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LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 23, 2006The Global Desktop ProjectFree software has always seemed like a good match for the developing world. It makes top-quality software available to all, without forcing choices between buying expensive licenses (using hard-to-get foreign currencies) or dealing with the the consequences of wide-scale copying of proprietary code. Free software is one bit of technology which is just as available in the poorer parts of the world as it is in the richer countries.What has been observed, however, is that, while use of free software in the developing world is taking off, participation in the development process is not growing at the same rate. This is true even in countries where there is no shortage of people with the technical skills needed to hack on free software. To a great extent, much of the developing world is a consumer of free software, but takes a relatively small role in its production. This costs the development community, which has no end of projects which could benefit from more developer attention. But it especially hurts the people who don't participate. A consumer of free software remains dependent on imported code without developing the ability to improve that code or influence its further evolution. The United Nations University (UNU) recently sent out a press release on this issue:
Being a 'passive consumer' rather than an 'active participant'
is not in the best interests of a developing nation's government or
business sectors. Technological self determination in developing
countries is key to their future prosperity and is contingent on
harnessing the power of this high-tech phenomenon.
The UNU, working with governments and industry, has set out on an effort to improve participation rates in the developing world. Part of this effort is the Global Desktop Project, an initiative to increase the number of free software hackers by encouraging improvements to the Linux desktop experience. The leader of this project turns out to be a familiar name: Scott McNeil. Among other things, Scott has served as the head of SUSE's US operation, the "open source strategist" for VA Linux Systems, and the executive director of the Free Standards Group. Scott tells us that the desktop focus was chosen because the desktop tends to be one of the most interesting areas for aspiring hackers. There is also a great deal of desktop-oriented work - such as internationalization - which is best done by locals. Within this focus, there are four separate initiatives being pursued. These include a "train the trainers" seminar series designed to help spread the free software methodology, the establishment of a set of open source labs, the creation of a series of FDL-licensed courses, and a student mentoring effort. The first labs are expected to open in China later this year; they will be financed from initial funding received from Intel and a couple of Chinese government agencies. The labs will hire students - mostly at the graduate level - to work on free software projects. Lab staff will also work on mentoring to help new developers work with the community. Says Scott:
Mentoring of the interns will primarily be done by the project
staff with some support from members of the community who we are
engaging. While we have received some positive feedback from
various open source developers, we believe that a majority of open
source developers have no desire to mentor or assist newbies. This
is why mentoring/management will be primarily done by the project
staff. We have no desire to throw the kids into the hacker's pit
and watch them get flamed and ignored...
Working with the community is often one of the biggest stumbling blocks for developers coming from outside of Europe and North America. These developers have all the technical skills they need, but there can be a strong impedance mismatch between the culture they grew up with and the often, um, impolite nature of discussion in the development communities. Being flamed on a mailing list is unpleasant for most of us (though there do seem to be people who live for that experience), but it can be shocking to somebody from a culture where people do not talk to each other that way. It can also lead to workplace difficulties. Even more gentle, well-meaning criticism can be problematic for some developers. So developers from those areas tend to avoid the community - and not contribute back improvements they may have made. And that hurts everybody involved. That is why, as Scott says, "the Global Desktop Project is as much a socialization exercise as it is an engineering project." It is an effort to integrate these developers into the growing worldwide development community - a result which should be beneficial to everybody involved. This project - which is expected to last three to five years - is just getting started, so it will be a while before results will be visible. There will, doubtless, be many cultural and funding hurdles to overcome during that time. But, if all goes well, the Global Desktop Project has the potential to increase the rate at which the developing world joins the free software development community. And, as a bonus, we might just get a better desktop out of the deal.
Xara releases the sourceXara Xtreme is yet another drawing and image composition tool for the Windows platform. A few months ago, Xara announced that it would branch out and make this application available for Mac OS and Linux platforms as well. Even better, it would be released under the GNU GPL. The result, it was said, would be a top-quality drawing tool for the free software community.The first part of that promise has now been fulfilled: the source code is now available for the project now known as Xara LX. This version of Xara, it turns out, is a GTK+ application by way of wxWidgets. It comes with plenty of warnings: many of the features are not yet ported, and the whole thing can be somewhat unstable. But, the tool is now out there for people to play with.
Once it stabilizes, the Linux community should have another nice drawing package in its toolbox. Linux may not yet be poised to displace proprietary packages from the systems used by professional artists, but things are clearly headed in the right direction. With tools like the Gimp, Inkscape, Krita, and, now, Xara LX, we are getting closer to the day when there is no need to use those other, proprietary platforms even for the most demanding graphical tasks.
Money trouble at OpenBSDThe OpenBSD project sets the standard for security in free operating systems. More than with any other project, the OpenBSD hackers work at tracking down potential security problems before they affect users. This work has earned OpenBSD a well-deserved reputation for being hard to break.A recent posting to the openbsd-misc mailing list has raised a non-technical issue: it seems that OpenBSD's finances are not as solid as its software. The project has been running at a $20,000 (US) annual deficit for the last couple of years, with no relief in sight. The problem, it is said, is that OpenBSD users have stopped buying CDs; instead, they content themselves with grabbing a copy from a network server for free. The sales of CDs and related items are a major source of money for the project; if CD sales do not live up to expectations, income will fall short. LWN asked the OpenBSD project if there was any sort of public information on the group's budget and how it is spent. Unfortunately, it seems that there is no such information. From looking at what information is available, it appears that the biggest single expense is the occasional "hackathons" - coding-intensive developer meetings - run by the project. Beyond that, there's the usual costs for Internet service, equipment, and so on. It appears that very little of OpenBSD's budget goes toward paying salaries to developers. To support its activities, OpenBSD would like to bring in about $100,000 per year. Donations recently have been a very small fraction of that, however. What the OpenBSD folks are saying now is: something has to change, or the project will be unable to continue at its current level of activity in the future. Every free software project must support its work somehow. For small projects, that support may consist of no more than the occasional donation of development time by an interested hacker or two. Larger projects require more, however, in the way of infrastructure and developer time. So most projects, once they achieve a certain level of success, have to find a revenue stream from somewhere. That, often, is when the core developers try to form a business around the project. It may just be a matter of lining up some consulting work to pay for the continued development and maintenance of the code, or there may be a more advanced business plan involved. Sometimes projects are able to obtain sponsors which have some interest in the project's success; witness Google's support of the Mozilla Foundation, for example. Sometimes developers will be hired by a company to work on free code; many Linux kernel hackers make their living in that way. It is a rare project, however, which is able to get very far with sales of CDs and donations. There is little motivation for anybody with a broadband network connection to order CDs; a simple download gets more current software more quickly. This is why Linux distributors have been moving away from CD sales as a business model for years - and those which haven't are wishing they had. The OpenBSD project is simply discovering the same thing others have found out: the value of a CD is quite low. Anybody who is in the business of selling CDs full of free software is in a commodity business, and one which is in competition with its own customers at that. There is no other business of any consequence built around OpenBSD, however. There are few products which incorporate OpenBSD, and few high-profile network-based services which use it. While OpenBSD does not lack for users, it seems there are relatively few who see a business interest in supporting its development. It must be said that the abrasive nature of OpenBSD's leadership cannot be helping in this regard. The same posting hints at one approach for generating some cash:
[What] a lot of people don't seem to realize is that OpenSSH
development is paid from the same pool of money as OpenBSD.
OpenSSH is in use by millions around the world however the revenue
stream just simply isn't there. This is where other projects could
help. Without naming entities or projects by name there are others
out there that are sitting on some cash. It would be wonderful if
these entities could share some of the wealth to keep us going.
The project, in other words, is appealing to "entities" which obtain some value from OpenSSH to kick into the OpenBSD coffers. It is hard to imagine that, for example, Linux distributors - all of which distribute OpenSSH - are not among the "entities" being targeted here. This is just a bit ironic, given how the OpenBSD founder has chosen to trash Linux recently. More disconcerting, however, is the implicit threat: support OpenBSD, or OpenSSH may go down the tubes. The answer the project is likely to hear may not be the one they are looking for; the world may ask, instead, why are OpenBSD and OpenSSH funded from the same pool of money? Might it not be better to separate the two - by forking OpenSSH, if necessary? Certainly some way could be found to keep OpenSSH going if OpenBSD were to come to an end. The end of OpenBSD would be an unfortunate event, however. The project's uncompromising focus on security has raised the bar for all systems and made all of us - even those who have never run OpenBSD - more secure. We all benefit from having a group out there doing the work that the OpenBSD people have taken on. But it is up to the OpenBSD folks to put some of the same attention into securing their financial future, and that means finding a way to obtain money from those who benefit most from OpenBSD's existence. Given the size of the OpenBSD user base and the modest nature of its financial needs, it seems like this problem should have a solution.
