Linux in the news

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Three reasons for newbie-centric culture shock (LinuxWorld)

Is there such a thing as too many choices? Joe Barr thinks there just might be in this LinuxWorld article. "Choice. It's all about choice. That's why there is a Linux in the first place. The dark side prefers one choice on the ballot: upgrade to the next version of Windows. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that those crossing over these days may be frightened by the long list of choices they have to make just to surf the Web, write a letter or IM that babe they met at the Seniors Activity Center."

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Largo loves Linux more than ever (NewsForge)

NewsForge follows up on the continued use of Linux in Largo, Florida. "We're back in Largo, Florida, checking on advances in the Linux-based network they use to run the city's computers that we wrote about last year. True to Largo's "City of Progress" motto, these guys have not been standing still. Now they're talking about Linux-based terminals in all the city's police cars. Microsoft has tried -- and failed -- to bring them into the proprietary fold. And, possibly most important, we have an amazing cost figure that ought to make you ask your local politicians why their IT operations aren't as efficient as Largo's."

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Microsoft to offer Linux software? (CNN)

CNN looks into a META Group study which predicts that Microsoft will start developing software for Linux. ""We believe that, beginning in late 2004, Microsoft (and its partners) will begin moving some of its (to-date) proprietary application enablers (e.g., .Net components) to the Linux environment; this will gradually include the major Microsoft back-office products, such as SQL Server, IIS, and Exchange," META Group said."

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Raided Firm's Software Checks Out (Wired)

Wired covers a company called Ptech, a Massachusetts technology firm U.S. federal agents suspected might be linked to terrorist groups. "Some said the Ptech incident proves that government should rely on open-source software. "This is exactly why open-source software advocates promote open code, to allow peer review and preclude such things from happening," said security consultant Richard Forno. "It works for both a security and operational stability benefit.""

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Trade Shows and Conferences

Linux Is No Longer Just an Upstart (Boston Globe)

Here is an article from the Boston Globe reporting from the Enterprise Linux Forum. "...Linux has mastered the art of linking thousands of small computers together to form powerful data networks. For instance, Lawson Stores, a large retail chain in Japan, uses 15,000 networked Linux boxes as point-of-sale terminals. In addition, Linux is routinely used on clusters of powerful computers linked together to run demanding scientific and technical applications, as well as processing visual effects for popular movies like "Shrek.""

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Companies

IBM debuts new Linux-only server (News.com)

News.com covers IBM's new Linux-only server. "IBM's pSeries machines already are available with Linux but have also required AIX, IBM's version of Unix. Now, as expected, Big Blue has modified Linux sufficiently that its p630 servers will start up without AIX."

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Symbian to make Psion's OPL dev language open source (Register)

The Register covers Symbian's plans to open source OPL, a development language for Psion EPOC devices. "And now, OPL is going Open Source - apparently on the say-so of Symbian. News of the move was broken on by All About Symbian by Ewan Spence of freEPOC.org, who says All About Symbian is going to be involved in the planning of turning OPL into an Open Source project."

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RealNetworks to release more code (News.com)

News.com covers an announcement from RealNetworks as the company plans to release more source code. "The release of the Producer source code will enable other software companies, as well as individual programmers and groups of programmers, to write their own software for encoding video and audio streams into the RealVideo 9 and RealAudio 8 format."

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Business

Indian Linux enthusiasts in upbeat mood (Forbes)

Forbes.com covers Linux Bangalore and Bill Gates' visit to India. ""No one could have possibly arranged for more publicity for the open source movement and its importance than Bill Gates coming and giving $400 million to fight Linux," said Atul Chitnis, an adviser to the Bangalore Linux Users Group whose conference ended on Thursday. Bangalore is considered a key battleground in the tussle between the two platforms because of India's developer army which analysts say can help lower costs and boost innovation." Thanks to Biju Chacko

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The true value of Linux (ZDNet)

ZDNet is carrying a Meta Group pronouncement on what they think is the real value of Linux. "Astute IT organizations will recognize that Linux's true value is derived more from the price/performance of the commodity Intel hardware it enables than from its open source characteristics."

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TCO Revisited

Here are two more articles looking at the Microsoft funded study by IDC which says Windows 2000 has a lower Total Cost of Ownership than Linux.

ZDNet: " Certainly there are configuration issues, but having worked with both Linux and Windows, my experience over the last two years has clearly shown that Linux takes longer to configure and troubleshoot than Windows. Many of you will quickly counter that Linux servers, once they're configured, generally require significantly less troubleshooting than Windows machines. True. In fact, very true, provided you're running standard Linux installations--but who does that? The whole attraction of Linux is that we can modify its source to suit our needs."

eWeek: "But this study is full of questionable assumptions. For example, it's based on a five-year technical lifetime, rather than the more common three years -- spreading upfront costs over a longer period."

