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Leading items and editorialsSun NFS v4 component source code released. Reflecting that Sun has noticed the underwhelming response to its previous source code release announcements, its latest announcement uses words to warm the heart: "The Sun Industry Standards Source License is designed to meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition as articulated by the Open Source Initiative. Sun has submitted the license to the Open Source Initiative for their consideration." Unfortunately, the first word reported back from Eric Raymond indicates that they aren't there yet. There are problems with the license itself: "'Attaching conformance requirements to the license is too easily abused,' Raymond said. New specifications for the software could be written in such as way as to 'lock down' the actual software, he said." In addition, the current NFS code is part of the Linux kernel. Linus requires code used in the kernel to be licensed under the GPL; Sun's choice of a non-GPL license would prevent its inclusion. Eric is continuing to work with them, so it isn't hopeless yet. What exactly is the code they are releasing? It is described as "a code component of NFS version 4 called Transport-Independent Remote Procedure Call (TI-RPC)". Guy Harris wrote in with some additional details and a comment on what Sun's rationale for releasing the code might be. The Sun announcement read, "TI-RPC is one of the foundations of NFS, and a key component of the security advancements in version 4". Guy suggests, "Sun's rationale for releasing that code is to make available implementations of the GSS API authentication flavor for ONC RPC". Meanwhile, other elements of the announcement, increased funding for a project to develop a Linux NFS v4 implementation and the release of its rights on the NFS trademark, are certainly welcome. We hope they change their mind and choose to use the GPL for the NFS code as well. (Thanks to Michael Gerdts.) Richard Stallman on UCITA. Richard Stallman has put out a call to fight UCITA (the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act). "UCITA is a proposed law, designed by the proprietary software developers, who are now asking all 50 states of the US to adopt it. If UCITA is adopted, it will threaten the free software community(1) with disaster. To understand why, please read on. " For previous LWN coverage of UCITA, see the January 13th, 2000 and the June 30th, 1999 editions of the LWN. We agree strongly with Richard; UCITA is a bad idea no matter which way you look at it. LWN 1999 Timeline in French. The LWN Timeline is now available in French, thanks to the efforts of Roland Trique over at Linux-france. LWN Coverage from LinuxWorld 2000 in New York City. Jonathan Corbet and Dennis Tenney are both out at this week's LinuxWorld Expo 2000 in New York City. Here are some links to what they've sent back so far:
Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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February 3, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and editorialsOpen source encryption software in Denmark. This article on the Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group's site covers a hearing held by the Danish Ministry of Research concerning the use of encryption software to enable Danish citizens to protect themselves from Echelon and other surveillance activities. Thanks in part to SSLUG's efforts, open source software was well represented at this hearing. "Even more interesting was the 'how do you prevent back-doors in you product?'. Most companies stated that third-party reviewers could be allowed to check the source code given that they conform to a NDA (non disclosure agreement). The representatives for GnuPG and PGP had an easy task here. Roger Needham from Microsoft managed to make the whole audience laugh by stating that 'If our product contains a back-door, we simply don't know anything about it....'" (Thanks to Hans Schou).More details on "NSA Linux". More information came out this week on exactly what work Secure Computing will be doing on Linux for the NSA and how it will be handled in this note, posted to the securedistros mailing list by Tom Haigh, CTO for Secure Computing. "We will open source all the modifications to the kernel as well as deliver a general-purpose security policy engine...Separately, we will use Linux and develop Linux policy engines for our own products, such as Sidewinder. These policy engines will remain proprietary to Secure Computing." If you are interested in some of the code origins of the planned "Type Enforced Linux" from Secure Computing, check out Jay Lepreau's comments and Tom Haigh's response from recent conversations on the securedistros list. Security ReportsNew FreeBSD update for procfs. Previous fixes to problems with procfs under FreeBSD have been found to be incomplete. Upgrading to the latest patch is strongly recommended, to prevent potential local root compromises.Cobalt RAQ server vulnerabilities. The RAQ1, RAQ2 and RAQ3 servers from Cobalt contain vulnerabilities that may allow the site administrator password to be trivially acquired. Cobalt has issued an advisorycovering the issues with information on where to acquire patches to resolve the problems. Applying the patches as soon as possible is highly recommended. UpdatesDebian advisory: symlink problem in apcd package. Debian has issued an advisory regarding a /tmp symlink vulnerability in the apcd package. If you have this package installed, an upgrade is strongly recommended.ResourcesSARA Security Auditor. SARA, which stands for the "Security Auditor's Research Assistant", is based on the original SATAN scanner, but offers quick response to today's problems and a real-time report writer. It has been field-tested and is now being made available as free software, with a commercial product, SARA Pro, apparently on the way.Instructor 1.0 is a "32 bit instruction set auditor" announced by author David Goldsmith. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
