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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Open formats make history - and maintain it (Times)
The Times is running a column by Gervase Markham on the importance of open formats. "Paradigm shifts are often preceded by tiny, almost unnoticeable shivers. So you could be forgiven for missing the news that late last month, the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (for historical reasons it does not call itself a state) decided that all the documents its employees create have to be in a data format called OpenDocument. What makes this more than an obscure bit of United States government administrivia? Well, it could be the trigger for a revolution that will increase consumer choice and ensure the survival of documents that could be of historical importance in the future."
Does Open-Source Software Make The FCC Irrelevant? (Forbes)
Forbes looks at Eben Moglen and his efforts to open up the radio spectrum. "Should the FCC try to crack down, the hackers have a powerful weapon: The First Amendment. An offshoot of the Free Software Foundation called GNU Radio is developing a new generation of radios and TV receivers that use software for just about everything except the antenna and the power source. The FCC can prohibit manufacturers from selling radios that transmit on illegal frequencies, but it would have trouble shutting down a Web site distributing software that does the same thing."
Free Standards Group launches Linux Standard Base Desktop Project (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the formation of the Free Standards Group LSB Desktop Project. "Jim Zemlin, executive director of the FSG, said that the Desktop specification would be an "incremental component on top of the LSB Core." The LSB Core specification covers standard system libraries, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), the executable format, standard commands and utilities, and other components that would be found in a standard Linux system."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Cruising the Kernel with Andrew, Ted and the Gang, Part I (Linux Journal)
Doc Searls goes cruising on the latest Geek Cruise. "You can think of Geek Cruises as conferences at a hotel with a hull. You'd be right, mostly. In fact, they're more like intensive lectures in a subject, given by Masters at a small Caribbean or Alaskan or Mediterranean or Hawaiian university that features bars, night clubs, pools, music, a casino and unlimited quantities of food."
Companies
HP Inks Subscription Agreements with Novell, Red Hat (eWeek)
Hewlett-Packard has signed new subscription agreements with Novell and Red Hat, according to this article on eWeek. ""In a nutshell, what this does is take internal Linux usage at HP up a notch. While there are currently more than 15,000 Linux-based systems in use within the company, these are umbrella license agreements for the whole company and allow us to build and deploy internal Linux systems and solutions more easily and more rapidly," Efrain Rovira, HP's worldwide director of Linux marketing in Houston, told eWEEK on Wednesday."
AMD to jointly sell cheap personal computers in India (Yahoo.com)
Yahoo.com reports that AMD and HCL Infosystems plan to sell a personal computer for less than 10,000 rupees (220 dollars), in India. "The computer, which uses the open-source Linux operating system, includes a 1.6 GHz processor, a 15-inch monitor and 40 gigabytes of hard drive space. "Why is it that every Indian doesn't have a PC on their list of things to get this Diwali but the cellphone is there?" said Ajay M. Marathe, president of the Indian arm of AMD. Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, is traditionally the biggest shopping season in the country." (Thanks to Philip Webb)
Linux Adoption
Race to Linux winners announced (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the winners in the Race to Linux. "Actually, there were three separate races -- one for each of three different applications. The target applications were Microsoft's Issue Tracker Kit, Time Tracker Starter Kit, and Reports Starter Kit. No doubt Microsoft is thrilled about its starter kits being used to demonstrate methods of running .Net applications on Linux. Chris Maunder, founder of The Code Project, said that they chose the Microsoft starter kits because "we wanted applications that weren't too difficult, that were simple, that were well-written, popular applications, in the hope that people would be familiar with them in the first place.""
India's Canara Bank to Deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux (IT News)
IT News reports that Canara Bank has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its platform of choice to automate more than 1,000 branches across India. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be deployed on more than 1,000 servers and 10,000 desktops at Canara Bank to provide a robust, secure and scalable solution for powering the bank's business critical IT infrastructure. Under the first phase of deployment, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been rolled out at approximately 500 branches in three months. Close to 500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers and 5000 Red Hat Desktops have been deployed in this phase. The bank is said to be actively pursuing deployment in additional branches as well to meet its target of 100% automation in its banking services environment." (Thanks to Biju Chacko)
Interviews
Nokia Engineers on KHTML, Collaboration and aKademy (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an interview with David Carson and Deepika Chauhan from Nokia. "What was your experience of aKademy? We had a great time at aKademy, and we got much more out of it than we ever anticipated. We came to aKademy since we wanted to thank the KDE community for the great components created by them that form the basis of the future Series 60 browser, meet some of the contributors in person, and share with the community our experiences of building a browser around WebCore/KHTML and JavascriptCore/KJS. The conference gave us a better understanding of the working model of KDE. We hope that we can work together with KDE on the mobile browser. We have observed a lot of excitement among developers in contributing to the mobile applications and we hope the community can bring their innovations to the mobile platform."
