LWN Weekly Edition
Leading itemsSecurity
Kernel development
Distributions
Development
Linux in the news
Announcements
Letters to the editor
->Multipage format
This page
Previous weekFollowing week
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 1, 2003The legality of file sharing servicesThe entertainment industry has been engaging in a long and fierce campaign to make the writing of certain kinds of software illegal. In their view, tools like DeCSS or Elcomsoft's eBook processor are to be outlawed simply because they can be used to violate copyrights. File sharing software has also been targeted by this industry for the same reasons; people can use that software to share copyrighted files. If the RIAA and MPAA have their way, unrestricted file sharing systems would come under the same sort of legal sanctions as DeCSS.In this arena, however, the industry must work without one of its favorite weapons. File sharing networks just move bits around, they do not actively circumvent any sort of copy protection mechanism. As a result, they are not exposed to the anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA. So file sharing networks must be fought with traditional copyright law. As last week's ruling in the Grokster et al. case (available in PDF format) shows, the studios are going to have a harder time. File sharing networks, when properly constructed, are legal. What are the attributes of legal file sharing software? From this ruling, one concludes that such software must (1) have real non-infringing uses, (2) not be based on a central server architecture, and (3) not provide for control over what can or cannot be distributed through the network. The court was quite clear that the simple potential to infringe copyrights was not enough to condemn the software or the companies distributing it:
Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can
and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends.
Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from
companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of
which can be and are used to infringe copyrights.
Lawful uses of the software would not be enough, however, if the companies were actively involved in the distribution of copyrighted materials. The saving factor for the defendants here was that they do not maintain any sort of central server or index of the files available in the network, and are not involved in actual file transfers.
Users connect to the respective networks, select which files to
share, send and receive searches, and download files, all with no
material involvement of Defendants. If either Defendant closed
their doors and deactivated all computers within their control,
users of their products could continue sharing files with little or
no interruption.
Just as relevant is the fact that the the defendants had no control over what their users were sharing:
Defendants provide software that communicates across networks that
are entirely outside Defendants' control. In the case of Grokster,
the network is the proprietary FastTrack network, which is clearly
not controlled by Defendant Grokster. In the case of StreamCast,
the network is Gnutella, the open-source nature of which apparently
places it outside the control of any single entity.
This is a lesson which has been taught by the American courts more than once: control brings liability. If you do not have control over a system, you have a defense against liability for what others do with that system. There is no more convincing way of relinquishing control than by releasing the software under a free license. The plaintiffs put forward the claim that better control should have been put into the defendants' software. The court did not buy it, however:
The doctrine of vicarious infringement does not contemplate
liability based upon the fact that a product could be made such
that it is less susceptible to unlawful use, where no control over
the user of the product exists.
Current law, in other words, does not require that products be made in such a way that they cannot be used to infringe copyrights. Ed Felten has speculated that the entertainment industry will soon make efforts to change the law. This would be an unsurprising move, to say the least; that is, after all, what the CBDTPA would do. As one LWN commenter pointed out, pressing for that sort of law would break the RIAA's agreement with the BSA, where it said it would not push for further anti-copying measures. Relying on that agreement to hold sounds risky, however; chances are good that there will be new legislative efforts in the near future.
The Linux kernel and digital rights managementThe entertainment industry is certain to continue its attempts to obtain the protection it wants from the Congress and the courts. But the industry is also very interested in technical means of enforcing limited access to its products. As Lawrence Lessig pointed out years ago, the software running on our systems is the other component of the code which constrains our actions. There's no shortage of people, governments, and corporations who would like to use that code to control (and monitor) what we can do with our systems and the products we purchase.In most Linux users' view, there is little intersection between this sort of digital rights management (DRM) code and free software. After all, what's to keep us from simply yanking out any code which gets in the way of what we want to do? So some people were surprised when Linus Torvalds posted a message stating "I want to make it clear that DRM is perfectly ok with Linux!" There is, you see, a scenario where DRM software can be embedded within the Linux kernel, and there is very little that can be done about it. It is not that hard to build hardware that refuses to boot a kernel which has not been signed with a particular private key. That kernel could restrict access to devices, or refuse outright to run applications which have not also been signed with a given key. Such a kernel could take away all of the control we would otherwise have over our systems whether we like it or not. Yes, whoever distributes the kernel must provide source, but, without the private key (and, thus, the ability to create a signed, binary kernel), a Linux user cannot make changes and get them to run on the target system. Linus gives two reasons for his position: distributing signed binaries is acceptable under the GPL, and he does not want to be in a position of saying what can or cannot be done with the Linux kernel. The GPL argument is interesting. Anybody who distributes a GPL-licensed program in binary form must make the associated source available. That source is defined by the GPL as:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus
any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable.
One could well question whether a private key used to sign the binary is covered by this language. Most commenters seem to think that it is not. If the GPL has nothing to say about keys, then the distribution of signed binaries (without the associated private keys) is clearly within the bounds of the license. If a private key is considered part of the program's installation scripts, there could be a problem. Linus has stated his opinion, but he cannot speak for the others who hold copyrights on code in the kernel. One of those people could conceivably mount a legal challenge should he or she object to the signed binary distribution. Kernel hackers in general seem uninclined to make this sort of challenge, but one never knows. Linus's other reason - not wanting to regulate what others can do with Linux - goes to the core of the philosophy of free software. Any free (or open source) software definition will include a statement that the license cannot discriminate based on the use of the software. The purpose is to exclude licenses that, say, prohibit use by the military, by people with the wrong religion, citizens of certain countries, or drinkers of light beer. Similarly, Linus does not want to discriminate against those who would only allow certain software to run on their systems. Besides, the techniques which implement DRM can also be used to implement a higher level of security for Linux users. A system that can only run signed executables is certainly going to be more secure than one which will run any binary presented to it. Some users may well want that kind of security, and they should be able to have it. It would be difficult to allow this sort of use while simultaneously forbidding DRM uses. Ultimately, it comes down to what people are willing to buy. In an ideal world, Linux-based systems which implement oppressive DRM schemes would languish on the shelves, while those which are better suited to the needs and wishes of their users will succeed. The sad fact is that things often do not work that way; when products like DVD players, the Xbox, or Tivo are what's available, that is what people will buy. The marketplace does not work as well as one would like in this regard. But the GPL is not the tool that can fix it.
When "Free" Isn't Good Enough[This article was contributed by Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier] The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) may not be suitable if you're hoping to have your documentation included in Debian "main." The nature of the problem is described in this proposed statement written by Anthony Towns. If adopted as an "official" statement from the Debian project, GFDL-licensed documents will find themselves excluded from the free portion of the Debian distribution. The conflict between the GFDL and the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) comes in when the author includes "Invariant" sections or an Acknowledgements or Dedications section. These are described in section 4 of the GFDL. Essentially, the GFDL requires that these sections not be modified or removed, which goes against the (DFSG) requirement that a license "must allow modifications and derived works." One may avoid the conflict by simply not including the sections that are troublesome, or by using another license. However, that may not satisfy some authors and definitely doesn't solve the problem for documents already accepted. For many documents, this may not be a problem. If an author insists on using the GFDL and one of the troublesome sections, users can simply grab the documentation elsewhere or even as a Debian package just by getting the package from the "non-free" collection of Debian packages. However, when another program includes the documentation, it may make things a bit trickier. According to Richard Braakman the GFDL puts a "wall between documentation and code."
The GFDL is incompatible with the GPL, and many of its requirements
don't translate well to functional software. This makes it difficult to
embed such documents into a program, for example in order to present
on-line help. In the other direction, many documents contain example
code, sometimes sizeable chunks of it, which will be unusable by default
unless specifically licensed otherwise.
Braakman also raises a few other issues that he considers problematic with the GFDL. One that is interesting to note is the idea that "languages other than English are poorly supported."
The GNU FDL defines special roles for several kinds of sections (such as
"History" and "Dedications"), but refers to these sections by their
names in English. A document under the GNU FDL will have to include a
section with the title "History", regardless of the language it's
written in.
One could ask whether the Debian project should make an exception for documentation. The rules that apply to code may not work so well for documentation, particularly when good documentation is even harder to come by than good code. The Debian developers are not known for compromising on their principles, however. It will be interesting to see what the final outcome of this discussion will be, but it looks entirely likely that the Debian project may decide that one of the GNU Free licenses is, in fact, not free enough.
Spam for Linux consultantsThe Linux Consultants Guide (once the Consultants HOWTO) is a longstanding resource for Linux consultants who wish to get their names out to potential clients. In recent times, this guide has been maintained by the folks at Command Prompt; it is still part of the Linux Documentation Project collection.It turns out that there is a price for being listed in the Guide, however: commercial email from Command Prompt. This mail contains the following text:
You have received this press release because you were are listed in
the Linux Consultants Guide database. If you do not wish to receive
communications from Command Prompt, Inc -- you may ask to be
removed from the Linux Consultants Guide.
