LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 6, 2003
The Open-HCI project launches
The announcement went out on the last day of January: members of the GNOME and KDE projects have gotten together to improve cooperation between the two with regard to human interface guidelines. For the (many) users who have wanted to see a higher degree of cooperation between KDE and GNOME, this move can only be seen as a step in the right direction.At the beginning, of course, it is a pretty small step. Both desktop projects maintain a set of usability guidelines which promote consistency and good human factors in desktop applications. The plan is to merge the two sets into a single document. Initially, each project's guidelines will remain in a separate section. Over time, the plan is to find areas which can be merged into shared sections, common to both desktops. The possibility exists that a single set of guidelines could eventually emerge. That is a distant hope, however; for now, the Open-HCI workers are more concerned with details like what format will be used for the combined document.
It would be hard to overestimate the value of a high-quality, shared usability document. Usability work is hard, tedious, and unglorious; it is also a crucial part of the development of end-user applications that actually work. It is exactly the sort of work that free software projects are not supposed to be good at - though much of the work already done within GNOME and KDE puts the lie to that claim. Making it easier for both projects to benefit from the usability work that is being done can only lead to better desktop applications in the future.
Shared usability guidelines should also lead to more consistent behavior between the two desktops. The competition between KDE and GNOME has been a good thing for both projects, and for the Linux desktop as a whole. But there is no need for the two to be separate islands. More consistent behavior will make it easier for users to pick and choose applications from both projects, allowing them to take advantage of the best of each. And that, too, should be good for the Linux desktop.
(See also: usability guidelines for KDE and GNOME; there is also a mailing list for the Open-HCI project).
Desktop Linux Summits and Consortiums
[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]
Sometimes two stories in the media become inextricably linked. When one story is covered, the other issue is always mentioned -- creating an impression that there is a connection where the link is sometimes tenuous or non-existant.Such is the case with the Desktop Linux Summit and the Desktop Linux Consortium (DLC).
The link, however, between the Summit and the DLC is thin at best and seems to be the victim of bad timing. With better timing, the DLC might be seen for what its founders want it to be: a meeting of the minds of companies and organizations who are interested in furthering Linux as a desktop operating system.
Questions still remain as to exactly what happened with the Desktop Linux Summit. The event is promoted as a "multi-vendor" event about Linux on the desktop. However, many vendors have abandoned the summit after Bruce Perens was replaced as the keynote speaker by Michael Robertson -- not coincidentally the CEO and founder of Lindows.com.
The original list of sponsors and exhibitors differs greatly from the current list. In fact, at least one organization listed as an exhibitor has asked to be withdrawn. Sam Hiser, of the OpenOffice.org Project confirmed today that the project has asked to be withdrawn from the list of exhibitors. However, they are still listed on the Summit website. A representative for Sun Microsystems also confirmed that they have asked to be removed as an exhibitor, but explained that it was because Sun's speaker would be unavailable for the conference -- not because Perens was no longer speaking.
We spoke with Jill Ratkevic, who was the original coordinator for the Desktop Linux Summit. According to Ratkevic, Robertson and Lindows.com president Kevin Carmony were aware of the decision to have Perens do the keynote. However, Carmony claims that he "always" thought that Robertson would be the keynote speaker and that it was a "mix-up."
Jeremy White, CEO of CodeWeavers, told us that no one had a problem with Robertson speaking -- only the manner in which the change was made. "I think that a lot of folks that were willing to be flexible on the agenda...what was frustrating was the manner in which it was done."
According to Carmony, the event is still sold out, but it certainly has a different flavor now that many Linux companies have pulled out. Attendees listed for the "sold-out" conference now include such Linux-specific companies as Borders, NovaPCs and the Brobeck law firm.
Shawn Gordon, of The Kompany, says he plans to remain involved:
The Linux Professional Institute and SuSE will also remain involved. Holger Dyroff, head of SuSE's U.S. operations, said that he did not want to disappoint people who had already made appointments to speak with SuSE.
However, by all accounts, the fuss over the summit is separate from the decision to form a Linux Desktop Consortium. Perens, who is serving as the interim executive director for the consortium, says that the LDC:
White says that the discussions for the consortium began "more than a month ago." "A few of us got together and said, 'hey, we should do a Linux Desktop Consortium.' We felt that we could use a more unified voice, and it's time for a Linux desktop." White says that the consortium will focus on business users' needs, but "we definitely don't want to neglect grandma."
The consortium is still in the planning stages right now. White says the group is "in a waiting period while we're gathering information."
Despite the fact that a number of LDC members pulled out of the Summit, Lindows.com was still invited to join the LDC. Carmony says that Lindows.com is taking a wait-and-see attitude about the consortium, but that Lindows is "absolutely" open to the idea of joining the group if it turns out to be something they can get behind.
Though the goals of the consortium are still somewhat vague, Perens said that they definitely plan to put on a vendor-neutral desktop conference. Group marketing initiatives also seem to be part of the plan. White says that the group wants to find a way that companies, projects and end-users can work together -- though the details haven't been ironed out yet. Member companies are being asked to pony up $1,000 for membership, but White says that the group doesn't plan to ask free software and open source projects for money.
Some may wonder how successful the consortium will be, since many members are competing companies. However, Perens says that the consortium "won't have to do much to be successful... there are a number of things that the various players should be taking about. There are events that should be held that can be held fairly. We don't have to save the world."
Holger Dyroff, head of SuSE Linux U.S. operations, says that SuSE doesn't plan to take the most active role in the organization but that SuSE is behind the idea of pooling marketing efforts and encouraging companies to see that their products integrate their products with Linux.
With any luck, the bad blood over the Summit will fade in time and Linux vendors will be able to make Linux a real success on the desktop. Everyone we spoke to for this story indicated a desire to put the issue behind them and to work on making Linux a success rather than focusing on the negatives.
The MS-SQL worm: lessons for free software
The MS-SQL worm has run its course and been cleared off the net. It is also, of course, another example of a proprietary software failure that did not affect Linux users except in indirect ways. Still, the worm is interesting to look at in a number of ways, and it should give free software users and developers a few things to think about.Much has been written about how quickly the worm spread across the net. Most of the vulnerable systems had been infected within about ten minutes. With that sort of propagation speed, there really is very little that system and network administrators can do; by the time they know that there is a problem, they have already been infected. There is no time to scramble for patches, or even to pull the plug. Someday networks will have to be able to react automatically to this sort of attack; automated response systems, however, are likely to be a source of outages themselves.
The worm infected something on the order of 100,000 hosts. Given the size of the Internet, that is a relatively small number; there just weren't that many vulnerable systems which were directly reachable on the net. Even with such a small proportion of vulnerable systems, however, the worm was able to create a great deal of disruption. It is not necessary to infect much of the net to create trouble for everybody.
This suggests that the talk of software monocultures that one often encounters (including on this site) may be a bit misguided. The net, certainly, is not a monoculture of vulnerable SQL Server systems. Monocultures still increase the risk of truly devastating, global attacks, but their elimination will not necessarily make the net a whole lot safer.
There are plenty of free programs which run at least 100,000 network-exposed systems. A widespread vulnerability in any of these programs could, conceivably, be used to similar effect by a future attacker. There is a good chance, perhaps almost a certainty, that a vulnerability in free software will be used someday to trash the net. It is not an occasion to look forward too.
