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Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Dell, Lenovo sell Windows-free laptops for Linux customers (LinuxWorld)
LinuxWorld looks at where to get laptops without Windows. "Two leading hardware vendors, Dell and Lenovo, are quietly selling laptops without preloaded Microsoft Windows to Linux customers who know where to look, says Lincoln Durey, CEO of EmperorLinux, an Atlanta reseller that customizes, installs and supports Linux on the major-brand laptops it sells."
Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch reports on an effort by the FSF to work with hardware vendors. "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is expanding beyond its software boundaries, and reaching out to hardware vendors to encourage them to "work with the free software community" to establish a "mutually beneficial relationship." It's all spelled out in a just-published whitepaper. On March 1, the FSF released "The road to hardware free from restrictions," written by Justin Baugh and Ward Vandewege, senior systems administrators for the FSF. In it, they detail ways for major hardware manufacturers to work with free software for the benefit of both."
OLPC project distributes second round of beta units (ars technica)
ars technica reports on the second release of OLPC laptops. "The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is shipping out another set of prototype XO laptops. Designated BTest-2, this series of beta test units is primarily intended to help testers evaluate improvements to the screen and touchpad. The BTest-2 units, which are in transit to select developers, will also be used to perform early tests on the wireless mesh technology. According to the release notes, the final release version of OLPC's XO laptop will be faster and more durable than the BTest-2 units and will include several additional features. The release notes also reveal that the BTest-2 units resolve several problems documented during tests conducted on the previous BTest-1 series."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Sun Announces Ruby Support for NetBeans (eWeek)
eWeek looks at Ruby support in NetBeans. "While the Eclipse open-source development community opens its EclipseCon conference, Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans community have announced an early-access release of the NetBeans Ruby Pack, which is a plug-in that provides support for the Ruby programming language. The NetBeans plug-in offers developers added support for dynamic and scripting languages and includes editing features for both Ruby and JRuby--an implementation of the Ruby programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine."
2007 HIMSS Wrap-Up (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews covers the recent Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference. "This years HIMSS conference in New Orleans is over. Here's the conference wrap-up: CCHIT certification is being emphasized. Interoperability progress is occurring but is still confusing. Open source has a presence at HIMSS now! Read more for details."
Companies
A Modest Proposal for Michael Dell (Linux Journal)
Glyn Moody investigates the state of pre-installed Linux on Dell computers. "Dell is only talking about certifying its “corporate client products”. Worse, it's only talking about doing that with Novell – hardly open source's favourite company at the moment. The justification for not going further is rather unconvincing: “We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another.” So, rather than upset supporters of some distros, Dell has decided to be scrupulously fair and to upset supporters of all distros. It's clear from this statement that Dell is not going to offer systems with pre-installed GNU/Linux any time soon."
Novell's revenue sags, Linux business soars (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch analyzes Novell's 2007 first quarter financial results. "Despite the unexceptional overall results during the first fiscal quarter 2007, however, Novell reported $15 million of revenue from Linux Platform Products, up 46 percent year-over-year, and $91 million of invoicing, up a whopping 659 percent year-over-year. Linux -- make no doubt about it -- is Novell's future. "
Red Hat expands developer tools business (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers a partnership between Red Hat and Exadel. "The open-source software company said that it has established a partnership with Exadel in which Exadel will open source its Web development tools at JBoss.org, a Red Hat open-source project site."
Linux Adoption
California may adopt OpenDocument (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports that California is considering making the OpenDocument Format the required standard for state agencies. "Similar to the ODF bills proposed in Texas and Minnesota, California Assembly bill AB 1668 would require that state agencies "become equipped to accept all documents in an open, XML-based file format for office applications, and shall not adopt a file format used by only one entity.""
UK trumps Europe on Linux streaming (ZDNet UK)
ZDNet UK reports on a Linux-friendly video service that is being deployed by the Waverley Borough Council. "When the European Commission launched a streaming video service last year which excluded Linux users, large swathes of the open source community became deeply angry. Now, a Surrey local council has shown that open source operating systems can be included in such programmes."
