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LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 4, 2004Freeing the firmwareFew of us have multiprocessor systems sitting on our desks - or so we might think. The truth of the matter is that a typical computer contains several processors, only one of which is normally considered to be "the" processor. The others make the various subsystems and peripherals work; they live on the motherboard, in the video card, in the network adaptor, etc. Each of those processors needs a program to run. Traditionally, this "firmware" has been burned into some sort of read-only memory in the hardware itself. Manufacturers have figured out, however, that some money can be saved by leaving out the ROM and forcing the host processor to download the firmware at load time. The firmware can be shipped on the installation CD, where it gets put into the system along with the driver.Hardware installation CDs for free operating systems are still rather rare, however - and systems like Linux tend to avoid that approach in the first place. It is much nicer if the operating system simply works with the hardware presented to it without requiring a separate software installation step. The result is an easier experience for the user, and also for the hardware vendor, who typically does not want to try to support even a few of the numerous Linux and BSD variants in widespread use. Shipping drivers with the operating system itself has generally been a successful approach. Linux systems work on a vast variety of hardware, including many devices which have long since ceased to be supported by their manufacturers. With few exceptions, users can upgrade to a new kernel and expect their hardware to still work. There is no need to go scrambling around the net looking for updated drivers. If the driver needs to download firmware into the device, however, the situation changes. Somehow, the driver must get a copy of the firmware to feed to its hardware. The 2.6 kernel has a nice mechanism which allows a driver to ask user space for the firmware bits, but user space must have the firmware to answer those requests. The firmware can usually be found on the installation CD; sometimes it can be downloaded from the net as well. But users would rather not have to go looking for firmware just to make their computers work. And, if the device is not brand new, the installation CD may be lost; at that point, finding the firmware may be just about impossible. So it would be nice if the firmware could be shipped with the operating system itself. The old practice of linking the firmware into the driver itself is frowned upon in recent times for licensing and other reasons. Loading the driver from user space is a fine solution, however; the firmware request mechanisms work nicely, and the distributors can deal with the problem of getting the user-space side of things working in a transparent way. The only problem is that firmware typically comes with a restrictive license which does not have redistribution in mind. In many cases, firmware redistribution is prohibited entirely, or the situation is, at best, ambiguous. Thus, for example, the Prism54 firmware page reads as follows:
We do not yet have a re-distribution license for [the firmware
files] by Intersil (or globalspanvirata or Conexant) but since
Intersil wrote the original GPL driver and then supported the Open
Source community in maintaining it, we figure it's only fair we're
allowed to redistribute them here. Our official permission is
pending.
In today's legal climate, the "we figure it's only fair" license strikes some users as inadequate. Distributors, fearful of being sued, really need to have a license which makes their right to redistribute the firmware clear. Without that license, most of them will not ship the device firmware, and the distribution will not support the hardware in any sort of easy way. So attempts to get vendors to put their firmware under a reasonable license have been going on for years. Recently, those efforts have been stepped up a bit, thanks, especially, to efforts in the OpenBSD camp. The OpenBSD developers, too, have been starting off with quiet, private requests to the vendors. If those requests do not get an acceptable response, however, a call is made for the community to make its feelings clear. The hope is that, if enough people send coherent, polite notes saying that their future hardware purchasing decisions depend on proper free operating system support, the vendors will wake up and allow that support to happen. As the project has announced recently, this approach seems to be having some success. Atmel, for example, has just decided to make its firmware available under a BSD-style license. Theo de Raadt, who is behind the OpenBSD effort to make wireless chipset firmware available, told us that the situation is reaching the point where the vendors can be played off against each other. Enough vendors have made their firmware and/or programming information available that the rest can be credibly threatened with a loss of business if they do not follow suit. Not all vendors are convinced of this fact yet, however, so the OpenBSD folks are asking for help in contacting vendors. If the Linux community joins in with the BSD crowd, our combined voices might just be enough to make a difference. OpenBSD is, in particular, looking to apply pressure against Intel and TI, both of which have not, as yet, made their firmware distributable. Target contacts for TI and for Intel have been published. Interested people are encouraged to contact these vendors and let them know that proper free operating system support is a deciding factor in how they choose hardware. Needless to say, these messages should be professional and polite; flaming vendors will not help, and could be counterproductive. Some in the Linux community will, doubtless, be dismayed by the fact that this firmware is only available in binary form. The Debian project will argue for years on whether a BSD-licensed binary is distributable or not. The fact is that it would be fun to have the source and a toolchain so that interested people could reprogram their hardware. But that is unlikely to happen for most hardware, and, in any case, the situation is little different than with firmware which is distributed in the hardware itself. It's simply a cookie which must be fed to the hardware to convince it to do its job. If we can distribute the cookies with our operating systems, we can have hardware which works out of the box. That seems like a goal worth writing some mail for. [As a postscript, it should be noted that talks with Conexant regarding the Prism54 firmware are proceeding. Prism54 driver hacker Luis Rodriguez tells us that the conversation is continuing and that he is confident that the issue will be resolved soon.]
The state of BSDBeing LWN, we understandably tend to focus on Linux distributions and developments in open source that have are interesting from the Linux perspective. However, Linux distributions aren't the only free OSes worth using. Most LWN readers are probably familiar with the "name brands" of BSD distributions, if not the distributions themselves. This week we thought we'd take a quick look at the status of each of the BSD distributions.
FreeBSDFreeBSD is probably the most widely-used BSD, though it supports fewer hardware platforms than OpenBSD or NetBSD. The FreeBSD project maintains several development branches. The FreeBSD-STABLE branch represents the production-quality release, while FreeBSD-CURRENT is the version in development that's due to become STABLE. The STABLE release, at this time, is taken from the FreeBSD 4.x series, and new development is mostly being done in the 5.x series. The 4.x series is available for x86 and Alpha, while the 5.x series adds AMD's x86_64, Intel's Itanium, pc98 and Sparc 64-bit chips to the Tier 1 architectures. Ports for PowerPC and MIPS are in development. According to the FreeBSD website, the 5.3 release should mark the first STABLE release taken from the 5.x tree. 5.3rc2 was released on October 31. The 5.x release includes a number of interesting features and changes to FreeBSD, including SMPng, Kernel Scheduled Entities (KSE), the UFS2 file system, support for Cardbus and Bluetooth devices, and a move to GCC 3.3.x from GCC 2.95.x. The 4.x release included SMP support, but it was not compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default, and SMPng brings some significant improvements to SMP performance.
NetBSDNetBSD's main claim to fame is portability and the wide range of hardware platforms supported by the OS. Not to disparage Linux or the other BSD distributions, but NetBSD is the undisputed master of portability, with support for everything from x86 CPUs to DEC VAX computers and the Sony PlayStation2. NetBSD also has wide support for emulating other CPU and hardware platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS, HPUX, Amiga Unix, IRIX, Ultrix and others. FreeBSD and OpenBSD also support binary emulation for many OSes, though not quite as many. NetBSD releases are broken into NetBSD-release, NetBSD-current and formal releases. A formal release is an "official" release, while NetBSD-release is the formal release plus bug fixes for the next release. The NetBSD-current release is the cutting-edge, development version of NetBSD. The NetBSD team is pushing towards version 2.0. The fourth release candidate for 2.0 was tagged on October 8 with a final release expected soon. The current NetBSD release is 1.6.2, released on March 1, 2004.
OpenBSDOpenBSD has a reputation as one of the most secure OSes available, and the main OpenBSD page boasts "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!" The OpenBSD distribution also includes a wide range of cryptographic software and support for cryptography hardware. The OpenBSD team is also active in developing OpenSSH. The OpenBSD team issues a release roughly every six months. OpenBSD 3.6 was officially released on October 29, with a slew of new features, fixes and support for additional hardware. 3.6 adds SMP support for x86 and AMD 64-bit CPUs, a new Network Time Protocol daemon in the base system, and many bug and security fixes. The new release also includes an improved DHCP client and daemon, StackGhost overflow protection for OpenBSD/sparc, and a new hotplug daemon.
Dragonfly BSDThe new kid on the block, DragonFly BSD, forked off of the FreeBSD 4.x tree. DragonFly BSD 1.0 was released on July 12, 2004. The DragonFly team does not maintain separate stable branch as of yet, and DragonFly runs only on x86 hardware. The DragonFly BSD team has several goals for the distribution, including a better packaging system, and a different approach to system design:
It is our belief that the correct choice of features and algorithms can
yield the potential for excellent scalability, robustness, and
debuggability in a number of broad system categories. Not just for SMP or
NUMA, but for everything from a single-node UP system to a massively
clustered system... The existing BSD cores, including FreeBSD-5, are still
primarily based on models which could at best be called 'strained' as they
are applied to modern systems. The true innovation has given way to
basically just laying on hacks to add features, such as encrypted disks and
security layering that in a better environment could be developed at far
less cost and with far greater flexibility.
DragonFly has some lofty goals set for its caching, messaging API, and user API, but it may be some time before these goals are realized. The status page shows the relative development of each of DragonFly BSD's main goals. Readers interested in a history of the BSDs should visit the BSD Family Tree, which details the history of FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, with a little about Apple's Mac OS X and Darwin thrown in for good measure.