The only way to avoid receiving spam from Command Prompt, in other words, is to be removed from the Guide altogether. We asked Command Prompt about this policy, and were told: "Nothing is truly free, not even Linux. You have to pay somewhere, whether it be mental/physical resources, money, time... but there is always a cost. Our cost to our listers is communication." They also noted that this policy "is not really published anywhere". A commercial email every month or so could well be a fair price for inclusion in the consultants database. But people should be informed of the bargain before it is made. As it is, nobody who is receiving this commercial mail has actually agreed to be on that list. Given that the document's license also violates the Linux Documentation Project's guidelines (it prohibits distribution in printed or modified form), one could well ask if the Consultants Guide should still be part of the LDP collection.
Security Brief items Fixing spam with the legal codeAs the spam situation continues to worsen, more people are looking farther afield for potential solutions. Recently there has been a new surge in interest in legal solutions. When all else fails, pass a law.One of the current approaches is the Lofgren law (backed by Lawrence Lessig) which would require all spam to carry an "ADV:" tag in the subject line. Recipients of untagged spam could report it to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and, perhaps, receive a portion of any fines collected from the spammer. The bill has numerous problems, including an overbroad definition of "spam" and the fact that the FTC already is unable to do anything about the vast number of complaints it receives. The state of Virginia has taken things further with a law that makes spamming with forged headers into a felony. Spammers could find themselves spending the next five years contemplating the benefits of anatomical enlargement in a prison cell. To qualify for this penalty, a spammer would have to send out at least 10,000 messages with forged headers in a single day. Creating legal tools to shut down spammers may be helpful in a few cases, but it is hard to see much long-term benefit coming from the legislative approach. What reason is there to believe that the legal system will be any more effective at shutting down spam than it is, say, at stopping the distribution of DeCSS? Even after an international campaign making even linking to DeCSS a crime, the DVD decryption software remains readily accessible. When all a spammer needs is a dialup connection and an open relay anywhere in the world, the effectiveness of any country's laws will be limited.
New vulnerabilities balsa: imap code buffer overflow
Bugzilla: several vulnerabilities.
Monkey HTTPd Remote Buffer Overflow
PoPTop: remotely exploitable buffer overflow
squirrelmail: more cross-site scripting vulnerabilities
Updated vulnerabilities apache 2.x: denial of service
Heap corruption vulnerability in at
bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries
BitchX - denial of service
Canna server: exploitable buffer overrun
dvips: command execution vulnerability
ethereal - format string vulnerability
evolution: multiple vulnerabilities
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
fetchmail: buffer overflow
file - memory allocation problem, stack overflow
GNU fileutils race condition
gkrellm-newsticker - multiple vulnerabilities
Potential remote root exploit in glibc
glibc: DNS stub resolvers contain buffer overflow vulnerability
glibc: integer overflow in the xdrmem_getbytes() function
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
IMP - SQL injection vulnerability
kde: arbitrary code execution
kerberos - cryptographic weakness
kernel - ptrace-related vulnerability
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow
LPRng: insecure temporary file
lprold - buffer overflow in lprm
lynx: CRLF injection vulnerability
perl-MailTools: remote command execution
man - code execution vulnerability
mgetty spool permission
micq: Denial of service
mime-support: insecure temporary file creation
mysql - configuration file vulnerability
nethack: buffer overflow
NetPBM: math overflow errors
netscape-flash: buffer overflow
net-snmp: denial of service vulnerability
openssl: local and remote extraction of RSA private key
pam_xauth: root exploit
PHP: vulnerability in mail function
PostgreSQL - more buffer overflows
Local arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Python
rinetd: incorrect memory resizing
Multiple-use vulnerability in Safe.pm
samba: remotely-exploitable buffer overrun
sendmail - buffer overrun
slocate - buffer overflow
snort - multiple vulnerabilities
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump - infinite loop
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
typespeed: buffer overflow
vim - modeline vulnerability
vixie-cron: Local vulnerability
vnc - replay and cookie vulnerabilities
wget:directory traversal bug
Problems with libgtop_daemon
Wwwoffle remote privilege escalation vulnerability
zlib 1.1.4 has buffer overrun
Events Call for Papers: Chaos Communication Club Camp 2003The Chaos Communication Club Camp is happening near Berlin on August 7 through 10. The call for papers has gone out, with papers due by July 1. "Lectures are expected to be highly relevant in practice or better be darn funny. Sales droids have been known to disappear without traces on past events."
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current development kernel remains 2.5.68; Linus has made no releases since April 19. His BitKeeper repository is full of new patches, however, including a FireWire update, some IDE cleanups, more devfs cleanups, a rework of the driver core class code, some new libfs helpers which make it easier to create in-kernel virtual filesystems, a big tty layer cleanup, a change to the interrupt handler prototype (see last week's LWN Kernel Page), runtime barrier instruction patching (which allows optimal performance on different processors without the need to ship multiple kernels), more preparation for an expanded dev_t type, some swapoff improvements, a new set of memory allocation flags (also covered last week), and numerous other fixes and updates.The current stable kernel is 2.4.20; Marcelo has promised a second 2.4.21 release candidate shortly, but it had not been sent out as of this writing. The current 2.4 prepatch from Alan Cox is 2.4.20-rc1-ac3; it includes a merge of the XFS filesystem, the current ACPI code, and the usual collection of fixes and updates.
Kernel development news The 2.6.0 "must fix" listOne of the important steps in getting a 2.6.0 release out the door is creating an organized list of crucial outstanding issues. For this development cycle, that job seems to have fallen to Andrew Morton, who has posted the first version of a "must-fix" list for 2.6.0. It's a long list, even though it does not include routine bugs kept in the kernel bugzilla system.Many of the outstanding issues can be found in the block I/O subsystem - not surprising, considering how much things have changed there. RAID (especially RAID0) still has some problems with large requests. CD burning can still hang. IDE tagged command queueing still does not work correctly; the solution here may be to just take it out for 2.6. Work in I/O schedulers is still ongoing; some of the schedulers could use some improvement, and there needs to be a mechanism for choosing between them. The floppy driver is still bug-ridden. And the IDE subsystem still has a long list of things that need to be fixed. In the filesystem arena, ext3 still lacks a working data=journal mode. ext3 also still uses the big kernel lock, with significant work required for its removal. There are race conditions with asynchronous I/O and truncate() which can corrupt filesystems. NFS still has a number of outstanding issues. Networking has a potential deadlock for UDP applications. IPSec has a number of outstanding problems including a substandard key management implementation, "mysterious TCP hangs," the lack of an MPLS implementation, and incomplete IPv6 support. In the kernel core, there are still complaints about poor interactive response out of the new scheduler. The memory overcommit accounting is not as accurate as it needs to be. There are still some issues with the reverse-mapping VM (and the later object-based rmap patch) which can lead to performance problems in some situations. Then, there is still the 64-bit dev_t work; "...with the recent rise of the neo-viro I'm not sure where things are at." Power management still needs quite a bit of work. Much of the power management core code remains to be merged, there needs to be a user-space interface for power state transitions, and quite a bit of device support work needs to be done. Restoration of video state appears to be particularly tricky. There is also an effort afoot to rewrite the software suspend code in a better way. An issue which should not be overlooked is the large number of fixes from the 2.4 series which have not yet made it into 2.5. Those all need to be pulled together, ported forward, and merged. The above is a summary; the full list is rather longer. But, then, these lists are always long until the release gets close.
Suspending the systemThe software suspend patch was first merged in 2.5.18. It offers the ability to suspend any Linux system to disk, whether that system has hardware suspend support or not. It works by doing the following:
When the system is next booted, it detects the saved image in the swap partition and reverses the above process. If all goes well, the system comes back to life looking mostly as it did before being suspended. It all seems like a reasonable system if you don't mind that it does not work on SMP boxes, it does not work with high memory, it only works on the x86 architecture, and it requires an adequately-sized swap partition (a regular swap file can lead to corruption on some filesystems). It also fails badly if it cannot find enough swap space to save the system image. Work is in progress to address some of these issues. The swap space problem, for example, could be easily solved by simply setting aside a special partition for saving the system image. Many other systems work that way now. Given the size of modern disks, setting aside a partition with enough room to hold the system's RAM should not be that big of a deal. Saving to a swap file is a harder problem. Before the system can be resumed, the host filesystem must be mounted so that the swap file can be accessed. If a journaling filesystem is involved, remounting will clean out the journal, making changes to the filesystem. Once the system image is restored, however, the kernel will expect the filesystem to be in its previous state - before the journal was replayed. And that leads to filesystem corruption. Possible solutions include remembering block numbers for the swap file (as lilo does for kernel images) or setting up a way to mount the filesystem without replaying the journal. In the end, however, what may really happen is that most of the current suspend code will be replaced. Patrick Mochel is working on a general power management framework for Linux (that was, after all, the original purpose of all that driver model work he has been doing). Included therein is a flexible suspend implementation that can be tuned to the needs of the user and the abilities of the hardware; if the hardware can save and restore memory itself, there's little point in having the kernel duplicate that ability. So, in the new scheme, suspending (and resuming) the system becomes another set of operations that can be hidden behind a structure full of function pointers. Systems which can handle power management entirely through ACPI calls run with one set of operations, while those requiring the software suspend capability can have it. As part of this work, the software suspend code has been substantially reworked and cleaned up. At this point, though, the basic technique used by the code is the same, and it will suffer from many of the same problems. This work is not yet complete, however; expect it to be improved further before heading toward the mainline 2.5 kernel. Those wanting to look at Patrick's work can get it with BitKeeper at ldm.bkbits.net/linux-2.5-power; your editor is not aware of a non-BK copy available at this time.
