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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Linux Kernel Security, Again (Security Focus)Jason Miller delves into Linux kernel vulnerabilities in this Security Focus article. "Not being as intimately familiar with the various Linux distributions as I am with the three BSDs, I figured that I'd have a quick peek into his claim and see what happens. I wrote up a very simple bourne shell script on my work machine, which runs Mandrake Linux, and executed it under my non-privileged account. Within seconds, the machine was brought to its knees -- totally crippled and unusable. I stared at my screen in disbelief for a few moments, totally stunned with what had just happened. " (Thanks to James Feeney)
Expanded ISV Support Gives Linux More Bite (eWeek)eWeek takes a look at the Free Standards Group. "The Free Standards Group, which has just appointed Arthur Tyde - former CEO and co-founder of Linuxcare, now known as Levanta Inc. - as its chief technology officer, is embarking on an aggressive campaign to recruit independent software vendors as members. The FSG, which provides the Linux Standards Base specification, last year released Version 2.0 of the Linux Standard Base with the full support of all major Linux distributions, but large-scale ISV support remained the missing link."
Trade Shows and Conferences Novell's Brainshare 2005: Day 2 (NewsForge)NewsForge reports from Brainshare 2005. "CEO Jack Messman kicked off Day 2 at Brainshare 2005 with a confident keynote that recounted promises made last year, Novell's execution of those, and a flurry of new product announcements. If Novell is acting in desperation, as some have suggested of their move to Linux, it doesn't show itself in their public face. NewsForge also spent some time on the exhibition floor and a lot of time in the press room, where Novell was conducting rapid-fire one-on-one briefings for the media."
O'Reilly ETech CoverageO'Reilly has assembled a long list of articles that cover many aspects of the Emerging Technology (ETech) conference. Today is the last day of the conference.
FUDCon Footage OnlineVideo and audio coverage of the recent Red Hat FUDCon is available in Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis formats.
The SCO Problem SCO Plans for the Future (eWeek)We know you all have been wondering when you would see a new Darl McBride interview. Well, eWeek has the goods. "Anyone who buys us now would have to pay a super-premium on price because any price would be based on our IBM litigation being successful."
Companies Snort (rules) for sale (SearchSecurity)SearchSecurity.com reports on the new subscription program for up-to-date rules for the Snort intrusion detection system. "Updated Snort rules will be available as part of a subscription service, costing companies $195 per month, $495 per quarter or $1,795 annually. Educational institutions will be eligible for a discount. Others not concerned as much with timeliness can wait five days and get updated rules for free." For the curious, here is the license for the rules, which is clearly non-free.
Yahoo vows to open all services to Firefox users (ZDNet)ZDNet Australia reports that Yahoo! will be releasing all new features, and testing all new services on both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. "'The momentum right now is behind Firefox . The Internet players are making sure they don't miss out if there is a mass migration--they have realised that it is not just a Microsoft game anymore,' said [analyst Foad] Fadaghi."
Linux Adoption Linux is a PGA Tour winner (NewsForge)NewsForge covers the switch to Linux at the PGA Tour. "Most of the organization's staff was Microsoft-certified, but also familiar with Unix. When the company began thinking about using Linux internally, one of the biggest hurdles was to get IT employees trained in the open source operating system. Evans had the staff go through Red Hat certification. Once the staff got comfortable with Linux, PGA Tour adopted a new policy: If it can be Linux, that's what we prefer."
Legal Slip, Sliding Away on Software Patents (Groklaw)Groklaw looks at the European software patent issue: "Well, kiddies, take a look at this decision, by the Technical Board of Appeal, on an appeal by, sad to say, IBM, in which the appeal board found a way to say that maybe computer programs can be patented after all, even under the current rules. It's found in the EPO's journal for October of 1999. I thought you might like to see the EU equivalent to the US case, State Street Bank & Trust v. Signature Financial Group. Both in the US and in Europe, the beginnings were small and everyone said software couldn't be patented except in very restricted circumstances, and then the slide begins."
Irish Open-Source Groups Protest Software Patents (eWeek)eWeek covers Irish open-source advocates, and what they have been doing to combat software patents in the European Union. "The document, timed to reach MEPs on Wednesday, was created in response to members' own queries about the subject, said Barry O'Donovan, an open-source activist who helped draft the brief. It follows an e-mail-writing campaign by Irish academics and developers that began early last week, following the EU Council's official endorsement of the EU's controversial draft directive on software-related patents."
