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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Google crawls into source-code search (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at the new Google Code Search site. "Google is taking its search expertise to one of its favorite audiences: software developers. The company on Thursday launched a Web site, Google Code Search, which the company says will let programmers search billions of lines of code for tips on how to write their own software. The service, conceived by the Google Labs early technology group, will crawl publicly available code, most of which is made available through open-source projects. The search and indexing covers code on Web pages and code that resides in compressed files, said Tom Stocky, a product manager at Google."
Making sense of the One Laptop Per Child proprietary software row (Jem Report)
The Jem Report has published an article on the OLPC/NDA issue featuring interviews with a number of people, including Richard Stallman: "I have never signed an NDA for generally useful technical information, and I don't want to start now. On the other hand, I can see how, since it eliminates a greater wrong, it can be justified in this case. It is an unfortunate example, but it could also eliminate the problem."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Ohio LinuxFest 2006 brings a record crowd (Linux.com)
Linux.com covers the Ohio LinuxFest 2006. "More than 1,000 people turned out on Saturday for the Ohio LinuxFest 2006 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center (GCCC) in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The LinuxFest featured big-name speakers such as Jon 'maddog' Hall, Chris DiBona, and Jeff Waugh, and live penguins from the Columbus Zoo."
The SCO Problem
The Goldfarb Declaration (Groklaw)
Time for an update from SCOland: Groklaw has the declaration from Lawrence Goldfarb, one of the founders of BayStar. "Sometime in 2003, I was approached by Richard Emerson (Microsoft's senior vice president for corporate development and strategy) about investing in SCO, a company about which I knew little or nothing at the time. Mr. Emerson stated that Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit about IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux. For that reason, Microsoft wanted to further its interest through independent investors like BayStar." The bad news, from SCO's point of view, is that, according to this testimony, IBM had nothing to do with BayStar's subsequent decision to bail out of the SCO investment.
Companies
Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu (ZDNet)
ZDNet takes a look at Canonical's business model. "If you want to understand Canonical's Linux business strategy, think Red Hat 2000. Canonical is the 65-employee start-up behind a popular version of Linux called "Ubuntu". The company is betting that it can win a place in the market using a strategy that dominant Linux seller Red Hat has dropped."
Red Hat hires top channel exec (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch covers Red Hat's hiring of Mark Enzweiler. "Everyone in the channel business knows that Red Hat Inc. has never done all that well by its system integrator, value-added reseller, and solution provider partners. Things are about to change, however, with the hiring of Mark Enzweiler as its VP North American Channel Sales. Enzweiler is extremely well regarded in channel circles."
Terra Soft moves past Apple with first Cell-based supercomputing cluster (IT Manager's Journal)
IT Manager's Journal covers Terra Soft Solutions. "The announcement last year that Apple was moving to Intel-based hardware might have seemed like a fatal blow to Terra Soft Solutions, a company best-known for the Yellow Dog Linux distro. However, Kai Staats, CEO of Terra Soft, says that the move may be a blessing in disguise. The company has moved on to bigger and better ventures -- including construction of the first Cell-based supercomputing cluster."
Legal
Konsole license violations highlight GPL confusion (Linux.com)
Linux.com covers some allegations of GPL violations. "In July, Konsole author Lars Doelle posted a note on the MotorolaFans.com forum about two programs that appear to violate the GNU General Public License (GPL), under which Konsole is licensed. GPL violations are nothing new, but in this case Doelle has not only put the violators on notice, he's also telling users to stop using the offending programs as well."
Resources
Get your FLAC on with MP3FS (Linux.com)
Linux.com uses MP3FS to play FLAC files on an MP3 player. "I don't know if the folks at Xiph.org can live day-in and day-out using only the free Vorbis, FLAC, Speex, and Theora codecs, but the rest of us routinely run into consumer devices that don't recognize and support them. But with a little help from Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) and MP3FS, you cross one incompatibility off that list. MP3FS lets you mount a directory hierarchy of FLAC audio files and transparently present them as MP3s to software and hardware devices alike."