Driver porting Driver porting: Network drivers
Network device allocationIn 2.6, network devices are part of the wider kernel device model. There are advantages to this change, including the fact that network device information is available under /sys/class/net/. But hooking into the driver model poses a new set of potential race conditions which were not there before. What happens if your driver module is removed while a process has an associated sysfs file open? Network drivers are more susceptible than most to this problem because the networking subsystem does not restrict the unloading of drivers via the module use count.The only way to properly deal with this problem is to allocate network devices in a dynamic manner, and to let the device model code figure out when to free them. To that end, all net_device structures must be allocated with the new alloc_netdev() function:
struct net_device *alloc_netdev(int sizeof_priv, const char *name,
void (*setup)(struct net_device *));
Here, sizeof_priv is the size of the structure that you would otherwise allocate and assign to the net_device priv field; alloc_netdev() will allocate that memory for you as well. name is the name of the device (a format string is acceptible, so something like "eth%d" works), and setup is a function to be called to complete the initialization of the net_device structure. The setup function can be the same function that, in older drivers, you may have assigned to the init field in the net_device structure. For Ethernet devices, there is a simpler form:
struct net_device *alloc_etherdev(int sizeof_priv);
Calling this function is equivalent to:
my_dev = alloc_netdev(sizeof(my_priv), "eth%d", setup_ether);
Either way, when you are done with the device (i.e. after you have called unregister_netdev()), you must free it with:
void free_netdev(struct net_device *dev);
Note that it would be an error to free the priv field separately - let free_netdev() take care of it.
NAPIThe most significant change, perhaps, is the addition of NAPI ("New API"), which is designed to improve the performance of high-speed networking. NAPI works through:
NAPI was also backported to the 2.4.20 kernel. The following is a whirlwind tour of what must be done to create a NAPI-compliant network driver. More details can be found in networking/NAPI_HOWTO.txt in the kernel documentation directory, and, of course, in the source of drivers which have been converted. Note that use of NAPI is entirely optional, drivers will work just fine (though perhaps a little more slowly) without it. The first step is to make some changes to your driver's interrupt handler. If your driver has been interrupted because a new packet is available, that packet should not be processed at the time. Instead, your driver should disable any further "packet available" interrupts and tell the networking subsystem to poll your driver shortly to pick up all available packets. Disabling interrupts, of course, is a hardware-specific matter between the driver and the adaptor. Arranging for polling is done with a call to:
void netif_rx_schedule(struct net_device *dev);
An alternative form you'll see in some drivers is:
if (netif_rx_schedule_prep(dev))
__netif_rx_schedule(dev);
The end result is the same either way. (If netif_rx_schedule_prep() returns zero, it means that there was already a poll scheduled, and you should not have received another interrupt). The next step is to create a poll() method for your driver; it's job is to obtain packets from the network interface and feed them into the kernel. The poll() prototype is:
int (*poll)(struct net_device *dev, int *budget);
The poll() function should process all available incoming packets, much as your interrupt handler might have done in the pre-NAPI days. There are some exceptions, however:
The networking subsystem promises that poll() will not be invoked simultaneously (for the same device) on multiple processors. The final step is to tell the networking subsystem about your poll() method. This, of course, is done in your initialization code when all the other struct net_device fields are set:
dev->poll = my_poll;
dev->weight = 16;
The weight field is a measure of the importance of this interface; the number stored here will turn out to be the same number your driver finds in the quota field when poll() is called. If you forget to initialize weight and leave it at zero, poll() will never be called (voice of experience here). Gigabit adaptor drivers tend to set weight to 64; smaller values can be used for slower media.
Receiving packets in non-interrupt modeNetwork drivers tend to send packets into the kernel while running in interrupt mode. There are occasions where, instead, packets will be received by a driver running in process context. There is no problem with this mode of operation, but it is possible that the networking software interrupt which performs packet processing may be delayed, reducing performance. To avoid this problems, drivers handing packets to the kernel outside of interrupt context should use:
int netif_rx_ni(struct sk_buff *skb);
instead of netif_rx(). Other 2.5 featuresA number of other networking features were added in 2.5. Here is a quick summary of developments that driver developers may want to be aware of.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Benchmarks and bugs
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials A Look at Conectiva Linux[This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar] With the release last week of Conectiva Linux 9, it might be a good time to take a look at the project and its future prospects.Conectiva, S.A., (conectiva.com.br), a private company located in Curitiba, Brazil, was founded in 1995 by Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo. As was often the case in those days, Red Hat Linux was taken as the base for the new distribution, whose main objective was to bring Linux to the vast numbers of Portuguese and Spanish-speakers in Latin America. Following rapid internationalization of many applications and documentation was the first stable release announced in October 1997 - Conectiva Linux 1.0. Now if you happen to conclude that Conectiva is just another Red Hat clone with nothing much to offer to the Linux community, then stop right there. Because Conectiva is, in fact, one of the most avid contributors to the world of Free Software and one of the leading innovators in the industry. Examples abound:
Conectiva doesn't appear to be in a good financial shape. While this is hardly unusual as Linux distributions go -- even better-known Linux companies are struggling -- it does cast a shadow of doubt on Conectiva's future. Back in the days of versions 6.0, 7.0 and 8, Conectiva used to push its distribution internationally with some vigor. Besides its native Portuguese, the distribution has always fully supported Spanish and English. But a large portion of the Spanish and English language content on Conectiva's web site is no longer maintained. Even more surprising is the absence of any Spanish or English press releases about last week's release of Conectiva Linux 9. As such, the event was largely unnoticed by most international Linux news sites, and even many Brazilian Linux web sites have barely mentioned the release. With version 9, Conectiva seems to have placed quantity above quality. The distribution now comes on 4 binary CDs, all of which are required for installation (surely, a strange decision from the inventors of apt-rpm!). While the installation is very straightforward and the desktop as pretty as ever, it seems that some obvious bugs have made it into the stable release (e.g. my tried and tested XF86Config file fails to bring up X Window and OpenOffice crashes every time I attempt to select a font from the drop-down box). The default menus are a hard-to-navigate mess and there is no relation between installed applications and their presence in the menus. But perhaps the worst of all is the absence of a user community, a forum to ask questions and offer help, a place to share one's joys and frustrations. And no, Conectiva's own mailing lists will not come to the rescue -- the truth is that even there, Conectiva related traffic is far outnumbered by posts dealing with other distributions. What can Conectiva do? Creating a user community should be the company's first priority. The web site needs plenty of work - documentation, FAQs, user-contributed areas... Forums and properly categorized mailing lists dealing with different issues are a must, tri-lingual ones would be awesome. Then some PR. These measures don't take much time and effort to implement and once they are done, users are likely to return -- to what is probably the world's most underrated Linux distribution.
More on APT-RPMThe previous article calls APT-RPM one of Conectiva's best known software utilities, and references some articles about it which are good, but dated. As it happens, this LWN editor has been looking at APT-RPM recently, so this seemed like a good time for APT-RPM update.APT-RPM is an active development project headed by Gustavo Niemeyer, who started working on the project at the beginning of the 0.5.4 series. The Freshmeat project page shows the release of version 0.5.5cnc5 on April 14, 2003. The APT-RPM mailing list is a good place to watch if you want to stay current. Gustavo has been busy adding many interesting features like the new apt-shell tool, or the recently added scripting capabilities, which will allow users to customize advanced setups.
Distribution News Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News for April 29, 2003 is out. This week's edition begins with a look at an article by Robin Miller on why programmers write Free Software (LWN daily readers it will find familiar); and a similar article on Cybernaut which comes to different conclusions; with a pointer to the Slashdot discussion of both articles. Also this week: Removal of Pike 0.6 and Roxen 1.3; Debian Free Software License?; Proposed Statement about the GNU FDL; Python Volunteers for AGNULA wanted; and much more.Otavio Salvador reports that the DDTP team and the Debian-BR project have released an experimental version of APT featuring support for translated package descriptions. Somehow we missed last week's DWN which looks at software patents and Free software, and other topics.