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Linux Adoption

Open Source in the EU - how one agency introduced it (Register)

The Register looks into how the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) is planning on using Linux. "Hans-Georg Wagner, head of EMEA's communications and networking unit, is a self-confessed Linux fan, and hopes to be able to give Linux a bigger slice of the pie in the future, but is currently taking a hard-headed view of what Linux can and can't do for his organisation. EMEA requires 99.99 per cent uptime on its core systems, and in his view that pretty much dictates commercial Unix running on non-Intel platforms, because although Intel servers are attractive from the bangs per buck point of view, reliability can still be an issue, and Wagner can't afford to have his servers falling over. So for now, Unix does mission critical, while Linux comes in around the edges where uptime isn't quite such a necessity."

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Open Nurse (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews reports on a new site called Open-Nurse that aims to bring the benefits of open-source software into the world of nursing.

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Use Of Contract Programmers, Linux Up Sharply (TechWeb)

TechWeb examines a recent study by Evans Data Corp. which shows 70% of those surveyed are outsourcing some software work, and 60% use Linux on some servers. "While that's encouraging for Linux proponents, it isn't all good news: Linux deployment is being confined to less than one in four of a company's systems, while only 3% of companies say they use Linux on more than half their servers."

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Legal

Sklyarov testifies in copyright trial (News.com)

News.com reports on Dmitry Sklyarov's testimony in the ElcomSoft trial. "The defense also played a tape of the speech that spurred Sklyarov's arrest. During his presentation on flaws in eBook security at the DefCon convention in Las Vegas, Sklyarov told the audience that a publisher of an eBook 'puts itself in danger' when it relies on the insecure software provided by software publishers including Adobe."

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Adobe hacking case goes to the jury (News.com)

Here's a News.com article about the end of testimony in the ElcomSoft trial. "Earlier in the trial, ElcomSoft had sought to enter evidence of the benign uses of the software, such as to allow visually impaired readers to transfer Adobe eBooks to reading devices for the blind. Judge Ronald Whyte refused to allow that line of defense, however, leaving the company few arguments to protest its innocence."

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Stop the Broadcast Flag Mandate (Linux Journal)

The Broadcast Flag Mandate is an FCC rule that would make receiving TV with free software illegal in the USA. Read more in this Linux Journal article. "Right now, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States of America is preparing to hand down a regulation, the so-called Broadcast Flag Mandate. This regulation would make it a felony to own, sell or use important free software tools of communication, such as GNU Radio, Project GNU's software-defined radio program. The issue here has nothing to do with copyright infringement, despite the claims of the RIAA, the MPAA and the AAP; the Broadcast Flag Mandate would make purely private use of GNU Radio a felony."

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Adobe: Few eBook copies found (News.com)

News.com reports on the ElcomSoft trial. "While cross-examining several government witnesses, including three current and former Adobe employees, [ElcomSoft attorney] Burton tried to make the case that companies are trying to use technological controls to quash a consumer's ability to perform tasks within his or her legal right--such as making a back-up copy of a document, for example."

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Hacker hero, Hollywood nemesis on trial (CNN)

CNN covers the trial of Jon Johansen. "The proceedings begin Monday in Oslo District Court and are expected to last five days, with Johansen taking the stand. But whatever the trial's outcome, the digital copycat is well out of the bag."

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Digital copyright: overkill (Economist)

Here's an article in The Economist about the ElcomSoft trial. "So far, the federal judge conducting the trial has dismissed ElcomSoft's constitutional arguments as irrelevant to the criminal case. But these are likely to become the key issues if the case, or another DMCA test case like it, goes all the way to the Supreme Court."

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Interviews

CNET Interview: Dan Frye

News.com interviews Dan Frye. "Four years ago, Dan Frye convinced IBM's management it would be smart to jump on the Linux bandwagon--a wise suggestion. Not only did that decision afford Big Blue a hipper image, but it also helped the company open doors that otherwise might have remained shut. A soft-spoken man with a doctorate in atomic physics, he now finds himself a spokesman for open source inside the world's biggest computer company."

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CNET Interview: Bruce Perens

News.com interviews Bruce Perens. "Perens, who helped develop the Debian version of Linux, predictably expects open source to transform the governing constellation of power in the software industry. But he says this is not just the wishful thinking of an evangelist--with corporate customers increasingly fed up with strict proprietary software licenses, he maintains that open-source software will increasingly find its way into businesses no longer spooked by the concept."