Sharing Internet Connections (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet covers the use of fwbuilder on FreeBSD. "Before creating the rules you need within fwbuilder to share your internet connection, make sure that your network is properly set up. The computer running fwbuilder needs to have a NIC, which it uses to communicate with the other computers in your home network. This NIC is separate from the hardware you use to communicate with your ISP; that might also be a NIC (in the case of a cable or DSL connection) or it might be a modem (in the case of a dial-up PPP connection). Make sure the NIC you use to communicate with your other computers is plugged into the same hub or switch as your other computers."
Seven Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad (DesktopLinux.com)
Rick Lehrbaum tests seven single-CD Linux distributions on an old IBM ThinkPad laptop. "Like most companies, my employer has a stash of old, "obsolete" PCs and laptops that won't run the latest versions of Windows worth a darn. Naturally, this represents a great source of systems for testing the latest Linux distributions. I thought it would be interesting to find out which modern Linux distro made the best OS for a supposedly "obsolete" old laptop."
CLI Magic: Running multiple jobs with xjobs (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at xjobs. "Ever feel like you're not getting the most out of your multiprocessor machine? The xjobs utility allows you to schedule several processes to run simultaneously to make the most of your system's resources. Xjobs takes a list of arguments from standard input and passes them to a utility, or takes a list of commands from a script, and then runs the jobs in parallel. If you have a multiprocessor machine, xjobs will automatically run one job per processor by default."
Version control for Linux (developerWorks)
developerWorks has put up a survey of source code management systems which run on Linux. "Arch is a specification for a decentralized SCM that offers many different implementations. These include ArX, Bazaar, GNU arch, and Larch. Arch not only operates as a decentralized SCM, but also uses the changeset model. The Arch SCM is a popular method for open source development because developers can develop on separate repositories with full source control. This is because the distributed repositories are actual repositories complete with revision control. You can create a patch from changes in the local repository to be used by an upstream developer. This is the real power of the decentralized model." (Thanks to Jake Edge).
Reviews
Book review: ImageMagick Tricks (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews the book ImageMagick Tricks from Packt Publishing. "Command-line utilities can be powerful, but it takes some doing to make a typical desktop user work in the shell. The image manipulation program ImageMagick is one command-line program that gives users a good reason to use the CLI. Now Packt Publishing has released ImageMagick Tricks, a book that covers ImageMagick from the ground up. If you've never used ImageMagick before, this book is a good starting place."
AI versus AI: N.E.R.O. on Linux (Linux.com)
Linux.com plays with Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives (N.E.R.O.). "If you've ever been frustrated with the artificial intelligence (AI) in video games, then you are a prime candidate for Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives (N.E.R.O.), a cross-platform combat game where the key to winning is training your own intelligent non-player characters. On the field of play, the only rule is "let the best AI win." I tested my skills with the Linux client, and found N.E.R.O. to be a very different sort of game."
OOo gives chart module a brand new look (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at recent improvements to the OO.o chart module. "Want to see a dinosaur? Press the Chart button in OpenOffice.org Calc, and you will be presented with a real software relic. While other parts of OpenOffice.org have been thoroughly redesigned and updated, the features and the overall look of the chart module remain virtually untouched since version 1.0. The situation is changing, though, as a group of OpenOffice.org developers has started to work on a new chart module. The first results of their endeavors were presented on this year's OOoCon. Here is what they've done so far."
Miscellaneous
Good-bye Mr. Noorda (Linux-Watch)
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols remembers Ray Noorda. "Indeed, not long before he retired because of the onslaught of Alzheimers, Noorda believed that Linux was the future for Novell and supported Bryan Sparks and Ransom Love in an internal Linux skunkworks project. Novell, by then under Bob Frankenberg, killed off the Linux project. Soon thereafter, Noorda cut his ties with Novell. Noorda wasn't done with Linux even if the Novell of the mid-90s was. He used his investment company, The Canopy Group, to bankroll Caldera Systems, one of the first Linux companies."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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