EnGarde Secure LinuxGuardian Digital launched the next generation of the Community edition of EnGarde Secure Linux. The Community Edition of EnGarde is suitable for individuals, students, security enthusiasts, and those wishing to evaluate the level of security and ease of management available in Guardian Digital enterprise products.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 17The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of April 28, 2003 is out. This week's topics include some proposed changes to how ebuilds are managed; mailing list changes and the early addition of tcl/tk.
Mandrake LinuxThe Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for April 28, 2003 is out. This week's top story is the released of Mandrake Linux 9.1 PPC.There are a number of updated packages available, fixing various bugs in Mandrake Linux 9.1. New ldetect packages are available for Mandrake Linux 9.0, 9.1, Corporate Server 2.1 which fix a bug that could freeze systems when harddrake probed for PCI information on the computer.
SuSE Linux Announces Carrier Grade Linux edition of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8SuSE Linux announced market availability for its Carrier-Grade Linux (CGL) edition of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, Powered by UnitedLinux. Scalable for all requirements and infrastructures, CGL will enable businesses to develop and deploy advanced voice, data and wireless applications on a standards-based, modular communications platforms.
New Distributions SnapGear Embedded LinuxSnapGear has gotten into the embedded distribution business with the announcement (click below) of SnapGear Embedded Linux. It appears to be a 100% free distribution supporting several processors (with an emphasis, perhaps, on MMU-less processors - the principal developers of uClinux are at SnapGear).
Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS)Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) is a project with the aim of assisting LFS users to go beyond the base system. It contains a broad range of instrutions for installing and configuring various packages on top of a base LFS system. BLFS 1.0 was released April 28, 2003 under the original BSD License.
Minor distribution updates Astaro Security LinuxAstaro Security Linux has released v4.003 with major security fixes. "Changes: This Up2Date fixed several vulnerabilites in OpenSSL and PPTP and some bugs in the SMTP virus scan, increased performance of antispam, and updated PGP keys for the Up2Date packages."
Damn Small LinuxDamn Small Linux has released v0.3.7 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release has a small but significant addition: a hard drive install script."
Debian-HamDebian-Ham has released v0.5. "Changes: All of the binaries and libraries on the root floppy have been updated. Tlf is now statically linked against ncurses, so there is almost 400k free to run a contest. Cwdaemon is now the default keyer."
Fli4lFli4l (Floppy ISDN/DSL) has released v2.0.8 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This release has some bugfixes for the bootscript, in the fli4lctrl script, and in the Windows-IMONC. There is a new version of flicp (0.2). imond & ens are now logging to Syslog correctly. The hd package has a change for syslinux to not use the msdos.o kernel module, and now performs more error checking."
freevixfreevix has released v0.6 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Operation from cramfs/tmpfs, booting on 64MB RAM systems, Samba client binaries, an easier install system, the latest X version and VIA drivers, the latest Freevo version, and bugfixes."
KNOPPIXKNOPPIX has released v3.2-2003-04-28 with software updates.
Linux From ScratchLinux From Scratch has released v4.1 with minor bugfixes.
Mindi LinuxMindi Linux has released v0.84 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This release supports Debian and other non-standard Linux distributions more effectively."
MorphixMorphix has released v0.3-5 with major bugfixes. "Changes: A number of annoying bugs were fixed and preliminary ALSA support was activated. dillo was added to Light, K3B was added to Heavy, and Pingus 0.6 is included in Game."
MoviXMoviX has released v0.8.0pre4 with major bugfixes. "Changes: MPlayer was upgraded to 0.90. faad/Real support was added. DeCSS support was removed. Modules for i815 and Epia/Trident video cards were added. Automatic DMA activation was removed. The TV boot label was fixed. Support for DVD playback was improved. Support for SCSI CD-ROMs was improved. Many minor & major bugs were fixed, including video card detection and software video rescaling."
Slackware Live CDSlackware Live CD has released v2.9.0.13 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release has minor bugfixes with USB mouse detection. It adds KDE 3.1.1, k3b (a CD burning GUI for KDE), and Netscape 7.02. All development packages (the /d directory and xfree86-devel) have been removed."
TopologiLinuxTopologiLinux has released v3.1.0 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release adds some extra precompiled kernels, KDE 3.1.1a, and some other updates. It is released as 2 CDs (one install CD and one extra CD). The LITE version has been released."
uClinuxuClinux has released v2.5.68-uc0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This version was updated to the latest development kernel."
Distribution reviews Desktop/LX Wins MicroMart Editor's Choice!The UK technology seller and magazine, MicroMart, reviewed Red Hat Linux 9 Personal, SuSE Linux 8.2 Personal, Mandrake Linux 9.1 Standard, Lycoris Desktop/LX and LindowsOS 3.0, and awarded the Editor's Choice award to Lycoris Desktop/LX. "All of these distributions have their own positives and negatives, but for anyone looking for an simple, easy to use system Lycoris Desktop/LX is the clear winner. It is clearly developed from the ground-up to be easy to use for anyone aged 9 to 90."
Review: Morphix 0.3.4 (NewsForge)NewsForge takes a look at Morphix. A bug fix release of Morphix (0.3.5) is now available, and many of the bugs mentioned in this article have already been fixed. (See Morphix entry under Minor Distribution Updates) "I was impressed with what I saw in Morphix -- a LiveCD distribution that could be used not only by curious home users and Linux evangelists, but by businesses wishing to set up ultra-cheap workstations. Imagine having the workstations at your office loaded up with RAM, not needing a hard drive, and having everyone able to carry their systems around on a CD-ROM."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development The OSAF's Chandler PIMLast week, the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) released version 0.1 of Chandler, an open-source Personal Information Management (PIM) system. The![[OSAF]](/images/ns/osaf.jpg){kind=small}
Product Roadmap shows the long-term release plan.
As Chandler matures, it will be aimed at increasingly larger audiences.
The release levels are aimed at five classes of users:
developers, early adopters, higher ed users,
mainstream users, and conservatives.
The first release opens the project up for general consumption by
developers:
While we are still very early in the design and
implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more
fully open project. We have made the release available for download,
opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code
repository.
Chandler is written in the Python language and uses the wxPython GUI toolkit. The Chandler Application Architecture Overview gives a pictorial view of the various components that make up of the application. The Chandler Current Vision document describes the aim of the project.
Chandler is intended to be an open source personal information manager for
email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as
well as a platform for developing information management applications. It
is currently under development and will run on Windows, Mac, and
Linux-based PC's.
Chandler differs from conventional PIM solutions in the following way:
With Chandler, users will be able to organize diverse
kinds of information for their own convenience -- not the computer's
convenience. Chandler will have a rich ability not only to associate and
interconnect items, but also to gather and collect related items in a
single place creating a context sensitive "view" of many types of data,
mixing-and-matching email, mailing lists, instant messages, appointments,
contacts, tasks, free-form notes, blogs, web pages, documents,
spreadsheets, slide shows, bookmarks, photos, MP3's, and so on (and
on). Data in Chandler is stored on repositories on the user's local
machine, on others' machines, and on shared resources such as servers.
This is a very different approach from that of today's common PIMs. For example, users can usually only view a given email message in one specific folder, grouped only with other email messages. In the user-centric world of Chandler, the basis of the relatedness of items is completely at the users discretion and is merely facilitated, rather than imposed by the software. For more information, see the Chandler README document. Chandler has been licensed under Version 2 of the GPL.
System Applications Clusters and Grids NSF Middleware Initiative third releaseThe (US) National Science Foundation has announced the third release of its Middleware Initiative software tool collection. These tools are aimed at the creation of national research grids, and thus address a number of access and "single signon" tasks that are also of interest elsewhere. There are also improved versions of tools like MPI. More information can be found on the NSF Middleware Initative site.
Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe PostgreSQL Weekly News for April 23, 2003 looks at the possiblility of a version 7.3.3 release in the next few weeks; a revised Front-End/Back-End protocol is in the works; plus miscellaneous fixes, new documentation, and much more.
knoda 0.6 releasedVersion 0.6 of Knoda, a KDE database frontend for various databases, has been released. Numerous bugs have been fixed.
Electronics Icarus Verilog 20030427 availableRelease 20030427 of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler has been released. The changes are documented in the release notes.
Hamlib 1.1.4 releasedVersion 1.1.4 of Hamlib has been announced. "Hamlib provides a unified environment for the development of radio and rotator control applications. Release 1.1.4 includes improved rotator support, important build fixes for gcc-3.x, *BSD, Mac OS X and Cygwin(win32) platforms. Besides improvements and bug fixes, some experimental work has been started on SDR, stay tuned."
Mail Software bogofilter 0.12.1 - new current releaseA new release of bogofilter, an email spam filter, is available. "The bogofilter package implements a fast Bayesian spam filter along the lines suggested by Paul Graham in his article 'A Plan For Spam' . It is written in C."
Mailman 2.1.2 has been releasedVersion 2.1.2 of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager, has been released. Version 2.1.2 is a bug fix release, including language updates and two new languages, Portuguese/Portugal and Polish. It is recommend that all Mailman 2.1.x sites upgrade to version 2.1.2.