February 3, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentStable kernel prepatch 2.2.15pre5. Alan Cox has released 2.2.15pre5, the next step toward the 2.2.15 stable kernel release. Development kernel 2.3.42 released. Development kernel 2.3.42 has been released. This patch includes an alternative UHCI (Uniform Host Controller Interface) driver for Linux USB, an apparent complete removal of Sparc AP1000 support, a driver for TMS380 PCI adaptors, the new version 4 automounter, Trident 4DWave support, a new Am8570 serial comunications controller driver, a reworking of the NSC PC108 and PC338 IrDA (infrared) driver, and a Crystal Semiconductor CS89[02]0 driver. Kernel.org to carry cryptographic software. H. Peter Anvin has announced that, as of February 14, the kernel.org FTP/web site and its mirrors will begin hosting cryptographic software. This policy change results from the change in U.S. export regulations; it means that useful cryptographic code may soon start to show up in the standard Linux kernel. Updated 2.3 job list posted. Alan Cox has posted an updated list of things to fix before 2.4 come out. Alan claims it's getting shorter, but it's still pretty long... Some reports have come back as to progress on various items on the list, including a note from James A. Simmons with an update on his work with the fbcon races and the fbdev drivers. David S. Miller also commentedthat the merge of the network fixes should be done soon. "75% done, the remaining bits should be doable in 2 seperate code merges. I think I can get this done over the course of the upcoming 2 weeks." The Wonderful World of Linux 2.4. Joe Pranevich has sent us the very latest version (he promises) of his Wonderful World of Linux 2.4. This is a "document-in-process" and will continue to be updated until Linux 2.4 is released. It is really worth a read; there is a lot of fun stuff coming. Here are some highlights:
This week on linux-kernel. It appears to have been a pretty quiet week, with very few large, intense discussions. We presume everyone has been busy getting ready for LinuxWorld, preparing for talks, BOFs, etc. We'll cover a few minor issues that did come up. Lock granularity. Michel W Zappe brought up the topic of lock granularity and the question of whether Linux 2.3.X was still deficient in this area. Manfred pointed him to a special patch from SGI that measures lock contention and cautioned that "fine grained locks are sometimes slower that one big lock under realistic loads". Stephen Tweedie finished with a summary of the work done early in 2.3 to eliminate all contention points found via kernel profiling. "The one place where we still have a big bottleneck on SMP is the network bottom half. There is code to deal with that (the "softnet" work), but it's not yet in the 2.3 tree." Progress on keyboard lockup problems. Some progress has been made the past week nailing down some keyboard lockup problems that have been reported with 2.3.X. Miles Lane posted a reminder that the problems were still occurring as of 2.3.41. Linus responded and several other people contributed with error messages and additional testing. As a result, at least some of the problems were attributed to the keyboard not being disabled during the mode set. Linus issued a patch that corrected this in at least some instances. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
February 3, 2000
For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page. |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. Linux/PPC Developer Release 1.1. Version 1.1 of the Linux/PPC Developer Release has been announced. "The Linux/PPC Developers, a loose coalition of programmers, have developed the Reference Release as a basis for other PowerPC Linux distributions. This release is not intended for general use but as a set of common software to be used by Linux distributors as the basis of their PowerPC products." The Linux/PPC Developer Release is based on Red Hat 6.1. MSC.Linux. Supporting a Linux distribution couldn't be that hard, right? Here's another company, MSC.Software, which has pre-announced a new Linux distribution, MSC.Linux. "Initially, MSC.Linux will focus on high performance numerical applications with a special emphasis on the use of distributed memory parallel hardware, such as Beowulf clusters. These features will accelerate the availability of Linux for high performance computing systems at a very competitive price." The domain name msclinux.com has been recently registered, but no information is currently provided on that site. For those who are counting: Tucows released its Linux distribution download statistics. "According to TUCOWS' December figures, Corel attained the highest percentage of downloads at 37 per cent, with Red Hat holding firm in second position at 20 per cent and Debian trailing in third place with 11 per cent. Other companies recording downloads included: Mandrake nine per cent; SuSE seven per cent; Slackware six per cent; and, Caldera six per cent." Complete LinuxMacmillan Complete Linux 7.0. Macmillan has announced its "Complete Linux 7.0" product. Like its previous distributions, this one is based on Linux-Mandrake. Unlike some of its predecessors, it will have a version number consistent with Mandrake's - Macmillan's "Complete Linux 6.5" release created a certain amount of confusion in the market.This time around there are actually two separate versions of the distribution. "Complete Linux" is aimed at new users, with PartitionMagic and StarOffice bundled, and a one-click installation process. "Deluxe Linux", instead, is a repackaging of the Linux-Mandrake PowerPack, and is meant for more experienced users. Macmillan has some other Linux products in the works, a secure server distribution, and a "professional suite" distribution which includes more bundled software, including the secure web server. There is also the possibility of a "web page development kit" for Linux in the near future. [Jonathan Corbet, LinuxWorld show floor.] Debian GNU/LinuxDebian Weekly News. This week's Debian Weekly News is a two-week edition. It gives a status report on the Debian Leader elections; Ben Collins, Joel Klecker, Matthew Vernon, and current DPL Wichert Akkerman have finally stepped forward to nominate themselves. Other items covered include the first test cycle for Debian potato, new boot floppies, the question of whether or not Transmeta's Mobile Linux is based on Debian and the re-emergence of the KDE on Debian debate.Linux-MandrakeLinux-Mandrake 7.0 reviewed (GeekNews). GeekNews reviews Linux-Mandrake 7.0. "The partition manager (DiskDrake) has quite a few nice features such as auto allocate if you're just not sure how to chop your disk up. As well, they have an option to save your partition information to floppy or even restore it from a floppy. Good job MandrakeSoft, in my mind, this was a feature that was long over due in a Linux graphical disk partitioning tool. It takes a bit of the fear out of partitioning your hard disk for Linux."MandrakeSoft introduces Linux-Mandrake PowerPack 7.0. MandrakeSoft has announced its Linux-Mandrake PowerPack 7.0 product, which will be unveiled at LinuxWorld. Linux-Mandrake 7.0 announced for the Sparc. MandrakeSoft announced the availability of Linux-Mandrake for Sun UltraSPARC(TM) platforms. Spiro LinuxInterview with SPIRO Linux' Rick Collette. GeekNews has put out an interview with Rick Collette, head developer of SPIRO Linux. Look for information on why SPIRO includes KDE, not Gnome, mysql, not postgresql and Zope.
"Geeknews.org: Why have the option to install a Zope server?
