Linux in the news

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Xbox hackers break new security measures (Register)

The Register says Xbox security measures have been broken by Linux hackers. "The complex new security system, which was thought to disable the operation of all previously existing mod chips, was broken in under a week of work by a UK-based group of enthusiasts keen to get the Linux operating system running on Xbox hardware."

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Five reasons why LPIC outpaces Red Hat's RHCE (ZDNet)

This ZDNet article about certification is written by an author who used to recommend Red Hat's RHCE, but who now thinks that Linux Professional Institute has a better product. "The open source movement emphasises community participation. The concept of ownership by a single vendor goes against the Linux grain, and several distributions vie for attention. It's natural, then, that a vendor-independent Linux certification will appeal to members of the open source community. A vendor-independent exam is a natural fit."

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Open source projects a challenge (ZDNet)

ZDNet has discovered that managing free software projects can be difficult. "What some managers don't realize is that by taking on a project, you must essentially remove yourself from the developer's chair whenever the community needs your attention. Responsibility has to be delegated and information shared, or the bustling Bazaar will become a headless mob that could kill the project."

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Lessons from the Internet Bookmobile (O'Reilly)

Richard Koman covers the tour of the Internet Bookmobile on O'Reilly. "Cruising in a high-tech-equipped bus, Richard Koman joined Brewster Kahle on a cross-country crusade in the Internet Bookmobile to provide lessons to school kids in the applications of the public domain. Read their experiences as they stopped at various schools--taking ASCII text versions of public domain works available online and letting the kids turn them into books."

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Companies

IBM says net income flat (News.com)

News.com looks at IBM's quarterly results. "...sales of new computing capacity increased 7 percent, 45 percent of that driven by customers using the Linux operating system, IBM said."

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IBM now sponsoring Samba.org

IBM is now providing web hosting for the samba.org site.

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Linux company plans German lab (News.com)

News.com covers a partnership between Linux NetworX and Fraunhofer Institute. "Under the partnership announced Thursday, Linux NetworX and the institute will jointly research technologies for linking Linux systems into a supercomputer "cluster." In addition, the center will help the company support European customers such as the Netherlands branch of Shell Oil or the Boehringer Ingelheim pharmaceutical company in Germany."

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Ballmer baulks at Oz Xbox chippers charter (Register)

The Register reports on Microsoft president Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Australia, and what he thinks of Xbox hackers. "Linux? No, no matter how heroic the team from the Xbox Linux Project is, Microsoft is not going to lose huge swathes of revenue because all the purchasers run Linux instead and don't buy any games. Its Xbox software licensing regime will be disrupted (as is the case already for many players in the entertainment business) if it becomes less possible or impossible to divvy up licences by territory and police it via regionalisation, but one does wonder why the law should have to shore up something as daft and artificial as regionalisation."

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Novell to Include MySQL in NetWare 6 (eWeek)

eWeek covers a Novell announcement that MySQL will be included in future releases of NetWare. "Some Novell customers agree. Deutsche Lufthansa AG approached Novell some time ago and suggested it provide Apache, MySQL and PHP on NetWare.
"There is strong demand from companies, like Lufhansa, who want to run these applications on a platform that can provide strong support while offering time-tested reliability and performance," said Antonio Mastrolorito, who works for Lufthansa Systems Infratec, the airline's IT infrastructure solutions group." See also this press release. (Thanks to Lenz Grimmer)

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Prometric / Linux Professional Institute announce joint testing promotion

Prometric and the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) have joined forces to offer a US$20. discount for those who take LPI's Level One and Level Two exams at any Prometric North American test center.

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Red Hat buy may mean speedy services (News.com)

News.com reports on Red Hat's acquisition of NOCpulse, a start-up whose server-monitoring software is expected to bolster the services offered through the Red Hat Network. "The move helps advance Red Hat in a popular area of the computing industry: letting customers administer large groups of computers en masse instead of one-by-one as a way to cut administrative costs. This vision includes automated policies that ensure performance, move jobs from one computer to another to accommodate changing demands, or shut down malfunctioning equipment--features that all require monitoring software such as that provided by NOCpulse."

