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Leading items and editorialsThe free software community and proprietary packages. The BitKeeper tool is being used by an increasing number of kernel developers to manage patches and the patch process in general. BitKeeper, of course, is not free software, and, as a result, a number of kernel developers have chosen not to use it. For the most part, the use of BitKeeper has not been a big problem; no kernel developer has been forced to use it to get patches into the code. The discussion of Linus's choice to go with BitKeeper has thus been somewhat more muted than one might have expected. Until now, that is. Daniel Phillips opened a massive can of worms with this patch which removes Jeff Garzik's "Doing the BK Thing, Penguin-Style" document from the kernel source. Says Daniel in a separate posting: I am against carrying what *appears* to be a big advertisement for Bitkeeper itself in the Linux source tree. This I see as akin to putting up a commercial billboard in a public park. Would you be comfortable with that?
The response to this patch has been mostly negative, and Linus has stated that it will not be applied. This discussion has the appearance of just another license war, but, since it reveals things about how the free software community sees proprietary programs, it's worth a look. There seem to be two main camps in the free software realm. The first sees free software as something that is fun, useful, and preferable whenever possible. This group is far more interested in getting the job done than worrying about the pedigree of its tools. Linus Torvalds, a highly visible member of this group, expressed it this way:
Quite frankly, I don't _want_ people using Linux for ideological reasons. I think ideology sucks. This world would be a much better place if people had less ideology, and a whole lot more "I do this because it's FUN and because others might find it useful, not because I got religion".
The other point of view sees proprietary software as an evil to be avoided at all costs. Even discussion of proprietary software is to be avoided; Richard Stallman refused to answer a question for our recent interview until the name of a proprietary product was removed. Those holding this point of view are deeply bothered by the use of BitKeeper in kernel development, seeing it as a betrayal of the principles embodied in free software. The presence of a document that seemingly encourages the use of BitKeeper in the kernel source - even though the document itself is licensed under the GPL - is seen as counterproductive and even offensive. Free software developers usually get along well, regardless of the degree of "ideology" in their world views. They are, after all, working toward the same goal, and share an interest in the code. Occasionally, however, the differences of opinion come out, and the resulting discussions can be fierce. These debates may not change many opinions, but they do at least keep everybody aware of the different views being held within our community. (See also: Alexander Viro's classic view of the situation, which sees three distinct groups instead of two; and this week's LWN Kernel Page, which looks at the other half of the BitKeeper discussion). AbiWord 1.0 is out - though you have to look for it. Gnotices broke the news that the long-awaited 1.0 release of the AbiWord word processor had hit the net. The folks at SourceGear are a little more restrained; as of this writing, the AbiSource web site still claims that the current version is 0.99.5. The 1.0 release can be found, though, on SourceForge, in Debian unstable, and numerous other places. Release notes still have not been posted; word is they are on the way. We gave the 1.0 release a quick spin in our state-of-the-art testing laboratories. AbiWord has evolved into a highly capable word processor with an extensive set of features. For a great many uses it should be more than adequate. Importing of proprietary document formats has been much improved, making AbiWord a useful tool for reading obfuscated documents sent by others. AbiWord is also very quick to start up and present a window for editing - a nice feature for those of us who get tired of having multiple kernel releases come out while we are waiting for our office suites to launch. The most obvious omission in AbiWord 1.0 is support for tables. There is no way to create tables, and documents which contain tables are not rendered well. It would also be nice if AbiWord could integrate with other GNOME-based office software, Gnumeric, for example. The AbiWord hackers are no doubt working on these issues; until they get resolved, AbiWord will still fall short of users' needs at least some of the time. It is, nonetheless, an impressive milestone for a free software project which has come a long way over the last few years. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the OpenOffice 1.0 release, which is likely to happen before the end of the month. Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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April 25, 2002
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and EditorialsThe Commonly Accepted Security Practices and Recommendations (CASPR) project. Rob Slade announced his acceptance as the leader of the CASPR Anti-virus Management and Protection discussion group. The group's goal is to document commonly accepted practices and recommendations for anti-virus management and protection.CASPR is an ambitious project to "document the information security common body of knowledge (CBK) through a series of Commonly Accepted Security Practices and Recommendations." CASPR grew out of Thomas Akin's thinking about how to use the Open Source development model to create a set of recommended practice documents. Since CASPR was founded in April, 2001, it has attracted contributions from over 450 volunteer Information Security experts. They are looking for group leaders and contributors to prepare papers on a variety of security topics roughly grouped under a dozen CBK domains. Interested readers are encouraged to find out more about volunteering. Sun appoints Whitfield Diffie as Chief Security Officer. Sun has announced the appointment of Whitfield Diffie as the company's new "Chief Security Officer." Mr. Diffie has been active in cryptography rights for years, and is the inventor of public key encryption. His appointment can be seen as a sign that Sun, perhaps, is getting serious about security issues. Honeynet looks to sting hackers (Network World Fusion). Network World Fusion News reports on the The Honeynet Project. "A group of 30 computer security researchers who set up inexpensive "fake" networks to observe how hackers behave as they break into them are finding out about new software vulnerabilities and warning the public." New tool helps hackers evade detection (News.com). News.com covers a program called Fragroute, which can be used to test a network's vulnerabilities. "Some security aficionados posting to the Bugtraq list concentrated on Snort as a program vulnerable to the Fragroute program, but [Dug] Song waved off the implied criticism on the open-source program in his posting. 'Snort, I'd wager, does much better than most,' he wrote, adding that many other proprietary programs are also vulnerable." Snort 1.7 Named a 2002 Finalist by Network Computing for Well-Connected Award. Sourcefire, Inc. announced that that Snort 1.7 has been awarded finalist status by Network Computing for a 2002 Well-Connected Award in the category of Intrusion Detection Systems. "Snort 1.7 is an open source network IDS that was chosen for its innovative ability to detect a variety of Internet attacks and probes and perform real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks." Security ReportsAnother OpenSSH vulnerability. An advisory has gone out for another vulnerability in OpenSSH. It could be remotely exploitable, but only under a set of relatively rare conditions: "A buffer overflow exists in OpenSSH's sshd if sshd has been compiled with Kerberos/AFS support and KerberosTgtPassing or AFSTokenPassing has been enabled in the sshd_config file." Gentoo Linux Security update - exim. Gentoo Linux has released an update for exim. This fixes a security vulnerability that was found which might allow a local attacker to gain elevated priveleges. This affects Gentoo's exim-3.34-r1 and prior packages. MHonArc script filtering bypass vulnerability. MHonArc v2.5.3 has been released; this release fixes a vulnerability which could allow some HTML tags to be placed in the archive unfiltered. MHonArc is a mail-to-HTML converter which "provides HTML mail archiving with index, mail thread linking, etc; plus other capabilities including support for MIME and powerful user customization features."
A denial of service vulnerabilty in Mosix 1.5.x was reported.
MosiX is an cluster-environment for
Linux. The clumpOS-Mosix client cd is also vulnerable, "the
clumpOS-Mosix Node has also no vnc password set so anyone in the
cluster-network can gain root-access to the affected node. this issue will
be fixed in the next clumpOS Version."
web scripts.
