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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading Ubuntu Linux backer tackles collaboration (ZDNet.au)ZDNet Australia looks at LaunchPad from Ubuntu Down Under. "The aim of the project -- called The Launchpad -- is to make it easier for Linux developers to find the latest enhancements to the operating system and its myriad packages, no matter which distribution they were contributed to. The effort encompasses distributed bug tracking, revision control, language translations and more."
History of the Linux Kernel Archives (KernelTrap)KernelTrap talks with Peter Anvin and others to provide a history of the Linux kernel archives. "Peter Anvin has been involved with Linux since nearly the beginning. When Linus Torvalds purchased his first computer on which he began writing the Linux kernel, the state-of-the art PC with 4 megabytes of RAM and running at 33 megahertz was too expensive for him to buy outright. Therefore, he financed much of the nearly $3,500 price, planning to pay it off over three years. Within a year as the Linux kernel began to evolve and a community of users formed, Peter organized an online collection that raised $3,000 and paid it off."
Trade Shows and Conferences Proceedings of the 2005 Linux Audio ConferenceThe proceedings from the 2005 International Linux Audio Conference (held last month in Karlsruhe, Germany) have been posted; a quick look shows just how much is going on in the area of free audio software. Dave Phillips's "Where are we going?" paper (PDF format) is a good overview of the state of the art.
MusE at LAD 2005The developers of the MusE MIDI/Audio sequencer have posted an account of a meeting they held at the 2005 Linux Audio Developer conference. "We have some good news for you! The first time nearly all MusE developers got together at the Linux Audio Developer conference. It took place at the "Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, short ZKM" in Karlsruhe, Germany. It was a nice meeting and we were discussing a lot about new features and implementation issues."
Linuxfest Northwest 2005 in review (NewsForge)News Forge is running a review of the recent Linuxfest Northwest conference. "If giving away T-shirts is an accurate way to estimate attendees, then at least 750 people made the trip to Linuxfest Northwest in Bellingham, Wash., last weekend. Linuxfest Northwest 2005 continued the conference's strong focus on highly technical presentations -- this is not a vendor-centric event."
European Common Lisp Meeting Materials OnlineMaterials from the recent European Common Lisp Meeting are online. "The European Common Lisp Meeting took place in Amsterdam on April, 24 2005. The organizers are making available pictures, slides and videos of some of the talks at the event's web site."
Companies Novell hires top Samba programmer from HP (News.com)News.com covers the hiring of Jeremy Allison by Novell. "Novell has hired Jeremy Allison, one of the core programmers behind a widely used open-source project called Samba. Allison previously worked for Hewlett-Packard. He said he made the switch because he believes that he can benefit from the experience Novell programmers have in the area of file servers. "These guys know a lot about file sharing," said Allison, who starts the new job on Thursday."
Linux Adoption Defense Department signs Red Hat deal (News.com)News.com reports that the US Department of Defense has renewed a major contract to use security software now sold by Red Hat. "The department's Defense Information Systems Agency agreed Monday to purchase subscriptions for Red Hat Certificate System software, Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day confirmed Friday. The deal renews support for software that was sold by America Online's Netscape Communications group until Red Hat acquired it in December." The DoD will also be switching its servers from Solaris to RHEL.
Linux at Work Linux Comes to Wall Street (eWeek)eWeek looks at the use of Linux by Wall Street financial firms. "Long relegated to menial file and print server duties in most enterprises, Linux is now playing a mission-critical role in financial trading and other highly sensitive networks on Wall Street. The traction in the financial sector is part of broader Linux adoption growth, which is expected to continue through this year and next, according to Deborah Williams, an analyst at IDC, in Framingham, Mass. "On Wall Street, time is money, and for 2005 the buzzword is going to be latency. If you can speed things up and address that latency, you can make more money," Williams said."
Interviews Mandriva (ex Mandrake) Linux Founder Gael Duval (LinuxQuestions.org)LinuxQuestions.org interviews Mandriva's Gaël Duval. "LQ) There have been rumors that some Linux distributors, including Novell, may follow what Red Hat has done and have an Enterprise release and a "Community" release. Is this direction something that has been considered by Mandriva? GD) No. Mandriva Linux will still be distributed as both a download edition and commercial offers, with full official support for updates (bugfixes, security)."