Security One year of RHEL4 securityRed Hat Magazine is carrying an article by Mark J. Cox looking at the security record of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 release in its first year. It certainly will be interesting reading for RHEL users, who can get a sense for how Red Hat views the security performance of its flagship distribution. One need not be an RHEL customer, however, to find items of interest in this report.RHEL 4 marks the beginning of Red Hat's classification scheme for vulnerabilities. Severity classifications are an acknowledgment of an important aspect of Linux security: large numbers of advisories and updates are issued, but very few of the problems being fixed constitute real threats for most users. Every temporary file vulnerability should be fixed, for example, but it is a rare system which is compromised by way of a temporary file exploit. Red Hat's classifications can help to focus administrators' minds on the important problems. Perhaps more importantly, the classifications should help "analysts" and other commenters to look beyond the sheer volume of advisories and look at the ones which really matter. Red Hat defines a "critical" vulnerability in this way:
By definition a critical vulnerability is one that could
potentially be exploited remotely and automatically by a worm. We
stretch the definition to also include those flaws that affect web
browsers or plug-ins where a user only needs to visit a malicious
web site in order to be exploited.
By this definition, there were 19 critical vulnerabilities disclosed for RHEL 4 in its first year. The list of involved packages is interesting: HelixPlayer, mozilla, firefox, kdelibs, lynx, gaim, kopete, thunderbird, and mod_auth_pgsql. All but one of the critical vulnerabilities, in other words, were in complex, graphical clients (though classifying lynx as such is a bit of a stretch). As a result of this distribution, a default RHEL server installation suffered from zero critical vulnerabilities in it first year. Workstation installations, instead, had a fair number. Red Hat claims to have issued updates for all critical vulnerabilities within two days of their public disclosure. The report also looks at exploits - the company is aware of 28 publicly-circulating exploits for software shipped in RHEL 4. It is claimed that the security technologies packaged with RHEL 4, including the "Exec-Shield" stack protection and address randomization techniques, impede or block about half of those. The "Lupper" worm could get past those barriers, but would be unable to execute its payload as a result of the SELinux policies in effect. The report does acknowledge, however, that a modified version of the worm would have been able to circumvent SELinux. Anybody wanting to poke holes in this report could certainly do so. Not everybody will agree with how Red Hat classifies all of its vulnerabilities. It would be nice if that classification - or the entire report - could be done by an impartial outside party. One might also note that the response time for older RHEL versions can be longer; consider a recent cron vulnerability which was fixed for RHEL 4 last October, but the RHEL 3 update only arrived last week. Since part of RHEL's claim to value is its long-term support, the idea that updates will be slower in coming as the distribution ages is a little disconcerting. (In fairness: the gap is much smaller for more important problems: the patches for the recent firefox vulnerability for RHEL 2, 3, and 4 all came out on the same day). The important thing, however, is that this report got written and published at all. While most distributors make a strong effort on security, few of them take the time to look at their record and tell the world about it. Full disclosure does not stop with individual vulnerabilities; Linux users benefit from a view of the larger picture as well. Red Hat is to be commended for putting this information together; hopefully other distributors will follow suit.
Brief items Sun's "open source DRM" specifications releasedSun has announced the release of the first set of specifications for its "open source DRM" effort. It is an exercise in Orwellian naming: we have "Project DReaM" for "DRM/everywhere available," a system called "Mother May I," and the whole thing is found at OpenMediaCommons.org. Nonetheless, they got Lawrence Lessig to add a favorable statement. Code for a prototype "conditional access system" implementation has been posted.
A serious sendmail security holeIt's been a while since we had a good sendmail vulnerability...but we need wait no longer. Sendmail 8.13.6 has just been released in response to a security issue which could lead to a remote root exploit. This looks like a good one to fix in a hurry. Distributor updates have been seen so far from:
Xorg-server 1.0.2 security fix releaseIt would appear that one of the bugs found in the recent Coverity scan was a local root exploit in the X.org server (version 1.0.0 and later). The X11R6.9.0 and X11R7.0 releases are also vulnerable, though older releases are not. A 1.0.2 release has been made available with the fix; expect updates from distributors in the near future as well.
New vulnerabilities beagle: untrusted search path vulnerability
cairo: denial of service
crossfire: buffer overflow
curl: heap-based buffer overflow
drupal: multiple vulnerabilities
flash-plugin: arbitrary code execution
ilohamail: missing input sanitizing
kernel-patch-vserver: missing attribute support
PEAR-Auth: potential authentication bypass
PeerCast: buffer overflow
sendmail: remotely exploitable race condition
snmptrapfmt: temporary file vulnerability
wzdftpd: missing input sanitizing
xorg-x11-server: privilege escalation
xpvm: insecure temp file
Updated vulnerabilities ADOdb: PostgresSQL command injection
apache: cross-site scripting
Ubuntu installer: plain text passwords in log file
blender: integer overflow
bzip2: race condition and infinite loop
ktools: buffer overflow
cpio: arbitrary code execution
crossfire: arbitrary code execution
cube: multiple vulnerabilities
curl: buffer overflow
cyrus-imapd: buffer overflows
dia: missing input sanitizing
emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"
enscript: arbitrary code execution
evolution: format string issues
fetchmail: multidrop bug
ffmpeg: buffer overflow
flex: buffer overflow
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
freeciv: denial of service
gdb: multiple vulnerabilities
gdk-pixbuf: multiple vulnerabilities
gedit: format string vulnerability
gnupg: incorrect signature verification
grip: buffer overflow
gzip: arbitrary command execution
heimdal: privilege escalation
imagemagick: arbitrary command execution
imap: buffer overflow in c-client
initscripts: privilege escalation
ipsec-tools: denial of service
kdebase: local root vulnerability
kdelibs: heap overflow
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel multiple vulnerabilities
kpdf: insufficient patching
xpdf heap based buffer overflow
libapreq2: algorithm weakness
libcrypt-cbc-perl: programming error
libgadu: memory alignment bug
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
libmail-audit-perl: insecure temporary file creation
libpam-ldap: authentication bypass
libpng: heap based buffer overflow
libungif: memory corruption
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
lurker: several vulnerabilities
lynx: arbitrary command execution
metamail: buffer overflow
mod_python: remote access vulnerability
mozilla: multiple vulnerabilities
Mozilla Thunderbird: remote code execution and DoS
nbd: arbitrary code execution
ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities
ntp: uses wrong gid
openmotif: buffer overflows
OpenSSH: double shell expansion
perl: setuid vulnerabilities
php: multiple vulnerabilities
phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities
phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities
pound: HTTP Request Smuggling Attack
pstotext: remote execution of arbitrary code
Py2Play: remote execution of arbitrary Python code
scorched3d: multiple vulnerabilities
squid: authentication handling
squirrelmail: multiple vulnerabilities
sudo: vulnerability via scripts
tar: buffer overflow
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: multiple DoS issues
tetex: integer overflows
texinfo: temporary file vulnerability
tin: buffer overflow
unzip: long file name buffer overflow
uw-imap: buffer overflow
vixie-cron: crontab allows any user to read another users crontabs
w3c-libwww: possible stack overflow
webcalendar: multiple vulnerabilities
xine-lib: buffer overflows
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
xloadimage: buffer overflows
xpdf: buffer overflow
xpdf: potential vulnerabilities
xpdf: denial of service
xpdf: integer overflows
zlib: buffer overflow
zoo: stack-based buffer overflow
zoph: SQL injection vulnerability
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.16, released on March 19. A fair number of fixes have been merged since 2.6.16-rc6, but nothing too major. For those just tuning in, some of the big, user-visible changes in this kernel include the OCFS2 cluster filesystem, a number of networking changes including CUBIC congestion control, TIPC support, and an IPv6 version of DCCP, the swap migration and direct migration patches, a new SCHED_BATCH scheduler class, a number of new filesystem-oriented system calls, and the error detection and correction code. Big internal changes include the mutex changeover and the high-resolution timer code. The long-format changelog has lots of details.The mainline git repository contains a big pile of patches merged for 2.6.17-rc1; see below for a summary. The current -mm tree is 2.6.16-rc6-mm2. Recent changes to -mm include a reorganization of the page migration code (since merged), some high-resolution timers changes, some scheduler tweaks, and the MD RAID reshaping patches.