Proprietary products. The following proprietary products were reported to contain vulnerabilities:
Updatesrsync supplementary groups vulnerability. Ethan Benson reported that rsyncd fails to remove supplementary groups (such as root) from the server process after changing to the specified unprivileged uid and gid. "This seems only serious if rsync is called using "rsync --daemon" from the command line where it will inherit the group of the user starting the server (usually root)." (First LWN report: March 14th, 2002). This week's updates:
Webalizer DNS server based attach vulnerability. The cause is a buffer overflow bug. This one sounds nasty. If reverse DNS lookups are enabled in webalizer, "an attacker with control over the victims DNS may spoof responses thus triggering a buffer overflow, potentially leading to a root compromise." Webalizer 2.01-10 "fixes this and a few other buglets that have been discovered in the last month or so". (First LWN report: April 18th, 2002). This week's updates: Previous updates:ResourcesNessus 1.2.0 has been released. "Nessus is a remote security scanner which has been developed since 1998. It is free, open-sourced (GPLed) and updated very regularly (and currently performs over 900 security checks)." Linux security week. The Linux Security Week and Linux Advisory Watch publications from LinuxSecurity.com are available. Frédéric Raynal's article on "Howto exploit a remote format bug automatically" was posted by the author to Bugtraq. The article was written "for a French magazine (MISC #2) which main topic is security." Remote Timing Techniques over TCP/IP is the topic of this paper by Mauro Lacy. The paper "describes remote timing techniques based on TCP/IP intrinsic operation and options." EventsUpcoming Security Events. Foundstone Executives Conduct All Day Security Seminar At Networld+Interop. George Kurtz, Foundstone CEO and co-author of "Hacking Linux Exposed" and Stuart McClure, Foundstone President and CTO and lead author of "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets and Solutions" will conduct the session "Hacking Exposed, Live!" on May 6, at Networld+Interop in Las Vegas, Nevada. HiverCon 2002 call for papers. . The 6th of September is the proposal deadline. HiverCon 2002 will be held 26th-27th November, 2002 at the Hilton Hotel, Dublin, Ireland. "Created to fill the gap of deep knowledge computer security conferences. Aimed at the security concious programmer, admin and consultant, HiverCON avoids introductionary talks to focus on advanced and prominent security topics." SummerCon 2002 is looking for speakers. The Conference will be held on May 31 and June 1 at the Renaissance Hotel Washington D.C. "Summercon is the oldest and one of the most storied of the computer security conferences. No doubt more history will be made this year. Details about the conference will be posted to the website http://www.summercon.org/ in two weeks." SEcurity of Communications on the Internet 2002 (SECI'02) has extended the deadline for submitting papers to May 5th. The conference will be held Setpember 19-21, 2002 in Tunis, Tunisia.
For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we don't list above) and events further in the future, check out Security Focus' calendar, one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to lwn@lwn.net. Section Editor: Dennis Tenney |
April 25, 2002
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel is 2.5.10, which was released on April 24. As per Linus's new style of operation (see below), this patch is relatively small, and was not preceded by any prepatches. It consists mostly of driver updates and a couple of fixes for 2.5.9 problems. 2.5.9, also released without prepatches, contained quite a few architecture updates, ongoing USB work, the usual IDE and VFS updates, and a new interrupt balancing scheme. The current prepatch from Dave Jones is 2.5.9-dj1; it adds more fixes and a SCSI subsystem change that is likely to break a number of drivers. The current stable kernel release is 2.4.18. Marcelo has released no 2.4.19 prepatches in the last week. Alan Cox's latest prepatch is 2.4.19-pre7-ac2, which contains a bunch of I2O work and numerous fixes. There will be a kernel developers' summit held in Ottawa, just before the Ottawa Linux Symposium. Like last year's event, this summit will be an invitation-only affair. No agenda has yet been released. Smarter interrupt balancing is now part of the 2.5 kernel - at least, for the x86 architecture. Modern interrupt controllers have long had the ability to direct interrupts to specific processors on SMP systems. Thus far, Linux has made relatively little use of that capability. 2.5.9, however, included a small patch by Ingo Molnar which changes things. At most once every "jiffy" (1/100 of a second on the x86), the interrupt management code will attempt to balance each interrupt that it handles. This code will now select a target processor by scanning in a random direction for a CPU that is "idle enough" - one which has been idle for at least one clock cycle. In the absence of an idle processor, the code will most likely not change the processor handling the interrupt. The changes make sense. In general, it is better to have the same processor deal with any specific interrupt, in order to take advantage of data in the processor cache. But, as the scheduler gets better at keeping processes from moving between processors (again, for cache reasons), it is a good idea to direct other work away from busy processors. The performance benefits from balancing interrupts in this manner are probably not huge, but every bit helps. What do you call a USB "device" - a computer (such as a PDA) which attaches to a USB bus as a device, rather than as a host computer? The standards use the term "device," but, as discussed here over the last few weeks, Linus (along with others) is not comfortable with that term. A USB "device driver" is commonly understood to be something that runs on a host computer, after all. Terms like "target," "slave," and "client" have been thrown around. The leading contender now, however, may well be "gadget." It may seem relatively non-technical, but it gets the idea across. Don't be surprised if the kernel acquires a set of gadget drivers in the near future. On the proper splitting of block I/O operations. The 2.5 development series has seen a great deal of work on the block I/O subsystem. One of the goals of that work has been to address a performance problem found in 2.4 (and prior) kernels: all block I/O transfers were split into very small blocks. An application (or filesystem) may write large chunks of data, but the block I/O code would split those large transfers into single blocks before passing the request (now multiple requests) on to the driver. The driver can join those chunks back together, but the "lots of small blocks" nature of the 2.4 block subsystem remains a drag on performance. So one of the first things that was done in 2.5 was to increase the smartness of the block code, having it pass large requests through to the low-level drivers intact. It turns out, however, that this approach is not entirely without its problems either. Consider the challenge faced by the EVMS project, which is building a fancy volume management scheme. An EVMS volume looks like a disk, and can receive large requests from the block I/O layer. Internally, however, that request may have to be handled with operations involving multiple drives. Thus, the lower layers may have to split up the I/O requests that the upper layers have so carefully kept intact. The EVMS folks have run into some practical difficulties in handling this splitting. There are, in fact, some serious traps to avoid in performing this sort of operation. Splitting a block I/O request can require memory - but what happens when the system is out of memory, and the I/O request was generated in order to free pages? That sort of scenario can lead to deadlocks, grumpy users, and further declines in Linux stock prices. So how does one deal with requests that need splitting? A few possibilities have been raised:
No generally-accepted solution has emerged as of this writing. The rest of the BitKeeper story. This week's Front Page looks at the latest BitKeeper debate as a disagreement over BitKeeper's non-free license. It turns out, though, that licensing is not the full story; there is some concern about how patches are getting into the mainline tree, and how BitKeeper may be affecting the development process. Consider another posting from Daniel Phillips: Those who now chose to carry out their development using the patch+email method, and prefer to submit everything for discussion on lkml before it gets included are now largely out of the loop. Things just seem to *appear* in the tree now, without much fanfare. That's my impression.
Daniel's fear, thus, is that BitKeeper is helping to reduce the openness of kernel development by providing a sort of back channel through which many patches now pass. Not everybody agrees with that assessment, naturally. Linus, for example, states: "I'm not getting changes from any new magical BK 'men in black'." Linus goes on to recognize, however, that at least some people feel put off by the new process. One idea that he has come up with is to have BitKeeper generate daily development kernel releases so that everybody could easily track what has been merged. That has not happened yet, but Linus has decided to do away with the -pre prepatches for development kernels, and to make regular releases more frequently. Thus, 2.5.9 and 2.5.10 came out relatively quickly, and without prepatches. If Linus sticks with this approach, kernel development will look more like it did back in the early days. (Meanwhile, regular dumps of patches from BitKeeper are being posted by both David Woodhouse and Rik van Riel. Larry McVoy has posted statistics on 2.5 changes in BitKeeper by developer and by directory.) Other patches and updates released this week include:
Kernel hackers wanted:
Kernel trees:
Core kernel code:
Device drivers
Filesystems:
Kernel building:
Miscellaneous:
Networking:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
April 25, 2002 For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Distributions page.
