LWN Weekly Edition
Front pageSecurity
Kernel development
Distributions
Development
Linux in the news
Announcements
->One big page
This page
Previous weekFollowing week
| |||||||||||||
Linux in the newsRecommended Reading How many Linux desktop users are there? (DesktopLinux)DesktopLinux looks at a project to count desktop Linux users. "Desktop operating systems numbers, even when gathered by top research companies, such as IDG and Gartner, are often a bit fuzzy. When it comes to uncommon desktop operating systems, like Linux, the numbers often amount to little more than an educated guess. Now, a new open-source program, statix, promises to give accurate data on how many Linux desktops are actually in use."
Selling software that sells itself: An interview with Matt Asay (LinuxWorld)Don Marti interviews Matt Asay. "Open source is changing not just how companies make software, but how they sell it. Alfresco's Matt Asay explains the new sales cycle and the skills that today's software sales people need to close deals."
Linus Torvalds interview (EFYTimes.com)EFYTimes.com has an interview with Linus Torvalds. "Did Microsoft's Men In Black ever met Linus Torvalds? But why is he so critical of GPLv3? Why does he slam Subversion? What would happen to the kernel development if he chooses to do something else more important? These are some of the questions Linux/open source community from around the globe wanted to ask Linus. And, here is Linus candid and blunt, and at times diplomatic, answering your questions. Check if the question you wanted to ask to the father of Linux is here and what does he have to say..."
Trade Shows and Conferences Hands-on Linux training at SHARE (Linux.com)Nathan Willis covers the SHARE conference on Linux.com. "San Diego -- Mainframe programmers and sysadmins get more than just sales pitches and informational talks at SHARE this week -- they also get real-world training. I sat in on a number of educational sessions and hands-on labs at the conference, taught by engineers from IBM, Novell, and independent software vendors."
The SCO Problem Judge Kimball Sets the Rules of the Road for SCO v. Novell (Groklaw)Groklaw covers the process for the remainder of the SCO v. Novell trial. "But September 17 at 8:30 AM is the date set for the trial to begin. Judge Kimball states in this document that while it was originally pencilled in to last 3 weeks, it should be 'substantially shorter' now."
Companies Novell: 'We're not SCO' and we won't sue (Computerworld UK)Computerworld UK reports on comments made by Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry after the recent SCO/IBM court ruling. "Lowry said the ruling means "the cloud has lifted over Linux." Users and distributors of the open-source OS finally can breathe a sigh of relief that they are not in violation of Unix copyrights. "We don't believe there is Unix in Linux," Lowry said. "We've been fighting that all along. It wouldn't be consistent for Novell to say, 'Oh gosh, now that this has been confirmed, we're going to suddenly take a different position' and sue companies for copyright infringement.""
Is VMware too close to Linux? (The Register)The Register looks at VMWare's IPO, which could be in trouble before it happens. "Writing on his blog VentureCake, Linux specialist Mike MacCana thinks he might have found a bit of rust on VMware's shining armor. He claims that VMware's ESX server is derived from Linux, and therefore is not legally re-distributable as proprietary software."
Xandros + Microsoft Deal Gives Linux E-mail Server a Second Chance (BetaNews)BetaNews examines the history behind the Microsoft/Xandros partnership and the Scalix email server. "In the latest stage of a collaboration that's looking more and more like it was planned to work out this way months ago, Microsoft announced today the extent of the intellectual property it's licensing to newly acquired Linux client Xandros. In addition to some systems management protocols, it's getting access to ActiveSync, a crown jewel of Microsoft IP that may come just in time to resuscitate Xandros' newest division."
Yahoo challenge to Google has roots in open source (Baseline)Baseline Magazine takes a look at Hadoop. "If you want to get your hands on an open source version of some of Google's core technologies, maybe you should ask Yahoo. Yahoo has emerged as one of a major sponsor of Hadoop, an open source project that aims to replicate Google's techniques for storing and processing large amounts of data distributed across hundreds or thousands of commodity PCs (see Baseline's report: How Google Works). Last year, Hadoop project founder Doug Cutting became a Yahoo employee, and at July's Oscon open source conference he and Yahoo's director of grid computing Eric Baldeschwieler detailed how they are applying the technology."
Interviews People Behind KDE: Summer of Code 2007 (2/4) (KDE.News)KDE.News introduces this People Behind KDE interview with some of the Summer of Code participants. "People Behind KDE releases the second of in its series of four interviews with students who are working on KDE as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007 - meet Bertjan Broeksema, Carlos Licea, Pierre Ducroquet and Gavin Beatty!"
