Linux in the news

Women in Free Software, by Fernanda G. Weiden (Groklaw)

Groklaw presents an article by Fernanda Weiden that examines the scarcity of female software developers in the open-source software arena. "The gender issue in the Free Software community is a big paradox: we have a community of volunteers teaching the world how to develop technology in a different way, one willing to distribute equal opportunities through free access to the software, and at the same time a community in which more than 50% of the total world population doesn't participate."

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Upgrading to Apache 2 (Linux.com)

Linux.com has some advice for those who haven't yet gotten around to upgrading to apache2. "Apache 2 offers a number of new features and improvements over the Apache 1.3 series, but the upgrade can seem daunting to those who haven't had much (or any) experience with Apache 2. I recently had to go through an upgrade from Apache 1.3 to Apache 2.0 on Debian Sarge, and it's not as difficult as you might think."

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Embedded Systems Conference Boston Opens Today

CMP Media has posted a press release announcing the first day of the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. ""Just as celebrities and athletes are globally recognized, the Embedded Systems Conference celebrates the heroes in our community -- rock star engineers who every day, change the way we work, live and play through astounding technological advancements," said Paul Miller, vice president and group publisher of the CMP Media Electronics Group."

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Gartner on open source: fair and insightful (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers a talk by Gartner Research Vice President Mark Driver at the Gartner Application Development Summit. "He added a word of caution about Mono, however. Microsoft is happy to see Mono and even Java tools today because they protect the company from further charges of monopoly. Driver said it could crush Mono tomorrow with intellectual property warfare if they wanted to do so, but that Microsoft prefers them let them live for now. The killing blow will come from WinFX and the new Vista APIs. He is very pessimistic about Mono being able to maintain its current high degree of compatibility."

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SCO Releases 3Q Results (Groklaw)

Groklaw covers the SCO third quarter financial results press release. "The second paragraph says it all: "Revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2005 was $9,353,000 as compared to $11,205,000 for the comparable quarter of the prior year. The decrease in revenue in the third quarter of fiscal year 2005 from the comparable quarter of the prior year was primarily due to continued competitive pressures on the Company's UNIX products and services and a decrease in SCOsource licensing revenue." Oh, and this section of the forward-looking statements disclaimer: "We wish to advise readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from historical results or those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, continued competitive pressure on its operating system products which could impact the profitability of the UNIX business, unforeseen legal costs related to our litigation, our inability to develop new products and services, and our inability to see our litigation through to its conclusion.""

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Novell: Vista will drive users to Linux (News.com)

News.com covers comments by Novell CEO Jack Messman concerning cost of conversion to the next version of Windows. ""The cost of migrating to Windows XP to Vista will be higher than the cost of migrating to Linux and that will push migrations to Linux," Messman said. Novell says it is making real gains on the desktop in Europe currently and that many organizations are choosing its Linux Desktop product especially in vertical industries that require locked-down clients with limited functionality."

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Galaxy remakes Sun's server strategy (News.com)

News.com examines Sun's newly announced Galaxy server line, which run AMD Opteron processors. "Sun for years shunned the x86 servers in favor of machines running its own Solaris version of Unix and its own UltraSparc processors. But the server market growth has been with x86 systems running Windows and Linux, and Sun is working hard to make up lost time."

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Sun extends olive branch to Red Hat (News.com)

News.com reports that Sun Microsystems is talking with Red Hat about RHEL support on Sun's new Galaxy servers. "Sun is being more accommodating toward Linux again--specifically, to Red Hat, whose Enterprise Linux product dominates the Linux market. Sun extended its Red Hat support contract to the new Galaxy servers and invited Red Hat to share some of its spotlight, along with partners Oracle, MySQL and Advanced Micro Devices. "Stay tuned on the Red Hat-Sun relationship," Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said at the Galaxy launch event in New York. "We think there's ample opportunity to work together out there.""