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DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. News and EditorialsGoodbye Best Linux, welcome back Sot Linux. The well-known Finnish distribution Best Linux has announced a name change. Changing the name back to good old SOT Linux is now possible, as Sweden is no longer our primary market focus. Several years ago we were obliged to change the name from SOT Linux, because the word "sot" means "disease" or "soot" in Swedish, neither of which were considered desirable by our marketing department. To celebrate the return to a former identity, a new release of the SOT Linux Operating System has been announced. SOT Linux 2002 comes in Desktop and Server versions. What happened to RunOnCD?.
Joe Klemmer pointed out that the link for RunOnCD
Everything else is in Korean, a language not known to any LWN editors. So if anyone knows what happened to RunOnCD, please let us know. New DistributionsLinEx distribution. The Extremadura Regional Government in Spain has developed the LinEx GNU/Linux distribution, which is based on Debian and Gnome. "LinEx forms part of a wider regional project which aims at promoting the Information Society in order to improve citizens' quality of life." (Thanks to Fred Mobach.) Boot Everywhere Linux. bootE Linux is yet another minimalist Linux distribution. bootE is pronounced boot-ee and the E could mean Everywhere or Emergency - no one really knows for sure. bootE is an i386 Linux distribution and is contained on a single floppy disk. It supports only single user mode, and is intended as a repair/rescue/emergency distribution. Initial version 0.10 was released April 18, 2002. ELJOnline: Brian Writes about His BOEL. Brian Elliott Finley writes about BOEL (Brian's Own Embedded Linux), a single floppy distribution based on tomsrtbt. "One of my initial requirements for BOEL was that it had to fit on a single floppy. I wanted to be able to boot a virgin machine from a floppy diskette and have it come up to a point where it could communicate with the network and access its hard disk(s). From that point, I figured I could pull over any scripts or tools necessary that didn't fit on the floppy itself." Probatus released Probatus Spectra Linux operating system. Probatus Oy released the Probatus Spectra Linux operating system. Designed for workstation and server use, the Finnish made Probatus Spectra Linux comes with lots of extras, including the Probatus Spectra SDK application development environment, which supports all most common operating systems. Distribution NewsBeehive Linux. Beehive Linux has released Beehive Linux 0.5.0 (Money Shot). "Almost everything has been updated to recent versions." Conectiva Linux. Conectiva Linux has announced (in Portuguese) the release of Conectiva 8.0. An English translation of the announcement is available via Babelfish. Debian Weekly News. The Debian Weekly News for April 17 is out. It looks at Woody CDs, rsync and Debian, Debian over OpenBSD, KDE3, OpenOffice, and, almost as an afterthought, the Debian Project Leader election results. Message from the new Debian project leader. The new Debian project leader Bdale Garbee has sent out an introductory announcement. "This is the first of what I hope will be a fairly regular series of messages from me in my capacity as Debian Project Leader. I intend to tackle various topics that I think deserve your attention as we move along the path towards our vision for Debian's future... but right now, I don't want to distract anyone from the effort to get woody released!" GNU-Darwin supports AMD. GNU-Darwin now supports AMD-based computers in addition to Apple and Intel boxen, and Darwin installer CD images are available for free. Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #39. The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for April 17, 2002 features an upcoming PPC Installfest in Boston, the Open Directory Project, and much more. MandrakeSoft releases Mandrake Linux 8.2. MandrakeSoft has announced the release of Mandrake Linux version 8.2 in "retail pack" form. This version includes StarOffice 6.0 and lots more. Mandrake Linux 8.2 for PPC. MandrakeSoft has announced the immediate availability of Mandrake Linux 8.2 PPC. It comes with Linux kernel 2.4.18; XFree86 4.2 for 3D acceleration with more graphics cards; glibc 2.2.4; KDE 2.2.2; GNOME 1.4.0; Window Maker 0.8; Apache 1.3.23; Evolution 1.01; Galeon 1.0.3; and Mozilla 0.9.8, just for starters. Slackware. Things have been pretty quiet at Slackware this week. Either the Slackware 8.1 beta2 (released last week) is ready to become the official Slackware 8.1, or people just aren't testing it enough. In any case, the only change this week was a cvs upgrade. Minor Distribution updatesArch Linux. Arch Linux has released v0.2 with major feature enhancements. Bifrost. Thanks to Tom Karlsson we have learned that embedded distribution Bifrost moved to a new URL. See http://bifrost.slu.se/ for the home page in Swedish, or http://bifrost.slu.se/index.en.html for the English version. The entry in our Distributions list has been updated as well. Keeper Linux. There is a major new release of Keeper Linux. KLX-2.01 boots directly from CDROM with its root filesystem in ramdisk (no hard disk required). Keeper Linux was listed under Floppy-based distributions, but with this release we've moved it to the Special Purpose/Mini section of our list. Lunar-Linux. Lunar-Linux has released a revised "Petro_e" ISO for download. Distribution ReviewsZee Germans and Zee Penguins: SuSE 8.0 beta 3 Review (Linux Journal). The Linux Journal reviews SuSE Linux 8.0 beta 3. "SuSE 8.0 is a great Linux distribution. It's easy to install, which has been a typical problem, has very sane defaults and provides a rich environment for those moving to Linux or upgrading to this version. While only a beta was evaluated here, it shows strong promise for really propelling Linux onto the desktop." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
April 25, 2002
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
Distribution Lists:
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsNews and EditorialsThe Twisted event-based frameworkTwisted is an event-based framework that has been released a "loosely-affiliated group of hackers" known as Twisted Matrix Laboratories. Twisted is written in Python.
A number of applications are included with Twisted, Instance Messenger is a multi-protocol chat program, and Twisted Web is a web server that is integrated into the twisted framework. Twisted components are divided into the dot products and plugins sections. Many of the Twisted components appear to be under construction, a number of interesting utilities appear to be in the planning stage. The twisted developers offer these reasons for using the Twisted framework. Twisted version 0.17.4 has been announced. The latest features include NNTP support, persistent connections and pipelining for the web server, a Zope-inspired component architecture, bug fixes, and feature enhancements. Twisted is licensed under the LGPL license, it may be downloaded here. Embedded SystemsEmbedded Linux Newsletter (LinuxDevices.com). Here's the LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter for April 18, with the usual collection of interesting stuff from the embedded Linux community. Running Embedded Linux on SuperH (Linux Devices). Bhavana Nagendra writes about booting Linux on a Hitachi SuperH development board. "This article demonstrates running embedded Linux on the Hitachi SuperH target using Red Hat Linux and RedBoot as the boot loader. We discuss initial setup, related kernel details and copying the Linux kernel to Flash memory. We illustrate the appropriate use of JFFS2 and NFS filesystems and address some board-specific kernel issues with examples." GraphicsHot and Fresh Technology for the Enterprise (O'Reilly). Antoine Quint delves into SVG progress on O'Reilly's XML.com. "This month I'm taking a break from flooding you with heaps of technical SVG tricks in order to reflect on how SVG has been progressing." LibrariesGdk-pixbuf 0.17.0 is released. Version 0.17.0 of the Gdk-pixbuf library has been released. This version merges in a number of GTK+ 2.0 bug fixes. Mail SoftwareMailman 2.0.10 released. Version 2.0.10 of the Mailman mailing list manager has been released. This version includes a number of minor bug fixes. Network ManagementNetwork Management With OpenNMS (O'Reilly). Shane O'Donnell examines OpenNMS and network management on O'Reilly's OnLamp site. "Once everything is handily deployed, you suddenly find yourself thinking, 'Whew, that's a job well done.' But then it dawns on you: not only are you not done, but you are now stuck tending the monster you've just created. Dr. Frankenstein found himself in a similar situation at one point." Printing SoftwareFoomatic adds support for Omni. According to LinuxPrinting.org, the Foomatic printer database now includes support for IBM's Omni printer driver. "OMNI does not reach the output quality of GIMP-Print, but it gives support to many printers which were not explicitly supported before, especially for dot-matrix printers, but also many inkjets and lasers." ESP Ghostscript 7.05.1. A new version of ESP Ghostscript has been released. ESP Ghostscript is a patched version of GNU Ghostscript 7.05 that supports a number