Rick Collette: I used to work for an online shopping mall of
sorts. And one of the guys there SWORE by this thing called
Zope. After I started digging into it, I realized what a powerful
tool it really was. Netscape, Sun, and IBM all sell a product called
an Application Server. These server products are not near as robust
or easy to use as Zope, and the price CERTAINLY cannot be beat. I see
a trend in app servers becoming as normal as Web Servers, so we
decided to include it as an option. TurboLinuxTurboLinux announces 6.0 distribution. TurboLinux has announced the availability of TurboLinux 6.0 in both workstation and server versions. The workstation version includes a lot of the usual stuff: including StarOffice and a trial version of VMWare. The server version tosses in BRU and OpenMerchant.Slackware LinuxSlackware booth at Linuxworld. The Slackware folks are out at Linuxworld, booth #134, and are ready with T-shirts, CDs and "other Slackware propaganda" for all their fans.SuSE LinuxTerabyte memory expansion for Alpha processors. SuSE put out a press release regarding recent additions to Linux kernels 2.2.14 and 2.3.40 to support up to 2 terabytes of memory for a single task on the alpha architecture. "The now completed 2 terabyte expansion for the alpha architecture comes from SuSE Labs and is again based on the work of SuSE employee Andrea Arcangeli."Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
February 3, 2000
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsOpenSSH 1.2.2 released. The release of OpenSSH 1.2.2 has been announced. This is the first stable release of the Linux port of this package. "OpenSSH offers several enhancements over commercial SSH1, including IPv6 support, removal of insecure ciphers and a full security and code review by the OpenBSD team." CMU Sphinx. Those of you involved in or interested in building applications with interactive speech recognition may want to take a look at the announcement that CMU Sphinx has transitioned to open source and should become available in CVS form over at Sourceforge this week. "CMU Sphinx has been supported in large part by grants from DARPA and the NSF for many years. Sphinx2, the first component to be released, is a speech recognizer and library, suitable for real-time applications. The system is completely open source, under a BSD-style license. " BrowsersMozilla M13 "spot" review. Leon Brooks was kind enough to send us a "spot review" of the Mozilla M13 release. "Summary: if M14 is as much an improvement as M13 was, it will become my default browser. I have started using M13 for non-mission critical work, and for yet another software opinion of websites that I build. ".EducationLinux in Education Report. This week's Linux in Education Report takes a look at Learning Logic, "a highly interactive, computerized mathematics program currently used to teach Algebra I", Pangee, a universal language-learning engine and Nico Coetzee's Linux User Course (warning, pop-up ad), a free, web-based training program for people wanting to learn end-user Linux.They also put in an update and a plug for the Red Escolar project, the Mexican (School Net) Project. "The project has advanced significantly since then and is moving into Phase 2 of their deployment plan. They estimate a savings of approximately $120,000,000 by using Linux rather than Microsoft products." K12linux. Another Linux in education site has come on-line. K12Linux opened on January 30th, 2000, and is focusing exclusively on Linux for the primary and secondary age group. The site is still under construction, so it may be worthwhile to check back in a week or two. They do have at least one interesting case study up: Silvervalley High School, California and its choice of Linux-based X-Terminals for use instead of Windows systems or MacIntoshes. Linux Knowledge Base Report. This week's Linux Knowledge Base Report mentions that work is nearing completion for the February 8th launch. They will be showing off a demo of the Linux Knowledge Base at the Linux World Expo this week in New York in the Mandrake booth. LinuxForKids CD. In celebration of its four month anniversary, LinuxForKids has announced the LinuxForKids CD Collection, Volume 1. "To celebrate this anniversary, we are glad to announce the release of the LinuxForKids Collection, Volume 1, CD-Rom. This CD features all the titles listed so far on LinuxForKids.com, plus all the necessary libraries to compile and run them. In all over 50 different software packages and 20 libraries." On the DesktopA peek at what's coming in KDE. KDE, the Next Generation is the title of a Linux Journal article by KDE developer Kalle Dalheimer. "The KDE team is working full steam on the next release of the K Desktop Environment which is planned for spring 2000, so it is time to look at what the new version will have in store. " (Thanks to John McNulty.)KDE news update. PerlQt support for Qt-2.0 has been announced, KDevelop 1.1 beta 2 has been released and Kurt Granroth, Daniel M. Duley (aka Mosfet), David Faure and Andreas Pour are all out at the Linuxworld Expo this week. For more details, check the KDE News. Interview with Windowmaker creator Alfredo Kojima. O Linux, a Brazilian Linux site, has published an interview with Alfredo Kojima, creator of the Windowmaker window manager (here is the Portugese version). "This interview took place during an event called Exposalt about operating systems at Federal University Fluminense, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro last weekend. Kojima was a key speaker in the event where he delivered a lecture about the details of his creation. OLinux's staff caught him in a rare moment when he gave us details about his work with WindowMaker." Search Enginesht://Dig report. Geoff Hutchison wrote in with an update for the ht://Dig search engine. "Hopefully 3.2.0b1 will be released on Friday and we can start to show everyone what we've been working on for the last year. Though it's by no means optimized or feature-complete, there's quite a bit to be excited about. After we release, I'll be working on some documentation on the guts of the new architecture. The new architecture is nearly complete and should make it much more flexible!"Website DevelopmentIPC8 Zope presentations online. Two presentations on Zope from the International Python Conference have been put up on the Zope.org site. The talks available are "Zope for content managers" and "Zope for developers."Zope Weekly News Rides Again. After a brief hiatus, the Zope Weekly Newshas returned. It is chock-full of good items this time, including industrial-strength commercial Python support from ActiveState, Zope coverage over at the new O'Reilly Network, ZopeStudio (aka the Zope-Mozilla Initiative) news and ZDnet UK's analysis of both Zope and Midgard. The latter article is excellent and well-worth a read all. Midgard Weekly Summary. This week's Midgard Weekly Summary indicates that Midgard 1.2.6 beta 2 is scheduled to come out this Friday. It also contains some information on improved user self-registration for Midgard 2.X. WineWine 20000130 released. Development release Wine 20000130has been announced.
