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November, 1999

It all happened because DVD playback software for Linux doesn't exist. There are numerous DVD playback utilities for Windows --WinDVD, ATI DVD, Compaq DVD, XingDVD -- but nothing, nada, zip for Linux players. And if there's one thing about Linux users, they're do-ers, not whiners. -- Andy Patrizio, Wired News

Linux DVD devlopers crack the DVD encryption scheme. They succeed in demonstrating (1) that the DVD scheme is poor, and (2) that closed-source cryptography is almost always a mistake.

Support for 64GB of main memory on 32-bit Intel processors was developed by Ingo Molnar and folded into the 2.3 kernel.

The Debian "potato" freeze is postponed until November 7.

Slackware 7 is released. The previous version was 4; the jump in version numbers is done as a "marketing" move... (Announcement here).

Creative Technology releases a driver for its SB Live card - under the GPL.

Red Hat creates the "Red Hat Center for Open Source", a non-profit organization that "...will sponsor, support, promote and engage in a wide range of scientific and educational projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public."

Fortunately for Microsoft, however, there are only so many developers in the world willing to devote their talents to writing, testing, and debugging software pro bono publico.... It is unlikely ... that a sufficient number of open-source developers will commit to developing and continually updating the large variety of applications that an operating system would need to attract in order to present a significant number of users with a viable alternative to Windows. -- Judge Jackson's findings of fact, from the Microsoft trial

Linux-India operates a highly successful booth at IT.COM '99, a high-profile conference in India. (Report and photos here).

Red Hat announces a new version of its distribution made jointly with Oracle. It is to include high-performance tweaks, and Motif as well.

Microsoft is found to be a monopoly in U.S. District Court. The findings of fact show little faith in the ability of Linux to present a challenge to Microsoft.

SGI releases its kernel crash dump analyzer, adding to the set of kernel utilities donated by SGI. (Web page here).

A version of Reiserfs with journaling is released by the folks at Namesys, meaning that Linux has two journaling filesystems available. (Press release here, and LWN coverage here).

(Nov. 7) The Debian "Potato" freeze is rescheduled - to January 15, 2000. Problems with several aspects of the distribution - especially the boot disks, causes the delay. (Announcement here).

Kondara MNU/Linux 1.0 is released; Kondara is a Japanese distribution based on Red Hat's Raw Hide.

Cobalt Networks goes public, and the stock immediately begins trading at $130/share, almost six times its offering price ($22/share). The frenzy for Linux stocks begins in earnest.

The Comdex Linux Business Expo is held in Las Vegas. Attendance and interest are high; many people see Linux for the first time. (LWN coverage here).

Corel launches its Linux distribution at the Linux Business Expo.

The Linux Professional Institute completes its first professional certification examination for Linux.

SuSE 6.3 is announced, for shipment in December (announcement here).

Mozilla Milestone 11 is released, the open-source browser finally starts to approach an "alpha-test" level of usability.

Using Samba is released by O'Reilly. This book is adopted by the Samba Project, and is available under an open content license. (Announcement here)

Sybase announces support for Zope development (announcement here).

Red Hat buys Cygnus for almost $700 million in stock. Rumors of other acquisitions by Red Hat begin to circulate, and show no signs of stopping.

VA Linux Systems sets its IPO price at $11-13/share.

VA Linux Systems and SuSE enter into a development partnership (announcement here).

Supercomputing '99 is held, and has a significant Linux presence (report here).

The XFree86 project joins X.org as an honorary member.

The Linux Documentation Project comes out with a new logo, new web pages, new documents, and the ability to work with the DocBook format. (Project here).

LWN.net's web server fails to achieve one solid year of uptime by three days when a raccoon brings down power across a city block.

Microsoft may have unlimited funds with which to develop their products, but Open Source products simply cannot be starved for cash. Their development is funded with their users' time and effort, not with revenues from any sale. Use value again, not sale value. -- Rob Landley, The Motley Fool

ET-Linux 1.2 is released by Prosa (web page here).

Real-time Linux 2.0 is released (announcement here).

VA Linux Systems announces its "Directed Share Program," which makes a small amount of shares available to Linux developers at the IPO price.

SuSE receives investments from Intel and Apax Partners. (Announcement here).

Early reports indicate that a JDK 1.2.2 and a JDK 1.1.8 release from the Blackdown team are expected mid-month.

Sun posts job advertisements for Java developers to work with supporting Java on the Linux platform.

The second edition of the Gimp Users Manual is released. It is available on the web, and is also published in book form by Coriolis.

Alternative: Linux is held in Montréal, speakers include Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, and many others (web site here).

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