of non-PostScript printers. Omni printer driver version 0.6.1. A new version of IBM's Omni printer driver software is available. The Changelog file mentions beta support for CUPS, the new tools OmniDevices and OmniDeviceOptions, libxml2 support, and more. ScienceDebian-Med: Project Status (LinuxMedNews). LinuxMedNews is carrying the latest project status for Debian-Med. News includes a German translation of the project's web site, and more. Web-site Developmentmod_python version 2.7.8 released. Version 2.7.8 of mod_python is available. This release fixes a 404 bug that was introduced in version 2.7.7. (Thanks to Giorgio Zoppi.) Quixote 0.4.7 released. Version 0.4.7 of the Quixote Python-based web application framework has been released. New features include the addition of some testing code and a bug fix, among other things. See the CHANGES file for the details. A couple of Zope releases. Zope Corporation has announced the release of Zope 2.4.4 (the stable branch) and Zope 2.5.1 (development). This version adds a fix for the DTML crashing bug as well as a number of other bug fixes. Note that both releases require Python 2.1.3. The folks at Zope Corp. have also let it slip that they have a couple of positions open. Zope Newbies. The Zope Newbies site mentions the availability of a new Zope Magazine and two new Zope books. Webalyzer 2.01-10 released. Version 2.01-10 of the Webalyzer web log analyzer has been released. This release fixes a number of bugs. Building an Open Source J2EE Weblogger (O'Reilly). David Johnson writes about an open-source Weblogger application on O'Reilly's OnJava site. "In this article, I will introduce you to some of the most useful open source Java development tools by showing you how I used these tools to develop a complete database-driven Web application called Roller." Apache and SSL (O'Reilly). Paul Weinstein covers Apache and SSL integration on O'Reilly. "Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), developed by Netscape Communications, and Transport Layer Security (TLS), the open-standard replacement for SSL from the Internet Engineering Task Force, are the two protocols that add encryption and authentication to TCP/IP. This article summarizes the basic concepts of how the two protocols work and how Apache implements these protocols so that one can transmit information securely over HTTP." XSP, Taglibs and Pipelines (Perl.com). Barrie Slaymaker looks at XSP on Perl.com. "In the first article in this series, we saw how to install, configure and test AxKit, and we took a look at a simple processing pipeline. In this article, we will see how to write a simple 10-line XSP taglib and use it in a pipeline along with XSLT to build dynamic pages in such a way that gets the systems architects and coders out of the content maintenance business. Along the way, we'll discuss the pipeline processing model that makes AxKit so powerful." DocumentationLinux Documentation Project Weekly News. The LDPWN for April 23, 2002 is available. A new Managing Accurate Date and Time HOWTO is available. MiscellaneousPorting MFC applications to Linux (IBM developerWorks). Markus Neifer shows how to port Windows applications to Linux on IBM's developerWorks. "Porting Windows applications to Linux doesn't have to involve a retraining nightmare. Markus Neifer shows how to port MFC using wxWindows, giving a user's guide to this open source GUI toolkit and providing a complete, step-by-step porting example." |
April 25, 2002
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Desktop DevelopmentWeb BrowsersMozilla 1.0 rc 1. Release Candidate 1 for Mozilla version 1.0 has been announced. The developers are looking for testing and feedback. The release notes detail a long list of changes. Also, you can read about the new release on MozillaZine. Galeon 1.2.1 released. Version 1.2.1 of the minimalist Galeon browser has been released. This version adds compatibility with Mozilla 1.0 rc 1, autoscroll, print preview capabilities, and bug fixes. Opera 6.0 for Linux Beta 2 Released. Version 6.0 beta 2 of the Opera browser has been released for the Linux platform. "Opera 6.0 for Linux Beta 2 incorporates not only better features and faster rendering of pages, but also improves support for non-Roman alphabets. Opera is currently fine-tuning the Unicode and font support for Asian users and is preparing to shortly launch a final version of Opera 6.0 for Linux." Desktop EnvironmentsGNOME Summary for 2002-03-17 - 2002-04-22. Here's the GNOME Summary for March 17 through April 22, 2002. This issue looks at Abiword 1.0; the release of GTK#; reports from the Second Unix Accessibility Conference; and much more. PerlBox desktop for Unix. PerlBox is a new desktop system written in Perl. PerlBox supports voice command input and works with the blackbox window manager. Introduction to GConf and GnomeVFS Article. Mikael Hallendal and Richard Hult have published an introduction to GConf and GnomeVFS. GConf is the configuration utility for GNOME 2 and GnomeVFS is the Gnome Virtual File System library. Xfce 3.8.16 released. Version 3.8.16 of the Xfce lightweight desktop environment is available for download. InteroperabilityWine Weekly News. Issue #120 of the Wine Weekly News looks at wine-20020411, the X11 tree, WineX 2.0, Lindows, a CreateProcess test, C profiling, and more. MultimediaGnome Media Media Related Utilities Package 1.520.2. Version 1.520.2 of the Gnome Media Media Related Utilities Package has been announced. Changed components include Gnome-CD, Gnome-Volume-Control, Gnome-Sound-Recorder, and CDDBSlave2. Office ApplicationsAbiword v1.0. Abiword v1.0 has been released and is now available for download. AbiWord Weekly News. Issue #88 of the AbiWord Weekly News covers the latest developments from that project. The bug fixing effort is still in full swing. Pan 0.11.3 Released (Gnotices). Version 0.11.3 of the Pan news reader has been released. The main new feature is support for decoding yEnc formatted messages. Kernel Cousin GNUe. Issue #25 of Kernel Cousin GNUe covers a number of Microsoft compatibility issues, documentation, and lots more. |
Desktop Environments GNOME GNUstep KDE XFce XFree86 Window Managers Afterstep Enlightenment FVMW2 IceWM Sawfish WindowMaker Widget Sets GTK+ Qt |
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Programming LanguagesCamlCaml Weekly News. The April 23, 2002 Caml Weekly News looks at OCamlSDl, and CamlTk/Windows, and features a discussion on a curses library. The Caml Hump. This week's Caml Hump entries include Phox, Rogare utilities, OSP, netclient, Cameleon, Okey, Configwin, and OCamlSDL. FORTRANG95 progress. Check out the latest developments on the G95 open-source FORTRAN compiler project. Progress is steadily moving forward. LispLISA 1.2 released. Version 1.2 of LISA, the Lisp-based Intelligent Software Agents has been released. "LISA is a platform for the development of Rete-based intelligent systems in Common Lisp." This version adds a new query language for retrieving CLOS instances from the knowledge base. PerlLarry Drops Apocalypse 5 Hints On List (use Perl). Use Perl mentions some preliminary hints that Larry Wall has made concerning the contents of the upcoming Apocalypse 5. Perl and XML on the Command Line (O'Reilly). Kip Hampton explores Perl and XML on O'Reilly. "The truth is that putting Perl's XML processing facilities to work is no harder than using any other part of Perl; and if the applications that feature Perl/XML in a visible way are complex, it is because the problems that those applications are designed to solve are complex. To drive this point home, this month we will get back to our Perlish roots by examining how Perl can be used on the command line to perform a range of common XML tasks." PHPPHP 4.2.0 released. The release candidate phase of PHP 4.2.0 is done, the official 4.2.0 version has been announced. "The biggest change in PHP 4.2.0 concerns variable handling. External variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or the web server) are no longer registered in the global scope by default. The preferred method of accessing these external variables is by using the new Superglobal arrays, introduced in PHP 4.1.0." This version also adds experimental support for Apache 2. PythonDr. Dobb's Python-URL!. The weekly Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is available for the week ending April 22, 2002. The Daily Python-URL. New on the Daily Python-URL this week are several Python related events, Jython tips, ZEO 1.0 final, and more. RubyThe Ruby Garden. This week's Ruby Garden looks at autoincrement and decrement operators, Numeric#prev, proc expressions, alternate method return values, constructors, and more. The Ruby Weekly News. This week's Ruby Weekly News covers Ruby/Google 0.2.0, Ruby-Poll 0.0.1, TaskMaster 0.1.2, and Imlib2-Ruby 0.4.0. XMLExpand XSL with extensions (IBM developerWorks). Jared Jackson writes about XSL extensions on IBM's developerWorks. "Simply put, extensions are a way of calling a method written in some other programming language from within an XSL document. Usually, the extension methods are written in the same language as that of the XSL processor. There are exceptions to this rule: Java, for example, can be made to run programs in other languages such as Javascript or Perl." Privacy and XML, Part I (O'Reilly).
