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Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

IBPhoenix president gets past the politics (Upside). Upside reports on IBPhoenix, a company formed to work with the open source version of InterBase. "Compared with its two largest proprietary competitors, Microsoft's (MSFT) SQL Server and Oracle's (ORCL) 8i, InterBase is the one database management system that sticks closest to industry SQL standards. Compared with the low-cost open source databases such as MySQL and Postgres, InterBase's strengths include easier installation, better multi-user support and a 15-year track record in the commercial development world."

Companies

Interview with the CEO of Esfia, an Embedded Linux startup (LinuxDevices.com). Eric Lee, President and CEO of Esfia, a Taiwan-based Embedded Linux startup company, is interviewed by LinuxDevices.com. `Esfia will target the Internet Appliance market, with wireless and multimedia applications. "ESFIA" stands for: Embedded Solutions For Internet Appliances.'

Linux fiesta in the Lone Star state (ZDNet). ZDNet reports on the third IBM Linux summit. "Top IBM officials, including Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology and strategy for IBM's server group, will provide pep talks. And Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer at Red Hat also will address the troops."

Serves You Right... (LinuxToday Australia). The Australian LinuxToday is running another Bennett piece, this time looking at Compaq's push into Linux. "Compaq is on a real roll, but the really interesting part of Compaq's current market expansion is the bit no corporate public relations spokesperson dares mention - Linux appears to be fuelling Compaq's server surge. Last year the company had a 25% share of all Linux server OS shipments and that was before the company had trained its sales focus on the open source operating system."

Development projects

Happy to Stay in Beta (LinuxNews.com). LinuxNews.com looks at the phpGroupWare project. " The phpGroupWare project has hovered in the upper ranks of SourceForge's most active projects for the last few weeks. It has gone through eight developer releases in the last five months, steadily closing in on the final 1.0 release, which is scheduled for... whenever it's ready."

Linux factions battle over desktop platforms (ZDNet). ZDNet still wants to see a big fight between KDE and GNOME. "But such divisions appear unavoidable, according to such observers as Ransom Love, the CEO of Caldera Systems Inc., who dubbed the budding rivalry a 'holy war.'"

Time for an open-source rumble? (ZDNet). Here's a ZDNet opinion piece with a fairly strong view on the formation of the KDE league. "This time significant names such as IBM, Compaq, TurboLinux, HP and Borland are trying to play Switzerland by putting their names behind both the GNOME and KDE efforts. Such a play makes no sense; each camp seeks to make its project the definitive Linux desktop, and an organisation that supports both would-be standards appears more ignorant than one that stays out of the fray. This divided support is akin to sending arms to both sides of a war; it may be a neutral action, but it intensifies the confrontation and makes coexistence that much harder to achieve."

Reviews

The Newbie testdrives GnuCash (LinuxOrbit). LinuxOrbit takes a look at GnuCash from a new user perspective. "I know that I can do all the functions of GnuCash plus all the other functions I've mentioned, within a spreadsheet. I have done all of these using Lotus 123 and I must assume that the spreadsheet software available "free" on Linux is just as capable, so why GnuCash?"

Interviews

The future of Linux (America-iNvest.com). Financial web site America-iNvest.com carried an interview of Richard Stallman earlier this month where he talked about free software and making money from it. "I believe that it is good that companies can make money while respecting the freedom of computers users, and thus can pay programmers to develop free software. However the two companies that you mention [Red Hat and VA Linux] also distribute programs that are not free software. That is the only thing they do with which I do not agree."

Interview with Michael Tiemann (FreeOS.com). FreeOS.com interviews Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann. "At the same time it's also important to note that we do have many of the guys who are doing a lot of the key kernel infrastructure that allows companies like Mandrake to write these things. If the Linux kernel did not support the API's that are needed by ReiserFS or it didn't support the capabilities needed by these other tools then the whole open source eco-system would collapse. So we think it's great that other people are doing open source development also."

Miscellaneous

It's a Beautiful Libre Software School Day (LinuxNews). LinuxNews is carrying a story on the Libre Software School Day, a group dedicated to assist Linux user groups and non-governmental organizations in enlightening school administrators about free software. `The group's members consist of "teachers (often sciences, mathematics) that want libre [re: free] software to spread in the schools; computer people that have an interest for the schools, and militants that perceive the good synergy between libre software and education," Calvelli explains.'

PCMCIA and GNU/Linux, it's a snap (LinuxOrbit). The PCMCIA project is an example of how individual projects make Linux the complete system it actually is. LinuxOrbit looks at this project and what it meant to one recent user. "In the past two months, I've converted two laptops to Linux for use on our local area network, and without the use of the documentation and patches offered at the Linux PCMCIA Card Services project, I would have been lost."

This Time Next Year.... (LinuxToday Australia). Bill Bennett looks at why he thinks Linux is on the brink of mass acceptance. "Between Gnome Helixcode, KDE2.0, Applixware and Wine I can do almost everything I did in Windows without ever booting my PC's other partition. However a recent writing job required me to spend more time in Windows 98 than my usual practice. They say that one has to suffer to reach enlightenment -- it worked for me."

Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol

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