Enterprise Linux: is it broken?Ever since Red Hat launched its "enterprise" distribution, complaints have been heard from many quarters. The enterprise distributions, it is said, go against the spirit of Linux: they include per-CPU licensing and simply cost too much. Even the vendors of proprietary operating systems sneer at enterprise Linux, stating that it is more expensive than their own offerings.The latest contribution to this debate is this white paper from Lineox. It states:
The Free Software developers created this software to empower
everyone, and for everyone to share. But today's Enterprise Linux
is a lock-in play, designed to draw the customer into expensive
subscriptions and single-vendor service. Customers are made to
agree not to pass service bulletins on to others. While this is
within the letter of the licenses that we crafted for our software,
it's outside of their spirit.
Few readers will be surprised to learn that the answer to this problem is support services offered by Lineox. The company seems, in particular, to want to attract current enterprise Linux customers with less expensive software update services. In other words, they want to capitalize on the enterprise distributors' work in creating the distribution and getting the customer to install it by poaching those customers at support contract renewal time. The attacks on enterprise Linux offerings do not seem entirely justified. One has to wonder just who is really harmed by these business plans. The first place to look might be the customers, who, after all, are paying significant amounts of money for enterprise contracts. Clearly these customers are finding something worthwhile; Red Hat sells hundreds of thousands of subscriptions, and, according to its first quarter results, the renewal rate remains above 85%. In a time when most companies are looking closely at their expenditures, RHEL subscriptions would be allowed to lapse if they were not considered worthwhile. One can claim that these customers are paying premium amounts for the Red Hat brand name. This may well be true; branding has been an explicit part of Red Hat's business plan since the Bob Young days. Customers take comfort in brands; this need not be a problem for people who feel themselves immune to the allure of any particular brand name. The per-CPU nature of RHEL subscriptions irks some people in the community. The restriction applies to support, however. If you just want the security updates, just get them directly from Red Hat's advisories and install them yourself. Red Hat has imposed no restrictions on the software which are inconsistent with its licensing; it is hard to see who is harmed by its activities. The enterprise distributions have not taken any choices away from people who choose not to use them. The quality of the freely-available Linux distributions has never been higher - and many of them offer support to match. Debian's release cycle may be slow, but the project has never dropped security support for its stable distributions in the mean time. Fedora offers many of the features of RHEL without the price tag or the wait; the project has also provided top-quality security support for Fedora Core 1 for the last year. Ubuntu promises bleeding-edge software and 18 months of support for free. SUSE, Mandrakesoft, Conectiva, and others provide reasonably-priced offerings. Companies like Progeny and Lineox, and projects like Fedora Legacy offer support that picks up where the original distributor leaves off. Any of these offerings makes a more than adequate platform for just about any business or personal operation. They have the same software as the enterprise offerings, and they benefit from the work of numerous hackers whose salaries are paid by enterprise subscribers. About the only things they lack are (1) branding, and (2) certifications from vendors like Oracle. Certainly the lack of an Oracle endorsement should not be a major problem for people who find enterprise distributions to be insufficiently free. It is not surprising that many people in the community feel no need for the enterprise offerings. It is unsurprising that some businesses are trying to undercut the enterprise distributors by selling cut-rate repackagings of the enterprise distributions and updates. But it is a little strange that some people feel such a need to condemn the vendors of enterprise Linux and undermine their business. Enterprise subscriptions have helped to bring Linux into new situations and fund the further development of free software, all without violating any licenses or restricting anybody's choices. It is not at all clear that the community would be better off if the enterprise products did not exist.
Security Linux: security through obscurity?For all of you smug Linux users out there who think that you need not worry about the sorts of security issues that plague users of certain proprietary operating systems: this eWeek column seeks to bring you back to reality:
Of course, worms such as these don't exist for platforms other than
Windows, but why couldn't they? The executable attachments are
platform-specific and their authors don't write them for less
popular platforms because their comparative rarity makes it less
likely that a recipient will be able to become infected.
Talk about "security through obscurity"! The only thing keeping these scourges off of Linux and the Mac OS is that it's not worth the work to get such business. The exact same thing is true of spyware and adware. Of course you could write such things for the Mac and Linux and they would work. So, it seems, the only reason that Linux does not suffer a constant series of worms, and that Linux users are not continually trying to fight off spyware and related nastiness, is that we are such a backwater that nobody even feels a wish to attack us. We're not actually more secure; we're just too boring to bother messing with. We don't buy it. The "not popular enough" argument may help make victims feel better and make them feel that they need not worry about perhaps changing operating systems, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. Attackers have numerous reasons for doing the things they do. One of them is simply attracting attention and becoming in some way famous, even if that fame, such as it is, only attaches to a pseudonym somewhere. If you are trying to show your 31337 credentials by compromising Windows systems, you'll find that the barriers to entry are fairly high: there are, shall we say, a lot of people playing in that space. Certainly, one would think, at least one malware author would be attracted by the relatively green, uncrowded pastures of the Linux world? If nothing else, it would make a nice break while somebody else's worm is ravishing corporate networks worldwide. Along these lines, it's worth noting that the white-hat security researchers certainly do not find free software to be too obscure to merit their attention. One need not read Bugtraq for long to see that there is a steady stream of issues with free software being reported there. Another reason to attack systems is monetary gain. Access to zombie networks can now be bought and sold, as can information stolen by spyware or advertisements delivered by adware. There are millions of Linux systems attached to the net; many of them are in prominent locations with access to high-bandwidth network connections. They would make delightful spam relays or denial-of-service attackers. If an attacker could compromise 1000 of those millions of systems, he or she would have a nice little corral full of zombies which, one thinks, would be worth the trouble. Spammers seem to think that getting around SpamAssassin's tests is worth the extra effort. Certainly, one might think, being able to dump ads into Linux browsers, or direct them to unwanted pages, would merit a few minutes of somebody's time. The ultimate payoff might be smaller, but an attacker could have the entire field to himself. There are, in other words, incentives to compromise Linux systems on a wide scale. Compromises do happen, but the sort of widespread trouble experienced by others has, so far, been absent from the Linux world. The idea that nobody with the requisite skills has even tried to create such an incident is hard to believe. One can only assume that such attempts have been made, but that they have not succeeded. Linux systems are not immune from the ills of modern computing. There will almost certainly be some unpleasant episodes in the future. Recent reports have made it clear that Linux-based browsers are not free of exploitable bugs. As the free mail clients become increasingly complex and powerful, somebody will certainly find a way to compromise them. Last week's Red Hat security update phishing attempt was clumsy in the extreme - social engineering attacks that assume a victim simultaneously smart enough to untar and build an attack program and dumb enough to actually do it are unlikely to go far. As long as our mail clients do not allow programs in incoming mail to be run, these attacks will be relatively hard - but somebody, somewhere will probably figure out how to do it. Third-party applications could turn out to be an area worthy of special concern in the future. More home users could lead to more people who will, without question, install that "cool music download utility" found, without source, on some obscure web site. Eventually those users will learn the error of their ways - through hard experience. In the mean time, this risk can be mitigated by insisting on free applications, and by having the bulk of interesting applications be available directly from the network of distribution mirrors. There have been several attempts to put trojan horses into programs downloaded by free software users, but these attempts have always been detected quickly, and they have affected very few people. Our security is insufficient, and, eventually, somebody is going to demonstrate that to the world. There will, beyond doubt, be lots of snide columns posted when that happens. We must continue to work to prevent this occurrence, and to minimize the damage when it happens. In the mean time, however, we need not accept claims that only obscurity keeps attackers away from Linux.
New vulnerabilities apache: arbitrary code execution
Archive::Zip: Virus detection evasion
cabextract: missing directory sanitizing
catdoc: insecure temp file
Cherokee: format string vulnerability
groff: insecure temporary directory
iptables: missing initialization
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
lvm10: creates insecure temporary directory
MIME-tools: parsing bug
perl: insecure temp file creation
ppp: denial of service
proxytunnel: format string vulnerability
Speedtouch USB driver: Privilege escalation vulnerability
Updated vulnerabilities apache: mod_ssl cipher negotiation problem
aspell: bounds checking problem
cdrecord: failure to drop privilege
ncompress: Buffer overflow
cyrus-sasl: remote buffer overflow
ecartis: unauthorized access to admin interface
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
flim: insecure file creation
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
FreeRADIUS: denial of service
gaim: buffer overflow in MSN protocol
gaim: command execution via smiley themes
gtk2, gdk-pixbuf: buffer overflows
gettext: Insecure temporary file handling
ghostscript: symlink vulnerabilities
glibc: Information leak with LD_DEBUG
glibc: tempfile vulnerability in catchsegv script
gnome-vfs: backend script vulnerabilities
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
imagemagick: buffer overflow vulnerability
imlib2: buffer overflows
iproute: local denial of service
kernel: netfilter integer underflow
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
libpng: multiple vulnerabilities
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
libxpm4: stack and integer overflows
logcheck: symlink vulnerability
Midnight Commander: extfs vfs vulnerability
mikmod: buffer overflow
MIT-krb5: insecure temporary file
mozilla products: arbitrary code execution and other vulnerabilities
mpg123: buffer overflow bug
mpg123: buffer overflow
mpg321: format string vulnerability
mysql: several vulnerabilities
Netatalk: insecure tempfile handling in etc2ps.sh
netkit-telnet: invalid free pointer
netpbm: insecure temporary files
openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure
OpenSSL: denial of service vulnerabilities
pavuk: buffer overflow
php: remotely exploitable memory errors
PostgreSQL: Insecure temporary file use in make_oidjoins_check
PuTTY: pre-authentication arbitrary code execution problem
qt3: BMP image parser heap overflow
rp-pppoe, pppoe: missing privilege dropping
rssh: format string vulnerability
rsync: path-sanitizing bug
sharutils: arbitrary code execution
socat: format string vulnerability
sox: buffer overflow
SpamAssassin: Denial of Service vulnerability
squid: denial of service vulnerability
Subversion: Remote heap overflow
subversion: metadata information disclosure
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tiff: buffer overflows
WordPress: HTTP response splitting and XSS vulnerabilities
wv: buffer overflow
XChat 2.0.x SOCKS5 Vulnerability
xine-lib: buffer overflows
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
xpdf: integer overflows
zlib: denial of service
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6.10 prepatch remains 2.6.10-rc1; no new kernel prepatches have been released since October 22.Patches continue to accumulate in Linus's BitKeeper repository; they include the ext3 block reservation and online resizing patches, sysfs backing store, locking behavior annotations for the "sparse" utility, a reworking of spin lock initialization (see below), the un-exporting of add_timer_on(), sys_lseek(), and a number of other kernel functions, an x86 signal delivery optimization, an IDE update, I/O space write barrier support, a frame buffer driver update, more scheduler tweaks, some big kernel lock preemption patches, an IDE update, a large number of architecture updates, and lots of fixes. The current prepatch from Andrew Morton is 2.6.10-rc1-mm2. Recent changes to -mm include the kswapd high-order page freeing patch, a new PCMCIA device model integration patch, some scheduler tweaks, a generic CPU time abstraction (which comes from the S/390 port), and various fixes. The current 2.4 prepatch is still 2.4.28-rc1; Marcelo has released no prepatches since October 22.