Kernel development news Quote of the week
I do nothing more than trade stout rope for good behavior. I
anchor one end to a boulder, the other to a task's neck. The
mechanism is agnostic. The task determines whether it gets hung or
not, and the user determines how long the rope is.
-- Mike Galbraith. Who says scheduler patches are hard to understand?
OSDL's technical advisory boardAs has been promised earlier, OSDL has announced the formation of a "technical advisory board" to help improve its relations with the kernel development community. Initial members are James Bottomley, Wim Coekaerts, Randy Dunlap, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Christoph Lameter, Matt Mackall, Theodore Ts'o, Arjan van de Ven, and Chris Wright.
What's coming in 2.6.17As of this writing, the process of merging patches into the mainline for 2.6.17 has been underway for a couple of days. Something over 1500 patches have been merged, though the number of user-visible changes is relatively small. Here is what has gone into the kernel so far:
The merge window for 2.6.17 should stay open until around the end of the month, so there is still plenty of time for more patches to find their way in.
The last-minute unshare() discussionOne of many new system calls added in the 2.6.16 kernel is unshare(). Its purpose is to perform the opposite of the various sharing flags provided with clone(): it is used to disconnect some of a process's resources from those of its ancestor and sibling processes. With unshare(), a process can ask to have its own filesystems, namespaces, or file descriptor table. The unsharing of other resources, including semaphore undo information, virtual memory, signal handlers, and more is stubbed in for future releases.A couple of last-second issues with unshare() surfaced just as 2.6.16 was being prepared for final release; only some of those issues were resolved in the resulting kernel. One of those had to do with the implementation of unshare(CLONE_VM), which causes the calling process to stop sharing memory with others. It seemed that this functionality was present and complete, until Oleg Nesterov noticed that the code does not take into account the possibility that a core dump of the address space may be in process. The solution, for now, is to simply disable unsharing of memory. It seems that there is nobody who needs this feature immediately, and it was too late to be trying to fix up a core memory management function. Eric Biederman raised a couple of other issues relating to the unshare() API which he would have liked to see fixed before that API becomes part of a released kernel. One was the use of the same set of flags used by clone() to specify sharing. Eric says:
sys_unshare can't implement half of the clone flags under any
circumstances and those that it does implement have subtlely
different semantics than the clone flags. Using a different set of
flags sets the expectation that things will be different.
That discussion did not get very far, however; Linus prefers to use the same flags, and nobody else seems to be terribly upset about it. Eric's other point was that unshare() does not test for unrecognized flags; they are silently ignored. So user space can ask for the unsharing of resources which are not known to - or supported by - the unshare() call and no error status will be returned. This behavior could be a problem in the future, when the set of legal flags for unshare() is expected to grow. A program written to use one of the new flags may not do the right thing if it is subsequently run on a 2.6.16 kernel; the functionality it asks for will not be present, but the kernel will not inform it of the fact. The patch submitted by Eric addressed both issues: the names of the flags and testing for unrecognized flags. It was not merged for 2.6.16, however. The unrecognized flag test, on its own, might have gotten in (and such a patch has been merged for 2.6.17), but the combined patch didn't make it. Andrew Morton remarked: "Your single patch did two different things - there's a lesson here." The creation of tightly-focused patches truly is important, especially just prior to a final kernel release.
Solving starvation problems in the schedulerThe Linux CPU scheduler has come a long way since the early 2.6 days, when it was the cause for quite a bit of worry. Scheduling domains fixed many of the problems on larger systems, while a whole set of interactivity heuristics made desktops work better. The interactivity work, in particular, is based on the notion of a "sleep average." Any process which spends a significant amount of its time sleeping, relative to the time it runs, is deemed to be "interactive" and is given a higher priority.This mechanism works well enough that few people complain about interactive response with current 2.6 kernels. Every now and then, however, somebody comes up with a workload which manages to fool the scheduler and bring the desktop to a halt. Mike Galbraith has been chasing down a few of these, producing patches in the process which should help to mitigate the problems. The Linux scheduler maintains two "arrays" of run queues for each processor. When a process starts out, it is given a time slice and put onto the "active" array, where it can compete for the CPU. Once the time slice runs out, that process will move over to the "expired" array, where it languishes until all other runnable processes have used up their time slices. Once all processes are on the expired array, the two arrays are switched and the process begins again. There is an exception, however, in the 2.6 kernel: a process which is deemed to be interactive (because it spends enough time in interruptible sleeps) will, on expiration of its time slice, be put back onto the active array. As a result, an interactive process should not have to wait while some long-running batch process cranks through its time slice. To keep this mechanism from blocking out expired processes altogether, however, the scheduler checks to see if the processes in the expired array have been waiting for too long. Once the starvation threshold has been exceeded, all processes go to the expired array at the end of their slices, allowing the scheduler to perform the array switch in the relatively near future. Mike found that, on a system with a heavily-loaded Apache server running, tasks could find themselves starved for long periods of time; it seems that the starvation-avoidance logic was not working right. The problem turned out to be in the wakeup code. That code was always putting freshly-awakened processes onto the active array, regardless of what was going on elsewhere in the system. With a large number of server processes being continually awakened as requests came in, the scheduler was never able to switch arrays. The fix was to put the starvation test into __activate_task(); as a result, when expired processes are starving, processes will be awakened onto the expired array. That small fix fixed much of the problem. A fuller fix, however, involves the task throttling patch which Mike has been working on for some time. There's a number of fixes involved in this work, but the core observation is this: the "sleep average" code can be too generous to processes which sleep only part of the time. A process which manages regular, short sleeps can boost its priority significantly, to the point that it can force out other processes running on the system. And once a process obtains an interactivity bonus, it can keep it for some time. This behavior is all by design; some interactive programs can sit for a very long time, then perform some serious processing for a while. Think about the X server with that nice compositing window manager; it spends quite a bit of time idle, only to pin the CPU when the user starts dragging windows around. But this behavior can also give an interactive priority bonus to processes which are not truly interactive. The solution here involves a few changes. One of them is to simply be a bit less generous with the interactivity bonuses. But the core of the patch is a function called refresh_timeslice(). This function looks at the current sleep average, and compares it to the amount of time that the process is actually spending in the CPU. Based on this comparison, a per-process throttle time is adjusted. If more CPU time is being used than would be suggested by the sleep average, the throttle time is moved backward; otherwise it moves forward. If a process runs into the throttle time, its sleep average starts to decay quickly, depriving it of its interactivity bonus. The throttle time provides a grace period which allows processes to use short bursts of CPU time without being penalized. The amount of grace time can be adjusted by way of a pair of knobs exported by the throttling code. "Grace 1" is the amount of time new processes get to establish their averages before being exposed to the throttling mechanism, while "grace 2" is how long a process can run above its expected CPU usage before the throttle kicks in. There have been some objections to the addition of these knobs; they look like another obscure set of kernel tunables that most administrators will not know how to set properly. So there has been a push for the knobs to be replaced with a simple on/off switch. Systems meant for interactive use would leave the throttling on, while server systems would simply turn it all off. Working this issue out may delay the acceptance of this patch, though there seems to be little disagreement with the rest of it.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Build system
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Virtualization and containers
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions New Releases Fedora Core 5 releasedFedora Core 5 "Bordeaux" was released on Monday. The announcement contains a specific set of download sites; you can also get to a list of mirrors here.The announcement was preceded by the news that the new release could temporarily break non-GPL modules. Look for a kernel update to fix that. Those who have upgraded to FC5 may want to upgrade to flash-plugin-7.0.63-1, which properly handles integration with firefox-1.5.x contained in FC5. ATrpms has officially launched Fedora Core 5 support for i386 and x86_64. ATrpms is a third party general purpose package repository.
