Linux in the news

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Open Source needs centralized PR, not development (NewsForge)

NewsForge is looking for a better way to find out about open source projects. "It happened again: A complaint was brought up on a free software email list I'm on about the lack of a certain type of open source program, but there are several healthy projects in that area I knew about, and other list members pointed out yet others. Why didn't we all know about all of them? And if we don't know, how can we expect potential corporate open source adopters, who aren't on "inner circle" Linux and open source email lists, to know what's available to them?"

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Hacker cracks Xbox challenge (News.com)

News.com reports that an anonymous hacker cracked the Xbox. "The trick involves the "save/load game" function in the James Bond game "007: Agent Under Fire," which normally allows players to save a file recording their progress in the game to the Xbox's hard drive and later reload it. [Habibi-Xbox] found that by using one of several USB storage devices recognized by the Xbox, the "load game" screen can also be used to load other software, including compact versions of the Linux operating system."

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How open source developers can get more U.S. government contracts (NewsForge)

NewsForge has some advice for those seeking to make open source sales to the U.S. government. "All open source developers, contractors, distributors, administrators (etc) should give the appearance of only caring about their sales revenue and aim to sell Open Source Software products, each containing only a few binary packages, for as much money as the purchasing budgets can afford. The FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation] was designed for that behavior pattern, and helps government buyers efficiently talk to vendors who exhibit it."

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Trade Shows and Conferences

Linux Audio Development: A Report from Karlsruhe (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal reports from the first Linux audio developers' conference in Germany. "Historically, the basic Linux sound system has been built on an API known most recently as OSS/Free. As of the 2.5 development series, the Linux kernel now officially deprecates the aging OSS/Free API and has replaced it with the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). ALSA provides a backwards-compatible layer for accommodating older applications designed for OSS/Free. But, its advanced API includes more interesting features, such as support for sound hardware from consumer-level sound cards to professional-grade digital audio boards, a fully modularized driver design, safe operation in SMP and threaded programming environments, and a user-space library (libasound) to simplify applications programming."

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Companies

Fujitsu preps Linux-based robot (Register)

The Register looks at a Linux powered robot from Fujitsu. "Fujitsu says it will release information about the droid's control systems and software to make the machine user-programmable. All you need are C/C++ coding skills, apparently. Indeed, HOAP stands for Humanoid Open Architecture Platform."

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Oracle Pours Funds Into Linux App Development (TechWeb)

According to this TechWeb article Oracle plans to spend as much as $150 million this year to fuel third-party application development on Linux. "While Linux has made inroads in departmental servers and elsewhere, application availability remains a gaping hole. And most solution providers agree that applications drive technology buys."

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Sun to drop its customized Linux (News.com)

News.com covers the demise of another Linux distribution, as Sun decides playing the field is better than rolling their own. "Sun Microsystems will phase out its customized Sun Linux and move instead to partnerships with Red Hat and other mainstream Linux companies, executives said Friday."

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SuSE On Itanium To Support National Supercomputing Grid (TechWeb)

TechWeb covers SuSE Linux on Itanium 2 which will help to power the "TeraGrid". "SuSE estimated the value of the deal at several hundred thousand dollars. It's being done in partnership with IBM Global Services, which is deploying clusters of SuSE Linux systems at the four DTF sites."

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Business

Open source systems make business sense (ZDNet Au)

ZDNet Australia says open source is good business. "Business leaders trying to build empires are arguing with radicals trying to change the world, who in turn are cajoling project managers just trying to ship on time. I maintain that, politics aside, for most software projects, some level of openness makes good business sense." (Thanks to Con Zymaris)

Comments (4 posted)

Linux Adoption

Linux gains modestly in retail systems (News.com)

News.com looks at an IHL study which shows Linux gaining ground in retail systems. "The number of computerized cash registers using the Linux operating system grew by 185 percent in 2002, according to a study released Wednesday, but Linux still has only 4 percent of the overall market."

Comments (1 posted)

Linux On Desktop Not There Yet But Getting Close, Says Ellison (TechWeb)

TechWeb is carrying Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's comments on desktop Linux. "Regarding Linux on the desktop, Ellison said: 'Star Office is almost usable. It's getting close. I play with it, and it's not awful.'"

Comments (2 posted)

Interviews

Interview: Eric Raymond goes back to basics (IBM developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks interviews Eric Raymond. "Open source advocate Eric Raymond has been spending more time lately in front of the computer than in front of the crowds. He says he's backed off on the public speaking engagements, in part because the travel schedule was exhausting, but also because the need for a 24x7 open source advocate is just not what it once was. The open source revolution is "basically on course," he says; the enterprise has embraced Linux, and these days very few people now need to be convinced that the open source methodology can create best-of-breed software."