Kernel development news Unified spinlock initializationThere have traditionally been two ways to initialize a spinlock inside the kernel. It can be done with an explicit assignment:
spinlock_t lock = SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED; or with a function call:
spinlock_t lock; spin_lock_init(&lock); Linus has recently merged a set of patches which move all in-kernel initializations over to the function-based form. There has been no patch to remove the SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED macro, but it is not hard to see a move in that direction once the conversion is complete. The stated reasons for this change include consistency and making life easier for automatic lock validators. There is also an unstated, but evident reason: the assignment form of lock initialization gets in the way of the realtime preemption patches. Those patches change most spinlocks in the kernel to a different, mutex type, and that breaks the initializers. As a result, the preemption patches must change all of those initializations throughout the kernel. By putting those specific changes into the mainline, it is possible to make the realtime patches smaller, less intrusive, and a little bit less scary.
Asynchronous cryptoThe 2.5 development series included the addition of the kernel crypto API. This interface was added to enable in-kernel code to use cryptographic functions where needed; the IPSec code was one of its first users. This API has been extended since its addition, and it now supports a wide variety of cryptographic algorithms.There is just one little problem, however: the current Linux crypto API is a synchronous interface. When kernel code requests that a transformation be applied to a block of data, that work is done immediately, with a status value returned to the caller. A synchronous interface works fine when the cryptographic transformations are implemented in software. If the CPU has to do the work anyway, there is usually no time like the present to get it done. Increasingly, however, computers are being equipped with hardware cryptographic capabilities. It would be nice if Linux could make use of crypto hardware, especially on systems (such as high-bandwidth servers) which may have to do a lot of transformations. Hardware crypto complicates the situation, however; hardware operations take time. A synchronous interface does not work well when hardware is involved; the kernel needs to be able to go off and do other things while the hardware works through the data. Scheduling issues come into play as well; if a system has multiple crypto cards installed, it would be nice to balance the load across them and keep them all busy. The current crypto API does not address hardware-related issues at all. This shortcoming has been understood from the beginning; the initial crypto API deliberately did not set out to solve the entire problem. Hardware support was one of those "we'll get to that later" items. Evgeniy Polyakov, based in Russia, has gotten around to it with his posting of an asynchronous crypto layer patch. This large patch creates a new cryptographic API which addresses the needs of hardware cryptography. There is a callback-based asynchronous interface which enables the queueing of transformation requests and notification of their completion. The patch not only includes load balancing; it also has a pluggable mechanism allowing a choice of which load balancer to use. There is a priority mechanism built in, and a failover handler which does the right thing when a cryptographic peripheral fails. There is even a request routing feature for complicated transformations (encryption followed by signing, say) which may have to be performed by a series of devices. The new code has been welcomed, though the developers have a number of issues with the specifics of the implementation. Chances are that those issues can be overcome, and the new asynchronous API will eventually find its way into the mainline. At that point, it will almost certainly obsolete the existing crypto APIs - for both crypto users and the implementation of software transforms. A certain amount of scrambling will be required to make everything work again, but, when the dust settles, Linux should have a much more comprehensive and capable cryptographic subsystem.
Trapfs - an automounter on the cheapAn automounter implements a special filesystem which mounts remote filesystems on demand, when requested by a user-space process. The Linux automounter (autofs) is a mildly complicated subsystem; the autofsNG patches make it somewhat more complicated yet. Adam Richter decided that he could make things simpler, and solve a wider class of problems at the same time. The result has been recently posted as trapfs, a filesystem which can do automounts and more in less than 500 lines.Trapfs is derived from ramfs; by itself, it implements a simple, memory-based filesystem. A user-space process can create files, directories, device nodes, etc. in a trapfs filesystem, and everything will work as expected. There is one additional little twist, however: a trapfs filesystem can be mounted with the location of a special helper program given as a parameter. Whenever an attempt is made to look up a nonexistent file, the helper program is invoked and given a chance to cause that file to exist. When the helper exits, trapfs will return whatever the helper left behind to the original caller. So, if you want to implement an automounter, you just set up a trapfs filesystem with a little script which can figure out which remote filesystem to mount in response to a lookup request. The task can be done with a screenfull of commands - especially if security is not a big concern. Of course, there are some little details (such as unmounting idle filesystems) which are left as an exercise for the reader, but the basic idea is straightforward. Another possibility is to use trapfs to create a devfs-style device filesystem. The helper program responds to lookup requests by seeing if an appropriate device node can be created. Whether trapfs will prove useful for real-world tasks remains to be seen. It could have a role, however, in the creation of simple, dynamic filesystems in cases where a more complete solution (using FUSE, for example) is more work than is justified by the task. Unless there are major objections, Adam plans to try to get trapfs merged in the relatively near future.
Schedulers, pluggable and realtimeA constant fact of Linux kernel development would appear that people always want to play around with the CPU scheduler. Con Kolivas (with help from William Lee Irwin) has decided to make this playing easier through the creation of a pluggable scheduler framework. This mechanism is intended to make it possible for multiple schedulers to exist in the kernel, with one being selected for use at boot time. With "plugsched" in place, developers interested in experimenting with schedulers could switch quickly between them while running the same kernel.The patch works by splitting the large body of code in kernel/sched.c into public and private parts. Code meant to be shared between schedulers goes into a new scheduler.c file, while the current (and default) scheduler stays put. Also added to scheduler.c is a new structure (struct sched_drv) containing pointers to the functions which handle scheduling tasks. These functions are invoked for various process events (fork(), exit(), etc.), to obtain scheduling-related information, and, of course, for calls to the core schedule() function. Implementing a new scheduler is simply a matter of writing replacements for the relevant functions and plugging the whole thing in. There have been few objections to the pluggable scheduler implementation. Ingo Molnar, however, is strongly opposed to the idea in the first place:
I believe that by compartmenting in the wrong way we kill the
natural integration effects. We'd end up with 5 (or 20) bad generic
schedulers that happen to work in one precise workload only, but
there would not be enough push to build one good generic scheduler,
because the people who are now forced to care about the Linux
scheduler would be content about their specialized schedulers.
Ingo's position is that having one core scheduler forces developers to think about the whole problem, rather than one small piece of it. In particular, claims Ingo, the scheduling domains patch would never have come about if the kernel had pluggable schedulers; instead there would be a separate NUMA scheduler, an SMP scheduler, and so on. Ingo, meanwhile, continues his efforts to make the One Big Scheduler provide real-time response. The latest patch is -RT-2.6.10-rc1-mm2-V0.7.1. The biggest change in recent times is a new semaphore/mutex implementation which sticks closer to the original Linux semaphore semantics; this change allows a number of patches switching parts of the kernel over to the completion interface to be dropped. The new semaphores also include a priority inheritance mechanism. Whenever a process blocks on a semaphore, the kernel checks to see if that process has a higher priority than the process currently holding the semaphore. If so, the holder's priority is bumped up to match that of the blocking process. This technique should help to avoid situations where a low-priority process can keep higher-priority tasks from running for extended periods of time.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Memory management
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials Distributions for the PowerPCJudging from the number of inquiries and search requests for "ppc" or "powerpc" we get at DistroWatch.com, deploying Linux (or *BSD) on this powerful platform is not nearly as rare as some would like us to believe. Whether it is the attraction of elegantly designed and innovative Apple computers, or the sheer power behind the high-end pSeries servers, Linux on PowerPC is alive and well. Here is the list of current distributions that develop PowerPC editions of their products.
Distribution News OpenBSD 3.6 ReleasedOpenBSD 3.6 has been released. "This is our 16th release on CD-ROM (and 17th via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install. As in our previous releases, 3.6 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system..." Click below for more.
SUSE LINUX Professional 9.2 is availableSUSE LINUX Professional 9.2 has officially been released. Click below for a preview of new features, and places where you can find this release.
Mondo Rescue shut down by legal hasslesMondo Rescue is a well-regarded, GPL-licensed "disaster recovery" tool for both Linux and Windows. The project's web page currently reads: "Due to legal actions brought about by FastServers.net against one of our developers, Mondo as of now is terminated." The details of these actions are hard to come by; bits of information can be found in the Mondo Rescue forum, and, for the other side, in this mondo-devel posting. The end result, however, is that Mondo Rescue seems to have been shut down - for now. (Thanks to Rick Moen).
