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

Linux in the news

Here's a ZDNet article about Andover.net's IPO filing. "The famous open-source site is going public, via parent Andover.net's IPO. Will CmdrTaco be able to handle the fame and fortune?"

Salon Magazine looks at Andover.net's IPO. "...Andover.net is now styling itself the "the leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet." This is quick work for a network of Web sites that did not include any sites devoted solely to Linux or open-source software until the purchase of Slashdot last June."

Evan Liebovitch explains why Sun's purchase of StarDivision is bad news in this ZDNet column. "I don't believe Sun wants to help the Linux community at all, except to help fend off Windows while Solaris makes its move to eclipse both Windows and Linux."

Corel:

Here's a Reuters article about Corel's third-quarter results (they actually made money) and the corresponding increase in their share price. "Corel has attracted significant market interest with development of software and services for Linux, an open source operating system that is seen as a contender to Microsoft's Windows NT. Corel said it will launch a new easy-to-use version of the operating system in beta form on Tuesday, with a final version expected ready for November."

See also Corel's press release regarding their financial results.

Reuters looks at Corel's stock price. "Fueled by surprisingly strong results and advances in the red-hot Linux sector, shares in software developer Corel Corp. roared higher on Tuesday, but analysts were asking how long the rally could last."

From Motley Fool: "Still, exactly how companies are going to turn Linux into bottom-line profits is a pretty speculative issue -- particularly in Corel's case as the company is counting on desktop acceptance of the system in a space dominated by Rule Maker Microsoft. As such, investors serious about finding a jewel in Corel should watch its core software operations closely."

PC Plus looks at Corel Linux. "With Linux distributions as thick on the ground as penguins on an iceberg, you'd be forgiven for shrugging off the latest entry: But what we saw impressed us." (Found in Linux Net News).

The Ottawa Citizen covers the Corel flap. "While stock markets sent Corel Corp. to new heights this week, another influential group was giving the company the raspberry."

Here's a LinuxWorld article by Nicholas Petreley about the Corel beta test furor. "From our point of view, we are doing the best that we can to balance the needs of the Corel company and the open source community. We have responsibilities to our customers, to provide the best products that we can; to our shareholders, to provide the best value; and we have a responsibility to the open source community, to return our code when it is ready. And we want them to understand that we are not trying to co-opt this stuff and make it proprietary."

From Wired News comes this article. "Developers may also have misunderstood some of the language in the agreement, [Corel communications manager Judith] O'Brien said. The clause in question was designed to prevent the distribution of Corel's proprietary code, which had been added to the already available Linux code."

Multimedium ran this article (in French) about the Corel beta test blowup. Text in something resembling English is also available via Babelfish. "The webillard Slashdot, always dedicated to the cause of the software with source code opened, exposed the pot to the pinks." (Found in NNL).

ZDNet ran an article about the furor over Corel's licensing terms for their Linux beta test. "As Corel is discovering, making the jump from traditional commercial software practices and licenses to an open source model is harder to make then they might have thought. It's a lesson all companies moving to open source would be wise to heed."

Found on LinuxWorld:

Here's an an interview with Marc Ewing by Nicholas Petreley. "We are working on high-availability clustering technologies. Not Beowulf stuff, the kind you see running Web server farms, FTP server farms. We are still working on the failover technology and balancing technology, and you'll see that in an upcoming release."

See also: this look at the GPL by Stig Hackvan, and an article in getting sendmail to scale by Derek Balling.

Reviews and Technical Articles:

LinuxPlanet looks at different Linux install methods, including network installs and direct disk copying. "As Linux moves mainstream, though, another modus operandi will become more common. This is similar machines operating together on a LAN or other network. The users of such machines will be customizing their user interfaces, but the real work of setting them up will become a task for computer professionals. Linux has the tools already in place for installing quickly and efficiently on such clusters and this article is aimed at system administrators and other IT professionals who will need to install Linux distributions en masse." (Thanks to James Andrews).

osOpinion compares several Linux distributions. "I don't think there is much difference between Mandrake and RedHat other than some enhancements. One more thing is that Mandrake has most of the latest utilities and kernel also. If you want to be on the bleeding edge of Linux, this might be a choice."