Still, there are aspects of the free software way of doing things that help to make this kind of event less likely. They include:
- Security updates for free programs tend to be small fixes which
address the vulnerability and nothing else. Most distributors put
considerable effort into backporting fixes to whatever version of the
program they shipped. As a result, the security updates are
relatively safe and easy to install. The SQL Server fix was,
apparently, part of a huge patch set which changed many things.
Applying all security updates as they come out to a Linux system can
be tedious and annoying, but it is also a reasonable thing to do. It
has been said that companies trying to keep up with Microsoft patch
sets will encounter more outages from the patches themselves than from
security breaches.
The result of all this is that Linux systems are more likely to be current with their security updates. Or, at least, they have less of an excuse if they fall behind.
- Many, if not most of the systems compromised by the MS-SQL worm were
running a version of SQL Server that came packaged with a completely
different application; some examples include the Cisco E-Mail Manager,
ISS System Scanner, JD Edwards ERP, Office 2000/XP, Visio, Unicenter,
and many
others. Many of the people running vulnerable systems had no idea
that SQL Server was even present. Free applications do not tend to
drag along major subsystems in quite the same way. Further moves
toward complicated applications and component architectures could
change that, however.
- SQL Server, by default, opens a port to the world as a whole. For the most part, free software (and Linux distributors) have learned better than that. PostgreSQL and MySQL will talk to the net, and both have had security issues in the recent past. It is a rare installation, however, which has exposed either database server to the net without deliberate action by the system administrator.
All of the above points, hopefully, indicate that free software offers some relative security advantages, especially with regard to widespread infections. We have a long way to go, however, before we can even begin to think that we are safe. Smugness is the wrong response to this episode; instead, we need to learn from it and redouble our efforts to keep it from happening to us.
Security
Brief items
Vulnerabilities and alerts in 2002
One of the advantages to having a site built on a real database is that you can use it to generate nifty tables. When we ran a list of vulnerabilities and alerts one year ago, the whole thing was generated by hand. Life is easier this time around....at least, if you're not concerned with keeping your systems secure. The following table, which covers the second half of 2002, contains 119 separate vulnerabilities, and well over 300 alerts. As much as we like to say that free software is more secure, the table below makes it clear that it is not anywhere near secure enough.
On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that almost none of the vulnerabilities listed below have, to our knowledge, been exploited on any kind of scale. Most of these problems have been found (and fixed) by developers proactively auditing the code; in general, the fixes seem to get out to most users in time to avoid widespread problems. Many of these vulnerabilities are, most likely, relatively hard to exploit.
The table reveals some of the limitations of our security database. If a vulnerability has no alerts from a particular distributor, it does not necessarily mean that said distributor never got around to fixing the problem. In many cases, the distributor did not ship a vulnerable version of the affected program, and thus did not need to put out an update.
New vulnerabilities
bladeenc - improper input verification
| Package(s): | bladeenc | CVE #(s): | |||||
| Created: | February 5, 2003 | Updated: | February 5, 2003 | ||||
| Description: | Versions 0.94.2 (and prior) of the Blade MP3 encoder contain an input validation vulnerability which can lead to arbitrary code execution; see this advisory for details. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
courier - missing input sanitizing
| Package(s): | courier | CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0040 | ||||
| Created: | January 30, 2003 | Updated: | February 5, 2003 | ||||
| Description: | The developers of courier, an integrated user side mail server, discovered a problem in the PostgreSQL auth module. Not all potentially malicious characters were sanitized before the username was passed to the PostgreSQL engine. An attacker could inject arbitrary SQL commands and queries exploiting this vulnerability. The MySQL auth module is not affected. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
kernel - Multiple vulnerabilities in version 2.4.18 of the kernel
| Package(s): | kernel | CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0001 CAN-2003-0018 | ||||
| Created: | February 4, 2003 | Updated: | February 5, 2003 | ||||
| Description: | Vulnerabilities have been found in version 2.4.18 of the kernel.
Multiple ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) device drivers do not pad frames with null bytes, which allows remote attackers to obtain information from previous packets or kernel memory by using malformed packets. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0001 to this issue. A vulnerability exists in O_DIRECT handling in Linux kernels 2.4.10 and later that can create a limited information leak where any user on the system with write privileges to a file system can read information from that file system (from previously deleted files), and can create minor file system corruption (easily repaired by fsck). Red Hat Linux in its default configuration is not affected by this bug, because the ext3 file system (the default file system in Red Hat Linux 7.2 and later) does not support the O_DIRECT feature. Of the kernels Red Hat has released, only the 2.4.18 kernels have this bug. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CAN-2003-0018 to this issue. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
krb5 - vulnerability in Kerberos ftp client
| Package(s): | krb5 ftp netkit | CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0041 | ||||||||
| Created: | January 31, 2003 | Updated: | February 21, 2003 | ||||||||
| Description: | Kerberos is a network authentication system.
A problem has been found in the Kerberos ftp client. When retrieving a file with a filename beginning with a pipe character, the ftp client will pass the filename to the command shell in a system() call. This could allow a malicious ftp server to write to files outside of the current directory or execute commands as the user running the ftp client. The Kerberos ftp client runs as the default ftp client when the Kerberos package krb5-workstation is installed on a Red Hat Linux distribution. | ||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||
qt-dcgui: file leaking
| Package(s): | qt-dcgui | CVE #(s): | |||||
| Created: | February 4, 2003 | Updated: | February 5, 2003 | ||||
| Description: | All versions of qt-dcqui prior to 0.2.2 have a major security vulnerability
in the directory parser. This bug allows a remote attacker to download
files outside the sharelist. It's recommended that you upgrade the
packages immediatly.
Read the full announcment at: http://dc.ketelhot.de/pipermail/dc/2003-January/000094.html | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
slocate - buffer overflow
| Package(s): | slocate | CVE #(s): | CAN-2003-0056 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Created: | February 5, 2003 | Updated: | May 8, 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Description: | version 2.6 (at least) of slocate contains a buffer overflow vulnerability which could lead to a local exploit; see this advisory for the details. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
Resources
LinuxSecurity.com newsletters
The latest Linux Advisory Watch and Linux Security Week newsletters from LinuxSecurity.com are available.
Events
Sixth Annual Digital Money Forum
The Sixth Digital Money Forum will be held April 2 and 3 in London; click below for information on the program.SummerCon 2003
SummerCon 2003 is happening June 6 to 8 in Pittsburgh, PA. The organizers are still looking for more speakers if you would like to present at this event.
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Kernel development
Brief items
Kernel release status
The current development kernel is 2.5.59; no development kernels have been released since January 16.Linus is back from his travels, and has merged some 300 patches (as of this writing) into his BitKeeper tree. They include some JFS updates, a number of kbuild changes (including the merge of the new modversions code), a new aic7xxx driver, an ALSA update, various network driver fixes, a number of USB updates, a big rework of the SCSI command block allocation code, and more.
The current stable kernel is 2.4.20; there have been no 2.4.21 prepatches from Marcelo in the last week.