Musical Linux for productive peopleStartCom Linux has released an add-on CDROM, called StartCom MultiMedia Productivity, meant to be installed in addition to StartCom's latest released distribution, StartCom MultiMedia Edition. The additional CD comes with an autorun installer and a advanced set of audio and video manipulation programs.
Fedora CoreThe fifth release candidate for Fedora Core 3 was released last weekend. This is the probably the final release before the final FC3 release.Fedora Core 2 updates:
UbuntuUbuntu has introduced the Hoary Hedgehog into the wild. Hoary Hedgehog will be the next release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux and will include daily updates from Debian's development branch. A final release of the Hoary Hedgehog is scheduled for April 2005.The first Ubuntu Conference has been announced. This will be no fleeting affair; it takes a full two weeks, from December 5 to 18, in Mataró, Spain. Here is some additional information. Ubuntu has announced the release of the Warty Live CD. The Live CD contains a snapshot of everything in the Ubuntu 4.10 but in a bootable trial form. A new mailing list for all Russian speaking Ubuntu users has also been announced.
New Distributions CCux LinuxCCux Linux is especially optimized for i686 and higher processor architectures. For package management it uses the RPM format in connection with the apt tools, which give it automatic dependency resolving when installing new software and therefore makes the installation of new software much easier. CCux Linux joins the list with the Alpha 0.9.4 release, dated October 14, 2004.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsDebian Weekly News for November 2, 2004 is out. This week's edition has trip reports from Systems 2004 and Kansai OpenSource, successful dist-upgrades from woody to sarge with a real i386, and more.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 1 November 2004The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of November 1, 2004 is out. This week's edition looks at the Linux World Conference & Expo in Frankfurt, and other topics.
Ubuntu Traffic #09Ubuntu Traffic #09 is out, with a summary of the most important mailing list and IRC discussions involving the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution during the week of October 16 - 22, 2004.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 73The DistroWatch Weekly for November 1, 2004 looks at SimplyMEPIS, OpenBSD and more.
Minor distribution updates Buffalo LinuxBuffalo Linux has released v1.5.0. "Changes: Buffalo 1.5.0 is a 2 CD relaese. The main reason for going to 2 CDs is to provide both kernel 2.6.8.1 and 2.6.9. The new 2.6.9 kernel has issues with some video drivers. The GNOME bundle (gnome-2.6.1-buff-9.bz2), containing 85 packages, was moved to the second CD, along with another 250 packages from Slackware current (30 Oct). These additional packages provide other desktops such as KDE-3.3.1, BlackBox, FluxBox, WindowMaker-0.80.2, and other useful utilities. Firefox-1.0PR and Thunderbird-0.8 were added to the first CD, with over 80 other package upgrades."
Kontron to bundle MontaVista Linux Carrier-Grade Edition with TCA platformsKontron has announced the signing of an OEM agreement that puts MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) into Kontron's next generation of Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) and Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) platforms.
Quantian release 0.6.9.1 availableQuantian 0.6.9.1 begins a new Quantian series based on Knoppix 3.6 and the corresponding clusterKnoppix release. The iso file of about 2.0 gb contains updates such as new Linux kernels 2.4.27 and 2.6,7, openMosix based on the 20040808 patches to 2.4.27 as well as a kernel shared memory migration patch, KDE 3.2.3, R 2.0.0 and numerous other updates among the over 1900 Debian packages that comprise Quantian. Click below for additional information.
SalvareSalvare has released v0.1.5. "Changes: Apart from bugfixes, the major change is an "install-debian" command which will start an included (and exclusive) Debian installer. It also includes improved bootstrapping code to allow it to boot from a floppy and CD or from a floppy and network. Beta USB support and much improved hardware detection were added."
Source Mage GNU/LinuxSource Mage GNU/Linux has released v0.9.3 for both x86 and PPC architectures. "Changes: This version uses a 2.6.8.1 kernel. NPTL has been removed. There is native support of udev and static /dev. It now installs a bootable system. yaboot, lilo, and grub have been tested with or without a separate /boot partition. All software have been compiled using stable sorcery/grimoire, with few patches."
VLinux version 1.0 is now available (Bioinformatics.org)Version 1.0 of VLinux has been announced. "VLinux Bioinformatics Workbench is a Linux distribution for bioinformatics. It is an easy to use, no installation required, CD-based distribution based on Knoppix 3.3. It includes a variety of sequence and structure analysis packages, and it's an Open Source project released under the GNU GPL license."
Newsletters and articles of interest PDA Freedom with OpenZaurus (Linux Journal)Victor Castro explores OpenZaurus in a Linux Journal article. "Despite Sharp's cancellation of its Zaurus SL-6000 PDA in the US, the Sharp Zaurus continues to have a strong following among Linux gurus in the US and all over the world. No one proves this point better than the people behind the OpenZaurus project. The OpenZaurus Project provides an alternative to the original Sharp Zaurus ROM for different models of the Sharp Zaurus Personal Mobile Tool."
OpenBSD 3.6 Live (O'ReillyNet)Federico Biancuzzi interviews several members of the OpenBSD team about the upcoming OpenBSD 3.6 release, on O'ReillyNet. "FB: At the moment the [SMP] code works on i386 and amd64 platforms. Which platforms do you plan to support in the future?Niklas Hallqvist: Loose plans, not any guarantees made: alpha, ppc, sparc(64), and maybe mvme88k :-) Maybe the new mips port? Who knows. This is work that probably must be done just because it is fun. There's hardly a large demand with funders around the corner. And today, unfortunately, there's not much time left for fun projects anymore. I was very lucky to get paid to do part of this fun work; otherwise it might not have happened."
Distribution reviews Six Weeks with Ubuntu Linux (OSNews)OSNews reviews Ubuntu 4.10. "I was really impressed with the Preview Release. I originally only installed it to see the then brand-new Gnome 2.8 desktop and, as I expected lots of problems within a totally new distribution that I never had heard of before, I planned to reinstall FC2 on the same day. But though there were a few rough edges in the Preview Release, it surely had good beta quality. There were no show-stoppers for me and so I just kept it, "apt-getting" myself through September and October."
First Look: SUSE Linux Professional 9.2 beta (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews SUSE Linux Professional 9.2. "Novell recently opened a limited beta of SUSE Linux Professional 9.2, and I've been using it for my work/production machine ever since I got my hands on the five-CD download. No, using a beta release of an operating system as your production system is generally not a good idea. Yes, there are bugs, as expected in beta software. There are also improvements and refinements, as is also to be expected. But overall, well, read on and see."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development Fun with video effects on LinuxOccasionally, your editor stumbles across some really fun software in the tireless search for interesting Linux applications. It all began with the recent acquisition of an inexpensive Kensington VideoCAM USB camera from a yard sale. This was my third yard sale camera purchase in the summer hunt for fun computer toys, it was also the first camera that I actually managed to get working under Linux.![[Kensington USB Cam]](/images/ns/kensing.png)
Previous attempts to get a Kodak DVC-323 cam (unsupported) and a Connectix parallel-port Quick-cam (supposedly supported, but broken) proved to
be more trouble than they were worth.
Unlike the other devices, the Kensington
camera provided a pleasant hardware experience. It works well with most
of the video applications that I have experimented with so far,
and did not require a kernel build to use.
The Kensington camera is not a super high-quality device,
with a maximum 300x400 resolution
and a total inability to handle the brightness levels
found outdoors, it is mainly useful for indoor use.
Fun Video ApplicationsWe'll take a look at a couple of interesting video applications for Linux, to see the wide variety of video applications that are available, search the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory and GnomeFiles sites.The application xawtv seems to be the basic video application for X11 systems. It has a useful -hwscan (hardware scan) mode that can locate active video devices. Xawtv is useful for getting a quick video display up and running, focusing the camera, and adjusting the brightness and color balance levels. Xawtv is also useful for grabbing snapshot images, it advertises the ability to record movies, but your editor was unable to make that work. After verifying the basic functionality of your camera, it's time to move on to more interesting applications. Mvc, the Movement Video Capture application is an interesting application that can be used to capture movement within the camera's field of view. Mvc is a tiny package that built with no problems on my RedHat 9.0 and Fedora Core 1 systems. Operation is simple, just fire it up and it will create a series of .jpg images as it detects motion. Denizens of cube-farms may find it useful for figuring out who is making off with your pencils when you are away. EffecTV is by far, the most interesting video application that I have found: "EffecTV is a real-time video effector. You can watch TV or video through amazing effectors." The current version features 39 real-time video effects. Some of the effects are fairly simple, such as adding noise and distortion to the video, changing colors, and producing both sides of a mirror-image. Other effects are quite impressive, such as viewing through real-time morphing lenses, through-the-water simulations, and burning simulations. A number of the more complicated effects are quite subtle, you may want to leave them on for a while to get the full effect. Effectv also has a few trendy effects, such as Warhol TV, Shagedelic TV, and Matrix TV. To switch the current effect, simply press the keyboard's up and down arrow keys. A GUI interface with buttons for each effect, and sliders to modify the parameters would be a useful addition. The effectv full-screen mode is the best way to get the most bang-per-buck from even the cheapest of video cameras. It is a bit too easy to get stuck in full-screen mode, pressing alt-enter toggles it on and off. Below are a few still shots from some of the many effectv modes, keep in mind that they hardly do justice to the real-time video-in-motion:
Not being easily satisfied, your editor procured a second Kensington camera on eBay for a mere 99 cents (before shipping costs). As a fun demonstration, I connected both cameras up to the USB ports on my Athlon XP1700 system, then fired up XaoS, a real-time fractal zoomer that's worthy of note. With a little effort, I was able to fill the entire screen up with three windows worth of zooming fractals and morphing video effects. Such a system would make a great store-front display, or could provide some fun interactive eye candy for your next party. This is a great way to put some of those idle processor mips to use. It must be time to look into getting one of those fancy high resolution video projection devices...