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Gartner: Linux 'five years away from mainstream' use (silicon.com)

Silicon.com looks at a Garner report concerning the mainstream use of Linux. "On the desktop, Linux is having a tougher time. Gartner claims the operating system is reaching the point where the costs of migration may exceed the cost benefits in a phase characterised by over-enthusiasm and unrealistic projections which lead to more failures than successes."

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The Next 50 Years of Computer Security: An Interview with Alan Cox (O'ReillyNet)

Edd Dumbill talks with Alan Cox, who will be speaking at O'Reilly's EuroOSCON. "Alan Cox is well known for his long-standing work on the Linux kernel, but at O'Reilly's EuroOSCON (October 17-20), he will speak about computer security. According to Alan, we're just at the beginning of a long journey into getting security right. Eager for directions and a glimpse of the future, O'Reilly Network interviewed him about his upcoming keynote."

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PBS Launches NERDTV

The US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has created a weekly online TV interview show, known as NERDTV. "NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions." Linus Torvalds will be featured on November 29.

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Gates on Google: What, me worry? (News.com)

News.com interviews Bill Gates. "Q:Looking at the open-source world, there's this movement away from selling licenses toward selling support. A lot of people are participating in that, and you have been skeptical. Why? Do you think that's fundamentally the wrong model? A:The industry will always be a mix of free and commercial software. So there will be a balance between those. I think that we are going to have a lot of both. There are some zealots that think there should be no software jobs, that we should all, like, cut hair during the day and write code at night. Should you take some of those extreme views, I think it's easy to say that's not right."

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BitTorrent for Linux (Linux.com)

Linux.com has an introductory article about BitTorrent. "The BitTorrent protocol implements a hybrid client/server and P2P file transfer mechanism. BitTorrent efficiently distributes large amounts of static data, such as installation ISO images. It can replace protocols such as anonymous FTP, where client authentication is not required. Each BitTorrent client that downloads a file provides additional bandwidth for uploading the file, reducing the load on the initial source. In general BitTorrent downloads proceed more rapidly than FTP downloads."

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Writing a Program to Control OpenOffice.org, Part 1 (Linux Journal)

The Linux Journal has posted a tutorial on controlling OpenOffice.org remotely. "To accomplish this goal, we will build an application written in C++ that is able to connect to OpenOffice.org, open a spreadsheet and then update, print and close the document. The problems that must be solved in order to build the source code will allow beginners to understand the basic principles of this technology."

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Linux In a Windows Network with SAMBA (Really Linux)

Really Linux presents a tutorial on implementing SAMBA under Fedora Linux. "Integrating Fedora Linux into a Windows network is reasonable and easy as long as you use the SAMBA utilities. I share every main step necessary to implement such a SAMBA server within a Windows environment. Once integrated a Linux server looks and acts exactly like any other server on a Windows intranet. You will have the ability to drag and drop files, view server contents and directories using Windows File Manager, and even edit files on a Linux server from any Windows desktop."

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Gnome 2.12: On the Road of Evolution (OS News)

OS News reviews GNOME 2.12. "It's been a few years since I reviewed Gnome for the last time. Since then, Gnome has matured and made most things right -- except the spatial Nautilus that I personally don't like and the downplay of the Nautilus scripting/plugin engine. But all in all, Gnome is today more powerful, better integrated to the underlying system with DBUS and HAL, looks good, behaves as expected and, most of all, it's simple and clean. In my opinion, the Gnome Desktop is the best X11 desktop system today from the user's point of view when compared to the rest of the DE solutions."

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Mac and Linux users blacklisted from hurricane relief (The Inquirer)

The Inquirer reports that FEMA is only allowing users of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to apply for hurricane relief funds. "The now very much criticised US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has stopped Mac and Linux victims of hurricane Katrina from applying for relief. The agency, which is already in hot water for its lack-lustre rescue efforts in New Orleans, has created a web-based service that only works for users of Windows and IE6." There is a work-around for Firefox users, involving the User Agent Switcher extension.

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