Peer to Peer Furthur 1.7.2 has been releasedVersion 1.7.2 of Furthur has been released. "Furthur is a peer-to-peer music sharing tool that allows fully enforcable legal sharing, instant downloads with no waiting lists, in-depth cataloging functionality, and detailed attribute searches. Upgrading to this version is recommended for all existing users."
Printing CUPS 1.1.19rc3 availableVersion 1.1.19rc3 of the Cups print system has been released. A number of bug fixes and enhancements are included. See the release notes for the full description of the changes.
LinuxPrinting.org newsThe latest news from LinuxPrinting.org includes the release of the Foomatic 3.0.0rc2 printer database, and improved Adobe complance for the Foomatic PPD files.
LPRng-3.8.21 releasedVersion 3.8.21 of the LPRng print system has been released. Change information is in the source code.
Science An SVG Case Study: Integrated, Dynamic Avalanche Forecasting (O'Reilly)Chris Cochella and Tyler Cruickshank piece together Perl, MySQL, and SVG to keep track of high country snow conditions. "A wise backcountry skier is always aware of the specific local and regional weather conditions in the mountains that contribute to avalanche danger. For winter backcountry enthusiasts like us, the problem is that all of the weather data available (i.e., National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's National Weather Service) from remote mountain stations and ski areas is scattered throughout the Web -- in various formats, of varying frequency, contained in difficult to read text files, and differing in measured parameters. Cobbling this information together at 6AM prior to skiing is not our idea of fun. Thus, our goal is to collect all of this data in one place and then graphically display related parameters in a Web information appliance. We call this appliance the Avalanche Meteorology Toolkit (AMT)."
Web Site Development Quixote 0.6 final releasedVersion 0.6 of the Quixote web development framework has been released. This release includes a new template syntax, automatic HTML escaping, a new lazy module importing mechanism, better support for multi-threaded applications, support for running under Twisted, and several other improvements.
Aeger CMS Japanese translationA Japanese language translation is now available for the Aeger Content Management System.
Bricolage 1.6.0 Busts Loose (use Perl)Use Perl has an announcement for a new version of the Perl-based content management system, Bricolage. "The Bricolage team is pleased to announce the release of Bricolage 1.6.0. This is the first new stable release of Bricolage since the release of version 1.4.6 in January, and the first major release since 1.4.0 in September, 2002. The result of contributions from Bricolage community members from around the world, version 1.6.0 is the most full-featured, best performing, most stable version of Bricolage yet."
ht://Check 1.2.1 is outVersion 1.2.1 of ht://Check is out. "ht://Check is more than a link checker. It's a console application written for GNU/Linux systems in C++ and derived from the best search engine available on the Internet for free: ht://Dig. It is very useful for Webmasters who want to control and monitor their Websites, in order to discover unexpected broken links, but also interesting information from the data they have in the form of HyperText documents."
moregroupware 0.6.7 released (SourceForge)Version 0.6.7 of moregroupware has been announced. "moregroupware is a web-based groupware package, written in PHP4. moregroupware includes modules like webmail, notes, todo, contacts, project management, calendar and others. The most important improvements to the 0.6.7 release are those made to the files module and the new setup, logging and messaging code."
CMF 1.4beta1 Released (ZopeMembers)Version 1.4 beta 1 of the Zope Content Management Framework (CMF) has been announced. See the CHANGES file for details.
TownPortal 0.3 releasedVersion 0.3 of TownPortal is available. "The TownPortal developer team has released the first beta release of TownPortal, a free portal system for villages and local communities. The beta release is mostly feature-complete, but lots of tuning will still be needed for installation and user interfaces. Midgard experience is recommended for installing and using the package."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications ecasound 2.2.3 releasedA new version of ecasound, a multi-track audio processing utility, has been released. Here is the change summary: "User-friendliness of 'jack_auto' and 'resample' audio objects has been improved. Compile-time support added for both JACK -0.50 and 0.60-. Python-only implementation of ECI is now selected by default. Work-around included for a bug in ALSA -0.9.1 that broke xrun handling for record and playback. Lots of small bugs have been fixed in the build process. The SIGFPE bug that occured on FreeBSD systems is now fixed, as is the non-aligned access problem on Alphas."
gAlan 0.3.0-test3 releasedVersion 0.3.0-test3 of gAlan has been released. "gAlan is an audio-processing tool (both on-line and off-line) for X windows and Win32. It allows you to build synthesisers, effects chains, mixers, sequencers, drum-machines etc. etc. in a modular fashion by linking together icons representing primitive audio-processing components."
Rosegarden 4-0.9 releasedVersion 4-0.9 of Rosegarden, a MIDI and audio sequencer and notation editor, has been released. "This release shows a signifi[c]ant step towards our final 1.0 release goals and includes much improved performance notation support, improved device/instrument management, improved audio capabilities (including fully working LADSPA plugins, stereo audio recording and mixing), more studio features (improved bank editing and device information import and sharing), much improved lilypond export, a variety of translations (Russian, Spanish, and German), MIDI synchronisation infrastructure and much more."
SoundFontCombi v0.012 releasedVersion 0.012 of SoundFontCombi is available. SoundFontCombi is a router of ALSA based sequencer clients that has a graphical user interface.
Sweep 0.8.2 releasedVersion 0.8.2 of Sweep, an audio file editor, is available. Changes include support for the ALSA 0.9 sound drivers, Internationalization (i18n) improvements, and more.
Tekno Composer 0.4A new version of Tekno Composer has been announced. "Tekno Composer takes the ideas of real-time music composition for drum and bass. It features a synthesizer, a drum machine, and a sample player. It allows you to play and record loops in real-time using pattern based sequencing. It is an ALSA midi sequencer app, and will use ALSA and has support for Jack Audio."
Desktop Environments Proposed Modules List Update (GnomeDesktop)GNOME Desktop has published a long list of proposed modules that are to be included in the next major GNOME release. Included are several web browsers, a calculator, a video conferencing utility, system tools, a PDF viewer, a CD burner, and more.
Kernel Cousin KDE Reborn, #47 is UpIssue #47 of Kernel Cousin KDE has been announced. "Russell Miller recently took over as maintainer and editor for KC KDE (from a long line of predecessors) and has lost no time in releasing issue #47! This week he covers everything from KImageEdit MMX optimizations to KDE hacker Ellis Whitehead's joyful step up in life."
KDE Traffic #48The April 26, 2003 edition of KDE Traffic is out. Topics include: Moving aKtion to kdeblackhole, KMail SSH Tunneling HOWTO, and KAutoConfigDialog Howto.
KDE-CVS-Digest for April 25, 2003The April 25, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is available. "KHTML gets table layout fixes. Many KScreensavers bugs have been fixed. KDevelop adds database programming support. Dia, UML and engineering stencils have been added to Kivio. And more..."
Mono one step closer to GNOME integration (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop points to a new release of cilc. "cilc is a CIL-to-C binding generator. It can be used to expose any CIL library to the C (and C++) world using the GObject object model and coding style. This should be of particular interest to GNOME developers who wish to make use of libraries developed in C#, perhaps Gtk# widgets, within their own C applications."
XRandR integration (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop looks at a new patch for supporting XRandR, the X Resize and Rotate Extension, on GNOME. "XRandR is an extension to XFree86 which allows resizing, rotating, reflecting, and changing the refresh rate of each screen of a X-window display on the fly. The extension is part of XFree86 4.3."
Games WorldForge Gaming System updatesSeveral new packages are available from the WorldForge Gaming System. Version 0.6.0 of varconf, the WorldForge config library, skstream 0.2.5, a socket library, and wfmath 0.2.11, the WorldForge maths library have been released.
PyGame updatesThis week's new software on the PyGame site includes Pyddr version 0.6.2 and Jestur version 0.1.
Interoperability Wine Weekly NewsletterIssue #167 of the Wine Weekly Newsletter is out. Topics include: CrossOver Office 2.0, MS Threatens Developer, Winelib CoolPlayer Port, Wintab Status and Development, Another List of Working Apps, Improving Wine's Debugger, Accessing ODBC Databases, and WineHQ Outage.
Multimedia Freevo version 1.3.2-pre4 releasedVersion 1.3.2-pre4 of Freevo, an application for running a TV capture card, has been announced. "This development release includes GUI improvements, the ability to play music in the background, CD playing (with CDDB support), a new plugin interface, a Web recording interface, and many bugfixes. The binary runtime was updated, and MPlayer 0.90 is now used."
Office Applications AbiWord Weekly NewsIssue #141 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out, with the latest AbiWord word processor development news. "I hope you like staring at pictures this week because there's a good and plenty lot of them. Not only has the Support AbiWord button changed, but some mighty fun niftiness has also kicked up. We've got a visual lock on the first reported appearance of Abiword on AIX."
KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 ReleasedVersion 1.3 Beta 1 of KOffice has been announced. "It comes with many new features and improvements, new filters, hyphenation and the new database client Kexi."
