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Linux in Europe

Two years ago Mandrakesoft was on the verge of bankruptcy and SUSE was trotting along with a 6-month release cycle and a shrink-wrapped software sales model. Now, Mandrakesoft is a profitable company, SUSE is part of Novell, and many large cities and regions of Europe are actively migrating to Linux-based solutions. Has the center of Linux adoption shifted from North America to Europe?

The widely reported decision of the European Council earlier this week to adopt software patent agreement highlighted the key difference between public participation in legal proceedings in the USA and Europe. While software patents were adopted in the USA without much publicity or protests, the European open source community has put up a strong fight and, at the very least, succeeded in delaying the adoption of the controversial law. It has mobilized many open source web sites to launch online protests against the patents, asked EU citizens to write to their legislators with explanations why software patents are wrong, and gathered a decent number of protesters, many of whom came from distant countries, in front of the EU Council in Brussels on the days when important decisions were being made. These actions not only resulted in several unscheduled trips by Bill Gates to Brussels to lobby for the speedy legalization of software patents, they have also attracted the attention of the mainstream European media.

As such, Europeans are probably more aware of the open source movement than citizens of most other parts of the world. SUSE especially has to be commended for maintaining their distribution agreements with many retailers around Europe. While practically all other distribution makers have abandoned the shrink-wrapped business model and rely exclusively on digital delivery of their software, SUSE Linux boxes continue to be available in book and software stores throughout Germany, Austria and most other European countries. In fact, walking into any medium-size news stand in Germany is like entering a Linux paradise, as you are likely to find perhaps a dozen Linux-related magazines in both German and English. Many of these magazines are regular monthly publications designed for Linux beginners, with friendly tutorials and easy explanations. This is in sharp contrast with the United States, where the only available Linux magazines are Linux Journal and Linux Magazine, both of which cater for senior system administrators, rather than general public. At present, there is no US-made printed magazine targeting Linux beginners.

Speaking about magazines, Poland's Software Wydawnictwo has emerged as one of the top open source publishers in Europe. It is currently offering a number of titles ranging from a general Linux magazine with a cover CD and DVD (Linux+) to specialist monthlies for PHP developers (PHP Solutions) and security topics (Hakin9). The publishing house also produces its own distribution (Aurox Linux), which it sells as part of the Aurox Linux magazine. All these publications are available not only in Polish, but also in German, French, Spanish and Czech, with more languages planned for the future. Recently, Software Wydawnictwo also launched a new title for the domestic market entitled "Linux w Szkole" (Linux in Schools), which leaves little doubt that Linux is already well-established in Polish educational institutions.

Mandrakesoft has emerged from its financial disaster two years ago rather nicely. It returned to profitability last year and has since been awarded two large contracts - one by the European Union and the other by the French Ministry of Education and Research. Its surprising acquisition last month of Conectiva, South America's oldest and best-known open source company might not be the only one; the recent trips of Mandrakesoft's CEO François Bancilhon to China and other countries seem to indicate that the company is looking around to further strengthen its position as a global Linux solution provider. Besides its successful range of Mandrakelinux products for the home user, Mandrakesoft has also been expanding into the corporate sector with its Corporate Desktop and Corporate Server editions.

Ubuntu Linux is another European project that has gained rapid momentum since its launch 6 months ago. The distribution has succeeded in creating large user communities in many European countries, as witnessed by several rapidly growing user forums and community web sites in Dutch, French, German and Spanish. Ubuntu has seemingly done everything right - as if they studied the mistakes of other similar projects and avoided them right from the start. Of course, the GNOME-centric distribution has the backing of a wealthy individual, but their work is still highly innovative, especially considering that no other distribution before has been able to build fully functional live CDs for PowerPC and AMD64 processors. With the upcoming release of version 5.04 next month, accompanied by a sister edition for the KDE fans (Kubuntu), the Ubuntu Linux user base is likely to grow even further.

No article about the European Linux scene will be complete without visiting Spain. Spain is one country that has gone further than any other in converting a large number of computers and users to Linux. It all started a few years ago by an initiative of the regional government of Extremadura (gnuLinEx) and spread like a virus to other parts of the country. Nowadays there are large areas of Spain where all school and public administration computers are running Linux exclusively! It is interesting to note that Spain has virtually standardized on Debian and Debian-based solutions and many of these regional initiatives are now forging closer ties with Ubuntu, which is seen as a more progressive project than Debian itself.