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Sun Microsystems to Lay Off 4,400 Workers, Posts $111 Million Loss (San Jose Mercury News)

The San Jose Mercury News reports on losses and layoffs at Sun Microsystems. "The Santa Clara computer maker announced the layoffs as it reported a net loss of $111 million, or 4 cents a share, for the first fiscal quarter ended Sept. 29, compared with a $180 million loss, or 6 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier. Revenue was $2.75 billion, down 4 percent from $2.86 billion a year earlier and down 20 percent from the previous quarter."

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SuSE, Turbolinux pool Linux efforts (News.com)

News.com reports that SuSE and Turbolinux announced a strategic agreement to jointly develop Linux operating system products, based on SuSE's Enterprise Server software, for IBM's higher-end servers. "UnitedLinux also put SuSE's software at the core, but that partnership only involved Intel processor-based servers. The new alliance covers IBM's mainframe zSeries systems, its Unix pSeries systems and its mid-range iSeries systems."

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Business

Commentary: Linux's foot in the door (News.com)

Here's another analyst pronouncement on News.com; this one is from Forrester Research, and it is highly positive. "Long thought of as a fledgling operating system, Linux is now ready for prime time. CIOs have many new reasons to be confident that they'll get quality Linux support from their largest application vendors and systems integrators."

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Wall Street Leans Toward Linux (Computerworld)

Here is a Computerworld article about the growing use of Linux on Wall Street. "With a handful of key Wall Street Brokerage firms acting as icebreakers, Linux is quickly gaining ground on Unix and Windows as a mission-critical operating system within the securities industry. The attractions: its flexibility across systems and the savings it yields through the use of comodity hardware."

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Crash test penguin? Chrysler meets Linux (News.com)

News.com reports on the DaimlerChrysler purchase of 108 dual-processor Linux workstations from IBM to run car-crash simulations. "DaimlerChrysler has been using computers to simulate crashes since the early 1990s, first with single supercomputers, then with clusters of systems running Unix. Now the company is switching to less-expensive systems with Intel processors running Red Hat's version of the Linux operating system, DaimlerChrysler said." (See also this press release).

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Indian Government's Reported Move Makes News, Then Fuels Skepticism (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal looks into India's commitment to Linux. "Is India serious about Linux in education, or just setting the stage to ask Microsoft founder Bill Gates for a handout when he visits in November? Economic Times, India's most influential business newspaper, has dropped hints of government plans to push a "countrywide drive" to promote GNU/Linux as the "platform of choice". But Indian enthusiasts of Free/Libre Software and open source are treating the promises with skepticism, if not downright suspicion."

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Legal

Visa tangle delays DMCA case (News.com)

The ElcomSoft trial has been delayed according to this News.com article. "The trial, the first criminal test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was originally scheduled to start Monday in San Jose, Calif. It is now slated to begin Dec. 2, to give lawyers time to get permission from immigration authorities for ElcomSoft programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and CEO Alex Katalov to enter the United States."

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Interviews

What Makes Xandros Tick? (Consulting Times)

The Consulting Times interviews Ming Poon, the Xandros VP for software development. "We're trying to key up to a desktop where people can just install and start doing work, as opposed to the competition where you install it and half of the things on the desktop may not work or they are very hard to use.
Corporations also want us to provide them with end-to-end solutions. They call one phone number to get all their support from one place. They ask, 'Do you have a server solution too'? We will do a server version, and we will develop enterprise management tools to help large corporations to deploy the desktop installation."

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Consulting Times interviews Jeremy White

Consulting Times has an interview with Jeremy White, CEO of CodeWeavers. "Xandros is incorporating customized versions of CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Office and CrossOver Plugin solutions into its long-awaited Linux distribution, slated for release around the end of October. This “CrossOver for Xandros” package allows users to easily install and use critical office programs -- most notably Microsoft Office -- directly under Linux, without the need to purchase a Microsoft Windows license. To get a take on what this alliance means for the future of the Linux desktop, ConsultingTimes contacted Jeremy White, CodeWeavers’ founder and CEO. What resulted was a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion on a number of questions, including “What will Microsoft do to retaliate?”" Thanks to Steve Harris.