Alan Cox has released a couple of patches, the most recent being 2.4.21-pre4-ac2. Quite a bit of IDE work has been going on, and this patch should be handled carefully. (Indeed, there have been some reports of IDE-related deadlocks with the -ac2 patch).
Kernel development news
Initramfs status
One bit of unfinished 2.5 business is "initramfs," the boot-time root filesystem which is tacked onto the kernel binary image. The plan is to move much of the initialization-time code out of the kernel and into initramfs; the result should be a smaller kernel and a safer, more flexible boot process.The code to support initramfs has been in the kernel for some time. The big missing piece has been on the user space side. Before anything useful can be run in user mode as part of the boot process, there must be a whole environment to build it in. Attaching the C library to the kernel image is not an option that would appeal to many, so a special-purpose C library is needed. That library is "klibc," which has been under development by Greg Kroah-Hartman and others for some time. klibc provides a minimal set of standard functions, written with an eye toward portability and small size.
Greg recently posted an update on klibc. The library seems to be essentially complete, at least until somebody tries to do something requiring functions which have not been provided. The sticking point, at the moment, seems to be a bug in the initramfs unpacking code. Greg is interested in input from anybody who would like to help debug that problem. Once that's been ironed out, it is mostly just a matter of figuring out which boot-time operations should be taken out of the kernel and moved into a user-space implementation. If that is going to happen in 2.5, it would be nice if it happened soon; making major changes to the boot process brings with it a real risk of destabilizing the kernel for a while.
Driver porting: hello world
| This article is part of the LWN Porting Drivers to 2.6 series. |
The obvious place to start in this sort of exercise, of course, is the classic "hello world" program, which, in this context, is implemented as a kernel module. The 2.4 version of this module looked like:
#define MODULE
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
int init_module(void)
{
printk(KERN_INFO "Hello, world\n");
return 0;
}
void cleanup_module(void)
{
printk(KERN_INFO "Goodbye cruel world\n");
}
One would not expect that something this simple and useless would require much in the way of changes, but, in fact, this module will not quite work in a 2.5 kernel. So what do we have to do to fix it up?
The first change is relatively insignificant; the first line:
#define MODULE
is no longer necessary, since the kernel build system (which you really
should use now, see the next article) defines it for you.
The biggest problem with this module, however, is that you have to explicitly declare your initialization and cleanup functions with module_init and module_exit, which are found in <linux/init.h>. You really should have done that for 2.4 as well, but you could get away without it as long as you used the names init_module and cleanup_module. You can still sort of get away with it (though you may have to ignore some compiler warnings), but the new module code broke this way of doing things once, and could do so again. It's really time to bite the bullet and do things right.
With these changes, "hello world" now looks like:
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
static int hello_init(void)
{
printk(KERN_ALERT "Hello, world\n");
return 0;
}
static void hello_exit(void)
{
printk(KERN_ALERT "Goodbye, cruel world\n");
}
module_init(hello_init);
module_exit(hello_exit);
This module will now work - the "Hello, world" message shows up in the system log file. What also shows up there, however, is a message reading "hello: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel." "Tainting" of the kernel is (usually) a way of indicating that a proprietary module has been inserted, which is not really the case here. What's missing is a declaration of the license used by the module:
MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");
MODULE_LICENSE is not exactly new; it was added to the 2.4.10
kernel. Some older code may still lack MODULE_LICENSE calls,
however. They are worth adding; in addition to avoiding the "taints
kernel" message, a license declaration gives your module access to GPL-only
kernel symbols. Assuming, of course, that the module is GPL-licensed.
With these changes, "hello world" works as desired. At least, once you have succeeded in building it properly; that is the subject of the next article.
Driver porting: compiling external modules
| This article is part of the LWN Porting Drivers to 2.6 series. |
KERNELDIR = /usr/src/linux
CFLAGS = -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -I$(KERNELDIR)/include -O
all: module.o
Real-world makefiles, of course, tended to be a bit more complicated, but the job of creating a loadable module was handled in a single, simple compilation step. All you really needed was a handy set of kernel headers to compile against.
With the 2.6 kernel, you still need those headers. You also, however, need a configured kernel source tree and a set of makefile rules describing how modules are built. There's a few reasons for this:
- The new module loader needs to have some extra symbols defined at
compilation time. Among other things, it needs to have the
KBUILD_BASENAME and KBUILD_MODNAME symbols defined.
- All loadable modules now need to go through a linking step - even those
which are built from a single source file. The link brings in
init/vermagic.o from the kernel source tree; this object
creates a special section in the loadable module describing the
environment in which it was built. It includes the compiler version
used, whether the kernel was built for SMP, whether kernel preemption
is enabled, the architecture which was compiled for, and, of course,
the kernel version. A difference in any of these parameters can
render a module incompatible with a given running kernel; rather than
fail in mysterious ways, the new module loader opts to detect these
compatibilities and refuse to load the module.
As of this writing (2.5.59), the "vermagic" scheme is fallible in that it assumes a match between the kernel's vermagic.o file and the way the module is being built. That will normally be the case, but people who change compiler versions or perform some sort of compilation trickery could get burned.
- The new symbol versioning scheme ("modversions") requires a separate post-compile processing step and yet another linkable object to hold the symbol checksums.
One could certainly, with some effort, write a new, standalone makefile which would handle the above issues. But that solution, along with being a pain, is also brittle; as soon as the module build process changes again, the makefile will break. Eventually that process will stabilize, but, for a while, further changes are almost guaranteed.
So, now that you are convinced that you want to use the kernel build system for external modules, how is that to be done? The first step is to learn how kernel makefiles work in general; makefiles.txt from a recent kernel's Documentation/kbuild directory is recommended reading. The makefile magic needed for a simple kernel module is minimal, however. In fact, for a single-file module, a single-line makefile will suffice:
obj-m := module.o(where module is replaced with the actual name of the resulting module, of course). The kernel build system, on seeing that declaration, will compile module.o from module.c, link it with vermagic.o, and leave the result in module.ko, which can then be loaded into the kernel.
A multi-file module is almost as easy:
obj-m := module.o module-objs := file1.o file2.oIn this case, file1.c and file2.c will be compiled, then linked into module.ko.
Of course, all this assumes that you can get the kernel build system to read and deal with your makefile. The magic command to make that happen is something like the following:
make -C /path/to/source SUBDIRS=$PWD modules
Where /path/to/source is the path to the source directory for the
(configured and built)
target kernel. This command causes make to head over to the kernel source
to find the top-level makefile; it then moves back to the original
directory to build the module of interest.
Of course, typing that command could get tiresome after a while. A trick posted by Gerd Knorr can make things a little easier, though. By looking for a symbol defined by the kernel build process, a makefile can determine whether it has been read directly, or by way of the kernel build system. So the following will build a module against the source for the currently running kernel:
ifneq ($(KERNELRELEASE),)
obj-m := module.o
else
KDIR := /lib/modules/$(shell uname -r)/build
PWD := $(shell pwd)
default:
$(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) SUBDIRS=$(PWD) modules
endif
Now a simple "make" will suffice. The makefile will be read twice; the first time it will simply invoke the kernel build system, while the actual work will get done in the second pass. A makefile written in this way is simple, and it should be robust with regard to kernel build changes.