System Applications Database Software Firebird 1.5.2 Release Candidate 1 is availableRelease candidate 1 of the Firebird 1.5.2 database has been announced. "This release includes a fix for a known problem with events that caused the server to hog CPU after an abnormal termination under some conditions. If you who have experienced this bug, please test 1.5.2 and make sure that the problem has been resolved."
Ingres r3 releasedComputer Associates has announced the availability of Ingres r3, available under the "CA Trusted Open Source License." Major new features include high-availability clustering, parallel query processing, Unicode support, and more.
Kexi 0.1 beta 5 releasedVersion 0.1 beta 5 of Kexi, an integrated environment for managing data, has been released. Changes include improvements to the KexiDB Database Support Library, improved Form and Table Designers, bug fixes, and more.
MySQL Version 4.1 Certified as Production-ReadyVersion 4.1 of the MySQL database has been released. "Certified by the company as production-ready for large-scale enterprise deployment, this significant upgrade to the MySQL database server features advanced querying capabilities through subqueries, faster and more secure client-server communication, new installation and configuration tools, and support for international character sets and geographic data."
PgWorksheet 1.4 announcedVersion 1.4 of PgWorksheet, a simple GUI frontend to PostgreSQL, has been announced. "This version 1.4 allow the execution of multiple queries (separated by ';'), execution of external SQL scripts and is avaible as a native executable (.exe) for Microsoft Windows, in addition to the traditional, portable, python script."
PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Beta 4 Now AvailableVersion 8.0.0 Beta 4 of PostgreSQL has been announced. "After 4 weeks of work, involving alot of bug fixes, and documentation improvements, to the source tree, we have just released our 4th Beta of 8.0.0. Most of the items on Bruce's Open Items list have been completed, but we still have a half dozen or so Windows related items still open."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe October 27, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online. Take a look for the latest PostgreSQL database news.
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe November 1, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with a new collection of PostgreSQL database articles.
Filesystem Utilities EVMS 2.4.1 Released (SourceForge)Version 2.4.1 of the Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) is out. "This is the first maintenance release in the EVMS 2.4.x series, and is primarily intended to fix some recent bug-reports, as well as to update to the most recent kernel and Device-Mapper releases."
Libraries glibmm 2.5.1 announcedVersion 2.5.1 of glibmm has been released. "glibmm 2.5 wraps new API in glib 2.5, and is API/ABI-compatibile with glibmm 2.4. The new API is unstable, until this become the API/ABI-stable glibmm 2.6 when glib 2.5 becomes the API-stable glib 2.6."
IT++ 3.8.0 released (SourceForge)Version 3.8.0 of IT++ is available. "IT++ is a C++ library of mathematical, signal processing, speech processing, and communications classes and functions. It has been developed by researchers in these areas. The kernel of the package are templated vector and matrix classes and lots of functions for vectors and matrices. As such the kernel is similar to the Matlab functions. IT++ is based on LAPACK, CBLAS and FFTW."
jaxlib-0.6.3 released (SourceForge)Version 0.6.3 of JaXLib, a Java library with in-memory datastructures for objects and primitive types, I/O streams and more, is available. "This release just fixes a little nasty bug in class jaxlib.col.AbstractXCollection which caused the toString() method failing with a NoSuchElementException for collections containing exactly one element."
Printing Common UNIX Printing System 1.1.22Version 1.1.22 of CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, has been announced. "CUPS 1.1.22 is a bug fix release which fixes device URI logging, file descriptor and memory leaks, crashes related to printer browsing, and error handling in the browsing code. The new release also adds support for PostScript files from other Windows PostScript drivers."
PyKota 1.20 releasedVersion 1.20 of PyKota, a Python-based print quota system, has been announced. Changes include a new user privacy configuration directive, and translation work.
Web Site Development Installing Bricolage (O'Reilly)David Wheeler explains how to install Bricolage in an O'Reilly article. "Now that Content Management with Bricolage has piqued your interest, you might be wondering what you need to do to install it. I'll be the first to admit that installing Bricolage is not trivial, given that it requires several third-party applications and modules to do its job. That said, the installer tries hard to identify what pieces you have and which ones you don't, to help you through the process. Even still, it can help to have a nice guide to step you through the process. This article is here to help."
Midgard 1.6 releasedVersion 1.6 of the Midgard web CMS platform has been released. "This release changes the state of Midgard with major improvements and flexible features. For example, the Midgard database and web site setup has been redesigned with the new datagard command-line tool. Also, Midgard now bundles the MidCOM component framework and Aegir administration tool to provide a powerful out-of-the-box Content Management System experience."
Miscellaneous moodss 19.2.2 (stable) released (SourceForge)Stable version 19.2.2 of moodss, a system, network, and database monitoring application, is out. "This new version hopefully completely restores Tcl 8.3 core compatibility in the GUI. Updated myvars module for MySQL 4.1.7 support. Slightly improved rpm packaging."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ecasound 2.3.4 releasedVersion 2.3.4 of Ecasound, a multi-track audio application, is out. Here is the change summary: "Serious bugs in multitrack sync code, ECI C implementation and big-endian platform support have been fixed. Support has been added for input and output of FLAC, AAC and M4A files. Improvements have been made to both FreeBSD and Mac OS X support. Many minor improvements to ECI implementations and user documentation."
TimeMachine 0.3.0Version 0.3.0 of TimeMachine, a JACK-compatible audio application that can replay sounds that have just passed by, is out. Here are the changes: "Interactive command line mode by Mario Lang (no X11 needed) Generates WAV as well as W64 files, extension is now right Can specify JACK ports to connect to on the command line".
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.8.1 Desktop and Developer Platform is released (GnomeDesktop)Version 2.8.1 of the GNOME desktop is out. "This release includes the latest bugfixes and other improvements such as updated translations and is the first in a series of point releases."
Metacity 2.9.0 releasedVersion 2.9.0 (unstable) of Metacity, a window manager for GNOME 2, has been released with numerous changes and bug fixes.
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The October 29, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online, here's the content summary: "Auto logout support in Kiosk. Hardware Abstraction Layer support in media kioslave. Journal plugin for Kontact. KDevelop improves Ruby support. Bidi support from Webcore merged into khtml".
Xfce 4.2 BETA2 is outRelease 4.2 Beta 2 of the XFCE lightweight desktop environment is available. "Xfce 4.2-beta2 is the first desktop environment to ship with an easy to use graphical installation wizard, which takes care of compiling and installing Xfce and contributed packages on your computer. This second beta version offers several new and awaited features in comparison with the previous 4.0 stable release, while continuing to be lightweight, including a brand new session manager, keyboard shortcut and desktop menu graphical editors, multihead support (Xinerama and real multiscreen), "kiosk mode" support, optional support for icons in the desktop menu, a desktop menu plugin for the panel, CUPS and BSD-LPR printing support, and a new icon theme."
Educational Software Tux Paint 0.9.14 released (SourceForge)Version 0.9.14 of Tux Paint, a drawing package for children, is available. "Tux Paint 0.9.14 introduces several new features, including a highly-anticipated, easy-to-use configuration tool for parents and teachers, and a multi-layered coloring book mode. Reflecting its international team and focus, Tux Paint is currently available in over 45 different languages."
GUI Packages GTK+ 2.5.4 (unstable) releasedUnstable release 2.5.4 of GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces, is out with lots of changes and new bugs to find and report.
GLib 2.5.4 releasedUnstable release 2.5.4 of GLib, a low-level core library for GTK+ and GNOME, is available. Changes include a new .ini file parser, filename encoding consistency improvements, bug fixes, and more.
gtkmm 2.4.6 and glibmm 2.4.5 announcedNew versions of gtkmm and glibmm are available. "gtkmm provides a C++ interface to GTK+. gtkmm 2.4 installs in parallel with gtkmm 2.2, so you can have both installed at the same time. glibmm is now a separate module, for use in non-GUI software."
Gtk2-Perl 2.9.1 is outVersion 2.9.1 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+, has been released. "This is Gtk2-Perl 2.9.1, the unstable release for GNOME 2.9.1."
Imaging Applications GIMP 2.0.6 Released (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has the announcement for version 2.0.6 of the GIMP, a powerful image manipulation tool. "GIMP 2.0.6 is a bug-fix release in the stable GIMP 2.0 series. It fixes a couple of smaller problems and a crash that occured with Pango 1.2 (but not with newer versions of Pango). This is the last release in the GIMP 2.0 tree which will be obsoleted by GIMP 2.2 very soon now."
First preview of GIMP 2.2 (GnomeDesktop)Footnotes reports on the availability of a GIMP 2.2 preview release. "This pre-release has all the features that 2.2 will have. Since some of this code hasn't seen a lot of testing yet, there are certainly bugs. This is your chance to find them."
Instant Messaging Gaim 1.0.2 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 1.0.2 of Gaim, an instant messaging application, has been announced, it features numerous bug fixes.