Newmedia.com looks at Linux as a graphics platform. "As a bonus, GIMP is freely available open-source software. Every major Linux distribution includes GIMP and installs it automatically with Linux. Imagine purchasing an operating system that included Adobe PhotoShop free of charge!" (Thanks to Dan York).

InfoWorld covers IBM's "Red Hat Certified" laptop. "The certification of the ThinkPad 600 is the first in a series of steps the company will take to ensure that users can easily install, configure and manage Red Hat Linux on many systems in its portable line, according to IBM officials."

Fairfax IT ran this article about Linux in an embedded role. "Recognising the platform's stability and expandability, however, a number of hardware and software vendors are taking Linux into a new sphere as they integrate it into a broad range of new products." (Found in NNL).

News.com looks at the latest plans for the Amiga, which appear to involve becoming an Internet appliance company. "Software for inexpensive TV set-top boxes and Internet appliances, including projects based around the Linux operating system, will soon start to emerge from Amiga..."

This InfoWorld column predicts a big middleware role for Linux. "If you think about it, selecting Linux-based solutions on the midtier makes a lot of sense. As more application services leave clients and host systems and take up residence on midtier servers, the costs associated with supporting midtier services are increasing substantially. Using Linux and either open-source or commercial products on the midtier can provide significant cost savings over other approaches. Linux also has a good track record for reliability -- a definite requirement for midtier servers."

A French-language article can be found in Vnu|net France. This lengthy article looks at the use of Linux in network roles, and contains a set of case studies. A Babelfish translation can be had over here. (Found in NNL).

Here's a moderately technical article in Performance Computing on the optimization of the gcc compiler for the Pentium architecture. "In this example, we see that if we take the Pentium II pipeline into account, we can issue instructions so as to maximize the superscalar issue rate of the Pentium II processor. The scheduler indicates success in doing this with the message 'PPRO packet' and lists the instructions that form the 4-1-1 pattern."

John Dvorak says that Linux will never get very far in a server role in this ZDNet article. "Ask Linux advocates exactly why no IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server runs Linux. One of my networking gurus said that he has never seen any Linux system on the IRC-probably the roughest networking environment on earth-hold up to the strain."

Other:

PC Week has set up a "crack this host" competition, but this one involves two hosts: one running Windows NT and the other Red Hat 6.0. Here is to hoping that they have installed all the Red Hat updates...

The Linux Journal has opened up their 1999 Readers Choice Award poll. Feel free to vote for us for your favorite web page! :-)

USA Today ran this article on how federal employees have been bringing Linux in through the back door. "Since they can't get what they want on the market, Fermi scientists there have simply taken Linux and made their own custom modifications so they can do what they need to do."

Feds can no longer ignore Linux says Federal Computer Week. "If federal IT buyers are serious about reducing total cost of ownership and choosing systems based on best value, they should begin to consider Linux as part of the equation. Having such alternatives can only help to create competition that pushes IT costs lower and in turn improves operating systems - something federal procurement reformers have hoped would happen."

ZDNet attended the first Bay Area LinuxChix meeting. "Eventually, LinuxChix hopes to launch a speaker series, community outreach programs to introduce young girls to Linux, and even hold install fests aimed at women who want to load the Linux operating system on their machines." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann).

Upside Magazine profiles Sleepycat Software. "As its name suggests, Sleepycat isn't the kind of company you'd expect to see running with the big dogs of the software industry. Founded by the husband and wife team of Margo Seltzer and Keith Bostic, the company basically serves as a commercial vehicle for a single product, the open source Berkeley Database [Berkeley DB] embedded database system."

The LA Times looks at Linux in the home. "Intuit, which makes the popular Quicken home finance program, said that out of its 11 million customers, it has received, at best, a few hundred requests for a Linux version of Quicken. 'To be honest, it's nowhere near enough,' said Kevin Reeth, Inuit's product manager for Quicken. 'Out of tens of thousands of requests we get for new features, Linux barely shows up.'"

The flap over the registration of the "Linux" trademark in Germany has made it into CNN. "Roy Boldt yesterday confirmed that his systems integration company, Channel One GmbH, has put in a patent claim for the name of the open-source operating system, but said his intentions were good."

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

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