Morse code kernel panics
Here's one feature which didn't get in before the freeze: morse code kernel panics, recently updated to 2.5 by Tomas Szepe. With this patch, a 2.5 kernel which goes into a panic state will blink out the panic message in morse code using the keyboard LEDs. Possible future enhancements include audio output using the PC speaker or a sound card. One developer has mentioned the possibility of having a nearby machine with a microphone to detect and decode the encoded panic message.One might well be tempted to object that the number of people clamoring for this feature has been relatively small. But there is actually a serious side to this patch. It is well known that production Linux systems never panic, but if, someday, a box were to be struck by a cosmic ray and go down, its owner might like to know about it. Preferably before the "where has your site been this last week?" mail starts to show up. The morse code patch could, with a bit of work, be the beginning of a more general panic notification feature. It could be useful, even if you hope you never actually make use of it.
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
Architecture-specific
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Memory management
Networking
Security-related
Benchmarks and bugs
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
News and Editorials
Linux on iPod
The Linux on iPod project is currently focused on porting the uClinux kernel to the iPod, a propriatary MP3 player made by Apple. Apple has not supplied very much technical information for this hardware platform so a lot of reverse engineering and guess work has gone into the project. The uCLinux kernel is a pretty solid embedded version of the Linux kernel that supports systems without a Memory Management Unit (MMU).This is a new project. The author, Bernard Leach, recommends that if you really love your iPod, don't try installing Linux on it just yet. For the adventurous hacker there are plenty of challenges left. Here's the status as of January 27, 2003.
Current features:
- Basic frame buffer
- Audio device (44.1kHz 16bit little-endian)
- Directional buttons via tty interface
- HDD support
- FAT (and UMSDOS) filesystem support
- Scroll-wheel input
- Firewire
- Remote control
- Peizo
- Power Management (suspend etc)
- Battery Status
- Hold button status
- HFS+ support
- Flash support
Distribution News
Debian GNU/Linux
The Debian Weekly News for February 4th, 2003 is available. This week Martin Michlmayr was interviewed (German only) about the Debian project; Jonathan Oxer told us that the Debian Mini-Conf last week was a success with 117 people attending; there's a new Debian archive key; and much more.Debian has many different mailing lists where people can discuss a wide variety of Debian related topics. This listmaster update talks about some new mailing lists, what's being done to reduce spam on the lists, and more.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 5
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of February 3rd, 2003 is available. This week looks at the KDE 3.1 release; mirror slowdowns; Gentoo server migrations; and more.Mandrake Linux
The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for January 31, 2003 is out. This week looks at the Mandrake Linux 9.1 Beta 2 release; a new PPC beta; and much more.
MandrakeSoft has announced a new end of
life policy for Mandrake Linux. "With the release of Mandrake Linux
9.1, we will put in place a cycle that customers can easily anticipate.
MandrakeSoft will provide 12 months of "desktop" support for
distributions, and 18 months of "base" support for distributions. This
means that applications such as window managers, desktop environments,
browsers, etc. will have a 12 month support life, while applications such
as the kernel, Apache, and other "base" components will have a support
life of 18 months. At certain times, MandrakeSoft may choose to extend
support for certain versions of Mandrake Linux.
"
Slackware Linux
Slackware Linux has upgraded both GNOME and KDE packages, among many other changes. See the change log for complete details.Red Hat preps wider range of 'Advanced' server, client OSes (Register)
The Register looks at Red Hat's support policy and the new products that are coming soon. "Red Hat Advanced Workstation will be out later this year, and the company also proposes lower cost versions of non-consumer server products "that fit in below Advanced Server", which should give the company a clearer and more viable product range, with consumer being the traditional open source stuff you can get for free, and that updates eye-wateringly fast, while non-consumer has upgrade cycles and support periods that are in line with businesses expectations of being able to deploy something and have it supported without major upgrades for three to five years."
Minor distribution updates
Blue Linux
Blue Linux has released v1.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release updates several libraries, the Linux kernel, and others. KDE has been updated from 2.2 to 3.0.5a."
Coyote Linux
Coyote Linux has released v1.40rc1 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: A Web-based administrator, SSHd available for all config types, an updated kernel, a rebuild to use uClibc instead of glibc, remote syslog capabilities, a new menu system, and numerous bugfixes."
LRs-Linux
LRs-Linux has released v0.3.1-rc1 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: KDE 3.1, Gnome 2, The GIMP, LFS-CVS-27.01.2003, kernel 2.4.20, and much more."
RUNT
RUNT has released v1.01 with minor bug fixes. "Changes: This release adds support for USB keyboards."
Topologilinux 2.0.0.1
Topologilinux has released version 2.0.0.1 which has many new features. This release is based on Slackware (current 2003-01-19) with some updated packages and some extra packages like the ICQ clone Licq and the windows emulator Wine.
Distribution reviews
Xandros Desktop Deluxe 1.0 Review (LinuxLookup)
LinuxLookup.com test drives Xandros Desktop Deluxe 1.0. "The Xandros Desktop development team should be applauded for the simple elegance and fearlessness exhibited in the construction of this system. I have finally found a Linux OS that is not afraid of alienating hardcore Linux users by incorporating some of the triumphs of Windows like certain aspects of the XFM and acknowledging the importance of access to Microsoft Office through Crossover Office."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
GNOME 2.2.0 released
Version 2.2.0 of the GNOME desktop has been announced, one month ahead of schedule.
The release notes document the changes and include many screen shots. Here are a few highlights:
- A matured GNOME 2 developer platform.
- A UI overhaul for the Nautilus file manager with context sensitive menus.
- Application startup notification via a clock cursor.
- Support for themes in the panel.
- A Show Desktop panel button for raising desktop icons.
- Improved file searching via the Actions menu.
- An Open Recent capability in the Actions menu.
- An instant messenger Notification Area on the panel.
- A wireless link status box on the panel.
- Inclusion of the GStreamer multimedia framework.
- Improved View As features for Nautilus with support for Audio.
- More file formats are supported by the multimedia utilities.
- New thumbnailing abilities for additional multimedia types.
- A simpler and more powerful Theme Preferences dialog.
- Desktop-wide support for fontconfig and Xft2.
- Better font configuration and rendering.
- Multihead support for systems with multiple screens.
- Support for the Metacity window manager.
- Spell checking and an output window for the gedit text editor.
- Rotation and full screen views for the Eye of GNOME image viewer.
- Unicode character support for the Character Map.
- The File Roller archive manager for working with numerous archive formats.
- Keyboard key assignment capabilities via the Multimedia Keys Preferences dialog.
- Language support for 26 languages, including right-to-left languages.
- Standards support via freedesktop.org for better KDE interoperability.
System Applications
Audio Projects
Ogg Traffic for Sunday, February 2, 2003
The February 2, 2003 edition of Ogg Traffic is available with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. Topics include: Status Updates, PlusV for Ogg Vorbis?, FLAC joins Xiph.Org, and Speex RC2.Alsa 0.9.0 rc 7 available
Version 0.9.0 release candidate #7 of the Alsa sound driver development release is ready for downloading. Change info is in the source code.BLOP 0.2.6 released
Version 0.2.6 of BLOP, the Bandlimited LADSPA Audio Plugins, is available with lots of new audio synthesis features.JACK Rack 1.2.0 released
Version 1.2.0 of JACK Rack is available. "No response to the beta testing request, so I'll have to subject you all to a likely hairy release :) Arbitrary channels are the biggest thing. Also, previous save files will no longer work as the save files use XML now."