CentOS 4.3 is Released for i386, x86_64, and ia64The CentOS team has announced the release of CentOS 4.3 for i386, x86_64 and ia64. This release includes the Linux 2.6 Kernel, SELinux, udev replacing the /dev system, Xorg, MySQL4, CyrusIMAPD, Gnome 2.8 and KDE 3.3. These improvements along with many more are detailed in the release notes.
Mandriva One releasedMandriva has announced the availability (to Club members) of the "Mandriva One" distribution. It's big claim to fame would appear to be its ability to have a single CD function both as a live CD and an installation disk. "This high quality Linux distribution not only includes live and install functionality but also a selection of the best free software available with selected non-free applications and drivers available on a special edition for Mandriva Club members." "Mandriva Kiosk," a sort of click-and-run variant, has been pre-announced as well.
Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS U7Pie Box Enterprise Linux has released update 7 for Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3. "Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 include the Linux 2.4 kernel, GNOME, Apache 2, Samba 3 and Logical Volume Manager."
SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta8 AnnouncementSUSE Linux 10.1 beta8 is available for testing. Click below for links to known bugs and mirrors.
Distribution News Debian DemocracyThe first Call for Votes has gone out for the Debian Project Leader Election 2006. Here is the main vote page. Platforms for each of the seven candidates can be found here. A colored-coded transcript of the debate is available as well.Here's a final look at the General Resolution looking at the GNU Free Documentation License. The Debian Project now considers the GNU FDL conditionally free, as long as no invariant sections are used.
Debian: First AMD64 Binary UploadedAnthony Towns reports on the progress of AMD64 packages for Debian.
Deprecating debmakeThis won't affect very many Debian users, but if you make packages for Debian be aware that debmake will be removed from testing and unstable some time after the release of etch. Packagers should be switching to debhelper.
Change to release schedule for Ubuntu DapperThe updated release date for Ubuntu Dapper Drake, Desktop and Server editions has been set to June 1, 2006. "The Ubuntu Community Council and Technical Board discussed feedback on the delay proposal received during two town hall meetings on the #ubuntu-meeting public IRC channel. After conferring with an absent colleague they have now unanimously approved the new release schedule, published here."
Australian Local Community Team for UbuntuThe formation of the Australian Ubuntu Local Community Team has been announced. They are working on distributing, advertising and demoing Ubuntu within Australia, focusing on schools, business and home users.
Gentoo Security team meeting summaryA summary of the latest Gentoo Linux Security Team IRC meeting is available.
Announcing FUDCon Boston 2006FUDCon Boston 2006 is set for April 7, 2006. "FUDCon Boston 2006 is the fifth such event globally and the second to be held in Boston, Mass. USA. FUDCon Boston 2006 will feature an expanded three track lineup which includes a user, developer and applications track. The application track will feature unique individuals and corporations, such as Levanta, MySQL, Pogo Linux and even representatives from the Catalonian Government in Spain, who have leveraged Fedora for unique purposes and have contributed to the community."
New Distributions New Persian Linux ArrivedKaramad means Efficient in Farsi (Persian). Karamad is built at DPI (Data Processing of Iran-ext IBM). The Live CD also functions as an installation media. It can show and play most sound & video files. Other software includes OpenOffice, Firefox, KDE 3.4, Persian Help, an English to Persian Dictionary, and more.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe March 21 Debian Weekly News is out. Topics covered this week include the status of the amd64 port, the second etch installer beta release, the process for expelling developers from the project, and more.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 38The Fedora Weekly News for March 20, 2006 contains pointers to: Red Hat Magazine March 2006, Red Hat Formally Announces 'Integrated Virtualization', Phoronix.com: An Interview with Greg DeKoenigsberg, Looking Back and Forward on Fedora Core 5, Release Notes II: rereleased!, OLPC Operating System, DistroWatch.com: Linux in education, and more.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of March 20, 2006 covers x86 arch testers team looking for members, Athlon X2 dual-core host accessible for Gentoo developers, modular X to be unmasked this week, report from open-source conference in Tokyo, and several other topics.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 143The DistroWatch Weekly for March 20, 2006 is out. "It's that time of the year when development activity in the open source software world is about to reach its peak - the release of GNOME 2.14 last week will be followed by Fedora Core 5 later today, with SUSE 10.1 coming out next month. At the same time, Ubuntu's Dapper Drake has received extra 6 weeks to get more polish, while Mandriva's new "One" product has been overshadowed by news about the sudden involuntary departure of the distribution's founder. Also in this issue: Debian developers on explaining their project to non-geeks, update on the custom DVD booting a number of distributions, and a quick look at the new KNOPPIX 5.0."
Minor distribution updates Ark Linux 2006.1-rc1The first release candidate of the KDE-centric Ark Linux 2006.1 is out. This release includes KDE 3.5.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.2, amaroK 1.4 beta 2, kopete 0.12 beta 1, Xorg 7.0, gcc 4.1, and glibc 2.4.
Announcing Foresight Desktop Linux 0.9.4 (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop introduces Foresight Desktop Linux 0.9.4 with GNOME 2.14 and lots of other updates.
RR64 Linux 3.0 beta 1 announcedGentoo-based RR64 3.0 beta 1 is out. of RR64 Linux is available. This release features Xgl, GCC 4.0.2 as the default compiler, 2.6.15 kernel, 2.6.16-rc5 XEN kernel (SMP enabled), X.org 7.0, KDE 3.5.1, GNOME 2.12.3 and more.
Package updates Fedora updatesUpdates for Fedora Core 5: perl-Archive-Tar (upstream version 1.29), perl-Convert-ASN1 (upstream version 1.20-1), perl-DBD-Pg (upstream version 1.45), perl-PDL (bug fixes and code cleanup), lftp (upstream version 3.4.3), system-config-bind (bug fix and updated translations), tcsh (bug fixes), avahi (bug fixes), squid (new upstream version), authconfig (make smb.conf and krb5.conf loading more robust), bind (bug fixes)Updates for Fedora Core 4: GFS-kernel (rebuilt against kernel-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4), strace (bug fixes), perl-PDL (bug fixes and code cleanup), selinux-policy-strict (bug fixes), bind (bug fixes).
Slackware updatesThere were a couple of lengthy entries in the Slackware current change log this week, mostly about problems and fixes for the X11 packages. Also a new linux-2.6.15.6 kernel in testing, and upgrades to cairo, gtk+2 and dnsmasq.
Trustix Secure Linux updatesTrustix TSL-2006-0013 covers bug fixes in rsync and squid for TSL 2.2 and 3.0.
Newsletters and articles of interest Automatix kicks Ubuntu into gear (Linux.com)Linux.com eases a Ubuntu install with Automatix. "To test Automatix, I started with a fresh install of Ubuntu Breezy. Automatix supports all versions of Ubuntu up to Breezy, including Kubuntu and Edubuntu. It doesn't support Dapper, PPC, or AMD64 yet. Once the installation was complete, I logged in, opened Firefox, Googled for "automatix," and clicked on the first link, which happened to be to a complete Automatix tutorial on ubuntuforums.org. The tutorial was posted last year and makes reference to Ubuntu Hoary, but it works just fine for Breezy."
Distribution reviews PCLinuxOS: A Bright, New, Live-Linux on the OS Horizon (MozillaQuest)MozillaQuest reviews PCLinuxOS. "PCLinuxOS still is in the late beta stages of development. We took a quick look at the latest PCLinuxOS live CD, PCLinuxOS Preview .92 (pclinuxos-p92.iso) to see how it is coming along. It's doing well. And we like the PCLinuxOS preview."
My desktop OS: Gentoo Linux (NewsForge)NewsForge hears from a Gentoo Linux fan. "Gentoo Linux is all about choices. Do I want VLC media player compiled with Win32 codecs and Xine or MPlayer with AAC support? Or do I want to scrap that and go with open source formats? Gentoo uses the powerful Portage package manager to install and remove programs. Much of Portage's power comes from USE flags that tell Portage what dependencies to compile a program with. It has a front end called Emerge which the guide recommends for installing programs. To install Xine with AAC support, you can add the use flag and program to /etc/portage/package.use or the command line (USE="aac" emerge xine)."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development The Firefox Bon Echo Alpha 1 web browserThe first developer preview release of the Firefox 2 browser has been announced: "Bon Echo Alpha 1 is a developer preview release of our next generation Firefox browser and it is being made available for testing purposes only. Bon Echo Alpha 1 is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox 1.x should not use Bon Echo Alpha 1."