Paul Madsen and Carlisle Adams look at
privacy issues from an XML perspective. "If access to information is
part of the problem, it would seem that XML, with its logically
identified and structured information objects, would only add fuel to the
fire. Imagine how much easier a hacker's 'job' would be if she knew that
all banks kept the credit card numbers of their customers in an XML
Schema that specified a Integrated Development EnvironmentsGNUstep Weekly Editorial. The April 21, 2002 issue of the GNUstep Weekly Editorial looks at libffi support, work on gnustep-gui and gnustep-back, and more. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
Language Links Caml Caml Hump Tiny COBOL Erlang g95 Fortran Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) Gnu Compiler for the Java Language (GCJ) Guile Haskell IBM Java Zone Jython Free the X3J Thirteen (Lisp) Use Perl O'Reilly's perl.com Dr. Dobbs' Perl PHP PHP Weekly Summary Daily Python-URL Python.org Python.faqts Python Eggs Ruby Ruby Garden MIT Scheme Schemers Squeak Smalltalk Why Smalltalk Tcl Developer Xchange Tcl-tk.net O'Reilly's XML.com Regular Expressions |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and BusinessJack Valenti's Congressional testimony. For those who are interested, here is a transcript of MPAA CEO Jack Valenti's testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee. He whines at length about the problems of piracy, but does not actually come out asking for the CBDTPA. "Then there is the mysterious magic of being able, with a simple click of a mouse, to send a full-length movie hurtling with the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) to any part of this wracked and weary old planet. It is that uncomprehending fact of digital life that disturbs the sleep of the entire U.S. film industry." Petition supporting free software in Italian government. The Associazione Software Libero and the Italian Linux Society have launched a call for signatures in support of a proposed law which would require the adoption of free software and document formats in the Italian government. They want real signatures - there is a PDF file to be downloaded, printed, signed, and sent to the Associazione in Florence. It's all in Italian, of course. HP Receives Top Ranking from D.H. Brown for Leadership in Linux and Open Source; HP Also Unveils Linux and Open Source Book Series Authored by HP Experts. Hewlett-Packard Company announced that in a comparison of Linux strategies by top IT vendors, HP's was deemed the most clearly communicated for customers and the industry, according to a new research report issued by D.H. Brown Associates, Inc. HP also unveiled a series of books authored by executives from HP Labs and HP's Linux organizations to further the education, research, adoption and development of Linux, Itanium and open source. A new PostgreSQL book in the works. No Starch Press has announced the forthcoming availability of PostgreSQL: An Introduction to Software Engineering, to be published in cooperation with PostgreSQL, Inc. PHP and MySQL: the Building Blocks of Successful Web Database Applications. O'Reilly announced the release of "Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL", by Hugh E. Williams and David Lane. Transgaming Technologies unleashes WineX 2.0. Transgaming Technologies has announced the release of WineX 2.0, which allows over 80 Windows games to be played on Linux. Downloads are only available to subscribers, who must pay a $5 membership fee. VA Software Introduces SourceForge Enterprise Edition 3.1; Features Broader Enterprise Integration, Enhanced Project Administration, New User Interface. VA Software Corp. announced SourceForge(TM) Enterprise Edition 3.1, the latest version of its flagship product. Linux Stock Index for April 19 to April 24, 2002.
The high for the week was 25.23 Press Releases:Open Source Products
Distributions and Bundled Products
Proprietary Products for Linux
Linux PC Hardware
Products and Services Using Linux
Products With Linux Versions
Linux At Work
Java Products
Books & Documentation
Partnerships
Personnel & New Offices
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
April 25, 2002
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended ReadingLatin America in love with Linux (vnunet). Here's vnunet's take on an open source bill on the table in Peru. "The Peruvian bill is based on a document submitted to the Argentinean government last year, which was developed in conjunction with the free software community in that country and abroad." Peru Discovers Machu Penguin (Wired News). Wired takes a look at a bill on the table in the Peruvian government that would mandate the use of free software in government computers. "In a loftier sense, many view open-source or free software as the key to the region's technological future and its widespread use a matter of national pride and autonomy. Government use of open source -- which would encourage developers to write their own software -- would foment a homegrown software industry that could compete with giants such as Microsoft, the thinking goes." Lower Saxony Police switches to Linux (Heise). Here's an article (in German) in Heise Online describing plans by the Lower Saxony Police to install 11,000 Linux desktop systems. These systems will be running Netscape, StarOffice, and locally-written Java software; the government expects to save EUR 20 million over ten years by going with Linux. An English translation is available via Babelfish. (Thanks to Matthias Schroeter and Christof Damian). Web standards: Why MS and IBM can't be trusted (ZDNet). David Morgenstern examines the issues behind web services and software patents on ZDNet. "'Perhaps things have to get worse before they get better,' Wilson wrote, calling for user groups to develop a new, open set of standards based on the Open Source Initiative. 'Let those carpetbaggers and charlatans try to screw us with additional royalties. They've already given the Internet cancer but they're still not satisfied. So now they're now making the disease metastasize. However, I suggest, now that we've all tasted the Internet drug and are hopelessly addicted, we'll look for a cheaper and better fix before long.'" Enter Linux. IBM and MS Tax the Net (IT-Director). IT-Director looks at issues surrounding royalties and the settings of web standards. "IBM has made a statement to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), that indicates that the emerging standards for ebXML are likely to infringe on one or more of the patents that it holds and has indicated that it intends to apply a RAND policy to extract some royalties from users of the standard. Microsoft is expected to follow similar lines with other, well established web services protocols such as SOAP, UDDI and WSDL. Sun, on the other hand, as the provider of much of the intellectual property for XML -- the widest used standard at this time -- is not seeking similar compensation." Gates: GPL will eat your economy, but BSD's cool (Register). The Register analyzes remarks made by Bill Gates at the recent Government Leaders Conference in Seattle, Washington. "But back at the podium, Bill is drawing a clear line between freedom and Marxist insurgents: 'Then you get to the issue of who is going to be the most innovative. You know, will it be capitalism, or will it be just people working at night? There's always been a free software world. And you should understand Microsoft thinks free software is a great thing. Software written in universities should be free software. But it shouldn't be GPL software. GPL software is like this thing called Linux, where you can never commercialize anything around it; that is, it always has to be free. And, you know, that's just a philosophy.'" Just a Philosophy: A Response to Bill Gates (Dissociated Press). J. Brockmeier has written an editorial about Bill Gates' speech to the Government Leaders' Conference. "I object strenously to Gates refusal to actually address the GPL as it really is and the insistence that capitalism and the 'free market' will handle everything just fine so the computer users of the world should just sit back and accept whatever Microsoft delivers. " Office on Linux: If you can't beat Microsoft, join it (ZDNet). ZDNet examines CrossOver Office. "CrossOver lets you run some Microsoft Office applications on a Linux-based PC. So you can enjoy the full benefits of Windows apps without having to kowtow to the ruffians in Redmond by running a Windows OS." The Penguin and the Hare..... Con Zymaris writes about Linux on the desktop. "Throughout 2001, a substantial number of industry pundits took it upon themselves to deflate or denounce Linux's chances as a desktop Operating System contender. They pointed to the fact that even after two or three years of what they called 'hype', Linux still had a minuscule proportion of the mainstream desktop market. What are its chances of catching the naturally advantaged Windows platform on the desktop, and combating the arrogant and aggressive Microsoft?" Linux moves into the storage mainstream (ComputerWorld). This article looks at Linux in the enterprise storage market. "So far, the role of Linux in enterprise storage has been somewhat limited but recent events indicate that the operating system should now be viewed as