Database Software
Npgsql adopted into the Mono Class Library
Npgsql has been incorporated into Mono. "The Npgsql Development Team is proud to announce that Npgsql (the .NET Data Provider for PostgreSQL) stable sources are now part of the Mono Class Library cvs codebase."
SAP DB 7.4.03.10 available
Version 7.4.03.10 of the SAP DB database is available. See the release info document for details.Databases and Element Names (O'Reilly)
John E. Simpson explains how to deal with XML-illegal characters in database field names on O'Reilly's XML Q & A column.
Electronics
Xcircuit 3.1 released
Development version 3.1 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing program, has been released. The download page says: "The source for version 3.1 contains the first official release of the (long-in-coming) Tcl/Tk-based version of xcircuit. At this time (January 27), everything in the original program has been implemented in the Tk GUI. The Tcl version has the greatest amount of command-line control, and can be run exclusively from the command line (e.g., from a script). A command-line argument "-exec" has been added to facilitate running xcircuit in "batch mode"."
Printing
LinuxPrinting.org news
The latest news from the LinuxPrinting.org site includes the release of version 3.0.0beta1 of the Foomatic printer support database, and the addition of the Epson Stylus C50 to the database.
Web Site Development
Zope Members News
The most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: Groupware Suite for CPS, Developer Preview, ZChecker 0.1 Released, New release of OpenPT and PlacelessTranslationService, RenderPM renamed to RenderableCharts, Solutions Linux is in Paris - where are you?, ZWiki 0.15.0 released, Zope 2.6.1 beta 2 released, Plone 1.0 Release Date and Celebration, Open Letter to the Community (Updated), and more.Zope Newbies
New articles on Zope Newbies include: A Conversation with Guido, Part IV, Zope 2.6.1 beta 2, Write the Web goes Zope, Upgraded to Apache 2, Plone 1.0 RC2 installer for Mac OS X, and more.ZODB 3.1.1 beta available
Version 3.1.1 beta 2 of ZODB3, the Zope Object Database, is out. "We've made another beta release of ZODB 3.1.1 available, including ZEO 2.0.2. This is primarily a bug fix release; see the NEWS.txt file excerpt below for details. Of particular note are the enabling of the BTrees-based index for FileStorage and the disabling of the rare "hosed" state in ZODB."
mnoGoSearch 3.2.8 search engine released
Version 3.2.8 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine software is available. A number of changes have been included, see the change log for details.
Web Services
XML Forms, Web Services and Apache Cocoon (O'Reilly)
Ivelin Ivanov writes about XForms on O'Reilly. "Server side business logic is often invariant with regard to client devices. An email client supports the same basic operations whether it's used from a cellular phone, PDA, or a PC. To address the needs of web developers who build applications for a variety of devices, the W3C has formed the XForms working group. According to the XForms specification, "XForms" is W3C's name for a specification of Web forms that can be used with a wide variety of platforms including desktop computers, hand helds, information appliances, and even paper."
Desktop Applications
CAD
PythonCAD third release available
The third release of PythonCAD, an open-source CAD package written in Python, is available. "The third release adds some new functionality to the program. Construction lines can be easily drawn tangent to circles and arcs, as well as drawn perpendicular to the various entities in a drawing. The thickness of drawing entities like line segments and circles is now drawn on the screen, too. Splitting the entities in the drawing can now be done by clicking on them at the point where they are to be split, or entities can be split at points where they intersect one another."
Desktop Environments
Open-HCI Announced
KDE.News reports on efforts to gain closer cooperation between the KDE and GNOME usability teams.FootNotes
Headlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: GNOME 2.0 Desktop for Solaris released, First pre-release of GTK2 Dia available, 2.3 Proposed Features, New Nautilus features, librsvg 2.2.2 released, Open-HCI Announced, Gnumeric 1.1.16 aka 'L M L W' is now available, GNOME 2.2 Translation Statistics and Rankings, Fifth Toe Website, A glimpse of the future? I hope so, GNOME comes to Clemson University!, and more.KDE-CVS-Digest
The January 31, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out. "Is the 3.1 the ultimate in KDE? The end of development? Not from looking at the commits for this week. Some of the less trivial fixes from Apple are getting applied to Konqueror. The user interface continues to be refined. The Kde PIM project and all it's parts are a beehive of activity. Utilities such as K3b and Cdbakeoven are actively worked on. I'm already impatient for 3.2!"
Games
Pygame updates
New Python-based game software on the Pygame site includes: Pygsear .25 and Pyui 0.95.Crystal Space 0.96r002 released
The beta 2 release of Crystal Space 0.96, a portable 3D Engine, is available. "Again a new release of Crystal Space. This releases fixes a few bugs here and there and also adds a VERY significant optimization in the OpenGL renderer. This optimization can effectively double performance for some levels."
FreeSCI: Rebuilding Sierra's Classic Quests (O'Reilly)
Howard Wen writes about the FreeSCI project on O'Reilly. "For the past few years, programming-capable adventure fans have been developing FreeSCI, an open source SCI clone. Their goals are to port SCI games to other platforms, to add new features to the original games, to provide an engine upon which other hobbyists can create new Sierra-style games, and simply to have fun."
GUI Packages
FLTK Developments
The latest new software for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit includes: fl_connect 0.92, Log 0.91, Fltk 1.1.XX utf-8 patch, SPTK 1.00, FL-Inventor 0.9.5-rev1, and more.
Interoperability
Kernel Cousin Wine
Issue #155 of Kernel Cousin Wine is out. Topics include: News: Install IE 6, Threading Problems with glibc 2.3, User Interface Status, RPC Data Marshalling, File Dialog Options, and Windows API Database.Xmingwin for cross-generating apps (IBM developerWorks)
Cameron Laird introduces Xmingwin for cross-platform development on IBM's developerWorks. "I do much of my Window development on Linux hosts, even when working in C. This installment of Server clinic tells how you can, too, and why you might want to add mingw32-gcc source.c -o executable.exe to your usual repertoire of gcc source.c -o executable."
Multimedia
GStreamer 0.6.0 released
Version 0.6.0 of the GStreamer streaming media framework is available. "At this point in time GStreamer is fully functional for creating audio-based applications, as shown by applications such as gnome-sound-recorder, Rhythmbox and nautilus-media. Video-based applications still have some issues at this point, but we plan on solving those issues during the 0.6.x series in an ABI compatible way."
