro" in Benaguasil (Valencia/Spain), formerly : Benaguasil-P@rty. July 23 - 25. Click here to get more information.Volunteers wantedTriumph PC ONLINE is looking for volunteer writers for their webzine. |
July 15, 1999
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Software Announcements
|
Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 weekA security resource site that has been the source of good information we've used over the past year is Rootshell.com. It was surprising to review our links of the week for the past year and note that we had not yet mentioned them. Reviewing past Links of the Week has been amusing, to say the least. Checking out our editions from last March, no wonder that links were easier to find, when we were busy introducing Slashdot and FreshMeat. Both of these sites, of course, predate our first edition by several months, but we mentioned them for anyone who happened to run across our site before hearing about theirs. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
July 15, 1999 |
|
Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@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. | |
From: Mike Richardson <mike@quaking.demon.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: MS Buys RedHat Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 09:03:55 +0100 There has been some speculation that M$oft might buy up all the RedHat stock. It has been pointed out that this would not give them any useful control over RedHat, so presumably there is no immediate threat. But what if they could. Suppose that RedHat offered anough stock that M$oft could buy control, and suppose that M$oft forgot their "Linux is a viable competitor" arguments to the DOJ. What would they gain? I suggest that the answer is pretty well zero. IPR? Hardly, everything is available under the GPL, they can obtain it anyway if they want, just as I can. People? I think that you wouldn't be able to see for all the dust as the people who make RedHat distinct bolt. Income? RedHat sales would go down like a lead brick. I think we can ignore this one. Mike Richardson Series 1 Software England | ||
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 03:50:53 -0500 From: Tom Adelstein <tadelstein@earthlink.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Lotus Notes on Linux In your article you say: It seems Lotus will only come kicking and screaming into the fold after all...it ends with the comment, "What Lotus won't be doing, however, is bringing the Lotus Notes client or SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5 office suite to Linux... In a press release published at LinuxToday we stated (http://linuxpr.com/releases/124.html) "We're beginning to source some important breakthroughs for Linux. One of our consultants has a Lotus Notes client running on Linux and we'll post the how-to very soon. That's a milestone for moving the Linux desktop into the enterprise." Also, several references within IBM internal forums exist discussing Lotus Notes running on Linux desktops in production environments. What is IBM going to do, deport companies and their own personnel who want to run the Client on Linux? In our call center we're running Notes server on an OS/2 in a token ring environment with Linux clients. How about that! | ||
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 19:35:25 +0200 From: Bernhard Weiss <Bernhard.Weiss@KryptoKom.de> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: CORBA - IIOP/GIOP Hello dear reader, to expand our Linux based "High level firewall" we look for someone who is capable and interested to give a one or two day inhouse introduction on CORBA. The focus should be IIOP/GIOP and the implications in their use through firewalls in Intranet, Extranet and Internet. An additional topic might be interoperability between different implementations. The CORBA basics should be included, to help understanding the whole concept. The presentation language may be english or german and it should be given at our main location in Aachen/Germany. Financial terms are to be negotiated. Please refer to our homepage for informations about KryptoKom: Homepage in english http://www.kryptokom.de/english/index.html Homepage in german http://www.kryptokom.de/ Thanks and regards Bernhard Weiss -- Bernhard Weiss KryptoKom GmbH Technology Service Dennewartstr. 27 D-52068 Aachen bernhard.weiss@kryptokom.de http://www.kryptokom.de Office Marburg Central Office Aachen Phone: +49 (0)6424 / 964497 +49 (0)241 / 963 - 1380 FAX: +49 (0)6424 / 964495 +49 (0)241 / 963 - 1390 | ||
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:53:08 -0700 From: Anand Srivastava <anand@nmi.stpn.soft.net> To: tburgess@netcom.ca, letters@lwn.net Subject: Designing the Linux for the Masses Hi, If you look from the programmers point of view Linux fulfills all the seven criterias that you have outlined. But then the system is made by programmers for programmers. I guess if general users can't think the way programmers think they will have to live with Windows ;-). Why do programmers care. They are not making Linux for altruistic motives. They just want to have the best systems for themselves. We will and are getting GUIs but they will also fulfill those criterias only for programmers. Unless users take it upon themselves to write an operating system for themselves, or they can continue to use Windows and live with its stability (or rather the lack of it). Of course there will be a time when Linux will have GUIs for normal users too. Because programmers are making our GUIs very very configurable. It melds with their idea of choice in everything. They will also make it easier to make those configurations. That will be the time when some intelligent (we are not oriented towards normal users, they don't pay us, they don't make any additions, if they can't even use the interfaces made by us, so we can call them stupid, for our purposes, and as Scott Adams says everybody is an induhvidual in some field), normal users will be able to dumb down the GUI to normal users tastes. I don't know why anybody would like less freedom. But maybe normal users need chains around them to prevent them from poking around where they don't have any business. But this is what Orwell predicted. So maybe we are entering a time when they will need chains. But I would rather be free. My advice would be to have the freedom, but just don't go around messing with things that you don't understand. That is what freedom is, if you screw up you go to jail, rather being in jail from the beginning. I hope you won't lull yourself into thinking that programmers want to make Linux the best system for everybody. They care too much about themselves. If you want to do that start a company and hire designers and programmers to do that, of course you will be charging money for what you produce. We will see what eventually becomes more used the free stuff or the more dumb user friendly. I believe the masses don't want to spend money on GUIs, and they will take whatever is free. As long as their favourite browser, or app runs on it ;-). -anand | ||