Other countries, regions and cities are, if not moving to Linux outright, doing feasibility studies or have set up pilot projects. Reports about the migration of Germany's Munich and Norway's Bergen have been well-publicized, but other large cities, including Paris, Rome and Vienna have also been in the headlines recently. It is likely that many smaller projects, both governmental and in the private sector, are under way without them wanting to raise any publicity. This is not only great news for Mandrakesoft, SUSE and Ubuntu, but also an opportunity for many smaller open source companies, such as the recently unveiled, Malta-based 2X Software, which is offering Linux-based terminal servers and thin clients for large-scale deployments. Many other small Linux companies are showcasing their solutions on this week's CeBIT exhibition.

All this evidence leads us to believe that Europe is now the undisputed leader in developing strategies for migration to Linux and open source software. In the process, it has created a vibrant open source economy, as well as a strong awareness among its population to resist controversial laws favoring large software monopolies and their commercial agendas. The tide is unstoppable. Let's hope that other regions will follow Europe's example.

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Distribution News

Ubuntu Linux

The first test image of KUbuntu is available. "PLEASE DO NOT FILE BUG REPORTS IN BUGZILLA YET. Send any and all feedback to the ubuntu-devel mailing list. This is the first set of working CD images, and we're announcing them to the community in order to promote testing. They are likely to have many bugs, known and unknown."

The latest snapshot of Ubuntu's Hoary Hedgehog Array CD 6 is available for testing.

The existence of the ubuntu-hardened mailing list has been announced. "The list aims to be the place where Hardened Debian developers and contributors get in touch with both Ubuntu Linux users and developers, a place to collaborate, work together and give help to others to achieve and make possible the goals we want to achieve."

Here's a summary of the first Masters Of The Universe (MOTU) meeting.

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Debian Project Leader candidate platforms posted

The candidates for the role of Debian Project Leader in the coming year have posted their platforms on the election site.

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debconf5 CFP reminder and update

The period to submit papers for debconf5 expires March 15, 2005, 23h59 UTC. This debconf will be held in Helsinki in July.

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New Distributions

GoodGoat Linux

GoodGoat Linux is based on Gentoo. It's a simple desktop that can run from a USB key, hard drive or CDROM disk. Version 1.2(beta) was released March 4, 2005.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for March 8, 2005 is out. This week's news includes campaigning on debian-vote, Debian derived distributions, better Asian support, the recent release team meeting, a Debian project leader team, and several other topics.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

Here's the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of March 7, 2005. In this issue there is a look at the Gentoo 2005.0 security rebuild, the donation of an Opteron 246 server from Nvidia is now running the staging mirror and master rsync mirror, enhancements to the Gentoo Forums, and several other topics.

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Mandrakelinux Community Newsletter #101

This edition of the Mandrakelinux Community Newsletter looks at the Mandrakelinux and Conectiva merger, the Mandrakelinux 10.2 Beta 3 release, the media on the merger, Mandrakeclub interviews Wobo, and more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 90

The DistroWatch Weekly for March 7, 2005 is out. "Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week we will tell you about a secret meeting of Debian developers in Vancouver where they were to unveil their "Stunning New Release Strategy", give you a link to a valuable resource that will turn you into a better system administrator of Debian-based systems and direct you to a great new HOWTO to configure multimedia on SUSE LINUX. Also, a surprise for fans of the amaroK media player - a new PCLinuxOS-based live CD, bundled with some great free music. Enjoy!"

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Minor distribution updates

Astaro Security Linux 5.2 released

Astaro Security Linux has announced the release of v5.2 which adds gateway-based spyware protection.

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Puppy Linux Live-CD saves back to CD

Puppy Linux has learned a new trick with the multi-session-1.0.0alpha release. Just put your live CD in a CD-RW drive and at the end the session Puppy will save your configuration back to its CD.