Web Browsers More on the Firebird nameJonathan Walther has posted an interview with an unnamed Mozilla developer which discusses browser naming. "Think of our current project. How many people call it 'Seamonkey'? How many? That's its name. The real name is Seamonkey. But how many people call it that? Everyone calls it 'Mozilla'. When it goes away and is replaced by the new standalone browser, people will call *that* Mozilla."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)The most recent Mozilla Independent Status Reports have been posted. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from the Tinderstatus, SmoothWheel, Mozile, Electrix, Demiurge, JSLib, DownloadStatusbar, SecClab, Gnusto, Diggler, NeedleSearch and Checky."
Miscellaneous Red Carpet 2.0 preview 2 releaseA preview release of Red Carpet 2.0, a graphical software management tool for RPM and dpkg systems, has been announced. "Since the first preview release we've fixed several bugs that have been found and based on your feedback have addressed a number of user interface issues, including a tabbed UI and reworked strings."
gmodconfig 0.3 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.3 of gmodconfig has been announced on the GnomeDesktop site. "gmodconfig aims to provide a simple way for end-users to download, install, configure and update Linux kernel modules, in the language of their choosing, through an easy-to-use graphic interface. The backend consists of XML files that contain the modules informations and translations. Release 0.3 features an assistant druid to help module authors generate those XML files."
Languages and Tools C GCC 3.2.3 availableVersion 3.2.3 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, is available. The changes are mostly bug fixes. Thanks to Dan Kegel.
Objective C Objective-C: Dynamite! (O'ReillyNet)Andrew M. Duncan writes about Objective-C on O'Reilly. "Objective-C is also (like Smalltalk) a dynamic language. Briefly, this means that Objective-C defers, until runtime, decisions more static languages (such as C++) would perform at compile time. This lets you do a number of interesting things that would be awkward or simply impossible in a less dynamic language."
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe April 15-22, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with lots of Caml language news and discussion.
FORTRAN g95 FORTRAN developmentsDevelopment work continues on the g95 FORTRAN compiler project. "Work on the front end has slowed down considerably lately although efforts continue to get that last 0.001% of the test suite to be correctly accepted. The back end and libraries are now up for general testing, at least on x86 linux boxes. The tarball is updated as the web page is, give it a try!"
Java Java programming dynamics, Part 1: Classes and class loading (IBM developerWorks)Dennis M. Sosnoski discusses the Java binary class on IBM's developerWorks. "Take a look at what goes on behind the scenes of executing your Java application in this new series on the dynamic aspects of Java programming. Enterprise Java expert Dennis Sosnoski gives the scoop on the Java binary class format and what happens to classes inside the JVM. Along the way, he covers class loading issues ranging from the number of classes required for running a simple Java application to the class loader conflicts that can cause problems in J2EE and similar complex architectures. "
Enums in Java (One More Time) (O'Reilly)John I. Moore, Jr. writes about enumerated types in Java. "Unlike most modern languages, Java does not support the concept of user-defined enumerated types--enums. This article revisits the topic one more time, briefly defining what it means for a programming language to support enums and reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of two alternative approaches for Java. It then presents a mini-language for defining enums compactly. A small "compiler" that translates this mini-language into Java source code is provided as a resource accompanying this article."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The April 21-27, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out. "This week's summary presents a nice variety of language issues. Read about some new errors, documentation patches, bug closing and configuration."
This week on Perl 6The April 20, 2003 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out. Topics include: Building Parrot on Win32, PMC documentation, Is PMC size fixed?, Dan Does Design Decisions, Short-lived memory allocation, How deep is clone?, Shared memory, A New GC approach?, IMC and variable number of arguments, Currying questions, Are all list constructors iterators?, and more.
POOL (O'Reilly)Simon Cozens discusses POOL on O'Reilly. "In this article, we're going to look at POOL, a handy "little language" I recently created for templating object-oriented modules. Now you may not write many object-oriented modules, so this may not sound too interesting to you. Don't worry; I also plan to discuss, among other things, Ruby, how to use the Template Toolkit, profiling, computational linguistic trie structures, Ruby again, and the oil paintings of the Great Masters. Hopefully, something in here will be enough to keep your interest."
PHP PHP 4.3.2RC2 ReleasedPHP version 4.3.2RC2 has been released. "This is the second release candidate and should have no critical problems/bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues."
Simple linear regression with PHP, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)Paul Meagher plots statistical graphics using PHP on IBM's developerWorks. "In this article, the author, Paul Meagher, addresses these shortcomings with PHP-based probability functions; demonstrates how to integrate output methods into the SimpleLinearRegression class; and creates graphical output. He then tackles these issues by building a data-exploration tool, designed to plumb the depths of information contained in small- to medium-sized datasets." You may want to start off with part one.
Python Python 2.3b1 releasedGuido van Rossum has announced version 2.3b1 of Python, which includes lots of changes.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for April 29, 2003Here is this week's Python URL, with pointers to techniques for making *small* stand-alone versions of Python programs; two real-life uses for metaclasses; common uses of C++ references; and much more.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe April 28, 2003 edition of the Ruby Weekly News is out with the latest Ruby language news and software releases.
Scheme Scheme Weekly NewsThe April 29, 2003 edition of the Scheme Weekly News has been published, take a look for the latest Scheme language news.
Tcl/Tk This week's Tcl-URLDr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for April 30 is out with the usual collection of News from the Tcl/Tk development community.
Miscellaneous Bugzilla 2.16.3 and 2.17.4 Released (MozillaZine)The Bugzilla Team has released Bugzilla 2.16.3, the latest stable release, and Bugzilla 2.17.4, the latest development snapshot (not recommended for use in production environments). Both updates fix several security bugs so all users are advised to upgrade.
Using the Subversion Client API, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)Garrett Rooney writes about subversion, a next-generation reversion control system. "Subversion, as you probably already know, is a version control system written from scratch to replace CVS, the most popular open source version control system. While there are many reasons to choose Subversion, one of the most interesting is that Subversion has been designed and implemented as a collection of reusable libraries, written in C. This allows your programs to use the same functionality found in the command line Subversion client without having to call out to the command line client, to execute commands, or parsing output. This article briefly reviews the Subversion libraries, explains some of their data structures, and demonstrates the use of the Subversion client APIs in other programs."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Firebird Poll Ignites Flames of Passion (MozillaZine)MozillaZine reports on the results of its 'Firebird' poll. "The question posed by our last poll was intended to get feedback on 'Firebird', the new name for Phoenix. We got it in buckets. A massive 20,576 people voted — that's over ten times as many as for the new Roadmap poll."
Why do programmers write open source software? (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at some of the motivations for developers to participate in open source projects. "A majority of people who write open source code do it as part of their jobs. Apache was originally written and is still maintained primarily by network admins and programmers who need reliable, low-cost Web server software and believe it's better to pool their efforts than go it alone. Many Linux kernel improvements come from programmers who work for companies that depend on Linux in one way or another, ranging from small consulting firms up to multinationals like IBM, HP, and Computer Associates. Intel and AMD have helped the Linux kernel scale to multiple processors and support 64-bit CPUs."
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (pbs.org)Robert X. Cringely writes about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and open source software. "...here is where we'll find Open Source's vulnerability. There is this idea (I've written it myself) that Microsoft, for example, can't compete with Open Source because you can't compete with a product that has no profit Motive, and can't out-market a product that has no marketing budget or plan. But Microsoft could still beat Open Source simply by subverting it." (Thanks to Timothy Hunt)
Metaphors make the operating system (NewsForge)Here's a NewsForge article by Lee Schlesinger, in which he dissects Neal Stephenson's 1999 essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line". "This is a key lesson for Linux proponents to learn. Linux is a powerful operating system -- no one argues that. But Linux started out as a difficult operating system for the average person to learn. There are far more average users than expert users out there. To grow the community, Linux must be as simple as possible to work with. A larger group of users benefits both average and expert users, so even experts should support "frills" like GUI utilities and package installation tools."
Trade Shows and Conferences Systems Conference Celebrates All Things Embedded (TechWeb)TechWeb covers this year's Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. "MontaVista, a key player in the embedded Linux market, announced that its embedded version of the open-source OS had been tweaked to work with Tensilica's Xtensa processors. The pairing of MontaVista Linux Professional Edition 3.0 and Xtensa's OSKit automatically generates updates to the embedded Linux as designers modify the base Xtensa architecture to create their own custom SoC (systems on a chip). The result, according to MontaVista, is faster design and development of Linux-running SoCs."
Twisted Python (O'ReillyNet)Stephen Figgins covers the development of the Twisted application framwork. "At last month's PyCon in Washington D.C. several developers of the Twisted network application framework gave presentations. (Papers are available on the Python wiki.) In some ways, it was Twisted's big debut. Many attendees have made positive remarked the presentations. Once obscured, Twisted is stepping into the light."