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Resources

LinuxDevices.com Newsletter for Dec. 5, 2002

Here's the LinuxDevices.com Newsletter for December 5, 2002, with all the latest news in Embedded Linux.

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Manifestation of Assent (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal examines some considerations and guidelines for creating software licenses that are enforceable. "Most open source licenses you'll find at www.opensource.org and all proprietary software licenses you'll find anywhere are to be interpreted under contract law. They can be enforced, like other contracts are enforced, against both a licensor and a licensee."

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Group releases new Linux testing tools (News.com)

News.com covers version 2 of the Scalable Test Platform from OSDL. "The software is used to test the speed of computer functions such as writing information to memory, running database software and juggling multiple tasks. OSDL says that use of its software can help offer proof that its improvements work better and therefore should be incorporated into the "mainline," or standard, Linux software."

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Reviews

'Tis the season to frag with Linux (LinuxWorld)

Joe Barr plays around with Cube, a first person shooter game that runs on Linux. "Cube is the name and killing is the game. Written with a single codebase to support both Windows and Unix platforms through the magic of open standards like OpenGL and SDL, the game is both free as in beer and as in speech. Cube is not bogged down with a long storyline or complex gameplay. According to the documentation, the official storyline goes like this: "You kill stuff. The end." Cube is free software, albeit not as in GPL'd code. It uses a GPL-compatible, free software-license called the Zlib license, which is similar to the BSD license."

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PluggedIn: A $199 PC with no Windows, no Intel inside (Reuters)

Reuters looks at $199 computers at WalMart and finds Lycoris Desktop/LX inside of some. "Freedom -- from Microsoft -- is a chief reason that consumers would buy a Linux-based machine, said Jason Spisak, marketing director of Lycoris, a nine-person start-up and one of two companies supplying Wal-Mart with an operating system for the $199 machines. The other, also Linux-based, is Lindows."

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PHP5: Ready For The Enterprise? (TechWeb)

TechWeb takes a look at PHP. "Combined with its favorite open source buddies, the MySQL database and the Apache web server, PHP enables even the semi-technically literate to create dynamic, database-driven, Web applications. The most popular platform for this powerhouse combination is affectionately known as LAMP (for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), and is rapidly becoming one of the most potent platforms for building Web applications."

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The Penguin Takes Flight (Business 2.0)

Business 2.0 has an article about Miguel de Icaza and Mono. "Here's why Mono is hot: First, it promises to make translating most new Windows programs into Linux fast and easy. That means someday soon anything from Quicken to your company's supply-chain software could be ported over to Linux with the double click of a mouse. Second, Mono could speed up the development of new Linux applications by as much as a factor of three." Thanks to Ashwin N.

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Absolute BSD: the Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal reviews Absolute BSD: The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD by Michael Lucas. "Were one to evaluate the merit of Lucas's text based on its scope alone, one would be hard-pressed to provide sufficient praise. His 500-plus page text covers installation, help resources, backup and recovery, kernel configuration, networking, upgrading, security, the filesystem structure and hierarchy, system troubleshooting and system recovery. With such a breadth of information at our disposal, we should be empowered to perform spectacular feats with FreeBSD, right? Well, maybe."

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Xandros File Manager (Consulting Times)

Consulting Times takes a look at the Xandros File Manage (XFM), bundled with the Xandros Linux desktop. "What got me started on all this was a recent conversation I had with Ming Poon, the Xandros VP for software development, in which he explained why Xandros eschewed KDE's generic UNIX file manager in favor of a home-grown Xandros File Manager [XFM], that's tightly linked to the Linux OS. Now building a file manager has to be a huge task, and, in Ming's case, it's been his pet project ever since his days a manager of Corel Linux."

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Miscellaneous

Digital Robber Barons? (NY Times)

The New York Times looks at how high-speed internet access is becoming subject to the moral equivalent of robber baron business practices. "Until recently, the Internet seemed the very embodiment of the free-market ideal ? a place where thousands of service providers competed, where anyone could visit any site. And the tech sector was a fertile breeding ground for libertarian ideology, with many techies asserting that they needed neither help nor regulation from Washington." (Registration Required) Thanks to Thomas Blankenhorn

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Santa Tux's Corner: The Gift of Linux, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal suggests the gift of Linux for your friends and family. "Can Linux banish the Blue Screen of Death to its rightful place as nothing but a bad memory? With every passing day, it seems more likely. You, my friends, know the joys of running Linux and can help bring that day a little closer. In doing so, you can make someone's holiday celebrations a little brighter. This holiday season, give the gift of Linux."

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