The release notes are somewhat preliminary, changes include:
There have been some changes to the Firefox extensions and themes that may cause some compatibility problems with older additions, this is an area of active development. There are a few known Issues involving user interface changes and the history and bookmarks manager that are known to cause problems. This release is by definition, not ready for widespread use. Your editor will not be using it for production work until it is a bit closer to stable status. That notwithstanding, this new release appears to function well when visiting a variety of web sites, and seems to work as a browser should.
System Applications Audio Projects Rivendell v0.9.67 announcedVersion 0.9.67 of Rivendell, a radio station automation system, is out with a number of new capabilities.
Database Software Glom Beta 2 (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org looks at the latest release of Glom. "Glom Beta 2 has been released, with important bug fixes and new features. This is the last beta before 1.0. Glom allows normal people to design databases and their user interfaces."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe March 19, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database articles and resources.
Embedded Systems Rockbox release scheduleA new Rockbox release schedule has been posted. Rockbox is an open-source firmware replacement for a variety of digital audio players.
Interoperability Samba Coverity Bugs Down to ZeroThe Samba project has fixed a large number of security bugs that were discovered by Coverity. "The initial scan reported 216 potential bugs in Samba. In a week and a half, Samba Team developers have fixed all reported bugs. These changes will be applied to the next 3.0.x release."
LDAP Software LAT 1.0.3 releasedVersion 1.0.3 of LAT, the LDAP Administration Tool, has been released. "This is a bugfix release for the stable branch."
Libraries QewExtensibleDialogs Library Introduction (KDE.News)KDE.News mentions an introductory article on QewExtensibleDialogs. "QewExtensibleDialogs is a plugin library for Qt Designer. It provides dialogs that can be nested with no limits and provides centralised control for accepting or rejecting the whole stack. Jose Cuadrea introduces his library in an article which describes the use cases, the general design pattern and his Qt implementation."
Networking Tools Zenoss Project announcedThe Zenoss Project has been officially announced. "Zenoss is Python/Zope-based, network/systems monitoring application that has been in development since 2002. The goal of Zenoss is to "Simplify Systems Management" with a Python, open source alternative to the big commercial management suites (e.g. IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, etc.). Zenoss also strives to go beyond Nagios and OpenNMS with improved architecture, scalability, ease and breadth."
Security Sussen 0.17 releasedVersion 0.17 of Sussen is out with several new features. "Sussen is a tool that checks for vulnerabilities and configuration issues on computer systems. It is based on the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language."
Web Site Development mnoGoSearch 3.2.38 releasedVersion 3.2.38 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, is out with bug fixes and other improvements. See the change history document for details.
Zope NewsThe March 1-15, 2006 edition of the Zope News covers the latest developments on the Zope web development platform.
Web Services Sun Announces Update to Java Web Services Developer PackSun Microsystems, Inc. has announced a new version of its Java Web Services Developer Pack. "Sun Microsystems Inc., the creator and leading advocate of Java(TM) technology, today announced it has released the Java Web Services Developer Pack 2.0 (Java WSDP), which features advanced web service technologies scheduled for inclusion in next-generation versions of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). In addition, Sun is providing this enhanced web services development for Web Services with the NetBeans(TM) 5.0 IDE -- bundled with the Sun Java System Application Server -- to enable developers to speedily implement, debug and deploy web services."
Desktop Applications Animation Software DANCE v030606 releasedVersion 030606 of DANCE, the Dynamic Animation and Control Environment, has been announced. "DANCE is a portable, open, plug-in based, object-oriented software package for physics-based character animation. DANCE is free for non-commerical use and runs on both Windows and Linux. DANCE is written using FLTK 2.0."
Audio Applications Rhythmbox Breakdown #3 (GnomeDesktop)Issue #3 of Rhythmbox Breakdown has been published. "Rhythmbox Breakdown is the weekly (ha! last posted four months ago) summary of what's been happening in the world of Rhythmbox. For those who use cvs and follow the rhythmbox-devel mailing list, it will provide a summary of what's been happening and things that haven't been discussed on the list. For those who don't, it will let you know all the juicy new features (and crack) that we've been up to."
CAD Thirtieth release of PythonCAD now availableRelease 30 of PythonCAD, a scriptable drafting program, is out. "The thirtieth PythonCAD release addresses a number of issues that appeared in the rewritten entity transfer code made available in the previous release. By once again rewriting the entity transfer code, the problems found in the last release have been fixed and additionally a number of latent problems for handling undo/redo operations on Dimension entities were addressed. In addition to the reworked entity transfer code, a number of internal code enhancements appear in this release. The use of the 'weakref' module has been eliminated, and a number of other bug fixes and improvements have been applied to the code."
Calendar Software Lightning 0.1 Released (MozillaZine)MozillaZine covers the release of Lightning 0.1. "This is a major milestone on the road to an integrated calendar for users of the award-winning mail-client Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5. Thanks go to all developers, testers and other supporters of the project."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.14 is outIt's official: GNOME 2.14 has been released. Click below for the announcement, or see the release notes for details on all the new the GNOME hackers have come up with this time around.
GARNOME 2.14.0 Released (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org covers the release of GARNOME 2.14.0. "It includes updates and fixes after the GNOME 2.14.0 freeze, together with a host of third-party GNOME packages, Bindings and the Mono(tm) Platform -- this release is the first of a new stable GNOME branch and ships with the latest and greatest releases."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Electronics kicad 2006-03-21 releasedRelease 2006-03-21 of Kicad, a printed circuit CAD program for KDE, is out with bug fixes and improved Spanish translations.
KJWaves Version 1.0.6 releasedVersion 1.0.6 of KJWaves has been released. "KJWaves was written to be a cross-platform SPICE tool in pure Java. It aids in viewing, modifying, and simulating SPICE CIRCUIT files. Output from SPICE3 (ngspice) can be read and displayed. Resulting graphs may be printed and saved."
Games New PyGame gamesThe PyGame site has some new Python-based games including Lijnen 0.0.0.1 - a color-lines clone, Lady Python 0.0.1 - a snake game, Star Pynguin 0.45 - an asteroids style game and more.
Graphics Xara releases sources for GPL'd Xara LXpiptas reports on the KDEdeveloper blog, that Xara Xtreme will soon be available for Linux and subject to the GPL. "The vector graphics package Xara Xtreme so far was only available for Windows. Back in October, the Xara company announced the porting of its flagship product to Linux and Mac OS X. Not only that -- the complete source code should become available, and subject to the GPL license. But at the time they consoled hopes for an immediate release to a later date." (Thanks to Kurt Pfeifle)
GUI Packages wxWidgets 2.6.3 Release Candidate 2 announcedRelease Candidate 2 of wxWidgets, a cross-platform GUI toolkit, is out. Some of the changes include: enhanced GTK+ 2 support, XRC resource system compiled as standard replacement build system, Bakefile, better integration with STL, sizer improvements, new Gnome printing features, ODBC enhancements, wxTaskBarIcon support on Mac OS X and Linux, arbitrary shapes for top-level windows, flicker reduction on Windows, better theme support, alpha channels for images, many API enhancements and bug fixes.
Interoperability Wine 0.9.10 releasedVersion 0.9.10 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: Improved ESD audio driver, More Web browser improvements in mshtml and wininet, Direct3D fixes and preparation for ddraw code migration, Explorer process now managing the desktop window and Lots of bug fixes.
Medical Applications MirthProject.org (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews looks at the Mirth Project. "The goal of the Mirth Project is to develop Mirth, an open source cross-platform HL7 interface engine that enables bi-directional sending of HL7 messages between systems and applications over multiple transports. By utilizing an enterprise service bus framework and a channel-based architecture, Mirth allows messages to be filtered, transformed, and routed based on user-defined rules."