Loudmouth 0.17.2 releasedVersion 0.17.2 of Loudmouth, a C library for writing Jabber clients written using GLib, has been announced. "This release fixes a number of UTF-8 related issues people have been seeing in Gossip. It also fixes an issue when running multi threaded programs where Loudmouth wasn't used in the main context."
Mail Clients Evolution 2.0.2 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 2.0.2 of Evolution, the GNOME mail client, has been announced, it features numerous bug fixes. See the news document for details.
Multimedia Now showing: Your own online MPEG-4 cinema (IBM developerWorks)Sing Li shows how to make an MPEG-4 player on IBM developerWorks. "Follow along with popular author and Java developer Sing Li as he shows you how to code a custom Java MPEG-4 player using the SDK libraries, how to use an applet to create a download-on-demand MPEG-4 player, and how to prepare the content for delivery."
Fluendo launches the Flumotion Streaming Server (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org looks at Fluendo's new Flumotion streaming media server. "This streaming media server is the same that was used to stream GUADEC in Kristiansand this year and also the Akademy KDE conference in Stuttgart. The server supports streaming in Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Speex in addition to archiving your streams to disk."
Music Applications LilyPond 2.4 releasedVersion 2.4 of LilyPond, a music typesetting system, is out. "With this release, LilyPond does not rely anymore on TeX to do titling and page layout, but distributes page breaks optimally by itself to produce evenly spaced pages, while respecting user specified turning points. The slur formatting code has been completely rewritten, and now yields classical engraving quality results for most cases. In addition, version 2.4 adds fret diagrams, a safe execution mode for webserver use, a further simplified input format, better typography for ledger lines, many bugfixes and a fully revised and updated manual."
swh-plugins 0.4.11 have been releasedVersion 0.4.11 of swh-plugins, a set of audio plugin effects, are out. Changes include bug fixes, and new plugins for artificial latency and cross-fading.
News Readers Liferea 0.6.1 announcedVersion 0.6.1 of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, has been released. This version improves the handling of updated items, features IPv6 support, includes bug fixes, and much more.
Office Applications Criawips 0.0.8 is outVersion 0.0.8 of Criawips, a presentation application, has been released. "Versio[n] 0.0.8 is a snapshot release of current development code. So don't expect a full-featured application yet. This release is mostly some "get the code frozen for the presentations on LWE and Linux-Info-Tag" last week." Version 0.0.8a was later released to fix a compilation problem.
gcalctool v5.5.9 announcedVersion 5.5.9 of gcalctool, the default GNOME calculator, is out. "This release is for the first GNOME 2.9 call for tarballs. It's believed to be stable but we need as many people testing the new arithmetic operator precedence support as possible to verify that."
Gnumeric 1.3.92 aka Release Candidate 1 (GnomeDesktop)Release Candidate 1 of the Gnumeric 1.3.92 spreadsheet is out. " With this release we have gone through lots of old bug reports and fixed a large number of little things that should make Gnumeric a more polished application. People with broken printer configurations -- you know who you are -- will take delight in the delayed initialization of Gnome Print. A broken CUPS configuration will no longer cause a hang on startup."
Peer to Peer KMLDonkey 0.10 releasedVersion 0.10 of KMLDonkey, a GUI frontend for the MLDonkey P2P core, has been released. "Aside from being an official release, version 0.10 contains only a few bug fixes since the 0.10pre4 release. The changes since the last official release, 0.9.1, are too numerous to list".
Digital Photography digiKam-0.7-rc1 is outVersion 0.7-rc1 of digiKam, a digital photo management application for KDE, is out. "The highlights of this release are a number of bug fixes, updated documentation and various usability/cosmetic fixes since the beta1 release."
Web Browsers Epiphany 1.5.1 is outVersion 1.5.1 of Epiphany, the GNOME browser, is out. Changes include loading/unloading of extensions on demand, interface improvements, bug fixes, and more.
Epiphany Extensions 1.5.1Version 1.5.1 of Epiphany Extensions is available. Changes include a new copy-template script, new Sidebar, Extensions Manager, and Bookmarks Tray extensions, and more.
Firefox 1.0 RC 1 Released (MozillaZine)The first release candidate for version 1.0 of the Firefox browser has been announced. "The release candidates include about 250 bug fixes since Firefox 1.0 PR and we'd appreciate any feedback around any of those areas. With this release, we're also featuring Mozilla Foundation builds for up to two dozen locales".
Miscellaneous The Electronic Voting Machine ProjectThe Electronic Voting Machine Project aims to produce a Python-based voting application that runs on older PCs. "A worldwide group of scientists, engineers, political scientists, legal scholars, and voting-rights activists are working on developing a PC based voting machines that will be easier to use, more secure, cheaper, and provide greater democratic transparency than commercially available voting machines."
GNOME Terminal 2.9.1 releasedVersion 2.9.1 of GNOME Terminal has been released. Changes include making terminal windows into group leaders, a new full screen mode, bug fixes, translation updates, and more.
Announcing gnome-doc-utilsThe initial release of gnome-doc-utils is out. "This package contains a number of utilities for working with GNOME documentation."
Seahorse 0.7.5 releasedVersion 0.7.5 of Seahorse, a GNOME application for managing PGP keys, is out with lots of changes.
Teatime 2.4.1 is outVersion 2.4.1 of Teatime, a GNOME panel applet for reminding you when your tea is ready, is available. Changes include improved sound system support, new translations, and bug fixes.
Yelp 2.9.1 releasedVersion 2.9.1 of Yelp, the GNOME help browser, has been released. "This is the first unstable release in the 2.9.x development series, leading up to the stable 2.10 release. If you've been yearning for new features since Gnome 2.6, prepare to be excited."
Languages and Tools C Using Design by Contract in C (O'ReillyNet)Charlie Mills discusses Design by Contract programming in an O'Reilly article. "Design by Contract is a programming approach that formalizes the interface between callers and callees, leading to more robust and disciplined code. If your language lacks formal support for DBC, though, are you stuck? No--Charles Mills describes the design and implementation of Design by Contract for the C programming language."
Caml GODI and its new homepageThe GODI project has a new homepage. "The GODI project is a source-code based distribution of the Objective Caml (O'Caml) language that contains the core programming environment plus a lot of additional libraries, and even some applications. Besides making the O'Caml environment more accessible, the intention of GODI is also to make this programming language more popular."
Java Advanced Synchronization in Java Threads, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)Scott Oaks and Henry Wong continue their O'Reilly series on threads under J2SE 5.0 with part two. "J2SE 5.0 introduces new utilities for coordinating multiple threads. But where you have synchronized threads, you have a risk of deadlock. In this excerpt from Java Threads, 3rd Edition, Scott Oaks and Henry Wong look at deadlock and how to deal with it."
JSP Harnessing Rhino (IBM developerWorks)Michael Squillace works with Rhino on IBM developerWorks. "JavaScript is well known as a language for dynamically manipulating and accessing the content of Web pages. With the introduction of Rhino, a 100% pure Java implementation of JavaScript, many developers have discovered that the language is also an excellent tool for quickly building and deploying GUI-based applications. In this fifth article in the alt.lang.jre series, regular developerWorks contributor Michael Squillace introduces you to the fundamentals of Rhino, a prototype-based alternative to the Java language on the Java platform."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The October 18-31, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is online. Take a look for the latest Perl articles.
This Fortnight on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)Matt Fowles has put together his first edition of This Fortnight on Perl 6, for October 1-17, 2004. Take a look to read about Perl 6 development issues.
PHP How to Use JMS with PHP (O'ReillyNet)Amir Shevat works with JMS using PHP, in an O'Reilly article. "Java Messaging Service (JMS) is a great enterprise messaging architecture, but what if you have have a web application written in a non-Java language that wants to participate in JMS? Amir Shevat shows how PHP can be made to work with JMS."
PHP Weekly Summary for October 24, 2004The PHP Weekly Summary for October 24, 2004 is out. Topics include: Type hints continued, After CVS went down, Nesting level too deep, empty() with infinite parameters, VM generator, PHP 5, SQLite 3 and politics, PHP 5.1 Roadmap, Linux LFS Support, PHP 5.1 time() caching and Nothing to add.
PHP Weekly Summary for November 1, 2004The PHP Weekly Summary for November 1, 2004 is out. Topics include: openssl - module shutdown, CLI and NetWare, Streams file uri under win32, dl() unload/module shutdown, type hints and NULL continued, Sablotron upgrade, Eyal Gutmans, curl_init and safe_mode, Negative string offset support, 5.1 roadmap continued, and type hints and streams.
Prolog PrologDoc 1.0RC1 released! (SourceForge)Release candidate 1 of PrologDoc 1.0 is out. "PrologDoc is a small Prolog tool to document your Prolog applications, much like the better-known Javadoc does for Java. Its aim is to be simple but useful and freely usable. Initial stable version of PrologDoc has been released. It's meant to be used in real projects and to gather some feedback about useful features to add to the upcoming 1.0 release."
Python spyse, the Secret Python Multi-Agent System Engineering platformThe initial release of spyse, the Secret Python Multi-Agent System Engineering platform, is out. "It allows Python developers to build distributed systems of multiple cooperative agents and makes use of various standards, such as FIPA and OWL, as well as Zope. It is very spicy."
urwid 0.8.1 releasedVersion 0.8.1 of uruwid, a curses-based UI/widget library for Python, is available. Changes include monochrome terminal support, interactive terminal i/o testing, unit testing, and bug fixes.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The November 1, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the week's roundup of Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML Render dynamic graphs in SVG (IBM developerWorks)Brian Venn uses SVG for creating dynamic graphs on IBM developerWorks. "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based language for drawing two-dimensional graphics. The ability to render graphics on the fly lends itself naturally to using it for representing data such as graphs. But suppose the data being represented varies in its magnitude. You may want to graph values between 0 and 10 today, and between 0 and 100,000 tomorrow. Plotting these values on the same scales would be useless -- ideally, you want the ability to scale SVG graphs depending on their content. Author Brian Venn shows you how."
