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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading New approaches to Linux package management (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at package management tools such as Portage and Conary. "Traditional Linux package management systems such as RPM, Debian's dpkg, and Slackware's pkgtool present several problems for users. Users who want optimized packages often have problems finding them, different package repositories have conflicting naming conventions, and binary packages are often not available for packages in a timely fashion. However, for users willing to stray from the beaten path, there are alternatives. Two projects have taken up the challenge of making a package management system that overcomes these shortcomings."
Saving the Net (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal is running a lengthy piece by Doc Searls on threats to open networking. "The carriers are going to lobby for the laws and regulations they need, and they're going to do the deals they need to do. The new system will be theirs, not ours. The NEA principle--Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, Anybody can improve it--so familiar to the Free Software and Open Source communities will prove to be a temporary ideal, a geek conceit. Code is not Law. Culture is not Free. From the Big Boys' perspective, code and culture are stuff nobody cares about. That's us: Nobody."
Sony Numbers Add Up to Trouble (Wired)Wired reports on some research done by Dan Kaminsky. He queried DNS servers worldwide to see if they had the addresses of Sony's "mother ship" systems cached. "The results have surprised Kaminsky himself: 568,200 DNS servers knew about the Sony addresses. With no other reason for people to visit them, that points to one or more computers behind those DNS servers that are Sony-compromised. That's one in six DNS servers, across a statistical sampling of one third of the 9 million DNS servers Kaminsky estimates are on the net."
Trade Shows and Conferences Cruise Report 3: New Species Discovered at Sea (Linux Journal)Doc Searls has another report from last month's Geek Cruise. "This is what I learned from Andrew [Morton] and Ted [Ts'o]. After sitting in on their sessions (which ran many hours--the cruise was something of a crash course at sea), I realized that Linux's nature, as a building material, is akin to that of a species."
Open Source Symposium report (NewsForge)NewsForge has this report from Seneca College's fourth annual Open Source Symposium. "A fourth speaker, Stephen Downes, a senior researcher with the National Research Council of Canada, laid out a challenge to not only open software, but open content. He spoke of the different business models and different approaches of commercial/proprietary vs. open source. Part of the distinction is the different distribution models for not only the software, but the content, he said. The current World Wide Web is somewhere between closed and open, what he called "never never land, neither here nor there.""
Autumn Symposium Rakes Over Copyright and Patent Law (O'ReillyNet)Andy Oram reports on the recent Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process. "The glow of this conference lingers on in the shape of a new center that has just been announced by the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a conference sponsor. Conference organizer David Harrison says of the center that "Leading researchers and practitioners in all areas that depend upon innovation and creativity will work together to achieve real change through practical applications. The center is intended to provide applied solutions to preserving and promoting the creative incentives necessary for social, cultural, and economic growth." My hope is it will lead to more conferences of this nature and ultimately, new policy."
Companies Musical chairs continues at Novell (DesktopLinux.com)DesktopLinux.com covers the resignation of Hubert Mantel from Novell Inc. "In the latest bit of personnel-related news from beleaguered Linux software/services provider Novell Inc., Nuremburg, Germany-based SUSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel announced his resignation Tuesday via email to friends and business associates on one of the SUSE mailing lists. Mantel, chief maintainer of the SUSE Linux kernel, simply said in the brief letter that he could no longer work for the company any longer."
Sleepycat - a blue ribbon example of open source financial success (IT Manager's Journal)IT Manager's Journal looks at the successful business model used by Sleepycat software, the company that produces the Berkeley DB database. "What originally piqued my interest in Sleepycat was the question of why a company that claimed to be as successful as Sleepycat was still private and, to the best of my knowledge, did not have a single venture capitalist on its board of directors, nor is it beholden to one or more venture capital (VC) groups. To find out the answers, I got in touch with Rex Wang, vice president of marketing for Sleepycat. Wang confirmed that Sleepycat is an extremely profitable concern. Sleepycat employs about 30 people, and is looking to add to that workforce as it expands the company. Moreover, Sleepycat has not just refrained from using venture capital, the company does not even borrow money to finance its development. The company funds itself entirely from the profits it receives from its license fees."
Linux Adoption New Linux phone standards effort in the works (ZDNet)ZDNet reports on the creation of another Linux-based phone standards effort. "The Linux Phone Standard (Lips) Forum wants to standardize Linux interfaces so that higher-level software won't have to be customized for each variation of the open-source operating system appearing in different cell phone models. If successful, the allies believe they'll make Linux a better competitor the fast-growing market."
Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to Linux (KDE.News)KDE.News presents a translated article from Automatiseringsgids magazine about the use of KDE and Linux at a Dutch record store chain. "At first glance, a shop is not a place where you would expect to find KDE in the workplace. Yet the Dutch Free Record Shop is deploying it on a large scale as the operating system for their point of sale systems. According to the supplier Novell, it is one of the application areas where simple and restricted functionality is required, leading to a breakthrough for GNU/Linux on the PC."
Linux at Work Linux continues supercomputer domination (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at Linux in supercomputing. "The last few Top500 Supercomputer Site lists left little doubt that Linux is the operating system of choice for these bleeding edge systems, but the latest list highlights the popularity of Linux in supercomputing and cites it as the OS of choice for 78% of the world's fastest machines. 391 of the systems rely on Linux of one flavor or another -- far more than Unix (yesterday's supercomputing king), Mac OS X, Solaris, or any others. Microsoft Windows didn't even turn up on the list."
Resources Avoid Common Pitfalls in Greasemonkey (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet looks at security concerns and scripting pitfalls in Greasemonkey. "Once upon a time, there was a security hole. (This is not your standard fairy tale. Stay with me.) Greasemonkey's architecture has changed substantially since it was first written. Version 0.3, the first version to gain wide popularity, had a fundamental security flaw: it trusted the remote page too much when it injected and executed user scripts."
CLI Magic: netcat (Linux.com)Linux.com introduces netcat. "In the simplest terms, netcat is a utility that reads and writes data across the network. As you probably know already, you can write to a file or read from a file on your local machine using the cat utility. By running cat filename > filename2 , you can write the contents of a file to another file. By using cat > filename , you can write directly to a file from standard input."
Using Perl in PostgreSQL (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet uses Perl to write server-side extensions to PostgreSQL. "In fact, PostgreSQL lets you create server-side routines in quite a few languages, including one called PL/PGSQL that is all its own, and is somewhat similar to Oracle's PL/SQL. The PostgreSQL core distribution supports and maintains three other procedural language interfaces to third-party interpreters: Perl, Python, and Tcl (the first procedural language that PostgreSQL supported). There are also other languages maintained outside of the core distribution for various reasons, including PL/Java (or an alternative flavor, PL/J), Pl/R, PL/Ruby, PL/PHP, and a vastly better PL/Python. If you, like me, are at home in Perl, you will probably want to write your server-side functions in Perl, too."
At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software for Linux, Part 2 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips covers music notation software for Linux, on Linux Journal. "CMN is a powerful music notation specification language. Although it lacks a mouse-driven graphical interface, the language elements will be immediately familiar to users who know the naming conventions for common, and some not so common, music notation symbols. CMN is capable of handling almost any scoring requirement, including many 20th century additions to the standard notation symbol palette."
Reviews Enhancing kernel security with grsecurity (Linux.com)Linux.com has takes a look at grsecurity. "If the prospect of configuring 30+ options seems daunting, relax. You can choose from predefined low, medium, and high settings. In fact, it's a good idea to start with the low setting and see how things go. After rebooting into the grsecurity-enhanced kernel, check that all of your services are still running. If everything goes okay, try bumping the security level up to medium and then up to high. There is also a custom setting that allows you to mix and match options."
Inside a Luxury Synth (O'Reilly)O'Reilly's digital media site has a review of the Korg OASYS, a high-end digital synthesizer. "In fact, Linux's greatest success on the OASYS project may be that it's almost entirely invisible, letting Korg's designers focus on their proprietary sound engine. That was a big part of the appeal to Korg. 'You can change things easily in Linux,' says Phillips. 'There's more granularity when you compile the kernel.'"
PunBB: A simple, speedy bulletin board (NewsForge)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reviews PunBB on NewsForge. "For some time now, I've been looking for a good, open source bulletin board package to run a discussion board on my Web site. After a lot of searching, I've settled on PunBB because it offers the features that I want, and is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). PunBB is extremely easy to set up and configure. The requirements are minimal, and the entire procedure should take only a few minutes for users who are moderately familiar with Linux."
Project management with Trac (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at managing projects with Trac. "Trac integrates a capable wiki engine with a number of project management features. In particular, Trac provides a Web-based interface to a Subversion source code repository, a job/bug ticketing system, and basic scheduling features. Each of these is integrated with the wiki engine. Trac can be readily adapted to nearly any project management style."
Miscellaneous Linux backers form patent-sharing firm (ZDNet)ZDNet covers the launch of the Open Inventions Network. "Patents owned by OIN will be available without payment of royalties to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against others who have signed a license with OIN, when using certain Linux-related software." This company has been formed by IBM, Sony, Royal Philips Electronics, Red Hat, and Novell.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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