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SME Server

The SME Server and its home Contribs.org have been going through some changes. After a short go-round with Lycoris, ownership of the distribution reverted to Resource Strategies, Inc. That didn't last either. As of March 5, 2005 Ruffdogs has taken possession of Contribs.org and is developing a Roadmap for the rebuilding of the Contribs.org community. The current stable release of SME Server is at version 6.0.1. The first release candidate for SME Server 6.5 is also available.

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Announcing YES Linux 2.2 Build 0

YES Linux Release Team has announced the immediate availability of YES Linux 2.2 Build 0. This is the first build of the YES Linux 2.2, with lots of updated packages, and a few new ones.

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Package updates

Fedora Core updates

Fedora Core 3 updates: tzdata-2005f-1.fc3 (updates for Israel and Azerbaijan), kernel-2.6.10-1.770_FC3 (various bug fixes), libtooll-1.5.6-4.FC3.1 (dependency on gcc version), firefox-1.0.1-1.3.2 (fix spacing issues in textareas), ipsec-tools-0.5-0.fc3 (update to 0.5), dmraid-1.0.0.rc6-1_FC3 (update v1.0.0.rc6), selinux-policy-targeted-1.17.30-2.85 (fixes for postfix in squirrelmail), ipsec-tools-0.5-1.fc3 (fix some packaging errors), gaim-1.1.4-1.FC3 (bug fixes), gimp-2.2.4-0.fc3.1 (update to v2.2.4), yum-2.2.0-0.fc3 (bug fixes).

Fedora Core 2 updates: tzdata-2005f-1.fc2 (updates for Israel and Azerbaijan), kernel-2.6.10-1.770_FC2 (various bug fixes), ipsec-tools-0.5-0.fc2 (update to 0.5), ipsec-tools-0.5-1.fc2 (fix some packaging errors), gaim-1.1.4-1.FC2 (bug fixes).

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Mandrakelinux updates

Mandrakelinux 10.1 updates: imap (adds a requires for xinetd - also for 10.0, Corporate Server 2.1, 3.0), unixODBC (fixes some issues with the GUI config tools), dynamic (now launches kaffeine).

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Slackware Linux

This week in slackware-current, mozilla-firefox-1.0.1-i686-1 and mozilla-thunderbird-1.0-i686-1 were added, some older browser packages were removed; new linux-2.6.11 packages are in testing. See the change log for details.

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Trustix Secure Linux bug fix advisory

New, improved apache, etcskel, gdbm, rootfiles, samba, squid and sudo packages are available for TSL 2.2.

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Distribution reviews

Review: Mandrake Corporate Desktop (NewsForge)

NewsForge has a review of Mandrakesoft's Corporate Desktop. "Mandrake Corporate Desktop is a little different, though: it is based on Mandrake Corporate Server, which is a tested and mature product on a calculated and lengthy release cycle. If you're used to some degree of instability or unpredictability with Mandrakelinux, you won't find it in Mandrake Corporate Desktop. One could roughly equate Mandrake Corporate Desktop to Red Hat Desktop, and Mandrakelinux to Fedora Core."

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Review: Astaro Security Linux 5.1 (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews Astaro Security Linux 5.1. "One of the more popular uses for Linux is as a router/firewall to secure a local area network (LAN) against intruders and share an Internet connection. Several specialized distributions have sprung up to simplify this task. These range from small, diskette-based distros like the Linux Router Project and FREESCO to larger systems requiring a hard disk installation. Among the latter is Astaro Corp.'s Astaro Security Linux (ASL) 5.1, which I recently reviewed as part of ongoing research into content filtering products. ASL is an RPM-based distribution that allows an administrator to easily turn an x86 PC or server into a router/firewall appliance."

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My Workstation OS: Knoppix (NewsForge)

Irfan Habib explains why he likes Knoppix on his desktop. "Knoppix has many uses. Many use it as a GNU/Linux advocacy tool, for which it is well-suited, as it comes with the latest and greatest FOSS software, which can be readily demonstrated to potential users. Knoppix is also a great rescue CD. And Knoppix lets me take my desktop anywhere by letting me save my settings to a configuration file. I can load Knoppix on any computer, load my customized settings, and mount a USB storage device as the home directory, and voilà! there's my desktop."

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Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
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