Extensibility, XML Vocabularies, and XML Schema (O'Reilly)David Orchard looks at XML extensibility issues on O'Reilly. "This article describes techniques to achieve more effective loose coupling between systems by providing a means for backwards- and forwards-compatible changes to occur when systems evolve. These techniques are designed to allow compatible changes with or without schema propagation. A number of questions, design patterns. and rules are introduced to enable versioning in XML vocabularies, making use of XML namespaces and XML Schema constructs."
Build Tools cruisecontrol 2.2 releasedVersion 2.2 of CruiseControl, a framework for a continuous build process, has been released. "It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, maven, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds."
Editors Conglomerate 0.7.15 Released (GnomeDesktop)Conglomerate version 0.7.15, an XML editor, is out. "This is still an unstable release; there are still some known repeatable crash bugs. Please download it and test that no new bugs have been introduced!"
gedit 2.9.1 (unstable) releasedUnstable version 2.9.1 of gedit, the official text editor for the GNOME environment, is out with lots of bug fixes and translation work.
Screem 0.12.0 Stable release (GnomeDesktop)Version 1.2.0 of Screem, an HTML/XML Editor and website editing IDE, is out. "This is the culmination of the 0.11.x development series and includes many bug fixes / improvements from the past 7 months."
tease 1.2.1 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2.1 of tease, a text editor written in tcl/tk for use on win32 systems and unix, has been released. "Tease offers an uncommon, broadening tool set, and provides it in a fast, intuitable GUI environ. 1.2.1 is a bug-fix release. A number of bugs relating to spaces in filenames, and file loading and saving were the bulk of the fixes in this build."
Test Suites Marathon 0.90 Released (SourceForge)Version 0.90 of Marathon, a testing framework for GUI applications developed using Java/Swing, is available. "This is a minor feature enhancement and bug-fix release."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading A Firm Foundation for the Linux Desktop (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet looks at the origins of X and the accomplishments of X.org. "X.org has achieved a lot and is poised to achieve a lot more. It has issued two releases of X in the past six months, a feat involving a great deal of testing, management, and weighted decision making. This is an exciting time, where the foundation is still working out a lot of basic procedural issues, such as how to reach the point of making a release. Increased funding would make a huge difference at this critical historical moment in the adoption of desktop systems."
Give me liberty and give me death? (Financial Times)The Financial Times has posted a response to the "why open source is unsustainable" column. "Global businesses such as IBM have very good lawyers. They are not known for investing billions of dollars into businesses built on licences that are simultaneously vague and imperialistic. (I imagine an absent-minded Genghis Khan.) Unenforceable licences are also unpopular. In his scholarship, Prof Epstein has pointed out eloquently that the market is the best information processing system we have: we should assume that it is incorporating all available information. If we apply his principle here, it indicates that the market has weighed his fears and found them wanting."
Trade Shows and Conferences KDE at LinuxWorld Netherlands Report (KDE.News)KDE.News features a report on the recent LinuxWorld event in Utrecht, the Netherlands. "This first LinuxWorld event in the Netherlands was held simultaneously with two other events: 'Storage Expo' and 'InfoSecurity'. Many large companies were present including Sun and Novell. It was styled more as a business event, and because even the penguin in the logo was wearing a tie I decided to do the same."
Dutch EU Presidency holds Open Source in Government conference (NewsForge)NewsForge covers the upcoming "Open Standards and Libre Software in Government" conference. "The conference will focus on successful implementations and policies on open source in EU-level, national, local and regional government. There will be a presentation of the German Federal Government's Migration Guide and the EU Regional Innovation award-winning policies of Extremadura, Spain from Regional Minister Luis Millan Vazquez de Miguel. There will also be a discussion of EU policies on interoperability and open standards, with speakers from the European Commission."
The SCO Problem SCO sees a little sense (ZDNet)ZDNet comments on SCO's backtracking on its scoinfo.com web site. "SCO clearly feels hurt by Groklaw and wants to hit back. Yet in recognising that it has no real case to make against it online, the company is sensibly husbanding its resources to concentrate on its two business plans: litigation and software development. We hope that the company will further realise that Groklaw's unassailable position reflects the strength of the arguments it espouses. Two business plans is one business plan too many: for the good of its customers and the market as a whole, the company should now take the next logical step."
Companies Adobe dipping toes into desktop Linux waters (News.com)News.com reports that Adobe is beginning to wake up to Linux. "The San Jose, Calif., company confirmed its OSDL membership but wouldn't comment on most of its Linux desktop software plans. However, Pam Deziel, an Adobe director of product marketing, did say the company doesn't think there are enough customers today to justify selling Linux versions of its flagship Photoshop or Illustrator graphics programs."
Ballmer's Email - Indemnification Comes Full Circle (Groklaw)Groklaw analyzes the latest letter from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, and finds the legal equivalent of an infinite loop. "..and then lo and behold, in one section he suggests that indemnification is another fine reason to choose Microsoft over Linux. Obviously, they think we all just fell off a turnip truck and can't connect the dots. Is it legal, I wonder, to help create IP legal issues for your chief competitor, and then use that trouble as a marketing ploy? If it is, somebody pass a law quick, will ya?"
Linux Adoption Asian states see open source as window of opportunity (IHT Online)IHT Online reports on the Indian West Bengal Education Ministry's plans to install 10,000 Linux boxes. "Desktop software from Red Hat, a U.S. company that repackages and sells the Linux system, offered savings of 25 percent to 30 percent over Windows, G.D. Gauta, a principal secretary in the information technology department in the West Bengal Ministry of Education, said in a recent telephone interview. But even if Microsoft had dropped its prices, it would not have made any difference, Gauta said, because "the Linux system is a better system."" Thanks to Anand Vaidya.
Open Source ready for prime time in UK.gov, says OGC (Register)The Register looks at a new report, from the UK's OGC, which gives open-source software a green light. "Open Source Software is now a viable and credible alternative for government, says a report published yesterday by the UK's Office of Government Commerce. The report, detailing the verdict on a series of proof of concept trials of OSS, which were carried out in conjunction with Sun and IBM over the past year, notes that the three main areas of implementation are at different stages of maturity, but notes that cost savings can be achieved, and signposts OSS' attractiveness as a possible escape route from vendor lock-in."
Linux in Government: In Spite of Endorsements, Government Linux Projects Still Treading Water (Linux Journal)Although government sponsored studies advocate the adoption of open source software actual adoption by government agencies lags behind. Linux Journal takes a look. "Although we have tracked many case studies, wide-spread adoption of OSS within government lacks execution. For example, only a few years ago, Mexico agreed to implement Linux in all its public schools. Vicente Fox introduced an initiative called e-Mexico shortly after he took over the presidency in December of 2000. Funding was scarce and the government began to look at ways to finance the project without using hard currency."
Not So Fast, Linux (Business Week)Business Week looks at Linux adoption by European governments and Microsoft's response. "Yet over the past 18 months the giant from Redmond, Wash., has unleashed a fierce counterattack, and there are signs that it's working. Paris was only the most recent and important victory. Last January the borough of Newham in London reversed course on a planned change to Linux after a consultant's report said Windows would cost $600,000 less to support each year. To seal the deal, Microsoft offered Newham an undisclosed discount. The Finnish city of Turku also changed its mind about dumping Windows after a three-year experiment with Linux showed employees resisted the switch."
Whatdya Mean, Free Software? (IT-Director)Robin Bloor lists the factors he sees limiting free software adoption in this IT-Director column. "There is no Standard Open Source License: Actually there is wide variety of Open Source licenses, just as there are a wide variety of proprietary licenses. Small companies may not care too much about this, as they probably have never even read a license, but large organizations do care because they have to. No large organization can afford the risk of not knowing the license terms for the use of key software products."
Legal Lexmark and the DMCA (Groklaw)Groklaw has the Lexmark ruling in plain text format, along with some commentary. "I want you please to notice that one of the judges in this case quoted from Larry Lessig's 'Free Culture.' I keep telling you, judges do eventually get it." The ruling by the court was not unanimous; see this article for the dissenting opinions.
Interviews Groklaw Interview with Sarah Deutsch, Esq. on RIAA v. Verizon (Groklaw)Groklaw interviews Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon and lead attorney on RIAA v. Verizon. "Deutsch: This case involved considerable dangers for privacy, safety and First Amendment and anonymous speech because the form subpoena could have been used not only to find out subscriber information for P2P file sharing, but for any website you visited, chatroom you participated in or even an email you sent. Many people do not realize that your IP address is visible everywhere you go on the Internet -- when you send an email, visit a website, or chat room, these numbers are visible. The service provider holds the key to link this IP number with a name, address or phone number."
Resources Using Unicode in Linux (NewsForge)NewsForge converts a Linux system to use Unicode. "First of all, check whether you're already using a Unicode locale. The command locale prints out the values of environmental variables that influence the locale settings. A complete description of their meanings is available in locale man pages. Usually, locale names consist of a lowercase language code followed by an underscore and an uppercase country code (e.g. en_US for U.S. English). Unicode locale names that use UTF-8 encoding additionally end with ".UTF-8." If such names are present in the output of locale, you are already using a Unicode locale."