Office Applications
GnuCash 1.8.0 released
The long-awaited release of gnucash 1.8.0 - the beginning of a new stable series - has happened. This version of gnucash includes scheduled transactions, mortgage and loan handling, some small business accounting support, multi-currency support, and much more. Click below for the release announcement; LWN also previewed this release last December.Kernel Cousin GNUe
Issue #66 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with the latest GNU Enterprise development news. Topics include: New release of Double Chocco Latte, Text Encoding in Common, Gadfly database driver for GNUe, Modal forms in wxPython and GTK, Passing parameters to Forms, and Passing parameters to Forms.AbiWord Weekly News
Issue #129 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out, with the latest AbiWord word processor development news. "Gabriel Gerhardsson declares the hash downloader bloat, ironic the maintainer would come out and say that after a long absence. Dom starts adding HELP! buttons everywhere, while I recommend altering them to "Don't Panic" buttons. The 1.0.5 HackDown displays that Hub has no belief that historical record is a sign of future performance, as he dares to add even more bugs and features to the new HackDown. Hey, he's French. AbiWord II: The Wrath of Dom will break an incredible historical record that no one would have anticipated: It shall be the most fully documented word processor, the most fully documented any application for that matter, before it even comes out."
Web Browsers
mozillaZine
The latest mozillaZine topics include: Independent Status Reports, MozillaZine Readers Give Their Verdict on Safari, ActiveState Komodo 2.3 Beta 1 Released, mozdev.org Soliciting for Donations, Integrating Switch Accessibility into Mozilla, and more.Lynx version 2.8.5 dev 14
Version 2.8.5 dev 14 of Lynx, a text-based web browser, has been released. Change information is in the source code, which can be downloaded here.
Languages and Tools
C
GCC 3.2.2 has been released
Version 3.2.2 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, has been released. Change documentation is forthcoming.
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The Caml Weekly News for January 28 - February 4, 2003 is out. Topics include: Wish: dynamic linking for Ocaml, question: "autoconfiguration" of Ocaml code, @, List.append, and tail recursion, XML-RPC server for OCaml, New release of Active-DVI, Finding the sign of a float, and WDialog 2.00-test4 released.The Caml Light / OCaml Hump
This week, the new software on The Caml Light / OCaml Hump includes: XmlRPCServer, OCaml XML-RPC, Active DVI, and WDialog.
Java
J2EE technologies for the stateless network (IBM developerWorks)
Kyle Gabhart covers stateless session beans on IBM's developerWorks. "In this first installment, we'll explore stateless J2EE components and evaluate the most appropriate one to use for your enterprise architecture. When it comes to stateless, request-processing components, you have two primary J2EE technologies to choose from: servlets or Enterprise JavaBeans technology -- or more specifically, stateless session beans."
XML in Java: Data binding, Part 2: Performance (IBM developerWorks)
Dennis M. Sosnoski writes about XML data binding on IBM's developerWorks. "Enterprise Java expert Dennis Sosnoski checks out the speed and memory usage of several frameworks for XML data binding in Java. These include all the code generation approaches discussed in Part 1, the Castor mapped binding approach discussed in an earlier article, and a surprise new entry in the race. If you're working with XML in your Java applications you'll want to learn how these data binding approaches stack up!"
Java Swing: Menus and Toolbars, Part 3 (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly continues the series on Java Swing with part 3. "In part three in this book excerpt series on Swing menus and toolbars from Java Swing, 2nd Edition, learn about the JMenuItem class."
EJB Inheritance, Part 4 (O'Reilly)
Emmanuel Proulx continues his series on EJB inheritance with part 4. "So far, we've seen how inheritance can be used when calling an EJB directly through RMI. However, SOAP (web services) and JMS also allow you to invoke objects remotely. Recognizing this, the EJB committee introduced JMS consumer beans (message-driven beans) in version 2.0 of the specification, and, in version 2.1, a generic asynchronous mechanism allowing web service invocations. This article discusses the steps involved in using inheritance in message-driven beans."
Building Dependency Webs in J2EE
Alex Iskold and Daniel Kogan cover dependency webs on O'Reilly. "J2EE applications are fundamentally complex. A typical system may contain thousands of EJBs, Java classes, JSP pages, and servlets, which are linked into an intricate web of numerous dependencies. Managing this complexity is the key to building stable and flexible J2EE applications. To deal with complexity, it is important to focus on the structure of the dependencies between all components in the system."
Lisp
Dynamic Learning Center for Lisp
Lisp vendor Franz, Inc. has made a Lisp educational resource site, known as the Dynamic Learning Center, available to the public. "The Dynamic Learning Center contains sample programs with documentation, programming exercises with solutions, support tools for learning and teaching Lisp, links and references to useful material. Practical notes and collateral material will also be made available."
Perl
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)
The January 27 - February 2, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out. "Hi all, here's your weekly dose of bug and fixes. Fold constants, send signals, leak memory and introspect layers through this week's summary."
This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)
The January 26, 2003 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out with the latest Perl 6 news. Topics include: The eval patch, The Parrot crashes, Compiling to Parrot, Extending the packfile format, The long running Objects thread, Intersegment branching, Bytecode Metadata, Odd JIT timings, L2R/R2L syntax, A proposal on if and else, Arc: An Unfinished Dialect of Lisp, Array/Colon question, Multiple Dispatch by Context?, and more.
PHP
PHP Weekly Summary
Topics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include: RSS bug feed, QA results suite, str_replace() sensitivity, Conferences, conferences everywhere, Array to XML, Mandatory file locking, and Sablotron build problems.
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for February 3, 2003 is available, with this week's news and links for the Python community.January 31 python-dev summary
The python-dev summary covering the second half of January is now available; it looks at Japanese support in the distribution, extended function syntax proposals, adding "capabilities" to the language, and several other topics.The Daily Python-URL
This week's Daily Python-URL article topics include: A conversation with Guido van Rossum, part IV, What Python Can Do for the Enterprise, pyblosxom, a chapter from Python in a Nutshell, An introduction to SkunkWeb, Introduction to PyObjC, Test-Driven Development by Example, REST and FSM and BP for Quixote, PiP - Python in PHP, REST for AOLserver, PyWX, and Quixote, pin.py, SQLObject, PyObjC, rlcompleter2, EuroPython 2003 Conference, Eric3, a Python IDE, and more.
Ruby
The Ruby Weekly News
Topics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include: The Ruby Way in Japanese, OSCON Presentations, Ruby Books, Test::Unit order of tests, and Local variables and blocks.New Ruby software includes: FXRuby-1.0.18, cLabs IEController, Borges, Webplayer, and the Ruby Application Archive version 2.3.0.
Scheme
Scheme Weekly News
The February 3, 2003 edition of the Scheme Weekly News is out. Topics include: scsh 0.6.3, SISC 1.7.1-beta, LAML version 19, SRFI-37: args-fold, SRFI-40: A Library of Streams, ReadScheme Library Expands Again, GNU TeXmacs 1.0.1.2, Scheme UK Meeting 5 Feb 2003, Quack.el 0.17, Guile GTK at Savannah, Guile 1.6.3, Scheme Scribe 1.1a, and Swindle 20030203.
Tcl/Tk
This week's Tcl-URL
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for February 5 is available with the latest from the Tcl/Tk development community.
XML
XML Pipelining with Ant (O'Reilly)
Michael Fitzgerald looks into Ant on O'Reilly. "Ant is an extensible, open-source build tool written in Java and sponsored by Apache's Jakarta project. Ant has developed into something more than a just a build tool, however. It has gone beyond its predecessor make (and make's kin) to become a framework for performing an even larger variety of operations in a single step, not just compiling code or cleaning up after a build."