Jakub Stachowski: Zeroconf Support in KDE (KDE.News)KDE.News interviews Jakub Stachowski the man behind Zeroconf for KDE. "Zeroconf is a name used by IETF for several techniques that should allow you to setup and use a simple network with no need for any manual configuration. One of its parts, DNS-SD, is the service discovery protocol based on standard DNS. Rendezvous is just Apple's name for Zeroconf, this has recently been changed to Bonjour after a trademark dispute. It is trademarked so you will not find it anywhere in KDE code or documentation. SLP is another service discovery protocol used primarily by Novell. It has nothing to do with DNS-SD or Zeroconf."
People Behind Perl: brian d foy (O'Reilly)O'Reilly has posted an interview with Brian d Foy. "brian d foy is a longtime leader in the Perl community. Besides founding the Perl Mongers and being a trainer for Stonehenge Consulting Services, he founded and edits The Perl Review, a quarterly magazine for Perl users. If that weren't enough, he writes and contributes to several CPAN modules. Recently, Perl.com interviewed brian on his work and plans."
Resources The Daemon, The GNU and the Penguin - Ch. 6 ~ by Dr. Peter H. Salus (Groklaw)Groklaw has the next installment of Dr. Salus' history of free/open source software. "By and large, Unix users refer to "Sixth Edition" and "V6" interchangeably. At Bell Labs, there was a continually changing version of Unix running. Only when Doug McIlroy caused the first "UNIX PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL" to be written, did there appear to be a fixed form. So, the manuals were listed by "Edition," and the system referred to was the "Version."".
The Second Commandment of system administration (NewsForge)NewsForge takes a look at integrity checkers. "Each integrity checker is a little different, so do some research before deciding on one. There are many excellent integrity checking applications out there, but the one I recommend and prefer is called afick (Another File Integrity ChecKer). Afick offers several advantages over integrity checkers such as Tripwire and AIDE. The first and foremost difference is that afick is written in Perl, which gives it the advantage of speed. Afick finishes the initialization of the database that stores filesystem attributes almost a minute faster than AIDE. Being written in Perl also means that afick is highly portable between operating systems."
Rich Web Text Editing with Kupu (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet looks at Kupu. "Kupu is an open source application, written in JavaScript, that implements a flexible, full-featured HTML editor that runs in a web page without any special plugins. Its primary use is as an embedded editor in content management systems (CMS), like Zope or Plone, where it allows users to create their own web pages. Its design is flexible enough so that you can embed it into pretty much any web application without too much difficulty."
Making Packager-Friendly Software, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet continues making software that is easy to package, with a look at dependencies, configuration files and more. "Many packaging systems (including pkgsrc) let you build packages as a regular user and require only superuser privileges to install them (to have the right permissions, ownerships, setuid flags, and so on). Therefore, you should make sure that your program builds correctly without superuser privileges to ease the packaging task. I can't think of an example in which a program requires full privileges to build."
The ins and outs of USB (IBM developerWorks)Peter Seebach discusses the USB standard on IBM developerWorks. The article is mostly presented from a Window/Mac perspective. "The USB specification may be an example of that hybrid de jure or de facto standard, one that clearly earned wide acceptance through its technical merit. Learn the history of the USB standard and some of its benefits to users and vendors, as well as where it missed the boat."
Reviews Getting Flat, Part 2 (Linux Journal)Doc Searls looks at The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Tom Friedman. "In Part 2, I want to examine the human origins of the open-source materials we're using to build this new world. And I want to start by distinguishing them from corporate origins. Again, this is not to diminish the importance of big-company contributions to the flat-world revolution but to subordinate them to the profound work being done by individuals and small groups."
Debian on Steroids III: Libranet 3.0 (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal reviews Libranet 3.0. "The heavyweight classification I give this latest Libranet comes from its distribution size--five CDs or one DVD--and its comprehensive list of included applications. Although a number of Debian-based distributions are available at less or no cost, none include as many programs as Libranet 3.0 does. This is of primary interest to me and other Linux users who lack broadband or simply don't want to spend their time downloading packages in order to get the functionality we want."
Miscellaneous Linus Torvalds' BitKeeper blunder (InfoWorld)InfoWorld sounds off on the BitKeeper episode. "The business community likes to distance itself from the ideological debates surrounding free and open source software, but the BitKeeper case is a prime example of why enterprise IT management can't ignore software licensing issues. You don't want your PBX vendor telling you how to use your phone system, or your printer vendor telling you what to print. Wouldn't you prefer software that didn't tell you how to run your business either?" It's hard to imagine seeing such words in the mainstream press even a year or two ago.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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