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Resources

Embedded Linux Newsletter

The October 17, 2002 LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the week's embedded Linux news.

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GRUB in Debian HOWTO, Version 1.0 (Linux Orbit)

LinuxOrbit.com looks at how to use GRUB on a Debian system. "Why use GRUB instead of LILO? Well, if you're reading this HOWTO, you're likely to already have your reasons for switching. But to give a couple quick reasons, you only install GRUB in your MBR once, it doesn't need to be reinstalled each kernel change like LILO, and you can also edit the boot entries, etc. from GRUB itself without having to boot first and change the config file. These are just some of my reasons, you can find more for yourself - but how do you set it up the Debian way?"

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'Dogs' of the Linux Shell (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal asks the question, "Could the command-line tools you've forgotten or never knew save time and some frustration?"

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Reviews

New KDE desktop: Tricks and treats (ZDNet)

ZDNet reviews KDE 3.1. "KDE 3.1 is due at the beginning of November, and the visual difference from its predecessor--version 3.0--will be immediately obvious, the group hopes. The software will ship with an icon set called Crystal and a new theme called Keramik, both of which have hints of Apple's Aqua interface in Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows XP styling. It will use a new theme manager and windows will have drop-shadows to give the desktop a three-dimensional look."

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OpenPKG reviewed (Sys Admin Magazine)

Sys Admin Magazine reviews OpenPKG. " In this article, we will explore OpenPKG, a software development and packaging project initiated by Cable & Wireless, an international Internet Service Provider. The OpenPKG project began in November 2000 and has grown into a collaborative software development effort managed and maintained by many. The project aims to create a modular and flexible UNIX subsystem for cross-platform software packaging and installation." Thanks to Ralf S. Engelschall.

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SuSE Linux Delivers Bundled OS, E-mail, Groupware (TechWeb)

TechWeb reviews SuSE's Linux Openexchange Server product. "Linux software vendor SuSE Linux on Wednesday introduced the SuSE Linux Openexchange Server, an open-source e-mail/collaboration platform it's pitching as a cheap alternative to Microsoft and Lotus programs. It's designed to serve organizations with 10 to 500 users, the company said."

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Sysmar Personal Computer review

The Philadelphia Inquirer gives a fairly mixed review of Wall Mart's under-$200 Sysmar Linux PC. "As admirable as this operating system is, it is virtually inaccessible to anyone who does not understand coding and programming. Looking at its list of directories, files and utilities is like gazing upon the inscriptions on an Egyptian tomb."

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ViaVoice and XVoice: Providing Voice Recognition (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal reviews two Linux voice recognition systems, IBM's commercial ViaVoice and the GPL licensed XVoice. "Conversing with a computer has long been a staple of science fiction. Such conversations are still largely in the realm of fiction, but voice recognition technology has improved significantly over the last decade. A number of voice recognition and control products are available on various platforms. Many people don't realize, however, that it is possible to control the Linux desktop by voice, and it has been possible for some time."

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Miscellaneous

MS Palladium boss to debate TCPA with Anderson, Cox (Register)

The Register covers what they say will be the "trusted computing face-off of the year", a debate between John Manferdelli, Ross Anderson and Alan Cox. "It is of course possible that they'll all agree, although if so it's not immediately obvious about what. John Manferdelli is general manager of Microsoft's Palladium business unit, and you can get an idea of where he's coming from here, while some of Ross Anderson of Cambridge Computer Labs' fears and doubts about TCPA/Palladium are expressed here. Lead Linux kernel developer Alan Cox you probably know about too, and he'll be dealing with the issue as regards open source."

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Scottish Power disconnects Linux users (Register)

The Register reports that Linux and Opera users are barred from Scottish Power's online services. "OK so then he tried using a Mozilla browser, with cookies enabled, only to be told he couldn't use a Linux machine either. So then he tried Opera on a Windows PC. Still no good."

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