We need more like this: LinuxFest Northwest 2003 (Linux Journal)Linux Journal covers LinuxFest NorthWest 2003. "LinuxFest had a great atmosphere: it was pro-Linux and fun, with very little bashing of Microsoft or anyone else. It was geared towards Linux enthusiasts who already know something about Linux, but some of the presentations could be enjoyed by anyone."
Swarms and Mobs at This Year's ETechDaniel H. Steinberg writes about several presentations at this year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. "Individually, Eric Bonabeau's keynote on Biological Computing and Howard Rheingold's address on Smart Mobs would have been interesting. Taken together you can see the application of emergent behavior described by Bonabeau to the technological challenges issued by Rheingold."
Linux Adoption Firms buy in to open-source software (Globe and Mail)Toronto's Globe and Mail looks at Linux adoption in Canada. "The potential impact on corporate computing and the technology marketplace is profound because this vast worldwide talent pool can create innovations, plug holes and fix flaws more quickly and more surely than any single company acting alone with limited resources, according to Chris Pratt, Linux manager for Markham, Ont.-based IBM Canada Ltd., who describes the open-source concept as "a Darwinian approach in which the strongest code survives."" (Thanks to Jim Gallacher)
Consider open source - SSC (Stuff)New Zealand's Stuff reports that State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham has written to the heads of all government agencies, encouraging them to assess open source options when buying software. "The initiative, approved by State Services Minister Trevor Mallard, was the key recommendation of a briefing paper on open source software written by the SSC's E-Government Unit head, Brendan Boyle. However, the SSC has stopped well short of following countries such as India, Italy and South Africa and calling for open source products to be preferred over commercial software as a matter of course." (Thanks to Kanchana Wickremasinghe)
Thai Ministry to Sell Low-Cost ComputersHere's an article in the Bangkok Post regarding a plan by the Thai Information and Communications Technology Ministry to sell low-cost, Linux-based computers. "The ministry expects that the second phase of the Computer ICT project will be able to distribute 300,000 units a month or 10 times more than in the first phase. It aims to place one million PC within 12 months." The systems will cost 10,000 Baht, or just over US$250.
Unfinished Business: The One Missing Piece (O'ReillyNet)In this O'ReillyNet article David HM Spector explores the history and current state of directory services, and explains why it's important to interoperate with Active Directory. "Linux has really reinvigorated the UNIX family of operating systems, as well as competition in the server market place. The hard work and talents of thousands of developers have made Linux an unstoppable force in the data center. They have also set the foundation for Linux (and other UNIXes) to provide credible and well-implemented alternatives to Microsoft Office on the desktop, but Microsoft still has absolutely no competition in the directory space. The directory space is the key to the desktop marketplace and the possibility of Linux's total integration in mainstream environments, because that's where all the really important metadata--the stuff that businesses run on--lives."
Legal Judge: File-swapping tools are legal (News.com)News.com reports on the outcome of the suit against Streamcast and Grokster: not guilty. "'Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends,' [Judge Stephen] Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. 'Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights.'"
Scientists protest EU software patents (ZDNet)ZDNet reports that a group of high-ranking scientists are petitioning the European Parliament to prevent the patenting of algorithms and software ideas. "The fate of the proposed patent plan could have a dramatic effect on the way software is developed in the EU, with many developers and small businesses fearing a U.S.-style system in which large companies with thousands of software-related patents are able to force smaller competitors to pay for intellectual property licenses."
Interviews Inteview with Miguel De Icaza (Linux Journal)Here's a Linux Journal interview with Miguel De Icaza. "MdI: I work at Ximian, but my focus has changed from doing GNOME development to working on a project called Mono. Mono is an open-source implementation of the .NET Framework, a development platform that I really like. A lot of the effort that has gone into Mono has been put there mainly to help GNOME become a better platform--my merging these two worlds. And, those of us working on the project would love to see more Mono-based desktop applications out there."
Ballmer: No sleep lost over Linux (News.com)News.com talks with Steve Ballmer about why Microsoft is not afraid of Linux. "Innovation is not something that is easy to do in the kind of distributed environment that the open-source/Linux world works in. I would argue that our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that community. Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition."
Inteview with Matthias Ettrich (Linux Journal)In this Linux Journal article, Aleksey Dolya interviews Matthias Ettrich, creator of the KDE desktop environment. "ME: Professionally I'm focusing on the next generation of Qt. Qt today is established technology that has been developed for more than ten years, so we feel it's about time to revise some of its architecture. The wide range of devices it is used on--[everything] from powerful desktop workstations to small embedded devices--leads to new challenges. Interestingly enough, both small embedded applications and the big desktop applications that constantly become more and more complex have one thing in common: they would benefit from a more flexible, smaller and at the same time even faster toolkit. And we believe we can [deliver] exactly this."
Nicholas Petreley on what Linux developers really want (IBM News)IBM News is carrying this interview with Nicholas Petreley as he analyzes the results of the latest Evans Data Corp 2003 Linux Developer Survey. "You spent a lot of time investigating developers' perception of Linux security. Where did the respondents come down on the Linux versus Windows security debate? Nick: They came squarely down on the side of Linux being a far more secure system. The comparison wasn't even close. What I found interesting though, was that their confidence in open source as inherently more secure has been dropping over the past 18 months or so, despite the fact that their actual incidence of crack-ins, break-ins to their servers, and virus problems, based on the survey was statistically insignificant."
Resources Burning CDs on Linux (IBM developerWorks)IBM developerWorks takes a look at CD burning on Linux systems. "CD-writing programs are available for both Linux and Windows, but the Linux versions are more powerful and versatile than their Windows cousins. In this article, we'll look at mkisofs and cdrecord, the workhorses of Linux CD recording. mkisofs creates a pre-mastered image, to generate an ISO9660/JOLIET/HFS hybrid filesystem. It both creates and populates a filesystem. Unlike other data storage media such as hard drives and floppy drives, a filesystem on CD is not first created, then populated with data. There is only one chance with a CD-R: formatting it first would create a disk with an empty filesystem. cdrecord records data on Orange Book CD-R/RWs, which is pretty much all of them."
Electronic Archaeology (O'ReillyNet)This lengthy O'Reilly Network article looks at tools for digging through old code. "In the real world, most programmers spend most of their time going through code that's a hundred years old and extremely messy. If it ever was designed, the design document was lost long ago. It has evolved over the years. Hundreds of people have worked on it. And it appears most of them knew very little about programming. As a result, most professional programmers have to deal with badly designed, badly implemented, uncommented, incomprehensible blobs."
Reviews Linux powers a mini PC (ZDNet)ZDNet takes a look at a tiny desktop computer featuring an embedded Linux operating system. "The Mini-Box M-100, a general-purpose computer built around Via's EPIA Mini-ITX mainboard, is about the size of a dictionary and weighs about two pounds. Besides being used as a desktop, it can also be used "embedded"--housed within a larger machine to perform a specific computing task."
Myths of Linux on the Desktop (ZDNet)Gartner examines the myths surrounding Linux on the Desktop. "Although Linux has many attributes that make it a fine operating system (OS), and it will be a viable option for certain types of users and enterprises, there are several areas of Linux's reputation on the desktop that we feel will be proved, over time, to be myths. Enterprises need to understand where reality ends and myth begins so they can make informed, justifiable decisions for its use on the desktop."
Miscellaneous What's 64-bit computing to Linux? (News.com)News.com is running a column on the importance of commodity 64-bit systems. "These two trends--commodity 64-bit architectures and Linux--are intersecting. Five years from today, nobody in IT will be buying 32-bit servers (and maybe not even 32-bit laptops). They will buy 64-bit servers and almost universally run them with Linux." Of course, the optimistic tone may have something to do with the fact that the author is SuSE CEO Richard Seibt.
Further Updates on Firebird Naming Debate (MozillaZine)MozillaZine covers the continuing debate over the Firebird name. "Jonathan Walther of the Debian project has published a transcript of an interview with an anonymous Mozilla developer about the Firebird naming conflict. According to IBPhoenix, which is affiliated with the Firebird database project, Walther has offered to mediate in the dispute."
A modest proposal to end spam (News.com)News.com reports on a proposal to end spam. "A few months ago, Lessig made an unusual wager: If Congress enacts an antispam law that offers bounties for the reporting of spammers, and the law fails to "substantially reduce the level of spam," he will resign from his dream job at a top law school."
At Microsoft's Mercy (O'Reilly)Kendall Grant Clark ponders the current state of XML editors on O'Reilly. "In a recent XML-Deviant column, "The Pace of Innovation", I examined the still contentious, often puzzling issue of XML tools support, especially for end users. Even after five long years of XML development, the ideal and ubiquitous "XML editor for humans" seems more rumor than reality. Could it be that we have underestimated the difficulty of building a tool with which ordinary people can easily and simply create XML content? What troubles me even more, however, was the conclusion I reached in that column, namely, that the XML creation facilities in the next major release of Microsoft Office are the best, realistic hope for the future of the documents side of XML, at least in terms of mass market success."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements NY Fair Use on the DMCANY Fair Use and NYLUG will be working together on DRM issues. "On May 2nd, NY Fair Use and NYLUG are working together to represent Free Software at the Copyright Office Hearings for 1201 of the DMCA. Ruben Safir, representing NY Fair Use, will be testifying about DRM on Commercial DVD's and its negative impact on private ownership rights and normative commercial dealing."