a viable alternative to support the most demanding, data-intensive applications. It is clear that Linux is capable of keeping data continuously available and safe, and that the operating system is quickly turning into a strategic enterprise platform for storage." Linux Supercomputer To Cogitate For Energy Department (TechWeb). TechWeb investigates the Department of Energy's contract with HP for a Linux supercomputer. "HP is building the supercomputer--benchmarked at a peak speed of 8.3 trillion floating-point operations per second--at the department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Installation should be complete by year's end. The lab plans to use the computer to study toxic-waste storage, materials design, geology, and genomics problems that require low latency between processors." Department of Energy buys fastest Linux system (CNN). CNN investigates the Department of Energy's new Linux supercomputer purchase from HP. "The computer should reach processing speeds of 8.3T flops (8.3 trillion floating point operations per second) at peak performance, making it the most powerful Linux computer in the world, HP said. It will also be among the most powerful supercomputers in the world." Stanford researchers may have largest database (CNN). CNN looks at Stanford University's BaBar database, which is claimed to be the largest database ever built. BaBar weighs in at around 500 TeraBytes in size. "The database, which collects information about subatomic particle collisions, is used by 600 physicists from nine nations taking part in the BaBar research project, Becla said Tuesday. BaBar's goal is to understand the difference between matter and antimatter and how it shaped the universe." The database runs on a collection of Sun and Linux servers. Waging peace on the Internet (Register). This article is about freedom in cyberspace. "Hacktivismo has been working with Chinese hackers and human rights workers, and the collaboration has been both fruitful and energizing. Occasionally there are cultural conflicts, but this has nothing to do with where anyone was born, and everything to do with how people get things done. Hackers tend towards MIT professor Dave Clark's credo which states, "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." Trust will come as development partners begin working more closely and learning that we aren't so different as we appear at the surface." Thaths It: A Young Man's Story of How Linux India Blossomed into Chaos (Linux Journal). Linux Journal looks at Linux India (LI) during an interview with Sudhakar Chandrashekaran (better known as Thaths). "As for missed opportunities, I'm not sure. My one single lost opportunity would be not registering LI as an official nationwide non-profit organization. I think for a brief moment during LI's existence, there was a window of opportunity for the creation of a nation-wide body. But that window closed and the LI community began to be more regional in nature, with more active involvement of members in their local LUGs." W3C strives for royalty-free patent policy (ZDNet). ZDNet is carrying the testimony of Daniel J. Weitzner before the United States Department of Justice and United States Federal Trade Commission during the Joint Hearings on Competition and Intellectual Property Law and Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy: Standards and Intellectual Property: Licensing Terms. Daniel is the Technology and Society Domain Leader in the World Wide Web Consortium. IEEE Will Drop Form Pledging Adherence to Copyright Act (Chronicle.com). The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on how the IEEE is dropping its "DMCA compliance" requirement. "The stiff opposition and the perception that the institute was siding with the government rather than with researchers prompted the decision to remove the digital-copyright provision from the form." Hollywood vs. High-Tech (Business 2.0). Business 2.0 discusses a senate hearing on the recent Hollings bill. "Chairman Hollings was only slightly less infuriated than the two CEOs. "Where did you get all this nonsense about ... 'irreparable damage'?" he wanted to know. Eisner chimed in that Vadasz's comments were just a sample of the runaround his industry had been getting from tech companies." The commercial salvation of Linux (ZDNet). ZDNet ponders the Cathedral and the Bazaar in the real world. "In fact, those cathedrals have a lot to teach these bazaars. I find it reassuring for the future of Linux that there are large, well-funded commercial outfits with an interest in it. Whatever problems Linux has, they are also the problem of these companies. For instance, I have my doubts about the future of pure Linux companies like Red Hat, but as bad as things would ever get for them, companies like IBM are into Linux too deep to let it languish." Saving Cyberspace (Linux Journal). Doc Searls writes about politics in Cyberspace on Linux Journal. "What followed supports the Law of Intended Consequences. Jeff Gerhardt of The Linux Show not only got turned on by the idea, but he picked up the ball and ran it for a touchdown and extra points. The current manifestation of Jeff's effort, with help from Paul Jones (of Ibiblio), Eric S. Raymond and myself, is a public proposal for the creation of two entities -- a consortium and a political action committee -- built for the purpose of advocating the Net to lawmakers and regulators. " CompaniesCompuserve 7.0 Ships With Netscape As Default Browser (Internet Week). Internet Week looks at CompuServe's switch to the Netscape browser. "CompuServe launched a new version of its online service this week-pretty much a non-event in the enterprise world except for one intriguing element: The release swaps out Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the latest version of Netscape's open-source browser." Web hosting on Red Hat Linux available from Digex Inc. (ComputerWorld). ComputerWorld covers Digex Inc.'s expansion of its hosting environments to the Linux operating system. "Digex will offer fully managed, end-to-end hosting on standardized Intel platforms under Red Hat Linux, she said, giving enterprise customers a less-costly option for needed services." HP To Build Linux Supercomputer for U.S. (NewsFactor Network). NewsFactor Network covers the cluster that HP will be building for the Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). "The computer is slated for installation at the Molecular Science Computing Facility in the department's Richland, Washington, laboratory. Scientists there are expected to study chemical problems in the areas of life sciences, subsurface transport, material design, atmospheric chemistry and combustion, as well as geochemistry and biochemistry." IBM to sell new storage systems in 2003 (News.com). Reuters looks into upcoming Linux-based storage systems from IBM. "IBM's Sanford said that the company will incorporate standards set by an industry group into the systems and that the company's virtualization software will be based on Linux." IBM and Sage to Bring Linux to Small Businesses (Reuters). Here's a Reuters article about an IBM and Sage Group Plc announcement that they will offer the Linux operating system to medium-sized businesses around the globe. "Sage said it would start to offer the Linux platform globally in three months time for its most comprehensive product Line 500, which lets medium-sized businesses run their finance, distribution, manufacturing and service operations." Update on Lineo recapitalization (LinuxDevices.com). LinuxDevices.com has published an update from Lineo CEO Matt Harris regarding Lineo's ongoing recapitalization process and new funding status. "Is there any chance the process won't be over this week? No. The legal process is underway, the new money has already been coming in, the employee payments are starting, and the customer work and partner work will not miss a beat." Red Hat Stronghold Web Server targets the Enterprise (Register). The Register reviews Red Hat's recently released Stronghold Web Server. "Stronghold Enterprise incorporates Red Hat Content Accelerator for increased web site performance, and also features support for OpenSSL, the PHP and Perl development languages and also the Tomcat Apache Java servlet container, the AxKit Apache XML application server and DAV content editing and management tools." Sharp launches Linux PDA (vnunet). Vnunet reviews the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Linux based PDA. "Daniel Wan, product marketing manager at Sharp, said that Linux makes the most of the Zaurus hardware capabilities, and provides an open platform for future development. He claimed that it also differentiates the device from other PDAs on the market. 