Interviews Defender of the Linux faith (News.com)News.com interviews Harald Welte about GPL violations. "Welte is one of the core developers of the Linux kernel firewall engine Netfilter/iptables and the maintainer of the packet filter subsystem in the Linux kernel. In 2004, he set up Gpl-violations.org, which aims to prevent companies from contravening the rules set down in the GNU General Public License."
Miguel de Icaza Explains How To 'Get' Mono (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet interviews Miguel de Icaza about Mono. "Mono's memory consumption is lower than ever, and for GUI applications, it actually consumes less than the equivalent programs written in Perl or Python. It has been an important goal of us to reduce memory usage in Mono. Java, in particular, made people afraid of large virtual machines, and we are working very hard to avoid giving anyone that impression."
Inside GnomeMeeting (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet talks with Damien Sandras about GnomeMeeting. "Damien Sandras says his programming philosophy is "the UNIX way:" designing individual programs that do unique tasks well and interoperate with one another, instead of one program that attempts to do several tasks that other programs already do. His GnomeMeeting is a voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video-over-IP application for Linux that builds upon open source libraries and open telephony standards."
Resources Track bugs with Bugzilla on Linux (developerWorks)developerWorks shows how to get started with Bugzilla. "For those in the support arena, keeping track of issues, problems, and the fixes applied to them can be a daunting task; however, there is a perfect open source answer to this challenge: Bugzilla. Once it is installed, you can easily track bugs and be notified when certain issues and solutions are discovered. This article provides a step-by-step guide for installing Bugzilla on a Linux system."
Getting Started with a TV Tuner Card (Linux Journal)Ron Powell explains how to get a television and FM radio receiver card working on a Linux box. "In preparation, I did a bunch of Googling and reading, and I subscribed to the Video4Linux mailing list (see Resources). This research was vital to the success of the overall project. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in using a TV tuner card in his or her Linux system spend some time researching before purchasing, as proper research can make all the difference. After checking prices and researching various tuner cards, I finally settled on the Hauppauge WinTV Radio card."
Reviews Karamba, what an attractive desktop! (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews SuperKaramba. "The user interface for SuperKaramba themes is defined by a markup language, in which the various user interface elements are loaded from PNG files, placed, possibly color-tinted, and more. This allows for some interesting effects, as shown in the screenshots. SuperKaramba themes encompass everything from neat, techy-looking system monitors to calendars, e-mail notifiers, and more. Through the use of the alpha (transparency) channel in PNG images, many of the downloadable themes integrate well into most desktop environments, be they minimalistic or gaudy. Having a system monitor, calendar, and analog clock running on the desktop background can look really cool."
KDE 3.4 Unleashed (tuxmachines.org)Tuxmachines.org reviews KDE 3.4. "One of the most obvious things one might notice upon their login to 3.4 is the vastly improved speed at which it functions. Desktop start up time is decreased by my approximations of 50% over 3.3. The applications on my desktop open up in about one second. I usually have one instance of konqueror preloaded and I open it to a blank page, but it's opening is just to fast for this human to clock as it is almost instanteous. Kontact takes about one second and kcontrol about two." (Found on KDE.News)
NeroLinux vs K3b (Flexbeta)Flexbeta compares two CD burning applications for KDE, NeroLinux and K3b. "This week Ahead Nero introduced a Linux version of their popular CD burning application dubbed NeroLinux. NeroLinux promises to bring the great features found in the Windows version to the Linux domain. Though the Windows version of Nero is loved by many, how well does NeroLinux stack up against already existing CD Burning applications such as K3b?"
Synchronizing PalmOS devices with Linux (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews a number of open-source applications for connecting with PalmOS-based PDAs. "Smart handheld devices or personal digital assistants (PDA) extend our access to the information on our desktops, from addresses to telephone numbers. Unfortunately, when it comes to vendor support for synchronizing this information with a *nix operating system, the options are limited. In this article, we'll review the various GPL-based suites available for synchronizing PalmOS-based devices with Linux."
Miscellaneous Zeta OS is rising from BeOS ashes (NewsForge)NewsForge covers BeOS successor Zeta OS. "yellowTAB has just announced details of what is to be expected for Zeta 1.0. The list includes an updated kernel and virtual machine (VM) manager for speed increases of up to 40%, breaking the 1GB memory barrier, fixes to BFS, an NDIS wrapper that is expected to greatly improve wireless networking support, a CUPS port for much improved printer support, and a new non-destructive partition manager for easy installation of Zeta on machines that already have Windows or other OS installed. Zeta 1.0 will also come with numerous development tools, including Python 2.4 with a working Bethon (Python modules for Zeta), GNU bash 3.0, GNU coreutils (5.2.1), OpenSSH, and Bash autocomplete with Zeta-specific completion templates."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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