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Miguel Interview, Part I (OSNews)

OSNews interviews Miguel de Icaza about Mono, .NET and dotGNU, Gnome and its relationship to KDE, and much more. "Mono would not be possible without the day-to-day work of hundreds of developers that make it happen. I suggest for those interested in a particular area in Mono, to check the ChangeLogs and the mailing list to identify the developer that has created this technology. Since Mono is a large community effort, I could not list the responsible developers on each section in the following answers as I would have liked to, because it would have taken me another week to reply."

Comments (2 posted)

Interview with Ove Kåven

Wine HQ features an interview with Wine developer Ove Kåven. "But on the Windows 3.11 machine, I had fun playing a MMORPG by Sierra, "The Realm", in my spare time. Then I thought, hmm, wouldn't it be nice if I could play this on the Linux machine, too? After considering it a bit, and finding the free time, I downloaded the Wine sources and started hacking. It took only a few weeks to get it to work, if I remember right. But by then, I was already hooked on the concept of Wine, and started trying to get Eudora to work, then Free Agent. Given that I had a level of experience with advanced Windows programming that few of the other contributors had at the time (and was able to fix the bugs that plagued Eudora and Free Agent), I soon decided to become a permanent member of the Wine team."

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Egoboo Developer Interview (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly features an interview with game developers Ben and Aaron Bishop. Having explored the world of Egoboo in Egoboo: The Cute Way to Dungeon Role Play, Howard Wen talks with Ben and Aaron Bishop, its lead developers, on portability and the hard lessons of game programming."

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The Suite Strategy of Konquering the Desktop (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor Network talks with KDE developers Ralf Nolden and David Faure as part of a report on the Linux Desktop. "When people talk about "the desktop" it is a kind of catch-all that describes all types of end-user situations. But quite a few segments exist within the "desktop" market, and they do not all share the same requirements."

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SuperVillain: He Has More Friends Now (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal talks with the creator of Ubergeek. "His name is Chris Hill and he describes himself as "an American living in London, England, originally hailing from Phoenix, Arizona." As for his day job, he says, "I'm a freelance web guy. I have my fingers in every pot. I host, design, manage projects and code. Mainly web sites for mid-sized corporations in the Southwest. I originally went to school for graphic design, but I've been into programming since I was young.""

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Resources

Linux Audio Musings

Dave Philips has updated his Linux Audio musings column for March/April, 2003. "The big news to report concerns the conference of Linux Audio Developers held at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, from the 14th through the 17th of March. This conference was the first of its kind and must be considered a complete success." See the Sound and MIDI Software For Linux site for more information.

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The Ultimate Linux Box: A Case Study (Linux Journal)

The Linux Journal, once again, seeks to build the ultimate Linux box. It will be a multiple-article process this year; the first looks at cases. "This year the idea is to build a multimedia workstation. We want a dual-head video card, professional quality USB sound, the latest in serial ATA RAID storage, a DVD recorder, some serious horsepower to drive it all and, of course, a nice case."

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Reviews

What's New in Python 2.3? (O'ReillyNet)

Here is an O'ReillyNet article written by Python in a Nutshell author Alex Martelli. "Is it worth upgrading? You bet. With Python 2.3, you can expect typical Python code to run about 15 percent to 20 percent faster than it did with 2.2, since a lot of care has been devoted to optimization and fine-tuning."

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StarOffice beta hits the ground running (IT News)

The Australian IT News looks at new beta releases from OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. "OpenOffice.org 1.1 and StarOffice 6.1 include support for a variety of new data formats, including the increasingly ubiquitous Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Macromedia Flash, DocBook, several PDA Office file formats, flat XML and XHTML; and support for over 10 new languages."

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Miscellaneous

Gnome flaw threatens Linux users (News.com)

News.com reports on a vulnerability in the Eye of Gnome program. "A vulnerability in the default image viewer for one of the two major Linux desktop systems could allow an attacker to execute code on a computer running the Gnome software, security group Core Security Technologies said in an advisory on Friday."

Comments (3 posted)

California prison program offers Mandrake Linux to schools (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux.com covers a program that puts Mandrake Linux into California schools. "California schools can choose to have the Mandrake Linux desktop pre-installed on reconditioned computer systems from an inmate-run refurbishing program.The computers are made available to eligible schools for free by the TTFA."

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Computerworld articles about Linux

Here are two Computerworld articles about Linux, thanks to Peter Link.

Getting Started With Linux looks at some big businesses that have switched to Linux for their operations. "The good news: You can do almost anything on Linux that you can do on a mainframe or distributed systems. The bad news: It will require you to learn some new concepts and terminology."

In Some Linux Issues Are No Big Deal for Newbies the focus is on protecting business data on Linux systems. "Among the areas you don't have to sweat, say customers, analysts and vendors, are backup and restore tasks, clustering and fail-over."

Comments (2 posted)

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