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Linux in the newsRecommended Reading UNIX Methods and Concepts: Putting the Genie Back in the Bottle (Groklaw)Groklaw presents an article by Dr. Peter H. Salus and Warren K. Toomey of the UNIX Heritage Society, which looks at the history of Unix source code sharing. "Recently, The SCO Group has asserted that IBM negligently leaked the methods and concepts in UNIX. What The SCO Group fails to realize is that, from day one, the methods and concepts in UNIX were out in the open. And, as AT&T found out when UNIX was commercialized, staunching the leakage of UNIX methods and concepts was like putting the proverbial genie back into the bottle."
Synergy: One keyboard (and mouse) to rule them all (Linux.com)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier looks at Synergy in a Linux.com article. "If you're one of the many users who has two (or more) computers on your desk, you might get tired of switching between the keyboard and mouse on different systems. KVMs are one solution, but if you'd like to save a few bucks and be able to switch between two or more computers with a flick of the mouse, Synergy is the software for you. Synergy allows you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers running Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. It also allows you to share clipboards between computers, so you can select text in a program on Linux, and paste it into an application in Windows. Best of all, Synergy is freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL)."
Trade Shows and Conferences LinuxWorld gets Seoul (NewsForge)NewsForge has a report from Korea's first LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. "Local TV cameras captured the opening ribbon-cutting ceremony, with a dozen or so Korean dignitaries and personalities doing the honors. David Korse, the CEO of conference sponsor IDG World Expo, kicked off the event with a few words on how excited he was that the company could bring LinuxWorld to Korea."
Companies Startup plans "complete" Linux smartphone OS (Linux Devices)Linux Devices reports on the Linux smartphone plans of "a la Mobile". "Silicon Valley startup a la Mobile plans to ship in September the industry's first "complete" Linux-based smartphone operating system. The Convergent Linux Platform (CLP), which aims to streamline Linux phone rollouts by ODMs, OEMs, and operators, will enter a field crowded with alternatives from MontaVista, Trolltech, ACCESS/PalmSource, and Wind River, among others. Founder Pauline Lo Alker compares a la Mobile's Convergent Linux Platform to Microsoft's Windows Mobile Smartphone platform, in terms of delivering all required software components within a single integrated stack."
Stratus plus Red Hat AS 4: Lots of nines (NewsForge)NewsForge covers Stratus Technologies' latest server offerings, which will run 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux. "While Hewlett-Packard's NonStop Computing division -- formerly known as Tandem Computers -- is a formidable opponent in the world of fault tolerance, Stratus is making inroads in the market with its Intel-based lineup of less expensive, but still highly reliable, servers. How highly reliable? Stratus updates a speedometer at the bottom of its home page daily with a 60-day rolling average of the uptime of its fleet of ftServers around the globe. It shows 99.9997% at present, which equates to about 95 seconds per year."
Turbolinux Accelerates Into China (Tech News World)Tech News World covers two efforts by Turbolinux to expand into the Chinese market. "Japanese Linux vendor Turbolinux last week announced a couple of big deals in China, as the company looks to take advantage of China's pro-open source government backing and the replacement of SCO-Unix servers in a Turbolinux bid for market expansion. Turbolinux said Qinzang Railway, part of China's Western Development strategy, would begin using a complete Turbolinux server system for its infrastructure and management of a luggage and parcel e-government Latest News about e-government system beginning July 1. The second deal is a Turbolinux server use by China Mobile's Wireless Music Portal..."
Linux Adoption Berlin Senate opposes complete migration to Linux (Heise online)Heise online reports on a slowdown in Berlin's plans to move to Linux. "The administration of the Berlin Senate (the governement of the German federal state Berlin) has voiced its opposition to a complete migration of the authority's computers to Linux. It thus opposes the Berlin Parliament, which called for a two-phase migration of servers and workstations to Open Sources systems. The report presented to heise online on the Parliament's position states that the Senate does not believe the migration to free software called for in the resolution "would conform to the market or be a tenable step either technologically or economically.""
Bodog gambles on Linux and JBoss, and wins (NewsForge)NewsForge reports on the switch from Solaris to Linux by bodog.com. "Bodog.com is a casino, sport-betting emporium, and online poker palace. The site gets busy; during football season it takes almost 200,000 bets per week, while the virtual poker tables can handle up to 5,000 bettors at a time. Bodog started out using WebLogic and Versant on Solaris, but ran into problems when a bug repeatedly took servers down at critical junctures. Vendors didn't offer much help, but a switch to Linux and JBoss brought Bodog some much-needed relief in the form of more reliable uptime and scaling capacity."
Legal HOWTO: Pick an open source license (part 2) (ZDNet)Here's part 2 of Ed Burnette's 'HOWTO: Pick an open source license'. "In this part I'll go through some of the most common licenses and see where they fall from this tree. I'll also try to address some of the issues that people pointed out in the comments to my last posting. The same disclaimer applies: This isn't legal advice, and I'm not a lawyer, and I'm probably over-simplifying some of the points, but I hope you find it helpful."
Interviews Novell's Desktop Advances - The Better Desktop Initiative (LinuxPlanet)LinuxPlanet talks with Ross Chevalier, Chief Technology Officer of Novell Canada, Ltd. about desktop Linux. "At LinuxWorld Canada 2006, I sat down with Ross Chevalier, Chief Technology Officer of Novell Canada, Ltd, who wanted to talk about why 2006 is finally the year of Linux on the desktop. Or, more precisely, "The Year of Adoption for an Enterprise Linux Desktop." Our discussion mostly centered how it was the many desktop advances Novell managed for the release of SuSE 10.1 that will bring this year about. Some of these are related to the Better Desktop Initiative, a project Novell started in late 2005. Others are related to various technologies Novell decided to integrate into their latest release."