Plone Foundation unwraps major content management release (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld talks with Plone co-founder Alexander Limi about the Plone 3.0 release. "Versioning was the single most requested feature by Plone's user community, Limi said. As changes are made in online content, Plone 3.0 now automatically keeps track of those alterations, providing a trail of who edited what information as well as the ability to roll back to earlier versions of the content."
Resources Troubleshooting Linux Audio, Part 3 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips has the final installment in his Troubleshooting Linux Audio series. "At last we reach the final installment of this series, the question & answer stage in which we'll consider some of the common problems encountered with audio and MIDI on Linux, along with some common and perhaps not-so-common solutions to those problems. We've looked at some indispensable items for your Linux system troubleshooting toolkit, now let's see how they are applied."
Hardening your systems with Bastille Linux (Linux.com)Linux.com takes a look at Bastille. "System administrators need to secure their systems while avoiding locking them down so strictly that they become useless. Bastille is a software tool that eases the process of hardening a Linux system, giving you the choice of what to lock down and what not to, depending on your security requirements. It bundles many of the tasks routinely done to securely configure a Linux system into one package."
How Linux became a mobile phone OS (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices has announced a new paper on the Linux transformation to the embedded space. "Linux started out on desktops and servers, but has now shipped on about 20 million mobile phones. Ever wonder how it made the jump? In a new whitepaper, embedded industry pioneer Jim Ready offers a concise technical retrospective on Linux's transition into a mobile phone OS."
A step-by-step guide to building a new SELinux policy module (Red Hat Magazine)Red Hat Magazine provides a howto on building SELinux policies. "Before we start, letÂ’s review why we work with policy modules. In the past, in order to modify the current SELinux policy on a system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, a system administrator would have had to to download the policy source, edit the policy source code, and rebuild and install the policy using tools like make install. The introduction of policy modules made this process easier and less error-prone. A system administrator could use the audit2allow utility to generate policy module updates directly from audit.log error messages. These modules function in a way similar to kernel modules in that they enable system administrators to modify part of the policy (a specific module) without having to rebuild the entire thing."
Reviews Open Source Stack Delivers The Most Affordable EMR (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews looks at Waiting Room Solutions version 3.0. "Waiting Room Solutions Version 3.0 is a CCHIT certified EMR and Practice Management system. It was completely built on open source technologies of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Without the extra costs of paying expensive Microsoft or third party licensing fees, this service can be offered to the physician's office through the Internet in the SaaS model at an extremely affordable price."
Fine-tune RSS feeds with ListGarden (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews ListGarden. "Most Web publishing systems on the market can automatically generate RSS feeds, but there are situations where you might want to have fine-grained control over your RSS feeds. For example, you might want to provide alternative RSS item descriptions, or to manually select which RSS items to publish. While you can code an RSS feed by hand, you'd be better off using a dedicated tool like ListGarden. It can help you to not only create and manage RSS feeds, but also to do more advanced tasks like publish the feeds on a remote server, back up the feeds, generate an HTML page, and much more."
Miscellaneous LinuxMCE Partners with KDE for New Release (KDE.News)Aaron J. Seigo writes about a collaboration between developers of the LinuxMCE media solution and KDE Plasma. "LinuxMCE uses X.org's window compositing functionality to provide a simple to use fullscreen interface that is blended on top of the media being played. This interface is a key focus of LinuxMCE according to lead developer Paul Webber. "The traditional PC user interface doesn't work well on a TV. So a different interface is needed, which is called the '10 foot' interface (in reference to the fact that people interact with media devices such as televisions from a distance). The '10 foot' interface is still in the same state as the desktop was pre 1983. There is no standardisation and each application has to figure out how to present its functionality to a user.""
Linux Standard Base Broadens ISV Support (OpenEnterprise1)OpenEnterprise1 looks at ISV support for the LSB. "The non-profit Free Standards Group is getting big support from ISVs for its latest effort to make sure Linux doesn't split into a variety of non-conformant versions. The FSG project, called the Linux Standards Base (LSB), already a core standard among Linux platform vendors, is gaining support from commercial and Open Source software makers -- including IBM, Novell Oracle, Veritas and MySQL."
Bringing the free software message to TV (Linux.com)Bruce Byfield talks up GNU/Linux on TV. "As a former course designer and academic, I used to be experienced in talking in front of people. However, one thing I hadn't done until now is appear on television. That, more than anything, is why I agreed to appear on the computer show Lab with Leo Laporte in a five-minute spot about the GNU/Linux desktop. The show is scheduled to appear October 11 on G4TechTV in Canada and the How-To Channel in Australia, with my spot being posted to Google Video on the same day. I won't know if I look savvy or imbecilic until I see how the segment is edited, but the experience taught me several points about appearing on TV in general, and evangelizing for GNU/Linux in the studio in particular."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
|||||||||||||