Resources
Editing audio in Linux (ars technica)
ars technica looks at a few popular Linux audio editing packages. "Given Linux's strengths, weaknesses, history, and ideology, it's interesting to see where Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) competes well with proprietary software, where it falls behind, and where it provides novel innovation. The FOSS pro-level Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Ardour, competes with industry-standard apps like ProTools, Logic, Nuendo, and Digital Performer. Audacity, on the other hand, is a more casual FOSS audio editor, but infuses the task with some distinctly geeky scripting facilities. SND, "modeled loosely after Emacs and an old, sorely-missed PDP-10 sound editor named Dpysnd," is a distinctly Linux audio app, complete with an ass-ugly interface, a mountainous learning curve, and the ability to wash your dishes if you know how to ask." (Thanks to Andy Kauffman.)
The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, Ch. 19 - Dr. Peter Salus (Groklaw)
Groklaw has posted the next installment of The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, subtitled "Tanenbaum and Torvalds". "Linus posted his queries, his information and his work on comp.os.minix beginning in mid-1991. But on 29 January 1992, Andy Tanenbaum posted a note with the line: "Subject: LINUX is obsolete""
MyOSS Magazine Edition 6
Edition 6 of MyOSS Magazine is out with coverage of open-source efforts involving Malaysia. Topics include: Linux Live CDs - Part 2, Libraries in GNU/Linux & Other Flavours and Podcasting in GNU/Linux.
Reviews
App of the Month: KDissert (KDE.News)
KDE.News has chosen KDissert, KDE's mindmapping tool, as the application of the month and has an interview with Thomas Nagy, lead developer of the project.
How to keep instant messaging off the record (NewsForge)
Mayank Sharma looks at the Off-the-Record plugin for Gaim in a NewsForge article. "Sometimes encryption isn't enough to keep your conversations private. With standard encryption, it's theoretically possible for someone to steal your secret encryption keys and decipher the conversation. For conversations that need to be kept confidential, the Off-the-Record (OTR) plugin for Gaim saves the day. It leaves no trace of a conversation ever having taken place."
Neuros solicits feedback on Linux-based PMP/R design (LinuxDevices)
According to LinuxDevices.com, Neuros is looking for input on the development of its next, Linux-based media player. "Neuros is currently designing a successor to the 442 portable media player, and has published the specifications for a development board that it calls the 'first prototype.' Neuros invites hackers, open source software authors, and interested readers to review and weigh in on the design, which is expected to be finalized in about a week."
Dumber people can run Linux (Inquirer)
Here's an Ubuntu review (the version is not specified) in the Inquirer. "Here's the other thing: it worked. It said, 'Choose a user name and a password.' It logged me in. And there was an entire computer, ready to go. It connected to the Internet. Firefox went places. Email downloaded. OpenOffice...officed. I mean, call that open source? Where's the anguish and pain? Where's the six weeks of downloading drivers and learning how to compile source code? A shocking lapse of standards, I call it."
Miscellaneous
New national center to assist governments with open source applications (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the launch of the National Center for Open Source Policy and Research (NCOSPR). "The mission of the NCOSPR will be to guide government agencies through the array of open source software available, as well as to develop specific solutions for individual agencies with its resource center. The center is also behind Government Forge, a portal to host and maintain open source software relevant to government agencies and other public entities."
Rx for Linux: Part 1 - Measurements and Markets (ZDNet)
ZDNet's Paul Murphy is at it again: this column asserts that Linux has lost its momentum. But he has a recipe for getting it back... "So what's the the most important lesson we can learn from Microsoft? that nothing sells like success. Start counting installs and making those numbers widely available, and pretty soon what's recently become largely a stealth phenomenon could start to snowball again." Who knew it was so simple?
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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