Wine Weekly News. This week's Wine Weekly News is out. Check for this tidbit: "Marcus Meissner mentioned that the original Windows version of DeCSS was used on Wine before Linux support for the DVD filesystem appeared." Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
February 3, 2000
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Development toolsJavaBlackdown JDK 1.2.2 RC4 and Java Plug-In 1.2.2. The Blackdown team has announced the release of the JDK 1.2.2 RC4 and the Java Plug-In 1.2.2. The JDK 1.2.2 RC4 is still not a final release; not all JCK tests pass currently.Some of the highlights of RC4:
Their Known Bugs and Workarounds page has also been updated. Java-Linux I18N Tutorial. Renzo Pecoraro has started a little Java-Linux I18N Tutorial. "It includes a custom font.properties file and instructions for Linux that allows you to use the gnu-unifont in your browser/JDK/JRE. This is a work in progress and comments/questions are greatly appreciated." PerlPerl.com takes a look at RSS in this article by Chris Nandor. "While it was pretty cool that RSS channels were being created for most of the sites I frequented, I was getting frustrated that the content providers out there did not provide all of the channels I wanted, or they weren't in the layout I wanted, or they just did something I didn't like. I wanted to control the content myself. That's the whole point, right? So I finally got around to doing something about it, and wrote a program for a new site I call my_portal. " Perl Monks Takes Your Confessions. Perl Monks " is a community for anyone trying to learn Perl or improve their current skills." The German Perl Workshop. The German Perl Workshop will be held March 8-10, 2000. PHPA brief PHP tutorial (in French). Linux-france has posted a brief PHP tutorial (in French) and notes that they would welcome translations of this material.PythonNotes from the International Python Conference. Those of us not lucky enough to attend the Eighth International Python Conference this week can at least get an idea of what went on by looking at the notes that have shown up on Frank Willison's "Frankly Speaking" page ("As I mentioned yesterday, venture capital is a major topic in this year's conference. The morning keynote speaker was Hadar Pedhazur, the initial major investor in Digital Creations, the creators of Zope. A year ago, Pedhazur advised Digital Creations to make their software Open Source, much against the initial impulses of the Digital Creations principals.") and the ZopeNewbies site ("So far the Python Conference seems to be surviving the snowstorm. The federal government was officially closed yesterday, as were both of the city's airports, but the Pythoneers trudged on.").More notes .... A.M. Kuchling has made his notes from the 8th Python conference available as well. "Next came GvR's keynote speech about Computer Programming For Everybody, but it was preceded by 3 brief but interesting announcements. First, Greg Wilson talked about the Software Carpentery competition. Provocatively, he said the competition has arisen from what he called "the impending collapse" of current supercomputing, as the apps get moved to Linux clusters and traditional supercomputer vendors go out of business. SC aims to create newer, easier-to-use and more powerful tools, and to introduce the free software community to the supercomputing community, "who have unlimited money and real problems". Tcl/tkTcl/tk Conference Reminder. The 7th USENIX Tcl/2k Conference begins in less than two weeks, February 14th through the 28th, in Austin, Texas.Dr. Dobbs' Tcl-URL!. This week's Tcl-URL! mentions a Tcl Poll, timing accuracy in Tcl, and various other pointers to the best of recent posts. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
Project Links PHP |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and businessHere's some leading items: The latest from the Gartner Group is actually a bit of a surprise - it is a positive and relatively correct look at what open source is. "From looking at trade press coverage, it would seem that open source and Linux are synonymous. However, a lesser-known fact about Linux itself is that in a typical Linux distribution of 500MB, only about 2 percent belongs to the Linux OS. The rest is what makes Linux useful and is made up of hundreds of OSS system utilities, tools and applications contributed by equally numerous development teams." (Found in Slashdot). Tobias Hoevekamp has written a page about the European Union's "Framework Programme 5," an effort which is trying to improve the competitiveness of the European software industry. Tobias notes that (1) the program now recognizes open source software, and (2) there is money available for projects which advance the program's objectives. This could be a good opportunity for companies or individuals to get funding for open source projects. Evidently it's even possible for non-Europeans to participate. See Tobias's page for more information. LAND-5 Corporation has announced the release of the source code for their enhanced Linux RAID software under the terms and conditions of the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Here are some highlights of some new hardware announced this week: Tuxtops, Inc. announced its product launch of Linux powered laptops. Penguin Computing has announced the "I-Node," which appears to be a high-availability clustered server system. IBM's port of Linux to the S/390 is now ready to go. Check out the web site for information and downloads. Amax Engineering Corp. announced a new series of Linux based workstations, rackmounts & servers, which will utilize the Red Hat Linux operating system. SGI has put out a large Linux announcement which includes a new set of support services (for several distributions), a new Linux-based server system, and a set of cluster offerings. Highlights of Embedded Systems News: Sybase has announced its plans for support for the Transmeta Crusoe chip, including a demonstration at LinuxWorld and SQL Anywhere support for Mobile Linux. Lineo's acquisition of Zentropix was announced. Zentropix has a track record and background in supporting real-time Linux. Monta Vista Software announced its partnership with FSMlabs also to bolster their real-time capabilities. MontaVista made several other announcements including: On a related note: Embedded Planet announced its new embedded Linux development platform, based on HardHat Linux from MontaVista. Also Red Hat announced its "Red Hat Tools for Embedded Developers". This appears to be a repackaging of existing Cygnus tools, with a few Red Hat staples thrown in: EL/IX, the Intuitive graphical IDE, "priority access" to Red Hat's embedded software repository, and an unmodified version of the same x86 2.2.12 Linux kernel that ships with Red Hat 6.1. Support and Linux Certification showed up in this week's news: The Linux Professional Institute announced that an incentive program is in place to reward the first 300 people to take LPI certification exams. Netizen, a Melbourne-based IT consultancy specialising in Open Source software, announced that it will be offering system support contracts for Linux, FreeBSD, and other Open Source systems for Australian clients. Linuxcare came out with several announcements:
Speaking of Maxspeed, they entered into this agreement with Wave Technologies, parent company of Sair. Wave Tech. will provide Maxspeed with a full Linux curriculum education package. Compaq also announced they will be offering call center support for SuSE on Compaq's Alpha and Intel products. Web Site announcements were hot this week: Ecrix Corporation and the Linux Fund announced the launch of OpenTape.org, a new nonprofit web site supporting the open source software movement. O'Reilly Network announced the launch of two new sites, including a new technical portal, http://www.oreillynet.com and a new LinuxDev center, http://oreilly.linux.com. Ebiz Enterprises, owners of the TheLinuxStore.com, has announced the launch of LinuxWired.net. Andover.Net announced that it is branching out into the corporate services world with offerings like "on-line technical documentation, on-line expert support, application updates and project consulting." These services are to be based around the Freshmeat site. A sample of this is shown in this announcement about a new developer site, server51.freshmeat.net. It appears to be a competitor to SourceForge, with the additional twist that it offers the option of sharing advertising revenue with the hosted projects. Andover has also announced the acquisition of QuestionExchange. Fred N. van Kempen sent us a note saying that he has sold the linux.net domain. No word yet on who bought it - an announcement is planned at LinuxWorld - but Fred says: "It's *definitely not* Microsoft, and they're planning some cool & useful things for the site."