Commercial announcements Commerce One Releases Open Source, DocSOAP XML Developer KitCommerce One has announced an open source Web services and SOAP XML Development Kit as part of its ongoing drive to foster the adoption of Web services technology for business.
CrossOver Office 2.0 releasedCodeWeavers has announced the release of CrossOver Office 2.0. This version allows Linux systems to run applications like Office XP, Photoshop 7, Access, and others - without Windows. Language support has also been improved.
IBM Delivers Linux Solutions to Finance Industry with New London CenterIBM announced the official opening of a new center in London for the financial sector, the latest of nine new IBM Linux® competency centers IBM has across four different continents. The centers are designed to help customers of every size, and from a variety of industries, including government, oil and gas and retail, take advantage of the reliability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of Linux.
Intel Researchers Teach Computers to 'Read Lips' to Improve Accuracy of Speech Recognition SoftwareIntel Corporation has announced the release of open-source software that allows developers to build computers that see and "read lips" the way humans do to better understand spoken commands.
Intel and Chinese Academy of Sciences Release Research Compiler for Intel Itanium Processor FamilyIntel Corporation and the Institute for Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing have released version 2.0 of the Open Research Compiler (ORC) for the Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor family. This set of open source compiler tools for Linux is aimed at researchers doing advanced compiler and micro-architecture research and adds several new features over the earlier release.
'Open Source Software - Case Studies Examining Its Use' Released by the Dravis GroupThe Dravis Group LLC has announced the existance of a report "Open Source Software: Case Studies Examining its Use," which illustrates the diverse uses of open source software. The actual report is available in PDF format at the Dravis website.
O'Reilly First to Adopt Founders' CopyrightO'Reilly & Associates has announced its commitment to Founders' Copyright; an initiative that will allow more O'Reilly titles to become available online.
Red Hat Appoints Alex Pinchev President, International OperationsRed Hat, Inc. has announced the appointment of Alex Pinchev to their executive team as President, International Operations. Pinchev will be responsible for the sales and service delivery for all Red Hat offerings outside of North America.
SuSE Linux Names Key Technology, Marketing and Alliance ExecutivesSuSE Linux named three key executives and announced the selection of new public relations and marketing agencies. Effective immediately, Juergen Geck, formerly vice president, Technology Partners, will be the company's Chief Technology Officer. Uwe Heine -- based in Oakland, California -- joins SuSE as Chief Alliance Officer and Dr. Uwe Schmid joins SuSE as vice president, Business Development and Marketing. The company also tapped Burson-Marsteller and J. Walter Thompson to develop and implement an international, integrated branding and communications program.
Resources Version 1.1.0 Released for Loads of Linux Links (LoLL)Loads of Linux Links (LoLL) Version 1.1.0 has been released. There are many changes and improvements, notably a new look to the website, W3C compliancy, better search engine and improvement of the underlying data with 1400 links added, 500 links deleted, bringing the total to 4000+ links.
TLDP Weekly NewsThe Linux Documentation Project weekly news has returned in time to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Linux Documentation Project.
Upcoming Events GIMP Developers Conference 2003 (GnomeDesktop)The GIMP Developers Conference 2003 has been announced. The event will take place as part of the Chaos Communication Camp 2003 in Paulshof, Altlandsberg, Germany on August 7-10, 2003.
pan-European Linux@work in DublinThe pan-European Linux@work conference will be held in Dublin coincident with the GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC). "Linux@work will be held on GUADEC's User Day, June 18, 2003 at Trinity College in Dublin. GUADEC and Linux@work will bring developers, GNOME Foundation leaders and individual, business and government GNOME users together to discuss open source software advantages and issues."
Open Source CMS Conference IIIThe Open Source CMS Conference III will be held in Cambridge, MA on May 28-30, 2003. "OSCOM 3 promises to be the best OSCOM conference yet, with a wide range of talks and tutorials covering 3 separate tracks. OSCOM 3 will be a meeting of the minds with the best from academia (MIT, University of St. Gallen, Harvard, University College, Cornell, Rice and others), corporations (HP, RedHat, Merant, Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks) and organizations (Apache Foundation, mozilla.org). The keynote will be given by Dave Winer (author and co-inventor of numerous important Internet technologies). A second keynote will be delivered by Jon Udell from Infoworld."
Third Open Source Content Management Conference (use Perl)Use Perl has a preview of what's to come at the third Open Source Content Management Conference, which will be held at Harvard on May 28-30, 2003.
GCC Summit One Month AwayThe GCC Developers' Summit will be held in Ottawa, Canada in one month. "We have space for up to 90 delegates to attend, and it would be great to see more people there. We strongly recommend that if you're planning on attending that you register ASAP. On May 1st the cost to attend will double."
International Lisp ConferenceThe first call for participation has gone out for the International Lisp Conference 2003, to be held in New York, NY on October 12-15, 2003.
KDE Developers' Conference 2003The Initial Announcement has gone out for the KDE Developer's Conference 2003, to be held in the south of the Czech Republic starting August 22, 2003. "Compared to previous KDE conferences, this one will be bigger, in terms of number of participants, scope and time. We will start with two days of technical talks in at least two parallel tracks, and end with an optional six-days project work and hacking session until the 31st of August. The event will be held in a castle near a famous brewery.
Tcl 2003 Registration OpenRegistration is now open for the Tcl 2003 Conference. The event will be held in Ann Arbor Michigan from July 29 through August 2, 2003.
Zope / CMF / CPS training in Paris, 19-23 may (ZopeMembers)A Zope traing session will be held in Paris , France on May 19-23, 2003. "Topics convered are: Zope basics, Python, ZPT, CMF fundamentals and CPS usage and personnalisation (including skinning and workflows)." The event will be presented in French.
Asian Enterprise Open Source Conference 2003 CFPThe first call for papers has gone out for the Asian Enterprise Open Source Conference 2003. The conference will be held in Singapore on October 29-31, 2003.
Ruby Conference 2003 preregistrationPreregistration is now open for the Ruby Conference 2003, to be held in Austin, Texas from November 14 to 16, 2003.
Events: May 1 - June 26, 2003
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Miscellaneous Opinions of German Mozilla Developers Sought for Open Source Survey (MozillaZine)According to MozillaZine, responses are being requested from German open-source developers for the FLOSS-US 2003 survey. "Claus Augusti, maintainer of the German MozillaZine, writes: "FLOSS-US 2003 is an international online survey aimed towards open source developers, currently being conducted for the second time by researchers of Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). I received a request for assistance at MozillaZine.de, as there are only 30 (of 1000) responses from Austrian/German/Swiss open source developers so far."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Letters to the editor Desktop Linux
Paul,
Regarding your recent LWN letter about the problems associated with
deploying Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows:
First, thanks for supplying a comprehensive list of problems, that
certainly helps those that want to pursue smoothing the user experience.
I, however, have a problem with your argument that Linux is not ready for
the desktop and that lies in your unspoken assumption:
Users already use Windows effectively and efficiently.
Your statement "End users of Windows are FAR less intelligent than you
might expect" highlights the fallacy of this assumption. In my opinion,
someone who understands what they are doing under Windows will readily
make a transition to Linux; the problem comes with those who have only
"Push button one followed by button two" understandings of their daily
tasks. This type of user will resist and complain about ANY change, it
doesn't matter whether it is a move to Linux, the next version of Windows
or an upgrade to Office. There is certainly NOTHING wrong with this type
of user; they have a job to do, and that is not become a computer expert.
However, it's important to realize this type of user exists and why they
resist or become confused by Change; it is not because of the inherent
superiority of their current tools, but rather because they know how to
make them do the required tasks. Any change means relearning and
relearning requires admitting not knowing how to do something, which
bothers many people.
So, the end goal should not be "emulate Windows" or "be more efficient
than Windows", that will not really accomplish anything. Rather, the goal
should be to continue to create new designs, improve existing ones and
focus on excellence, not "the other guy".
Regards,
Bill Carlson
--
Systems Administrator bill-carlson@uiowa.edu | Anything is possible,
Virtual Hospital http://www.vh.org/ | given time and money.
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics |
Opinions are mine, not my employer's. |
Whats going on over at InfoWorld?
I am a subscriber to the print edition of InforWorld. In the current issue it being divulged that most of the columnists who espouse free/open source solutions are being dropped in favor of a new "format". Of course it wasnt stated that way but anyone who follows the columns can see a pattern. I am curious what the inside story is. I was an avid reader of the magazine until now. I hope that other publications will take this opportunity to pick up some talented writers. -- David Hartley penguin@linuxweb.org Peace, Love, and Penguins
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||