Linux at Work
Fault-tolerant Linux can compete with Windows (electronicsweekly.com)
electronicsweekly.com examines the use of Linux for fault-tolerant computing. "Choosing the operating system that an organisation uses to run its critical applications also remains a tough decision. Linux is growing in popularity compared with other operating systems and using Linux offers a route for organisations to achieve high availability at a potentially lower cost. As a free operating system, the level of cost would be much lower than other approaches and this is contributing to its growing popularity from a business continuity perspective. An example of this is that Linux has entered the top three operating systems chart by the volume of servers sold for the first time, according to recent research by IDC."
TRUMPF Laser to Embed MySQL in its Manufacturing Products
MySQL AB reports on the deployment of Linux and the MySQL DBMS by TRUMPF Laser. "TRUMPF has selected MySQL to control the pulsating solid-state laser in its TruPulse series of welding tools. TRUMPF TruPulse lasers are used for welding in the automotive industry, in jewelry-making and in medical technology such as the production of dental braces -- all areas in which the highest level of precision is required. “With MySQL as the central data storage in our new laser control, we attain a clean, stable and easily expandable architecture,” said Rainer Thieringer, head of software development at TRUMPF Laser. “Moreover, the open source concept fits perfectly with TRUMPF’s control philosophy: Every piece of software in the laser control must be validated at the source code level.”"
Legal
Patent Fights Are a Legacy of MP3's Tangled Origins (NYTimes)
The New York Times has an article on MP3 patents. "Microsoft says it was doing the right thing: paying a German rights holder $16 million to license the MP3 audio format, the foundation of the digital music boom. Then an American jury ruled that Microsoft had failed to pay another MP3 patent holder, and slapped it with a $1.52 billion judgment. But the MP3 toll gates do not end there." (Thanks to petelink)
Interviews
Mauricio Piacentini (People Behind KDE)
The People Behind KDE has an interview with Mauricio Piacentini. "I am working on the KDE 4 versions of KMahjongg and KMines, and trying to help with the SVG conversion and art for other applications in the kdegames module. During the last few months I had a chance to work a bit (in code and art) with Ian Wadham in KGoldRunner, and Dmitry Suzdalev in KReversi." (Found on KDE.News)
Resources
Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population
Google Labs has released a paper [PDF] that details the failure modes from a large population of hard disk drives. "Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported." (Thanks to Hale Landis).
Switching your Linux systems to the new DST (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch looks at the change in US Daylight Savings time. ""Spring forward; Fall back," That's the way the saying goes. Some years I get it backwards, but I eventually catch on. I've never had to worry about my PCs getting it wrong before, though. Now, with the recent changes in the Daylight Savings Time (DST) rules, I do. Fortunately, there are ways to make sure that both my Linux computers and I get the new rules right."
The GNOME Journal, March Edition
The latest issue of the GNOME Journal has been published. It features an introduction to GTK+ cross-platform application development, an interview with Jakub Steiner and Andreas Nilsson about the Tango Project, the first article of a series about free desktop companies, and a letter from the editor. Writers in this edition are John D. Ramsdell, Alexandre Prokoudine, Sri Ramkrishna, and Jim Hodapp, respectively.
A Host For Native Linux VST Plugins ? (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks at VST plugins. "Fully functional support for the VST plugin standard is one of the most important remaining problems for the Linux audio world. VST plugins are ubiquitous in the Win/Mac audio worlds, they are employed extensively in professional and desktop music software, and it may be no exaggeration to claim that the VST standard has revolutionized computer-based creation of music and sound. Given its great popularity this writer believes that stable VST support would give Windows users a compelling reason to try Linux as an alternate or replacement platform, especially if they have a sizeable investment of money and experience in their collection of VST plugins."
Linux Gazette #136
Issue #136 of the Linux Gazette has been published. Topics include: Mailbag, Talkback, 2-Cent Tips, NewsBytes, Keymap and IOCTLs, A Report on SCaLE5x, A Beginner's Guide to Dual Booting Linux Mint and Windows XP, Measuring TCP Congestion Windows, The Open Source Hook, Interview: Orv Beach, Publicity Chair/SCaLE (Southern California Linux Expo), HelpDex, The Geekword Puzzle, The Linux Launderette and The LG Backpage.