And oh yeah, eLinux also announced a broad agreement with Linuxcare.
Press Releases:
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
February 3, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended Reading: Advogato interviews Donald Knuth. "I saw that the whole business of typesetting was being held back by proprietary interests, and I didn't need any claim to fame. I had already been successful with my books and so I didn't have to stake it all on anything. So it didn't matter to me whether or not whether I got anything financial out of [TeX]." Here is a well-written and humorous article about what is really going on with the DVD case. Worth a read. "But then the DVD Copy Control Authority (a name straight out of a James Bond movie if you ask me) attempted to sue the ENTIRE INTERNET. It's like a class action lawsuit in reverse. Even for Hollywood, this has to set some kind of record for sheer bulk corporate idiocy. The mind boggles." Salon takes a lengthy look at Nethack, calling it one of the best computer games ever written. "...while open-source advocates are more likely to vaunt the movement's ability to transform desktop and network computing, this endearingly pokey dungeon adventure is perhaps its most accessible exemplar, demonstrating how its core virtues seem to work even in the unlikely realm of computer gaming." Upside ran this article about Lineo's Embedix and Embedix PDA products. "Like a camouflaged predator disguising itself as the native environment, Embedix PDA hopes to devour the Windows CE operating system market by pretending to be Windows CE, giving applications a chance to ride the low-rent Linux express with zero porting costs." Computer Chips and Embedded Systems: ZDNet looks at Transmeta's Mobile Linux. "While the company's Crusoe processors will also work with Windows software, for information appliance applications it will push Linux. 'If Transmeta went to Microsoft and asked them to make a stripped-down version of Windows 98,' [Linus Torvalds] said, 'they would have laughed in our face. We and others want to be able to tailor the OS to our needs.'" Trevor Turton takes a look at some history behind code-morphing technologies, then ways that Linux could improve support for chips like the Transmeta Crusoe chip. This Reuters article credits today's jump in Linux stock prices to the progress of the Trillian project, which is bringing Linux to Intel's coming IA-64 chip. "Shares of Linux companies surged on Wednesday after a coalition of companies developing a version of the up-and-coming software system to run on Intel Corp.'s next-generation microprocessor line said they were ready to release the software to developers at large. " ZDNet looks at Embedix, Lineo's embedded Linux distribution. "Transmeta has the thunder, but Lineo has the lightning that comes with shipping an embedded Linux first." The storm around Linux in embedded systems is starting to develop, as noted in this ZDnet UK article. "Intel has more than 100 in-house developers working on its Linux-based platform. Companies, such as Caldera's spin-off, Lineo Inc., are cropping up to focus solely on slimming down Linux to a size capable of running on various platforms. And, on Monday, Linux developer Red Hat plans to announce that it intends to also play in the information appliance space with the release of an embedded Linux development system." Here's an InfoWorld article about the flood of embedded Linux announcements. "Leading the march will be Red Hat Software, which is expected to roll out its first product for the embedded market. Called Red Hat for Embedded Developers, the new toolset is designed to let developers create a range of open-source applications for embedded or handheld devices that contain as little as 32KB of memory." ZDNet ran this article about Linux in embedded applications. "Not that any user of TiVo's personal video recorder would know it had Linux inside. The fact that the recorder runs on Linux only becomes apparent when users browse TiVo's Web site, rather than surf TV channels." Business: AboutLinux ran this article on performing high-end scientific work on Linux systems; worth a read. "I installed reiserfs on a test machine for 2 weeks (my overclocked Celeron) and was so impressed with it that I installed it for the /scratch (9 or 11Gb) partitions on all of our Beowulf machines. I have tried it and I think it really is excellent, reboot times are now less than 30 seconds for these machines (when we reboot that is)." News.com looks at the new Linux server offerings. "To beef up its 'Beowulf' offerings, SGI will begin selling its new Advanced Clustering Environment, [SGI manager Greg] Estes said. A 32-CPU collection of computers, complete with the management software that distributes jobs among the rest of the computers, will cost about $125,000, he said." Brian Martin talks about Linux Security and why he is confident in its eventual success, with a mention of some of the projects in this area, such as Independence Linux and Bastille Linux. " With more and more companies adopting open source platforms for important business applications and mission critical activity, they are setting a standard and acknowledging the inherent benefits." Reuters ran an article about IBM's announcement that its "Network Station" thin client systems can now run Linux. "The IBM executive is quick to acknowledge that while Linux is capable of handling a range of Web site management tasks, the software system will require a lot of work before it can be made ready to handle industrial-strength business tasks." IT managers are coming around, thanks to case studies like Cisco's use of Linux in its worldwide printing systems and coverage of the stellar Linux IPOs on Wallstreet, reports Infoworld. "For the moment, it appears many IT managers are making sensible decisions about integrating Linux: Where it works, they're either using it or looking into giving it a try." News.com reports on Red Hat's partnership with Computer Associates. "The move is a boost to Red Hat's effort to gain a greater presence in large corporations. The deal also could help Red Hat move toward its goal of making more money from services instead of sales of ordinary software." Here's an infoworld story about the deal between Computer Associates and Red Hat. "The closer ties will mean that Red Hat can integrate and distribute CA's management packages. Specifically, ARCserveIT for storage, InoculateIT for virus prevention, MasterIT for Web-based systems, and NetworkIT for networks will come bundled with the Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition series." Evan Leibovitch takes a look at the moribund state of CDE and Motif. "In Motif and CDE we have two technologies that offer a microcosm of what's always been wrong with commercial Unix." News.com covers Linuxcare's alliance with Compaq. "Under the deal, Linuxcare will provide technical and engineering support for those who need help with the upstart, open-source operating system. In essence, Linuxcare will help software companies revamp their programs so they works on Linux." Here's another Red Herring article about the Solaris 8 announcement. "Despite Linux's growing popularity and Sun's moves to react to the trend, [Sun president and COO Ed] Zander claimed that he was supremely confident about Solaris. His confidence stems from his belief that Linux will ultimately become balkanized into splintered factions supporting a variety of versions, whereas Solaris will remain standardized and reliable. He even went so far as so to say that 'there's no such thing as a Unix marketplace -- there's only a Solaris marketplace.'" This osOpinion column looks at the Solaris source release. "Sun is giving the open source movement a vote of confidence and proclaiming our credibility! Remember: Solaris is threatened by both Linux and NT, and yet, to improve their