Profilers
OProfile 0.5 released
Version 0.5 of OProfile, a code profiler, has been released with a long list of new features and bug fixes. "OProfile is still in alpha, but has been proven stable for many users."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Linux-Based Voice Recognition (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal looks at Linux-based voice recognition. "The health-care market alone may justify the Linux-based voice recognition project. Health-care services are the largest expense of the Group of Ten nations, and it is the fastest growing sector as well. Health-care workers would benefit from using their voices to document patients' treatments. Voice recognition would allow them a hands-free environment in which to analyze, treat and write about particular cases easily and quickly."
Linux Report: The Year in Review (eWeek)
eWeek considers the progress Linux has made in the business world. "By 2007, we said one year ago, "No one will be fired for recommending Linux." Shortening our own timeline by four years, we suggest that an IT buyer might already be fired today for failing to consider Linux. That's a small step but one of Neil Armstrong caliber."
Internet beams out into space (BBC News)
BBC News looks at computers in space. NASA plans for each spacecraft and satellite to some day have their own net address. "To test the technology the Columbia space shuttle was fitted with an embedded PC that has a 233 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM and a solid-state 144 MB hard drive. The computer is running Red Hat, a version of the Linux operating system, and is maintaining a connection with the Goddard Space Flight Center which will to try to contact the onboard PC more than 140 times over the duration of the shuttle mission STS-107." Thanks to Henrik Storner
Trade Shows and Conferences
Desktop Linux Event Continues to Lose Support (OfB.biz)
Open for Business looks at the withdrawal of Lycoris and others from the Lindows controlled Desktop Linux Summit. "The summit, which still includes vendors such as SuSE and Sun Microsystems, will take place on February 20-21."
Crossing the Desktop Linux Chasm in San Diego (Linux Journal)
Doc Searls takes a look at the brouhaha surrounding the Desktop Linux Summit, in this Linux Journal article. "But, y'know, Lindows paid for this whole thing, apparently. So they have a reason to want the event the way they want it. I just wish they didn't call it the Linux Desktop Summit, because it's not really one any more. Actually, they never wanted it to be what we consider a summit in the Linux world."
Desktop Linux group launches (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers the launch of the Desktop Linux Consortium, which is made up of SuSE, MandrakeSoft, Lycoris, Xandros, ArkLinux, CodeWeavers, OpenOffice.org, the KDE project, and, perhaps, others. "Participants say the new consortium is in part a reaction to the behavior of one company not on the consortium's membership list: Lindows." Bruce Perens will be leading the new group.
Linux Adoption
Practical Questions (Linux Journal)
In this Linux Journal article, Doc wonders about the new face and organization of IT departments as they move more and more of the work to Linux. "I think the Linux hat fits corporate IT because there's a good value match between Linux and the way large organizations like to work. That may sound a bit oxymoronic to some, because Linux is not by nature a commercial operating system, and many businesses built on commercializing Linux have notoriously failed (Mandrake Linux being the latest example)."
Reuters introduces Linux-based market data feeds (Forbes.com)
Here's a Reuters article announcing that Reuters now has its flagship financial data and quote system running on Linux. "Reuters, working with Linux distributor Red Hat Inc., chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co, said they are now selling a Linux-based system to pipe the latest market-moving data on to the trading room floors of banks and brokerages." Thanks to Ashwin
Moving into Mainframe Linux (Computerworld)
Computerworld covers Linux on the mainframe. "The sweet spot for mainframe Linux today is server consolidation -- replacing dozens or even hundreds of separate Intel-based Linux or Windows servers with a partition on the mainframe that dedicates a single processor, memory and other system sources to running Linux."
South Africa embraces open source (News.com)
According to this News.com article, South Africa has joined the list of countries whose governments are seeking to use more free software. "By and large, South Africa imports its proprietary software and finds itself with comparatively little influence on how that software develops. The government expects that open-source software, by contrast, will provide more flexibility."
Interviews
Last FOSDEM Interviews
The FOSDEM team has published the last interviews in its series of interviews with the speakers. FOSDEM takes place this weekend in Brussels.- Harald Welte about netfilter/iptables
- Solar Designer about Openwall GNU/*/Linux
- Yoann Vandoorselaere about Prelude IDS
- Thomas Vander Stichele about GStreamer
- Damien Sandras about GnomeMeeting.
Resources
Linux Gazette #87
The Linux Gazette #87 for February 2003 is available. This month read articles on Linux-Based Voice Recognition; Fun with Simputer and Embedded Linux; and more; plus all the regular features.
Reviews
Peeking under the hood of SnapGear's uClinux-powered VPN appliances (LinuxDevices.com)
LinuxDevices.com technical editor Jerry Epplin takes a look at SnapGear's uClinux-based VPN appliances from the perspective of a developer's ability to customize them. "With the impressive improvements made in uClinux in the last couple of years, it has become increasingly practical to implement the networking capabilities of Linux in a small-footprint device. Perhaps the most obvious network-oriented devices for which uClinux is appropriate are firewall/routers, which need all the latest protocols and capabilities, but are in a highly competitive environment in which cost is paramount."
Breaking down the .Net barriers (MSNBC)
MSNBC looks at the Mono project. "In his office, Icaza lunges for a pen and starts sketching diagrams on the wall, which doubles as a dry-erase board, to illustrate Mono's progress so far. "We've been 18 months on this thing, and we've built an amazing amount of tools," he said. Still, many, including Icaza, caution against over-hype, in part because .NET is not yet the dominant force Microsoft hopes it will become." Thanks to Ashwin N
DB2 for Linux Clustering scales to 1,000 nodes (ADTmag)
ADTmag covers IBM's DB2 for Linux Clustering. "IBM first demonstrated the DB2 version last year, but observers noted that this week's proclamation by Scott Handy, Linux solutions marketing director for the IBM Software Group, marks the first time the company claimed 1,000-node performance. IBM engineers have tested the new implementation on systems running SAP, WebSphere and Tivoli, Handy said."
Germany-funded Linux software arriving (News.com)
News.com looks at the latest KDE release. "Further improvements are complete but haven't yet been integrated with KDE, Pour said. Originally that integration was scheduled to take place with the next version of KDE, which is scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2003."
Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason (O'Reilly)
Simon Cozens reviews the book Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason. "The book that's fallen onto my desk for review this month is Dave Rolsky and Ken Williams' Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason "What is this," you're thinking, "an O'Reilly site doing a review of an O'Reilly book? Scandalous!" Well, I hope that you've taken a look at my other reviews and have satisfied yourself that I try to be as impartial as I can when reviewing. As far as I'm concerned, this is a Perl site first and an O'Reilly site second."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Announcements
Commercial announcements
"Linux Server Hacks" Released by O'Reilly
O'Reilly has released "Linux Server Hacks". ""Linux Server Hacks" is a collection of industrial-strength, real-world, tested solutions to practical problems. The book contains one hundred independent but related tips, tools, and scripts that solve common but frequently difficult administrative tasks."