'It would have been easy to launch another PocketPC device, but this would have been a ''me too'' product,' he said. " SuSE, Sun hook up on grid software (ZDNet). Sun and SuSE will join forces in a project that involves SuSE's bundling of Sun's Grid Engine with SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional Edition. Sun's Evolving Role as Java Evangelist (O'Reilly). Steve Anglin examines issues surrounding Sun, Java, and IBM on O'Reilly. "Sun VP Rich Green has been quoted on countless occasions that Sun's ideal role with regards to Java is as an 'evangelist.' Sun VP George Paolini has been quoted, 'In my mind, organizations of this kind succeed when there's a technology [i.e., Java] at the center of gravity.'" Symantec preps Linux firewall for IBM iSeries (Register). The Register reports on Symantec's firewall package that runs on an IBM iSeries Linux partition. "Symantec say that they are keen on moving into the OS/400 server space, but that there are some significant issues involved with support the open-source Linux operating system. Because Linux is open source, anybody can, in theory, as well as in practice, go into the very guts of the Linux operating system--its kernel--and make substantial changes. This self-reliance is one of the benefits of using Linux over other operating systems. When it comes to security, however, this is a serious detriment." BusinessMore foreign banks switching to Linux (ZDNet). ZDNet looks at the banking industry's movement toward Linux. "The issue of software licensing, meanwhile, has become particularly pertinent in the recent financial climate. David Valentine, IBM Linux sales and marketing executive, cites budget cuts as a key driver. 'A lot of the customers I visit have just about digested what Microsoft licensing changes mean,' said Valentine. 'One chief information office says he is having to deal with a 15 to 20 percent budget cut each year, but his key supplier (Microsoft) is charging more for the same functionality.'" Bank's faith in Linux pays dividends (vnunet). Here's another "Linux in banks" story; this one is on vnunet. "Financial giant Credit Suisse First Boston has increased system performance twenty-fold by moving its mission critical application infrastructure from Risc-Unix to a Lintel environment. While incumbents continue to dismiss Linux as unfit for serious enterprise applications, the bank has proved the opposite by trusting its global trading system, Agora, to the operating system" Left Behind (TechWeb). This article on informationweek mentions the use of Linux in the airline travel reservation business. "Orbitz, which is owned by American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United, uses Intel-based servers running Linux to grab fares directly from ATG Co., the company that collects fares from the airlines and feeds them into the global distribution systems. Orbitz also pulls schedules directly from OAG Worldwide Ltd., which distributes airfare schedules to global distribution systems. 'Since we're using Intel and Linux, the processing power is cheap, so we can apply hundreds of machines to a search, which gives us more results,' Zoghlin says." ReviewsA Kylix 2 Open Edition Primer for Windows Delphi Programmers (Linux Journal). Linux Journal reviews Borland's Kylix 2 on Mandrake Linux. "Maybe someday a Kylix program of mine will run on a different Linux distribution. Heck, some day I might give a different user access to it; I think that's simply a matter of putting the stuff in /usr/sbin or something. But I still have no idea how to make a nice desktop icon appear automatically; but then again, apparently neither does Jbuilder." MandrakeSoft, SuSE Move Forward (Open For Business). Open For Business examines new releases of SuSE and MandrakeSoft Linux. "The two Linux distributions best known for Desktop-computing focus both started shipping new releases of their respective packages today. With large strides in usability being made in the last few months, these distributions promise to continue the drive toward the open source desktop." Core Perl: A Book Review. Paul Berry reviews the book 'Core Perl', by Reuven M. Lerner. Samba runs rings around Win2000 (vnunet). Vnunet has published a positive review of Samba. "In terms of scalability, the results show that Linux and Samba can handle four times as many client systems as Windows 2000 before performance begins to drop off. Consequently firms can save money on hardware and software upgrades, and can avoid the administrative and financial costs of licensing Windows file servers, by using the Samba alternative. " ResourcesLinux turns the lights on with X10 (NewsForge). Russell Pavlicek talks about using X10 device controllers with a Linux PC. "Thankfully, several industrious people had already set about the task of controlling the Firecracker interface under Linux. I found two projects to be of particular value: a command line utility called BottleRocket and a Tcl/Tk application called RocketLauncher. The home page for RocketLauncher seems to have disappeared, but I have posted a copy of it on my Web site." IBM middleware for Linux CD set. IBM has announced the release of a set of two CDs that contain middleware software for Linux. "The latest IBM middleware for Linux (DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, and Lotus Domino) is being provided, at no cost, on a 2 CD set, along with Web Services technologies, Linux technical articles, Linux Redbooks, and the very popular Java battle-bots game Robocode." The CDs run on Red Hat 7.1, 7.2, and SuSE 7.3. Emulate This!, Part 3 (Linux Journal). Marcel Gagné examines software and hardware emulation in part 3 of a Linux Journal article. "In this article, I'm going to take you a little deeper into the world of emulation, from software emulation to hardware emulation. This is a story about thinking inside the box or, rather, inside the Bochs." Open Office Newsletter #5. The 5th edition of the OpenOffice newsletter is out. Check it out for the latest project news. Lots of work is being done in the area of XML support. MiscellaneousJurassic Computer Park (Linux Journal). The Linux Journal looks at the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, a nonprofit recycling operation. "A Microsoft-free organization, ACCRC donated more than 5,000 computers last year at no cost to recipients. Thanks to a donation from SuSE, every computer that ACCRC distributes runs a full copy of SuSE Linux." Apple promotes 'Godless Darwinism and Communism' (Register). Just when you thought you'd heard it all, The Register has published a satirical piece about a Dr. Richard Paley from the Fellowship University who has apparently damned open-source software. "The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don't advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an 'Open Source' license, which is just another name for Communism." Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
April 25, 2002 |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesLinux Audio Announce list. A new, moderated mailing list for announcements of new Linux audio software has been announced. EventsAlan Cox and Martin Keegan to speak in London. Alan Cox and Martin Keegan will speak to the London Linux User Group at a Campaign for Digital Rights mini conference. The talk will happen on April 29, 2002 at City University in London. Linux Expo at Birmingham. Linux Expo returns to Birmingham (UK) May 29 and 30, 2002. Keynote speakers include Bob Young, Richard Stallman, Adam Jollans, and Dirk Hohndel. (Thanks to Clive Gould) YAPC::NA::2002 Accomodations. A list of accommodations is available for attendees of the upcoming YAPC::NA::2002 Perl conference. Notes from GUADEC. Steven Hanley has sent us a link to his notes from the GUADEC conference, now with coverage of day 3. Events: April 25 - May 20, 2002.
Additional events can be found in the LWN Event Calendar. Event submissions should be sent to lwn@lwn.net in a plain text format. Web sitesLinux StepByStep RSS feed. Linux StepByStep has announced that they now have an RSS feed available for their site. MiscellaneousGtkGlArea Needs a Real Maintainer (Gnotices). A new maintainer is needed for the GtkGlArea GTK+ OpenGL widget project. Section Editor: Forrest Cook. |
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Software AnnouncementsHere are this week's Freshmeat software announcements. Freshmeat now offers the announcements sorted in two different ways: The Alphabetical List and Sorted by license |
Our software announcements are provided courtesy of FreshMeat
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Letters See also: last week's Letters page. |
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. Note that we got very few letters this week, with results than can be seen below. Time to start writing in, folks, or who knows what we'll have to print next week? |
April 25, 2002 |
From: davidw@dedasys.com (David N. Welton) To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Tcl @ O'Reilly Open Source Conference Date: 18 Apr 2002 12:24:07 +0200 I agree that it's important to meet other developers and users of free software face to face. In fact, the Tcl comunity will be having its own conference, from September 16-20 in Vancouver, British Columbia. More information is available at: http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/ The Tcl gathering was previously a part of the O'Reilly convention, but they have chosen not to invite us back this year. -- David N. Welton Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/ Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/ Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/ Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/ | ||
From: (Omitted to protect the guilty)
To: jesux@pobox.com
Subject: I just wanted to point out a few things about the
'Jesux' Linux distribution.