attractiveness, isn't it curious they chose to be more like Linux and less like NT? Imitation, even cheap imitation, is, after all, a most sincere form of flattery." Dave Winer discovers software patents. "The Internet is a public space. Anyone who tries to own the Internet, as Amazon and Geoworks have, will be routed around." TJ Miller jr points out that issues of freedom are not new in the world of motion pictures. This time, Hollywood is on the wrong side. "If you look back to the history of filmmaking, back when the motion pictures were first invented, you'll find Thomas Edison's monopoly in New York City. His company held an exclusive and tight stranglehold over all film projectors, film, movie rights, and nearly anything associated with motion pictures. ... A small group of filmmakers decided to revolt, proclaiming that one should be free to create and show films without kow-towing to some huge conglomeration. To escape Edison and Co., they moved everything they had to a far-away place...a small town known as Los Angeles, California." From Humorix, it's the Corporate Media Conglomerate HOWTO. "How can you fight back? Well fortunately, the Recording and Movie Industries(tm) have already laid the groundwork for you to maintain your iron grip on freely available and widely adopted technology and information. Here's how:" Solutions Integrator raises the "Linux fragmentation" fear. "The gap between distributions of Linux has been kept to a minimum because of community pressure and the necessary blessing of Linus Torvalds. With the rise of Red Hat as the dominant commercial distribution of Linux, the cracks between the distributions are threatening to become full-blown canyons." (Thanks to Cesar A. K. Grossmann). Wired News covers the worries of some prominent open source advocates. "[Tim] O'Reilly likened the current state of open source software to the early days of the Internet, which has shifted in the last few years from a medium full of cooperative idealists into 'a competitive, dog-eat-dog environment.'" News.com looks at Corel's response to the Corel Update bug. "Fixing the vulnerability is a 'top priority for Corel,' the company said, and a fix will be posted on the company's Web site." Of course, this bug was reported in LWN two weeks ago, so Corel can only be said to be hurrying so much... FreeOS.com has put up this interview with Corel CEO Michael Cowpland. "We did look at several distributions but found them very limited. They were difficult to install and use and required an expert, which we did not find acceptable. In Linux, when something is not happening, the best thing is to do it yourself and that is exactly what we did." Finally: ZDnet UK has started up their Linuxworld coverage; check this article for a round-up of the press releases, if you haven't already had enough of those. In recognition of the Linux mania in progress at LinuxWorld, Jesse Berst has marshalled together statistics and press releases in his article Blow Your Boss Away with Linux Firepower. "To get your company on the Linux fast track, you'll need to placate execs with statistics, surveys, research. Don't have the time? Below is all the ammo you'll need to convince your boss to embrace Linux". ZDNet UK ran this article about the clustering talks to be held at LinuxWorld. "In a talk scheduled for this Wednesday, Peter Braam of Stelias Computing will review progress on the cluster project, outlining new cluster programming interfaces and functional specifications." Replacing People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" Contest, Geek & Guru is sponsoring a 'Sexiest Geek Alive' Contest instead. "The finalists will be chosen from their online questionnaire responses, knowledge of Star Trek trivia, and how well they wear a pocket protector-by a panel of High Tech geeks." This is not a gender-specific contest. Promoter Steven Phenix assures us they already have entries from several sexy women well qualified in the "geek" arena. ZDNet UK looks at the threat of Chinese Linux viruses. "Most observers however, including programming guru and authority an all matters Linux, Alan Cox, suggest the warning from Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus was nothing more than a marketing ploy, designed to talk up a new market." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
February 3, 2000 |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesRob Slade has put out a detailed review of the book "Hackers: Crime in the Digital Sublime" by Paul A. Taylor. Despite problems, he calls it recommended reading: "The book will probably not be a popular hit, which is a pity. I would suggest two reasons for the low profile. The first is that Taylor is making a conscious effort to avoid sensationalism, and, indeed, to counter the sensational, and misinformed, reports of computer security penetration that are prevalent in the popular media."David Hoggan's The Internet Book has now been made available on-line and under a liberal copyright, allowing both reproduction and electronic transmission (with proper credit). "'The Internet Book: Introduction And Reference' provides both an introduction to the internet protocol suite and a reference guide in a single volume." (Thanks to Alex Butcher). www.whichrpm.com is a site that enables you to find Linux software packaged in RPM format, used by many Linux distributions. With the popularity of Linux growing at an unprecedented rate the number of software packages available has also increased. WhichRpm has indexed more than 35000 software packages from the worlds archives so that you can perform queries such as 'where do I find a package that lets me talk to my Palm Pilot'. The WhichRpm site is built entirely from open source software using the RedHat Linux distribution, Perl and MySQL database. Linsight has announced that its LinTraining site has grown to contain over 200 company listings. Gamer's Alliance sent us some Linux news. Students in the UK are being offered a chance to win cash prizes by entering a ground breaking contest announced by sponsors The Linux/Open Source Foundation, 4linuxjobs.co.uk and 1venture.co.uk plc. We would like to pass on this announcement from Linux Gazette. EventsThe Linux werkgroep HCC afdeling Groningen will be giving Linux demonstrations at a Computer Show in Groningen, Netherlands on February 5th and 6th.The call for papers for the August, 2000 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo has gone out. Deadline is the end of February. ZD Events will host a second Linux Business Expo co-located with Spring Comdex in Chicago, April 18 - 20, 2000. Web sitesM&A West, Inc. announced the launch of Links2Linux.The folks at Linuxpower sent us this announcement. User Group News |
February 3, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekWorldPilot is a Zope-based system which provides an integrated email, calendar, and address book capability. It's currently available under a free software license, in beta form. Tired of silly benchmarks? Then don't head over to the /dev/null benchmark page. This benchmark, also known as "Fhlushstone," measures the speed of the null device; results are available for hundreds of systems. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
February 3, 2000 |
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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. | |
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 15:12:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Joe Klemmer <klemmerj@webtrek.com>
To: letters@lwn.net
Subject: Linux Security Issue
I would like to echo your comments about the need for a more
organized security model for Linux. To this I would like to offer a
donation of $500.00 towards the establishment of some kind of Linux
Security Body for the purpose of organizing and finding security related
issues in the Linux specific open source world.