Resources ASCII art fun with boxes (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at ASCII art creation with boxes. "Using boxes from the command line is a breeze. The syntax is boxes -d <designtype>; the -d switch is for telling boxes the design name. There are a lot of designs available, such as dog, columns, and peek. The examples page has a description of many designs."
The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, ch. 25, by Dr. Peter H. Salus (Groklaw)Groklaw presents Chapter 25 of Peter Salus' online book, "The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin", titled "The URL on Your Cereal Box". "In Chapter 17, I limned the creation and development of the Web. In a subsequent chapter, I'll talk about the geographical spread of Linux. But first, I want to look at the spread of the Internet and the Web that depends on it. The ARPAnet became functional in 1969: at the end of that year, there were four nodes. In January 1976, there were 63 (so much for 5- or 6-bit addressing). Five years later, in August 1981, Host Table #152 listed 213 hosts. In May 1982, Host Table #166 listed 235."
Emacs tips: More fun with outlines (Linux.com)Linux.com has fun with outlines in emacs. "In an earlier article, I covered the basics of making outlines in Emacs, but there's a lot more that you can do with them. In this article I'll show how to export and print outlines, customize outline heading line colors, and use outline mode's special features in everyday documents -- such as numbered lists, traditional outlines with Roman numerals, and even book manuscripts containing chapter and section headings."
Translate Haskell into English Manually (Linux Journal)Linux Journal looks at the Haskell programming language. "Have you ever tried to learn Haskell and hit a brick wall? Have you tried to read the main tutorial, "A Gentle Introduction to Haskell", and found it to be about as gentle as a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster? Did you have to learn about monads before you could even write your first non-trivial Haskell program? Have you noticed that unless you already know Haskell, it's even less readable than Shakespeare? Have you searched for an example of a nontrivial Haskell program only to find you can't understand it?"
How to keep users from messing up their desktops (Linux.com)Linux.com presents an excerpt from Linux Annoyances for Geeks. "While I prefer allowing every user to customize his system, some managers may want to keep users from messing up a standard configuration. There are two basic approaches to this process. First, you can disable access to the key tools. Second, you can change ownership and permissions on associated configuration files to prevent changes by regular users."
How To Set Up Xen 3.0 From Binaries In Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Howto forge)Howto forge presents a tutorial on setting up Xen 3.0 on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. "Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware. This saves money, and what is even more important, it's more secure."
Reviews Server Monitoring With BixData (HowtoForge)HowtoForge looks at server monitoring with BixData. "BixData is a system, application, and network monitoring tool which allows you to easily monitor nearly every aspect of your servers. It can be used for general reporting, for sending notifications when problems arise, or for automatic maintenance and repairs - by executing scripts when errors or particular conditions arise."
Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)Carla Schroder reviews the book "The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques". "The Debian GNU/Linux operating system is a marvelous piece of engineering, and Martin Krafft's new book "The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques" shows you how to get under the hood and take advantage of all the power it puts in your hands. This is the definitive Debian manual, and I wish it had been written years ago. Mr. Krafft's affection and enthusiasm for Debian is apparent, and makes this book a pleasurable read."
Flock beta rocks (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at Flock. "Flock is a "social browser" built on the Firefox code base, which integrates blogging, photo sharing with Flickr or Photobucket, "favorites" (a.k.a. bookmarks) using del.icio.us or Shadows, and other collaborative features. Last November I took a look at an early Flock release, and found it to be interesting, if a little bit rough. The Flock folks have been hard at work, and the new Flock beta release looks solid enough to be a must for users who spend a great deal of time blogging, sharing pictures, or using services like del.icio.us."
Inkscape review (Softpedia)Softpedia reviews Inkscape. "Inkscape started in 2003 as a fork of the vector drawing editor Sodipodi. Inkscape does not yet have as many features as the best commercial vector editors, but it is currently suitable for a wide range of applications. Inkscape's implementation of SVG and CSS standards is incomplete; most notably, it has not yet implemented SVG filter effects, animation, and SVG fonts. Inkscape is currently under active development, with new features being added regularly." (Found on GnomeDesktop)
What Is Jetty (O'ReillyNet)Ethan McCallum looks at Jetty in an O'Reilly article. "Jetty is an open source servlet container, which means it serves Java-based web content such as servlets and JSPs. Jetty is written in Java and its API is available as a set of JARs. Developers can instantiate a Jetty container as an object, instantly adding network and web connectivity to a stand-alone Java app."
Dock any application to the system tray (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews KDocker and Alltray. "Wouldn't it be nice if you could dock any application, and not just those that support the docking feature, into the system tray? A simple point-and-click operation is all it takes, thanks to a couple of helpful applications called KDocker and Alltray."
Ruby and .NET - how will they taste together? (Linux Journal)Pat Eyler covers the Gardens Point GP Ruby .NET beta release. "At this point, they claim that it can compile Ruby source into verifiable .Net v2.0 assembly, or it can run Ruby code directly in a compile, load and execute cycle. They do warn that their implementation is not yet complete, although it does pass everything in samples/test.rb (I wonder if they're using the Rubicon/Rubytests stuff for further testing?)."
Miscellaneous Anti-DRM campaign targets the RIAA (NewsForge)NewsForge covers the planned activities of the Defective By Design campaign. "The Defective By Design anti-Digital Rights Management (DRM) campaign is urging supporters to participate in a day of action on Friday, June 23. This time, supporters are being asked to call the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and similar organizations around the world to complain about DRM. After making the call, supporters will have the chance to share the results of their call with other participants."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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