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 21:21:14 -0700
Cc: letters@lwn.net
Note:
Although I could have filled this letter with verses (or references to verse
numbers) to show you in the Bible why your website is bad, I refrained from
doing so because I knew you would probably never look them up or you would
want to argue about the verses' meaning, and also because I believe that
many people engage in 'Bible-beating' (as this flurry of verse quoting is
referred to in the South) to avoid a LOGICAL argument because they know that
they cannot win a true debate with their opponent. Any repartee to this
letter that is full of Bible quotes will be delivered directly to /dev/null.
Also, so that you know, I am not affiliated to 'the media', Slashdot, or
anyoen
To quote your website:
-------------------------------------
Also, we are seriously considering changing some fundamental OS features.
The idea would be that function calls and features suggesting evil and
otherwise pagan ideas would be changed.
* abort(3)
* kill(1)
* references to "daemon"
---------------------------------------
Can you not see the fundamentally wrong things going on in just this
section of text? You make several statements that you may not even realize:
I. The words abort, kill, and daemon are fundamentally evil, so much so
that we want to go to the trouble of rewriting *NIX core code to take these
words out.
I'd like that the word abort does not specifically refer to human
abortions. It is used by NASA, the US Military, and many other unarguably
beneficial groups to mean 'stop'. 'Abort' is much harder to confuse via
radio communication, that is why 'start' and 'stop' are not used. Killing is
not always an evil act - haven't any of you ever had a dog put to sleep
because it was incurable? Or have any of you ever hunted? That too is
killing. 'Daemon' is actually a word that has roots that mean 'servant' or
''worker' - it was twisted into religious meaning by zealots like yourself.
Complying to the POSIX standard requires that you have these functions, and
that they work as the POSIX standard requires. Changing them will make you
LOSE users - or at least people who believe in mutually agreed-upon industry
standards.
II. In the sentence fragment "function calls and features suggesting evil
and otherwise pagan ideas" you suggest that pagan is a synonym for evil, or
that all pagan things are evil. This is an example of extreme
closemindedness that is (to me) strongly reminicent of the Pharisees and
Saducees. Paganism is an easier way of saying non-Christianism. NOT
ANTI-Christianism, just not Christian. By the true definition, Islamic
people are pagans - even though Christians and Jews worship the same God
they do, Jews are pagans - even though Jesus WAS a Jew, and Messianic Jews -
who believe in Christ as the Redeemer and Messiah but do NOT consider
themselves Christians (just Jews who follow Christ) are pagans. In all three
examples I have given just now, I hope I have shown you how inaccurate and
wrong your statements are. I have not even mentioned the fact that there is
a modern pagan movement that you are misaligning very badly with that
statement as well.
III. You have a large amount of statements on your website that are NOT
things a Christian should say. Exemplia Gratia: " We rightfully criticized
slashdot.org previously, but we did not do so with a loving spirit. For
that, we apologize. We still will not bow to the media, we do not need the
media, and we will succeed in providing a distribution for you. If God is
for us, who can be against us?" In this statement, you indicate that:
A - You have the right to judge anyone. I could indicate several parts of
the new and old testament that tell the story of how someone was punished
because they thought they knew God's will better than He Himself did.
B - Is it possible to criticize someone with a loving spirit? I believe this
is a contradiction. When you criticized Slashdot.org, you certainly (in my
humble opinion) did not intend it for their edification. You were 'trolling'
as some people on the Net refer to it. I', sure you object to the term troll
as well, claiming that it has demonic origins. You have a plank in your eye,
and you are trying to remove a mote from the eye of GNU/Linux. You need to
work on getting the plank out of your own eye first. If I had not banned
myself from 'Bible-bashing', I would have included some words from Paul
defining exactly what Love is and is not. What you are doing is not love, or
joyously spreading the Gospel. With the simple announcement of your intent,
you have malaligned and vilified a broad swath of the world's population.
This is not God's Work.
C - You indicate that the 'media' wants you to bow to them and need them.
You say this in the same paragraph that you mention your 'criticism' of
Slashdot. You are indicating that Slashdot.org is 'the media' and the
popular connotation of 'the media' suggests that there is a large syndicate
of the news/information industry that want you to bow to them and need them
and who wants to control you. By printing what you thought was a unique and
rebellious statement, you are technically guilty of Libel, which is better
known as slander. If Slashdot was able to prove that you caused them fiscal
damages by your statement, you could be taken to court for that. I'm not
suggesting that Slashdot would do anything like that, but rather that you
should think about what you are saying before you say it. Slandering
Slashdot - and trying to use that action as an example of how Christian you
are - is a bad example and reflects badly on all Christians. Yes, that
includes me.
If you are truly trying to make a linux distribution to spread the gospel,
why are you getting involved in the politics of software? You stated that
someone could only get SAINT from your distribution if they earned it. Don't
you know they can download it from the author of the program? Don't you know
that SAINT and SATAN are just silly acronyms? I'm out of patience. Your
site, http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/4081/ badly needs to be
rewritten without all of the hate and narrow-minded opinions. Instead of
writing a linux distribution about your religion, you should go learn what
being a Christian is really supposed to be.
P.S. Encryption isn't about having anything to hide, it's about privacy and
your right to keep the government and other people out of your own email.
| ||
From: Jesux Developers <jesux@pobox.com> To: (omitted) Subject: Re: I just wanted to point out a few things about the 'Jesux' Linux distribution. Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:11:02 -0400 Cc: letters@lwn.net At 21:21 -0700 2002.04.23, somebody wrote: > I. The words abort, kill, and daemon are fundamentally evil, so much so >that we want to go to the trouble of rewriting *NIX core code to take these >words out. No, that was never said or hinted. What was said is that those words *suggest* evil ideas. The very next line spells it out: "NOTE: we do not believe words are inherently bad." So, you are incorrect. >A - You have the right to judge anyone. I could indicate several parts of >the new and old testament that tell the story of how someone was punished >because they thought they knew God's will better than He Himself did. Of course we have the right to judge. The Bible doesn't say don't judge, it says judge not, lest ye be judged. The popular interpretation of that, that we should not judge, is false. It means that we should judge in humility, knowing that we will be judged by the same standards. And we have that standard by which to judge: the Bible. >B - Is it possible to criticize someone with a loving spirit? Of course. You obviously don't know what "criticize" means. Or maybe you don't know what love is. When I am being a jerk and my wife tells me to lighten up, she is criticizing me, in love. >If I had not banned >myself from 'Bible-bashing', I would have included some words from Paul >defining exactly what Love is and is not. Paul criticized many people in love. He would tell churches that they were acting horribly. Christ called the Pharisees and Sadducees a "brood of vipers." Or perhaps Christ wasn't be loving? >When you criticized Slashdot.org, you certainly (in my >humble opinion) did not intend it for their edification. Your opinion, humble or not, is incorrect. >I', sure you object to the term troll >as well, claiming that it has demonic origins. You're surely mistaken. However, go with the troll thing, you might be on to something. >By printing what you thought was a unique and >rebellious statement, you are technically guilty of Libel, which is better >known as slander. This is entirely false. First, slander and libel are not the same thing. Both are forms of defamation; slander being the lesser form, usually verbal, and libel being the big one, primarily written. >If Slashdot was able to prove that you caused them fiscal >damages by your statement, you could be taken to court for that. No. They would have to prove that what we said was false, that people believed it, *and* that it damaged their reputation. Fiscal damages are not relevant to the case itself, though would be a basis for the court award should the plaintiff win. But frankly, the comments posted on Slashdot itself every day are far worse than anything we wrote, and proving the last bit would be completely impossible. Of course, we never wrote anything remotely defamatory anyway; I can't see why you think we did. Claiming Slashdot is part of "the media" and that they want us to submit ourselves to them isn't remotely defamatory. >I'm out of patience. Well, good. You are also out of a lot of other things, like, perhaps, the ability to really do your research (if you ever had it to begin with). Here's a hint: click on some of the links on the Jesux site. -- Jesux Developers | ||
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