Music Applications Freecycle 0.6alpha is outVersion 0.6 alpha of Freecycle, a beat slicer, is available. "This new release replaces the PortAudio and PortMidi support with Alsa and alsaseq. PortAudio and PortMidi are still supported on systems without alsa. As a minor feature, Freecycle now provides the "Bark scale" for spectrogram plotting, which enhances the visibility of the audio wave in the frequency domain. Some bugfixes and minor optimisation as always.."
MusE 0.8 releasedVersion 0.8 of MusE, a MIDI sequencing application, is available. "MusE 0.8 was originally intended to be called 0.7.2 but for various reasons (featuritis, time, and because 'I wanna!') we decided to call it 0.8. This is most likely the last release in the old series, next up is the much rewritten 1.0. This release contains a number of new features lots of stability and usability improvements. All users are encouraged to upgrade."
Peer to Peer ANts beta 1.4.8 announced (SourceForge)Beta version 1.4.8 of ANts, a cross-platform peer-to-peer application, has been announced. "ANts now has a full LAN integration. Clients running on a same LAN are now able to find each other (multicast) and ANts can be used as an easy tool to share informations in a network. The built-in indexer (Lucene) let you index your documents and share them with your colleauges."
Web Browsers Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)MozillaZine has announced the availability of the minutes from the March 13, 2006 mozilla.org staff meeting. "Issues discussed include openness and communication, upcoming releases including Firefox 1.0.8, Firefox 1.5.0.2 and Firefox 2 Alpha 1, addons.mozilla.org updates, Foundation updates and newgroups propogation to Google Groups."
Miscellaneous Azureus 2.4.0.2 released (SourceForge)Version 2.4.0.2 of Azureus, a cross-platform java BitTorrent client, has been announced. "This release is primarily bugfixes and performance improvements, including: Encryption bug fix, Faster crash recovery hashing Fixed startup when config files corrupted, Data transfer from slow peers improved".
GPA 0.7.3 releasedVersion 0.7.3 of GPA has been released. "GPA is a graphical frontend for the GNU Privacy Guard. GPA can be used to encrypt, decrypt, and sign files, to verify signatures and to manage the private and public keys. This is a development release. Please be careful when using it on production keys."
No GPLv2-only projects on SavannahSavannah is a SourceForge-like repository site run by the GNU project. Debian developer Francesco Poli recently tried to host a project there, but was turned down. The reason: the license used is version 2 (only) of the GPL. As can be seen on the project page, GPLv2 is no longer considered to be an acceptable license.
Languages and Tools Caml Camomile 0.6.5 releasedVersion 0.6.5 of Camomile has been announced. "Camomile is a comprehensive Unicode library for OCaml. Camomile provides Unicode character type, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 strings, conversion to/from about 200 encodings, collation and locale-sensitive case mappings, and more. The library is currently designed for Unicode Standard 3.2."
Caml Weekly NewsThe March 14-21, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Java JBoss Seam (O'ReillyNet)Thomas Heute describes JBoss Seam on O'Reilly. "Many frameworks are perfectly sensible and well-designed on their own, but don't work particularly well when you try to combine them. Combining, for example, JSF and EJB 3.0 requires a lot of glue code, and adding another framework like JBoss BPM confuses things further. JBoss Seam is designed to provide common context for frameworks to share objects. Project leader Thomas Heute introduces Seam and what you can do with it."
Python Urwid 0.9.2 releasedVersion 0.92 of Urwid, a Console UI Library for Python, is available. "This release includes preliminary mouse support, a new input testing example program and a couple bug fixes. If you are interested in mouse support please try the input test example program and let me know if it works properly in your environment."
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The March 17, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The March 20, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Ruby Welcome to The Gemcutter's Workshop (Linux Journal)Linux Journal starts a new column on Ruby. "These last couple of weeks have seen the release of some great tools to help Rubyists develop programs following Test-First principles, and I'll discuss three of them later in this article. But first, some thought-provoking e-mail and blog posts have appeared recently in the Ruby community, and I'd like to take a closer look at some of them here."
Ruby Weekly NewsThe March 19th, 2006 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The March, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The March 21, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
IDEs Compuware and the Eclipse Foundation Announce Tools Services Framework ProjectCompuware Corporation and the Eclipse Foundation have announced Project Corona, a Tools Services Framework. "Corona is a server-side framework that enables Eclipse-based tools to collaborate, sharing information about projects, applications and events. Project Corona -- or the Tools Services Framework Project, as it is officially called -- has been reviewed by the Eclipse Technology Project Management Committee (PMC) and officially accepted for project creation."
Profilers Valgrind 3.1.1 announcedVersion 3.1.1 of Valgrind, a suite of simulation based debugging and profiling tools, is available. "3.1.1 fixes a bunch of bugs reported in 3.1.0. There is no new functionality."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Open, but not as usual (Economist)The Economist has published a lengthy report on open source business. "The way open-source projects organise themselves is critical to ensuring their quality. Rather than harnessing a magical, bubbling-up of creativity from cyberspace, many open-source projects have established formal, hierarchical governance. 'These are not anarchistic things when you look at successful open-source projects - there is real structure, real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place,' explains Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School." The article overrates SCO, however, and mistakenly claims that copyrights are a bigger problem for free software than patents.
Imagining the Maximum Net (Linux Journal)Doc Searls compares the Internet to the Interstate Highway System. "Here's a question: should the decision to build the Net to maximum capacity--the broadest we can make broadband--be based on whether or not today's carriers can think of a way to pay back the cost of building it? While we're answering that, let's ask if the Net should be private at all. Are the rivers and seas private? How about the Interstate Highway System?"
The Next Web? (XML.com)Simon St. Laurent discusses the evolution of the world wide web on O'Reilly's XML.com. "It sometimes seems like widely popular web-standards innovation halted around 2000, and the last few years have been a period of very slow catch-up. Various visions of a new Web, a better Web, have come and gone, leaving behind useful parts but not yet transforming the Web. Are we on the edge of the next big thing? It may make sense to look at the last few big things, comparing their visions with what's happening today."
Trade Shows and Conferences Eclipse conference offers ALM, rich-client technologies (LinuxWorld.com.au)LinuxWorld.com.au covers EclipseCon 2006. "EclipseCon is the annual technical conference of the Eclipse Foundation for open source tools. ALM projects being touted include the Compuware-led Corona and ALF (Application Lifecycle Framework), led by Serena Software. ALF addresses the issue of integration and communication between developer tools across the lifecycle; Corona enables Eclipse-based tools to integrate with ALF, according to Eclipse. Also known as the Tools Services Framework, Corona provides frameworks for collaboration among Eclipse clients."
Novell BrainShare 2006: Day one (NewsForge)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reports from Novell's BrainShare 2006 conference in Salt Lake City. "What the audience didn't see Monday morning is probably the most interesting presentation of all. Because the keynote ran long, the demo of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 was dropped from the presentation. However, the press had an opportunity to see the presentation after the keynote during the scheduled press briefing. Nat Friedman, Novell's vice president of Linux desktop engineering, and product manager Guy Lunardi walked through SLED's new features -- including new OpenOffice.org support for Visual Basic macros, Beagle search, and Xgl/Compiz enhancements for the desktop. Novell has had videos of Compiz demos online for some time now, but it's not quite as impressive as seeing it in person."
PS3 Conference Report - Date and More! (1up.com)1up.com looks at the Playstation 3. "[Sony President Ken Kutaragi] did offer some tantalizing new details about the system, though. PS3 will include a 60GB hard drive (which is upgradeable) with Linux preinstalled. According to Kutaragi, developers should create games for the PS3 with assumption the hard drive will be present in the system (his slide was titled "HDD is required!"). He also revealed that the system will be backwards compatible with the entire PS1 and PS2 libraries, and that games will be displayed in high-definition resolutions when played on the PS3 (similar to what the Xbox 360 does with compatible Xbox 1 titles)."
Companies Mandrake founder Gael Duval to sue Mandriva over firing (NewsForge)NewsForge had an "exclusive IRC chat" with Gaël Duval about the changes at Mandriva. Mr. Duval stated that he intends to file suit against Mandriva in response to his being laid off. "Duval said that last year Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon asked him to leave the company. Instead, Duval agreed to move from his long-time position as vice president of communication to head a new 'community department' intended 'to improve Mandriva's image in the open source arena.' Now the company has terminated that effort."