Twenty Third-Party Gnome Apps you Can't Live Without (OS News)OS News has published a list of 23 useful third-party applications for GNOME. "When on Unix/Linux I mostly use Gnome, and so here are some of the best third party GTK+ applications around I have found."
Linux on your USB Key (Tuxme.com)Tuxme.com has published an article about installation of Linux on a USB memory key device. "So I've had one of those usb keys for nearly a year now and what's on it? Nothing... so I decided to install Linux on it. 256MB should be more than enough and I would be able to boot it anywhere, use it for troubleshooting and impress my friends and co-workers."
Reviews 1-Box to serve them all (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews 1-Box, a multi-headed Linux machine that is being sold by a company called Useful. "1-Box uses one tower PC with up to five dual-head video cards driving 10 monitors, and a USB hub to plug in keyboards and mice. Software required includes some flavor of Linux, as well as the 1-Box application. 1-Box supports any software that will run on Linux and costs $99, plus $79 per user."
Miscellaneous Firefox donations hit $250,000 (News.com)News.com reports that the Mozilla Foundation has raised $250,000 during the 10 days of its fund raising campaign. "The money will be used to promote the final version of Firefox 1.0 when it is released on Nov. 9. The campaign started two weeks ago with the goal of getting 2,500 people to donate $30 or more to the marketing fund within 10 days, with the aim of placing a full-page ad in The New York Times."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements A compulsory insurance against software patents is like firefighting with petrol!The president of the Free Software Foundation Europe has sent out an open letter to the president of the EC concerning software patents and insurance. "In this sense, the planned compulsory insurance is like firefighting with petrol: We already have 30,000 software patents in Europe. Many compulsory insured patentees will consider the insurance as an investment they need a return on. Returns from software patents are reaped in lawsuits filed. The result: Rapidly exploding insurance premiums, insurance companies limiting their risk to what they can calculate, and in the end patentees and defendants will find themselves in a situation similar to one without compulsory insurance, but with one important difference: They will have spent an insane amount of money on a useless insurance and bureaucracy for its administration will have skyrocketed."
Anonymous Voting Referendum (GnomeDesktop)Gnomedesktop.org has announced a new GNOME Foundation voting process. "The results for the anonymous voting referendum are now official: all future GNOME Foundation elections and referenda will use an anonymous voting process."
GNOME Foundation 2004 Elections (GnomeDesktop)GNOME Foundation 2004 elections for the Board of Directors are coming up. Nominations are currently open to members of the GNOME Foundation. Find the details in this announcement.
Technocrat to pay $50 for original articles to be made Open SourceBruce Perens' Techrocrat.net site will pay $50 per article for articles on hardware, software, and systems administration. "This is your chance to be a paid professional author, to see your work viewed widely and taken up by others, and to get paid for making Open Source. We'll do our best to get other sites to link to the article."
Commercial announcements Saving Cash: A Comparison of Open Source and Proprietary SoftwareResearch and Markets has announced a new report entitled Saving Cash: A Comparison of Open Source and Proprietary Software. "This report on open source in Germany shows you significant saving potentials through the deployment of open source software for different company sizes. The study shows that the risk for Open Source users on account of copyright or patent violations in the software used is minimal." You do have to pay for the report, however.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 5.0 for Sendmail with Milter APIKaspersky Lab has announced version 5.0 of it's Anti-Virus software. "Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Sendmail with Milter API protects Linux/ Unix server mail traffic. The program works in conjunction with Sendmail and supports Sendmail's Content Management (Milter) API. This interface provides external applications with access to mail messages processed by Sendmail. It also offers additional processing and editing of the contents and meta-data of mail messages." Of course, most of the scanned viruses don't affect Linux systems.
Mandrakesoft gets mobility grantMandrakesoft has announced that it will be sharing a €1 million grant for "advanced mobility research"; click below for the details.
Novell: Unbending the truthNovell has put up a series of pages entitled Unbending the Truth: Things Microsoft Hopes You Won't Notice; it is a response to Steve Ballmer's anti-Linux letter. "If the world were as Microsoft states, Linux would not be the world's fastest growing operating system, ISVs would not be writing to it in ever increasing numbers, partners would not be looking to sell it, and Microsoft would not have put a revenue caution related to Linux in their latest SEC filing. These, however, are the real facts."
Hardware Acceleration Delivers Wire Speed Performance to Security SoftwareSensory Networks, a developer of hardware acceleration technology for network security applications, and Astaro have announced a partnership to integrate Astaro Security Linux with Sensory Networks NodalCore acceleration technology to deliver a hardware-accelerated security solution.
SGI Doubles Density of High-End Altix ServerSGI has announced a new entry in its SGI Altix 3700 series, featuring twice the bandwidth and processor density of previous versions. "The new system, which will also accommodate the forthcoming tanium 2 processors with 9MB cache, enables customers to pack 64 processors into a standard Altix rack."
Japan buys 2048-node Linux clusterSGI has announced the sale of a 2048-processor Linux cluster to Japan's Atomic Energy Research Institute. The system is based on Itanium processors, and includes over 13TB of installed memory.
Terra Soft Supplies Boeing, Airforce with Flight SimulatorsTerra Soft Solutions, Inc. has delivered 17 dual-head Apple Power Mac G5s to Ellsworth and Dyess Airforce bases to serve as flight simulators for the Boeing B1 bombers. "Boeing extracted the actual Ada95 code used on-board the B1 and the FORTRAN and C code from its development simulators, ported it to Yellow Dog Linux, and then ported and applied a C Motif graphical user interface which simulates the physical switch panel and displays on-board the B1 bomber."
TippingPoint Releases Open Source Code for TomahawkTippingPoint Technologies, Inc. has announced the availability and open source release of Tomahawk(TM), a test tool designed to evaluate the unique capabilities of network-based intrusion prevention systems (IPS).
Wind River Targets the Telecommunications MarketWind River Systems, Inc. has announced the Wind River Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition. The Platform includes a complete Linux reference file system with a rich set of networking middleware and applications. Based on the Linux 2.6 kernel with Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 2.01 features, Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition also includes Wind River Workbench 2.2.
New Books 'C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3' Book Download (KDE.News)KDE.News announces the availability of a freely downloadable book. "The "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" book written by Trolltech software engineer Jasmin Blanchette and Trolltech's documentation manager Mark Summerfield, already featured by the dot, can now be downloaded in PDF format from the publisher's homepage in the "Downloads" section."
"Spam Kings" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams. "Brian McWilliams, author of "Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and @*#?% Enlargements" explores the shadowy world of the people responsible for today's junk email epidemic."
"Real World Web Services" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Real World Web Services by Will Iverson.
Resources Open Streaming Manuals announcedThe initial release of a manual on Linux streaming has been announced. "r a d i o q u a l i a have just finished the first version of a streaming manual for those wishing to learn how to stream under Linux. Its intended as a manual to accompany a hands-on self-learning or workshop based approach. No previous knowledge of Linux is assumed. Another manual on 'advanced topics' will be forthcoming."
Quicktoots release number 13Release 13 of Quicktoots is available. The topic this time is audio mastering. "Mastering is the art of making a good mix sound incredible. It takes years of experience do do it well and is possibly the most important part of a professionals recording cycle. This toot provides invaluable insight into sound control during the mastering phase. Ron puts together years of hard learned knowledge gained from running his Minneapolis studio."
New Additions on LinuxSound.orgDave Philips has updated his list of new Linux audio software for October/November, 2004.
The LDP Weekly NewsThe November 3, 2004 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News is available with a new round of Linux documentation. "Matt Barnes would like to start a Linux Documentation - Audio Video project. The project aims to convert The LDP documents to wave and mp3 format. The goal of this exercise is to show that it can be done, and that it should be done. The intent is to allow someone to download a media file into a media player and listen to the information rather than always having to read it and possibly stream them over the internet." Hmm, talking man pages?
Contests and Awards KDE and the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards (KDE.News)KDE.News takes a look at KDE and various applications that have been honored in the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards. "Most importantly, in the category of "Favorite Desktop Environment", KDE came in first followed by GNOME. The trend over recent years has shown KDE gaining more and more popularity over GNOME and this year KDE received two votes for every one that GNOME received."
Kontact/KMail Awarded Best Mail Client (KDE.News)KDE.News covers KDE's award for Kontact/KMail as "Best Mail Client" at Linux World Expo & Conference Europe (Frankfurt).
Upcoming Events Earlybird entries are about to close for OSDCRegistration for the Australian Open Source Developers' Conference is now open. This conference will be run on the 1st - 3rd of December 2004 at Monash University, Caulfield in Melbourne, Australia.
Randal L. Schwartz and the 'Intermediate Perl' SeminarHurricane Electric has announced the hosting of a seminar on Perl by Randal L. Schwartz. "Intermediate Perl," will be held on Saturday, November 20, 2004, in Fremont, CA, between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Lunch will be provided by Hurricane Electric. The cost of the seminar is $199."
Call for Participation: ICMC 2005A call for participation has gone out for the International Computer Music Conference 2005 (ICMC). The event will be held on September 5-9, 2005 in Barcelona, Spain.
Southern California Linux Expo Continues to fill out Expo Lineup (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews reports on the latest speaker additions to SCALE, the Southern California Linux Expo. The event will take place on February 12 and 13, 2005, in Los Angeles, CA.
Events: November 4 - December 30, 2004
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
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