SCO Manager v1.5 Wins Best Systems Administration Tool Award At LinuxWorld 2003
The SCO Group has announced that SCO Manager v1.5 won "Best Systems Administration Tool" from the Open Source Product Excellence Awards at LinuxWorld 2003 in New York. SCO Manager v1.5 is an enhanced and re-branded version of Volution Manager 1.1, which enables secure and remote management, monitoring and updating of multiple systems through a browser.TimeSys Corporation Joins Eclipse; Releases Beta of TimeStorm 2.0 IDE
TimeSys Corporation has announced that it has been elected as a supporting member of Eclipse. Additionally, TimeSys announced the beta availability of its first offering powered by Eclipse technology, the TimeStorm 2.0 IDE for embedded C/C++ development. Developers interested in the TimeSys' IDE can download the beta version of TimeStorm 2.0 along with TimeSys Linux for x86.Witnet to Develop Mobilick for New Security Based Handheld Computer
Witnet International, Inc. has announced that the company will begin working on a special Linux version of Mobilick for integration within the software suite of solutions for Consumer Direct Link's ("CDL") Paron pervasive handheld device.Geac Helps Konica Leverage The Power of Linux
Geac Computer Corporation Limited has announced that Konica Business Technologies, Inc. has successfully implemented Geac's Connector Foundation(TM) 3.0 for Linux.MontaVista Doubles Revenues; Completes Record Year with Record Quarter
MontaVista Software, Inc. announced it has ended its 2002 fiscal year with revenues doubling over 2001, despite the general economic downturn. Maybe the downturn is finally turning around.Sony announced a Linux-based wireless portable file server
Sony announced FSV-PGX1, a wireless portable file server based on Linux 2.4.20 with ext3, which supports CIFS/SMB, NFS and ftp via IEEE 802.11b.Key Research gets $12.5 million
The Linux-installed hardware market may be a difficult place to do business, but that does not keep people from trying. A company called Key Research has announced the receipt of $12.5 million in venture capital to help it build a Linux server business. Key will be creating 64-bit systems intended for use in Linux clusters; they claim to have "an innovative approach" which will be revealed at a future time.
Resources
LPI-News January 2003
Here's the monthly newsletter from the Linux Professional Institute, with news about LPI at LinuxWorld and other conferences; LPI and United Linux; LPI certificates; and much more.Modular synthesis with AlsaModularSynth 1.5.5 (QuickToots)
This month, QuickToots looks at AlsaModularSynth. "AlsaModularSynth is a digital implementation of a classical analog modular synthesizer system. It uses virtual control voltages to control the parameters of the modules. The control voltages which control the frequency of the VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) and VCF (Voltage Controlled Filter) modules follow the convention of 1V / Octave."
Upcoming Events
Ottawa Linux Symposium 2003 registration opens
Attendee registration is open for the 2003 Ottawa Linux Symposium, which will be happening next July 23 to 26. OLS is the premier kernel-oriented developer conference in North America, and it tends to sell out, so it's best not to wait too long before signing up.Lycoris withdraws from the Desktop Linux Summit
Lycoris has announced that it will not participate in the Desktop Linux Summit. "Lycoris originally joined the conference after assurances of egalitarian control and changes to the conference schedule including the addition of keynote speaker Bruce Perens and vendors like Hewlett Packard. The recent changes to the conference schedule, the withdraw of Hewlett Packard, and conference management have given a single-vendor too much focus which is no longer in the interest of Lycoris."
Call for Lightning Talks at TPC 7 (use Perl)
Use Perl has announced that they are looking for some Lightning talk presentations for the upcoming TPC7 conference. "Mark Jason Dominus writes, "Lightning talks are brief (5-minute) talks that focus on a single example, idea, project, or technique. Lightning talks do not attempt to cover all aspects of their subject matter, but rather to present one facet of the idea clearly and succinctly. Last year's lightning talks sessions were a big success, and we hope to repeat the event.""
LinuxTag 2003 - First Call for Papers
The first call for papers has gone out for LinuxTag 2003, to be held in Karlsruhe, Germany on July 10-13, 2003.OSCOM opens conference planning
The Midgard site has an announcement for the OSCOM 3 conference, which will be held in Cambridge, Mass in late May, 2003. "Gregor Rothfuss from OSCOM board writes: "What kind of conference do you want? This question has arisen repeatedly over the last several weeks, as OSCOM board members and interested parties pondered past conferences, and wondered what to do about the upcoming OSCOM III. We decided to do a first, to the best of our knowledge: open up the conference preparation process. Effective immediately, you can take a look at the proposals we received on the redesigned OSCOM site.""
Announcing the UK Python Conference
The UK Python Conference will be held in Oxford, England on April 2 and 3, 2003. "The line up of speakers is impressive, with Guido van Rossum giving the keynote speech on Wednesday the 2nd April."
UKUUG Linux Developers' Conference
The UKUUG Linux Developers' Conference will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 31 to August 3, 2003.Events: February 6 - April 3, 2003
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| February 6, 2003 | O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference | (Westin Horton Plaza.)San Diego, CA |
| February 6, 2003 | Linux Solutions 2003 | (CNIT)Paris, France |
| February 8 - 9, 2003 | Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting(FOSDEM) | Brussels, Belgium |
| February 10 - 14, 2003 | The fifth NordU/USENIX Conference(NordU2003) | (Aros Congress Center)Västerås, Sweden |
| February 20 - 21, 2003 | Desktop Linux Summit | (Vivendi Universal Building)San Diego, CA |
| February 22 - 24, 2003 | CodeCon 2.0 | (Club NV)San Francisco CA, USA |
| February 27 - 28, 2003 | Linux Summit 2003 | (Dipoli Conference Center)Espoo, Finland |
| March 17 - 19, 2003 | Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU | (The Marvin Center Grand Ballroom, George Washington University)Washington, DC |
| March 20 - 21, 2003 | First OpenOffice.org Conference(OOoCon2003) | (University of Hamburg)Hamburg, Germany |
| March 20 - 21, 2003 | Conference PHP 2003 | (École Polytechnique de Montréal)Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| March 26 - 28, 2003 | PyCon DC 2003 | (George Washington University)Washington DC |
| April 2 - 3, 2003 | The UK Python Conference | (Holiday Inn Oxford)Oxford, England |
Software announcements
This week's software announcements
Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
- Sorted alphabetically,
- Sorted by license.
Miscellaneous
Desktop Linux Consortium press release
Desktop Linux Consortium has sent out a press release announcing its existence. "Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, said 'We already have all of the tools, in Open Source software, necessary for 80 percent of office workers in the world: an office suite including spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation program; a web browser, graphical desktop with file manager, and tools for communications, scheduling, and personal information management. The Linux desktop is inevitable!'"
Results from survey at WeWantLinux.org
The WeWantLinux.org survey site has been operating since last August, gathering data on consumer interest in computers pre-loaded with the GNU/Linux operating system. With 1500 survey entries validated, the results show a high level of interest in Linux PCs across the board.A Call for PostgreSQL Case Study Participants
Companies who are using PostgreSQL are invited to report on their activities. "We're looking for volunteers running PostgreSQL in their companies, or who have good contact with companies running PostgreSQL, to please assist us in creating a large number of good quality, reference PostgreSQL Case Studies."
WorldForge Logo Design Contest
The WorldForge game project is holding a contest for the creation of a new WorldForge logo. "WorldForge is looking for a new logo to reflect our project's growth and maturity. If you're an artist that's been looking for an easy way to contribute to WorldForge here's your chance."
Page editor: Forrest Cook