I do not do this lightly, I can not afford to put this kind of
money up, but I am doing this in the hopes that others will follow. As
mentioned it would be a very good idea if the companies that are making
money on Linux were to put some of that money to use for this.
Thank you,
Joe
---
Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
-- Russian Proverb
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Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 21:58:52 +1100 From: Mark Lillywhite <mark@plasticsoftware.com.au> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Kernel performance and threading Hi, I read with some alarm of your claim of a "challenge" which has been "thrown to proponents of highly-threaded applications to recode their programs in a single-threaded mode" in the Kernel section of your Jan 27 issue. The design of a system will take into account many different factors, and if the design is significantly simplified by using more than one thread of execution, then that design should not be unduly penalised by the operating system. To suggest that a large multi threaded application should be rewritten using a single thread, solely on the basis of peak theoretical performance calculated using the relative probability of low level "cache misses" is just plain silly. We have so many options to improve the performance of our applications without sacrificing design ideals - such as waiting 12 months for the CPU speed to double - that basing the architecture of a large piece of software around something as esoteric as a low level, architecture dependent metric such as potential cache misses is just irresponsible. I imagine that a really large system with many processes communicating via shared memory will have similar issues to those presented as arguments against heavily multi-threaded applications. Are we to be expected to rewrite multi-process systems as a single process too? Before long, we will reduce our system to just one process - and it will look like an operating system. Anyway, perhaps I'm missing something, but I thought that if I was executing the same code in the same address space over and over again, then I would get *loads* of cache hits? Kind regards, Mark Lillywhite | ||
From: "Hyre, Max" <Max.Hyre@cardiopulmonarycorp.com> To: "'lwn@lwn.net'" <lwn@lwn.net> Subject: I must take exception to that header! Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 13:43:04 -0500 Dear Mr. Corbet: In the Commerce page of this week's LWN http://lwn.net/2000/0127/commerce.phtml is the announcement that Sigma Designs is building a DVD player for Linux. The heading for the item is ``(Legal) DVD playback for Linux'', and I object to the implication of ``(Legal)'', and claim it would be much better presented as ``(Licensed) DVD playback for Linux''. The status of DeCSS playback for Linux is in dispute, but most disinterested parties hold that DeCSS is legal, probably in the US, and certainly in many foreign countries. The implied disparagement of DeCSS's status should be avoided. I would appreciate it if you would consider this matter, and would be thrilled if you'd change the text. Thanks for a great news site. Best wishes, Max Hyre | ||
From: Art_Cancro@uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us (Art Cancro)
To: letters@lwn.net
Date: Thu Jan 27 10:56:25 2000
Subject: Fun Sun Quote of the Day: "There is no Unix marketplace
Fun Sun Quote of the Day:
"There is no Unix marketplace anymore. It's a Solaris Marketplace."
-- Ed Zander
This one really floored me. What Mr. Zander (could he be Sun's
counterpart to Microsoft's own loudmouth Ed Muth?) is essentially saying
here is: "Sun is no longer committed to open systems and open standards.
Our proprietary software is better than Microsoft's proprietary software.
And pay no attention to IBM, HP, and the Linux community; we're so far
ahead of them they'll never catch up."
This sentiment sounds more like a spectre from the dark ages of
fragmented proprietary Unix than like something from the modern world,
which is finally starting to realize the value of a unified Unix (which is
what Linux now represents). It's hard to believe that any Unix vendor
would still have the audacity to make such a comment.
It's also somewhat hypocritical, considering that open systems played a
crucial role in making Sun a successful company in the first place. They
can sit on their high horse now, because they truly do have a world-class
operating system that is extremely robust and scalable ... but Linux is
rapidly closing the gap. For that matter, even Microsoft is "shrinking"
the gap somewhat. If Sun continues to pooh-pooh the standards-based
world, they won't be the Unix leader for much longer.