Fired, simply fired.Gaël Duval talks about leaving Mandriva and some plans for the future. "I've been working for one year during lost hours on a new project of Open-Source operating system called "Ulteo" (the concept has been proposed to Mandriva at the end of 2004, but not "selected"). I hope that I can launch a first version of the product in the next weeks. If this concept can prove itself to be valid, it could imply an important change in how people are using Linux in particular and operating-systems in general. Check contents and subscribe at http://www.ulteo.com if you want to learn more in the future." (Thanks to Alex Fernandez)
Linux Adoption Free software in developing countries vital to future prosperity and good governance (eGov monitor)The eGov Monitor has published this report from the United Nations University, looking at the role of free software in developing countries. "The growth of free, open-source software presents developing countries with an opportunity to escape from technological dependence on developed countries, but also a challenge to build up local expertise, United Nations University experts say."
Legal Creative Commons License Upheld by Dutch Court (Groklaw)Groklaw reports that a court in the Netherlands has upheld the Creative Commons license. "Sander Marechal, who found and translated the News Picks story about the court decision upholding the Creative Commons license in the Netherlands, now sends us the news in English and in much greater detail, from a blog entry "Dutch Court upholds Creative Commons license," on the Creative Commons Canada website. I think you'll find it interesting because it includes a translation of a chunk of the ruling, and since Creative Commons Canada provides the information under the Creative Commons 2.5 Canada license, I can provide it to you in full. The significant piece is this: the Creative Commons licenses are quite new, so there has been very little in the way of case law so far, so this is a significant development, as you will see."
Interviews Free software's white knight (ZDNet)ZDNet UK talks with Eben Moglen, legal counsel for the Free Software Foundation. "While working at Columbia, he tackled his first major legal case relating to software freedom. Moglen explains that while "trawling a bulletin board" in the early 1990s he came across Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the e-mail encryption program written by Phil Zimmerman. Moglen was impressed with the software, but realized that Zimmerman was exposing himself to potential legal issues, as U.S. legislation restricted the export of cryptographic software. "I wrote an e-mail message to him (Zimmerman) saying, 'Congratulations, you're going to change the world, but you're also going to get into a ... load of trouble. When you do, call me,'" Moglen said. "I was just two weeks ahead of the police.""
Novell's Messman Aims To Fuel Linux (CRN)Computer Reseller News interviews Novell CEO Jack Messman. "[Red Hat] had a six- to eight-year head start, and they've got the brand name and attacked a piece of the market that was ready for Linux: edge servers and small-business customers. But the Linux market is moving toward us in the enterprise, where we have strengths. It's a leapfrog strategy. We'll leapfrog Red Hat in the data center and consolidate backward. Red Hat is not the ultimate enemy, competitively. It's Microsoft."
Resources Lessons on Data Preservation From the Audio Industry (Groklaw)The Sound Man looks at audio formats and standards, on Groklaw. "In my world standards have allowed professionals to be creative using the the tools they choose, to share material, and to pass work from person to person without much fuss. Manufacturers have worked together to allow this. The audio community has demanded it. No one wants to be incompatible in our industry. Investments in existing equipment can run into millions of dollars. Who would dare use a non standard format? Such a machine would be of no use in our studio. It would not work with the equipment we already have."
Encrypt filesystems with EncFS and Loop-AES (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at encrypted filesystems. "Encrypted filesystems may be overkill for family photos or your résumé, but they make sense for network-accessible servers that hold sensitive business documents, databases that contain credit-card information, offline backups, and laptops. EncFS and Loop-AES, which are both released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), are two approaches to encrypting Linux filesystems. I'll compare the two and then look at other alternatives."
KMFL lets users change keyboards on the fly (Linux.com)Linux.com covers KMFL (Keyboard Mapping for Linux). "KMFL is a joint project of SIL International and Tavultesoft. SIL is an international Christian organization devoted to the study and preservation of minority languages. SIL's recent free software releases include high-quality Unicode fonts such as Gentium and Charis, and Sil's new Open Font License has received Free Software Foundation approval. Tavultesoft, a small software company in Hobart, Australia, is best-known for Keyman and Keyman Developer, two long-established Windows programs that provide the same functionality as KMFL, but under proprietary licenses."
Resynthesizer changes your pictures (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at the Resynthesizer plugin for the GIMP. "It is alarmingly simple to use. Draw a selection around the object you wish to remove from the picture, and run smart remove selection. Resynthesizer will fill the selection area with intelligently generated texture drawn from the surrounding image data."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)Mikhail Zotov has a list of tools for non-professional system administrators who manage Linux machines in a home or small-office network. "Finally, a few words on recovery tools are in order. Anyone administering a Linux machine has probably faced a situation when it was necessary to boot from media other than the hard drive. Perhaps you installed Linux on your colleague's machine but forgot the root password after a few days, or you installed a new kernel but didn't run lilo before rebooting the machine, or severe problems with the root partition were detected during boot."
Reviews Cultured Perl: Perl books, Part 1 (developerWorks)IBM developerWorks reviews two Perl books, Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs and Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom. "Both Higher-Order Perl: Transforming Programs with Programs (shortened to HOP in this article), by Mark Jason Dominus and Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom (shortened to RSPW in this article), by Randal Schwartz have some things in common. Obviously, they are both about Perl, and their authors are well known in the Perl community. In addition, both books are collections of interesting techniques for Perl rather than discussions of a single software package."
Review: GNOME 2.14 (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews GNOME 2.14. "Some of the interface changes in the new version, such as the addition of icons to dialog windows, are the equivalent of the gingerbread on the gables of Victorian houses -- decorations that do nothing for functionality. Others, such as the renaming or repositioning of menu items, increase the consistency of the interface, but will probably be unnoticed by most users, except as a mild irritation because something's different. Aside from these changes, GNOME 2.14 offers a solid core of improvements in usability, with an increased simplicity in general design, a help system that is finally more than minimally useful, and an acceleration of some key elements of the desktop."
LilyPond Helper Applications: Development Status (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips looks at several LilyPond GUIs on Linux Journal. "Last month I presented a brief update about the LilyPond music typesetting software. This month I look at three graphic front-ends that can make LilyPond easier to use for beginners and for users who simply prefer the more familiar interface of standard music notation. Denemo, NoteEdit and Rosegarden all provide GUIs that imitate conventional Western music staff paper. Each program also provides palettes or menus for note and rest types, expression marks, instrumental articulations and other standard music notation symbols. In these programs the interface is designed to resemble the tools and elements of standard Western music notation."
Smart Unicode typefaces released under free license (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at some new open-source fonts. "SIL International, a non-government organization specializing in linguistics, has released two new typefaces under a free license. The fonts, Charis SIL and Doulos SIL, are early examples of what SIL intends as a new standard for typefaces. Each font includes a broad range of Unicode-based characters and symbols, and is designed for use with so-called smart font technologies. Charis SIL and Doulos SIL are basic typefaces -- proofs of concept, you might say. Charis SIL is based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The resemblance is so close that Charis SIL includes Charter's license in the copyright notice. It is available in four weights: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Similarly, Doulos SIL is designed for compatibility with Times Roman, one of the most widely used serif typefaces. Only a roman weight is included."
YaKuake - An easy access console for KDE (NewsForge)NewsForge takes a look at YaKuake. "YaKuake is a pretty simple tool. The first time you run YaKuake during a KDE session, it pops up a small dialog saying "Application Successfully started! Press Alt+` to use it..." and then it disappears into the background. If you use Konsole, YaKuake can take its settings -- background, font, schema, history, line spacing, transparency, and so forth -- from Konsole, or not, as you prefer. Like Konsole, YaKuake features tabs, so it's possible to have multiple consoles running in a single instance of YaKuake."
Miscellaneous FOSS community, disabled users must learn to communicate (NewsForge)NewsForge reports that the FOSS community and disabled users have a serious communication problem. "An example of the need for better communication between the FOSS community and disability advocates emerged last year, when government officials in Massachusetts announced their intention to transition to the use of OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument). FOSS supporters celebrated the announcement, noting that the switch would reduce public expenditures, guarantee perpetual access to data, and end discrimination. FOSS supporters, however, were unprepared for criticism from organizations that fight discrimination against the disabled, such as the Disability Policy Consortium (DPC) and the Bay State Council for the Blind (BSCB)."