How to Optimize Rank Data in MySQL (O'ReillyNet)
Baron Schwartz discusses the use and optimization of DBMS software in the context of online gaming. "Imagine a site that keeps track of gamers' scores in computer games and displays gamers in "leaderboards" ordered by decreasing score. The site is written in PHP and the backend is a MySQL 5 database server. Because the data changes frequently, the server uses the InnoDB storage engine."
Single Packet Authorization (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal looks at how Single Packet Authorization fills the gaps in port knocking. "Vulnerabilities have been discovered in all sorts of security software from firewalls to implementations of the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol. For example, OpenSSH is developed by some of the most security-conscious developers in the world, and yet it occasionally contains a remotely exploitable vulnerability. This is an important fact to note because it seems to indicate that security is hard to achieve and, therefore, bolsters the case for a defense-in-depth approach. This article explores the concept of Single Packet Authorization (SPA) as a next-generation passive authentication technology beyond port knocking."
Reviews
Conary: An innovative second-generation package manager (Linux.com)
Linux.com takes a look at Conary. "rPath's Conary is a second-generation package manager. Considering that Erik Troan, rPath's CTO and co-founder, was one of the original authors of the RPM package format, some might be tempted to view Conary as an effort to do things right the second time around -- nor is that view far from wrong. In its design, Conary is a streamlined version of dpkg or RPM with Yum in which all the utilities of those package managers are combined in a single command and combined with version control to meet the demands of a modern distribution."
Review: Inkscape 0.45 is the best yet (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews Inkscape 0.45. "The number one most exciting new feature in Inkscape 0.45 is the addition of the first SVG Filter to the feature set, Gaussian blur. In accordance with the SVG specification, you can now adjust a blur setting for every object in a drawing, just the way you would adjust its fill color, stroke width, or opacity."
The Road to KDE 4: Dolphin and Konqueror (KDE.News)
KDE.News presents a comparison between the Konqueror and Dolphin file managers. "Dolphin is a new File Manager for KDE 4 which is dedicated 100% to file management, and is not intended to be a one-size-fits-all tool as Konqueror currently attempts. It is intended to optimize your file management related tasks, and present an easy to use file manager for casual KDE use. That doesn't mean it won't be powerful or configurable, only that Dolphin is being built for a single purpose."
A laptop to change the world (ZDNet)
ZDNet has run a look at the One Laptop Per Child project by Jeremy Allison. "But the real genius in the OLPC laptop is in the software. The OLPC is a completely open hardware system. There are no closed proprietary pieces to make support difficult. The software is the same, and it drives much of the needed sophistication in making the limited hardware perform acceptably. This is a system designed for people to learn from."
sshguard: Protection for OpenSSH (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews sshguard. "Are you concerned about brute force dictionary attacks on SSH? Given the popularity of these attacks, you should be. sshguard is a new tool to help protect against such attacks. Although it is still in beta stage, it appears to work well."
Upcoming PHP release will offer Unicode support (Linux.com)
Linux.com takes a look at PHP 6.0. "Andrei Zmievski is one of the leading developers of the PHP programming language. Since March 2005, he has been working with about 20 other developers to add Unicode support to version 6.0 of PHP. Now their efforts are nearing an alpha release."
Miscellaneous
Money or nothing? Trade-offs in FOSS compensation (Linux.com)
Linux.com tackles the issues of paying some people to develop free software. "What happens when a free and open source software (FOSS) project attempts to introduce compensation for its developers? Because FOSS remains based largely on volunteer work, many worry that payment might demotivate both those who receive it and those who do not. However, community leaders who have observed how payment interacts with the FOSS ethos suggest a more complicated picture. Identifying four main types of payment -- bounties, payment in kind, grants, and employment -- these experts suggest that what happens depends on the type of payment, as well as on the individuals involved."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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