Art Cancro Visit UNCENSORED! BBS at
ajc@uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us http://uncnsrd.mt-kisco.ny.us
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Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:30:09 -0700 From: Bruce Ide <nride@uswest.net> To: editor@lwn.net Subject: Sun, Java and the Meaning of Suck Sun's antics are very obvious. They want to be the next Microsoft pure and simple, and I don't see any reason why we should replace one gigantic monopoly with crappy software and proprietary "standards" with another. Sun probably realizes (As I hope do the rest of the readership here) that Linux everywhere pretty much eliminates the need for Java everywhere. Java was originally written on the concept that the same code could be run on any platform without the need to worry about platform dependent API's. Well if all the platforms have the same API, it really doesn't matter if you do it with Java or C, C++ or whatever other language you happen to like. And I personally have always found Java's supposed cross platform capabilities lacking for any program more complex than "Hello World." Moreover, Java has always been a huge memory hog and horribly slow. I think we should just jettison Java and hack Perl, Python and Scheme (Oh my!) into Mozilla. -- Bruce Ide nride@uswest.net SOMEONE had to put all that chaos there! | ||
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:43:45 -0500 From: John Klar <j.klar@xpedite.com> To: Bruce Ide <nride@us.ibm.com>, lwn@lwn.net Subject: Re: Why do you Bother With the Gartner Group? Bruce, I absolute agree with your assessment of Gartner. Their opinions over the years have definitely qualified for Petreley's "Beverage Through the Nose" award. I must respond to some of your points and prognostications. > So Linux makes sense to most of those people, except SCO I think Sun Microsystems is far more deserving of this comment especially in light of their recent moves. If I remember correctly SCO recently added a Linux binary compatibility layer to their OS. > I'm expecting the Merced to be a flop. It wouldn't surpise me if > AMD doesn't step up to the plate within plus-or-minus a few weeks > of the Merced release with an ultra-fast 64 bit chip of their own. Intel has hedged their bets with Merced. They've had Cygnus Solutions (with the help of HP?) adapting gcc for its use. In addition, I believe they've also been porting Linux. Similarly, Sun made statements that they wanted to be THE definitive Merced OS. I've not heard anything within the last year, but take that with a grain of salt since I've let most of my trade mag subscriptions lapse. > Despite Wintel protestations to the contrary, PC's are still toys > compared to the big blue iron. Really, anything compared to a mainframe is a toy. OTOH, if the "pathetic little quad Xeon" can saturate your uplink, what's the point? Maybe a better measure would be cost/transaction. > ... those chips are 64 bit TODAY, as are the MIPS chips but we > don't see many of those anymore AFAIK. The various flavors of MIPS are very much alive and well. A significant number of WinCE machines run MIPS derived chips as well as at least one of the current crop of game consoles and (I think) a digital camera. My predictions: I belive the "embedded linux" market will explode. The "always-on" internet connection market desparately needs a cheap, easy to configure/administer device by the average consumer. I also see computers increasingly used in home entertainment roles (streaming audio, MP3, DVD) that were the traditional baliwick of consumer electronics companies. Home automation is another potential market. These products all need to be _fanless_, low power, capable of 24x7 operation and absolutely require a bulletproof user and service interfaces. Consequently the low power properties of Crusoe really excite me. Opinions my own and not representative of my employer. John Klar Software Engineer Premiere Document Distribution | ||
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 11:24:26 GMT From: Duncan Simpson <dps@io.stargate.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Open sourec fixes --- is Red Hat the problem? I read this with and agree modulo quite a lot. A large portion of the problem seems to be getting the fixes into RPM format and not the speed of actual fixes. Freely avialable fixed lpr was avialable a long while back and it is sad that RH failed to put it in a RPM until recently. A far more recent example is last time I looked the latest bind 8 package is one apparently featuring the NXT buffer overrun bug. Bind 8.2.2p5, which does not have this bug, has been avialable for over a month but last time I looked there was no sign of an update to this version (plently of ISP name server boxen have been upgraded anyway). Taking over a week to produce an update despite advisories with the relevent code illistrated and a patch to fix the bug in them is a problem. It is a little hard for the linux community in general to fix this problem. Having said this the slow speed of fixes for a major linux distribution, given that fixes on bugtraq are really fast, is a problem that needs attention---how about a community site that RPMises the bug fixed versions and signs them itself? Disclaimer: I have neither RPM nor a RH system, so can do not this site msyelf. | ||
From: Jan Gruber <jgruber@fbw.htwk-leipzig.de> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Linux-Pavillon @ cebit Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:49:31 +0100 Hi, it looks like Linux is gonna have its own pavillon at this years Cebit. Check http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-30.01.00-002/ for more details. It's in german, but Babelfish should do the job. Rgds. Jan -- ###################################### Earth is a beta site. ###################################### cat /dev/world | perl -pe "(while (<>)\ {(/(*.?\?) 42 \!/) && (print $1)}" - | ||
From: Richard Simpson <rsimpson@ewrcsdra.demon.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: IBM's Java for Linux? Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 15:18:14 +0000 Sir, Last week you said, "IBM's Java implementation may not be truly free, but it looks like it may now be free enough to become the de facto Java implementation for Linux systems". Are you sure that this is what you meant? I spent some time hunting on IBM's web site and could find their Java only as an i386 binary with precisely no indication that it would ever be ported to the other 8(?) platforms which Linux currently supports. Please do not fall into the common trap of assuming that Linux == i386 Linux. As an Alpha user I am constantly annoyed by reading that some wonderous piece of software is now available for Linux, and then discovering that it is only ever likely to be available for i386. I appreciate that many companies who do not wish to release their products as open source are unable to support the likes of Alpha and ARM simply because they do not have the hardware to compile on. A solid Java implementation would allow them (as I understand it) to ship a Java bytecode (effectively binary) version and have it run on every Linux platform. This would be great news for those of us with the "other" platforms, but ONLY if we have, at least, the runtime environment. If a solid Java implementation becomes available only for the most popular platforms then those left out will be at a positive disadvantage. Some open source developers whose software can currently be compiled by (for example) m68k users will switch to Java and said users will then not have access to new versions. I know that I am always banging on about other platforms, but surely as Linux users we believe in hardware choice just as much as we believe in operating system choice? Thank you, Richard Simpson -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Simpson Farnborough, Hants, Uk Fax: 01252 392118 rsimpson@ewrcsdra.demon.co.uk | ||
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