Has Linux patching surpassed Mac and Windows? (ZDNet)ZDNet's George Ou looks at the advantages of the automatic Linux patch updating systems. "Recent vulnerabilities in Adobe Macromedia Flash and Mozilla Firefox that can affect multiple operating systems highlight a weakness in the Mac and Windows auto-update process because they're primarily focused on patching Apple and Microsoft specific issues. Most modern Linux distributions on the other hand like Redhat and SuSE have automatic update mechanisms that patch across the entire spectrum of software since Linux by its very nature is made up of a collection of applications from different sources."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements Latest Linuxaudio.org developmentsLinuxaudio.org has sent out a progress report. "Linuxaudio.org is a non-profit consortium whose role is to support Linux as a viable digital audio workstation. Linuxaudio.org therefore aims to expose, proliferate, and disseminate artistic, as well as software and hardware development endeavors associated with the aforementioned platform. The two-year-old consortium boasts a growing membership consisting of 30+ member organizations, companies, software projects, and institutions. In its relatively brief existence, Linuxaudio.org has spearheaded a creation of the first online CD compilation of art generated using exclusively open source software in conjunction with Linux, and has sponsored Linux audio booths at several international conferences and expos. "
A proposal for an open source tax creditA group called the Center for American Progress has put forward a proposal for an open source tax credit in the U.S. The core idea is that businesses can write off the costs of developing free software, but individuals cannot; they would like to change that. "Specifically, open source software would be treated like other individual tax deductions and credits. The value of an individual's donated time would not qualify--similar to the way charitable contributions are treated. However, out- of-pocket costs, such as fees for web hosting, the depreciated cost of capital expenses such as computers, travel to development-related conferences, and other expenses would qualify for a 20 percent refundable tax credit." The full proposal is available in PDF format.
Commercial announcements Dell and Novell ease enterprise Linux managementDell and Novell have announced at Novell Brainshare the Novell ZENworks 7 Linux Management Dell Edition. This exclusive offering delivers a wide range of integrated hardware and software management capabilities for Dell PowerEdge servers running Linux. For more news from Brainshare visit the BrainShare Pressroom.
Emu Software Enters Canadian Open Source MarketEmu Software has announced a partnership with Savoir-Faire Linux. "Marking a major step in its expansion in North America, Emu Software, makers of the NetDirector Open Source Configuration Management system, today announces a key partnership with Savoir-Faire Linux, a leading Linux migration consultant in Canada."
MySQL Joins the Eclipse FoundationMySQL AB has announced that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Add-In Provider. ""It will be exciting to see what results from two large and active open source software communities coming together," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "We welcome the contributions from MySQL AB and their database developer community to our efforts." Kaj Arnö, MySQL AB's vice president of community relations, said, "MySQL wants to support the community of open source developers who use the Eclipse platform and IDE to build applications in a variety of programming languages -- notably Java, C++, PHP, and Python."
Novell Launches the 'Platform for the Open Enterprise' at BrainShare 2006Novell has launched the Platform for the Open Enterprise. "As a key component of its new platform strategy, Novell today unveiled SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 the core of the platform for the open enterprise -- as well as enhancements to its security, identity and collaboration offerings."
New Books Firefox for Dummies Available (MozillaZine)MozillaZine has an announcement for the book Firefox for Dummies by Blake Ross. "The book includes many of the invaluable tips submitted by MozillaZine contributors earlier this year, and unlike most computer manuals, explains not just how but *why* Firefox behaves the way it does."
Intermediate Perl - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Intermediate Perl by Randal L. Schwartz, brian de foy, and Tom Phoenix.
Pragmatic Bookshelf releases "Best of Ruby Quiz"Pragmatic Bookshelf has published the book Best of Ruby Quiz by James Edward Gray II.
Resources The LDP Weekly NewsThe March 21, 2006 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News has been published, take a look for the latest new documentation.
Contests and Awards The 16th Annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity AwardsCMP Media has announced the winners of the 16th Annual Software Development Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards. ""This has been an exciting year for the Jolts," says Rosalyn Lum, technical editor for Dr. Dobb's Journal. "Not only did we see an unprecedented number of nominations in categories representing every phase of the software development cycle, we also found an exploding richness of features bundled in today's products adding to the complexity to today's software development tools and to the judging process. And, there were an equal number of new stars that have quickly moved to address the needs that this very complexity in the development environment has created."
O'Reilly Receives Three Jolt AwardsO'Reilly Media has been awarded three Software Development magazine Jolt awards. "On Wednesday, March 15, 2006, the magazine's editors announced the winners of this year's Annual Software Development Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards, recognizing O'Reilly Media, Inc. with the top honors and two Productivity Awards in the category of General Books."
Calls for Presentations Call for Presentations - Flash Memory SummitThe Call for Presentations has gone out for the Flash Memory Summit. The event takes place in San Jose, CA on August 8-10, 2006, submissions are due by April 21.
IMF 2006 - 2nd Call for PapersThe second call for papers has gone out for the International Conference on IT-Incident Management & IT-Forensics. The event will take place in Stuttgart, Germany on October 18 and 19, 2006, papers are due by April 17.
OOoCon 2006 Call For PapersA Call For Papers has gone out for the 2006 OpenOffice.org Conference. The event will take place in Lyon, France on September 11-13, 2006, submissions are due by June 1.
Real-time Linux workshop seeks speakers (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices hosts a Call for Papers for the Real-time Linux Workshop, set for October 12-15 in Lanzhou, China.
Recon 2006 Call for PapersA Call for Papers has gone out for Recon 2006. The event takes place in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on June 16-18, 2006, submissions are due by March 31. The guest speakers have also been announced.
XCon2006 Call For PapersA Call For Papers has gone out for XCon2006, the Fifth Information Security Conference. The event will take place in Beijing, China on August 18-20, 2006, submissions are due by July 1.
Upcoming Events Akademy 2006 is in Dublin this September (KDE.News)The KDE Akademy 2006 conference has been announced. "This year, the multi-day event for contributors to the leading Free Desktop will be held from September 23nd to 30th 2006 in beautiful Dublin, capital city of Ireland. Our hosts will be Ireland's oldest university, Trinity College. There are three sub-events: a contributors conference, the KDE e.V. annual general assembly and a week long hacking session that offers the opportunity to discuss all sorts of things face-to-face."
Embedded Linux Conference program announcedThe CELF Embedded Linux Conference will be held on April 11 and 12 in San Jose, CA. "The CELF Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) is one of the premier meetings of embedded Linux developers worldwide. It is open to the public, and features a wide variety of speakers both from CELF member companies and the Linux community at large."
Announcing FUDCon Boston 2006FUDCon Boston 2006 will take place in Boston, MA on April 7, 2006 after the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. "Hot on the heels of the release of Fedora Core 5 and the success of previous FUDCon events worldwide, the Fedora Project is proud to announce FUDCon Boston 2006. FUDCon Boston 2006 will offer a wide range of speakers on an even wider range of topics, in three separate tracks, and is sure to have something for everyone."
Itanium Processor Architects to Keynote Gelato ConferenceThe Gelato Federation has announced the keynote speakers for the Gelato ICE conference, the event will be held in San Jose, CA on April 23-26, 2006. "Jerry Huck (HP), James Reinders (Intel Corporation), Don Soltis (Intel Corporation), and William Worley (Secure64 and Itanium(r) Solutions Alliance) are scheduled to present on the past, present, and future developments of the Intel(r) Itanium(r) architecture."
Events: March 23 - May 18, 2006
Audio and Video programs The Internet of Things (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly has announced the availability of an audio program from the Emerging Technology conference keynote. "Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer, looks ahead to a world of ubiquitous computing. A world where you can use Google to find your socks in the morning. He also talks quite a bit about the importance of how we choose to name the technologies and trends we are developing. This program is an edited version of his keynote at this year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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![[Xara]](/images/ns/Xara-sm.png)
![[Firefox]](/images/ns/firefoxlogo.png)
Not being an active member of the Firefox testing community,
your editor ignored the warnings and downloaded a copy.
The