LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 3, 2005
A study on free software in British schools
There have been a number of stories recently about the adoption of free software in public school systems around the world. Certainly free software has a lot of attributes which make it well suited for that role: it is relatively secure, open to curious minds which wish to look inside it, freely available for students to copy and use at home, easily adapted to local languages, and easier on a school's (typically stretched) budget. Of course, not everybody agrees that the use of free software is cheaper; certain proprietary software companies, in particular, are trying to cast doubt on that assertion. So the administration of a school contemplating a switch to free software might well wonder: will it truly save money?The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency decided that it needed an answer to that question. So it took a detailed look at 48 British schools - 33 which were not using free software, and 15 which were - to get a sense for their relative costs. The result of this work is now available as a glossy report [PDF], suitable for printing on heavy paper and handing to a school administrator near you.
The study divided software usage into three broad categories: (1) servers, (2) class and administrative computer operating systems, and (3) classroom and administrative applications. The total costs were summarized in each category, taking a broad view. Costs include hardware and software, but also support - both purchased from outside and provided by internal staff. Training was also included. In other words, the study took into account all of those factors which, according to the critics, make free software more expensive than the proprietary alternatives.
The bottom-line result is quite clear:
Unsurprisingly, the study found that the best immediate results came from the use of free software on server systems. There are more obstacles to deployments on administrative and classroom systems. In some cases - especially for school administrative functions - the necessary applications are not yet available (the study notes that projects like SchoolTool are working to provide those applications). There is also some opposition to free applications from people who are trained in other packages. Tellingly, most of this opposition seems to come from the teachers, not the students:
Teachers and administrators, like most adults, have a certain tendency to get set in their ways and stick with what they already know. Children can be more flexible. What these schools are seeing corresponds with your editor's own experience: children have no problem working with free software, and, if exposed to it, will take to it readily. Just don't (speaking from experience here, again) expose your children to Battle For Wesnoth, or their homework will suffer.
In summary: this report is a good thing, as far as it goes. The flood of hostile "total cost of ownership" studies is unlikely to slow in the near future, so it is good to have contrary evidence from relatively unbiased sources. There are, however, no end of reasons, beyond the financial ones, for using free software in public schools, but this report ignores them almost completely. At the lower school levels, free software can be made available to students without licensing hassles or sanctimonious lectures about not making copies. At higher levels it can teach the students much about software itself, encourage them to experiment, and demonstrate how cooperative work can yield benefits for everybody involved. A strict focus on costs may provide a favorable picture, but risks creating the impression that cost is the only reason for using free software. In the context of the public schools, more than in many other situations, it is important that people understand that there is far more to free software than "free of cost."
Open source compliance insurance
The folks at Open Source Risk Management have, for some time now, been working on indemnification insurance for free software. The idea behind this offering is that businesses which are worried about an SCO-style lawsuit can purchase insurance turning that risk into a regular, predictable business expense. This sort of service may well turn out to be a hard sell, however; SCO's experience seems unlikely to inspire many copycat acts. The risk of successful, copyright-based legal attacks against free software currently seems to be quite low.Patents may yet prove to be a different story, though.
Meanwhile, OSRM, in conjunction with Kiln plc and Miller Insurance Services, has come up with a new idea: sell insurance to companies which fear GPL compliance problems:
This is, in other words, a 180-degree change from the previous OSRM offering. The previously-offered indemnification policies addressed concerns that free software could be infringing on copyrights through the inclusion of proprietary code. Now, instead, we have insurance to benefit those who might just infringe the copyrights associated with free software. This situation is, certainly, more likely to come about; here's another quote from the press release:
This statement, certainly, is a strong statement in favor of the enforceability of free software licenses.
One might argue that this sort of insurance policy presents a moral hazard. A company which hopes to ignore the requirements of the GPL could ship a product without source, secure in the knowledge that, if somebody calls them on it, they can fall back on the insurance policy to mitigate their losses. The plan's fine print must certainly have language excluding deliberate acts of noncompliance, but proving that a specific infringement was willful could be a challenge.
Others might say that there should be no inadvertent infringement of the GPL; any such infringement constitutes, at best, an extreme lack of due diligence. Consider, however, the much-publicized cases where various wireless routers have used GPL code in noncompliant ways. In these cases, the final vendor - the one whose name is on the product - often has little knowledge of what software was used by the obscure, far-eastern supplier who actually made the product. As more GPL rulings are handed down, it seems likely that resellers will start asking more questions of their suppliers, but surprises still seem possible. This particular risk - being betrayed by a supplier - seems like a legitimate thing to insure against.
So OSRM and its partners might just find a market for this particular offering. If, in the process, they make businesses feel more comfortable about using free software in their products - and, perhaps, even helping with the further development of that software - it should be a good thing for the free software community as a whole.
EFF: Halloween on the hill
As reported on the EFF site: the broadcast flag is back, bigger and badder than ever. The new halloween document [PDF], otherwise known as the "Analog Content Security Preservation Act of 2005," would impose no end of restrictions. "The unprotected analog outputs of computers will be, in perpetuity, restricted to either DRM-laden standards, or to a 'constrained image', 'no more than 350,000 pixels'. Analog video which has been branded as 'do not copy', will last for only ninety minutes only in the digital world - and will be erased, literally frame by frame, megabyte by megabyte, from your PC, without your control. You'll watch a two hour film, and as you watch the final half hour, the first few scenes will be being dissolved away by statute."
The send-a-link feature
The recent discussion on improving LWN's readership led to one clear action item: the addition of a feature which would allow subscribers to create special links which they could use to point out interesting articles to non-subscribers. These links would bypass the normal subscription gate, allowing articles to be read while they are still current.That feature has been implemented, and is now active. There is no limit on the number of links a subscriber may create, and no limit on how many people may read an article via a given link. A few caveats do apply, however:
- For the time being, only "project leader" subscribers have the ability
to create subscriber links. This restriction is meant to be
temporary; its main purpose is to slow the initial use of the new
feature while any remaining bugs are shaken out. It would, however,
be interesting to hear what people think of keeping subscriber links
as a differentiating feature for the high-level subscriptions.
- Subscriber links can be made for individual articles; just look for
the "send a link" line in the left column. These links cannot be made
for entire Weekly Edition pages, however.
- We reserve the right to turn off the subscriber link capability for
specific articles; the annual timeline is a case where we might do
that. No decisions have been made on that point, however, and the mechanism
to implement an exclusion policy has not yet been implemented.
- We reserve the right to turn off the whole thing if it looks like the feature is being abused and hurting subscription sales. We do not expect things to go that way, however.
Privacy stuff and details: for each link, we track who created it and the number of hits it receives. That information will go away some time after the link expires - which happens when the relevant article becomes freely available. The links are constructed in such a way that they will continue to work forever. Currently, following a subscriber link leads directly to the article in question; in the future, we might throw in some sort of encouragement to subscribe.
We are most interested to see how this new feature - which was driven by requests from our subscribers - works out.
Security
Sony, rootkits, and the escalation of the DRM war
As most readers are likely to have seen by now, a Windows developer recently discovered that a rootkit on his system had been installed by the DRM ("digital restrictions management," to use Richard Stallman's apt term) code from a copy-protected CD. This CD (Van Zant's appropriately named "Get Right With The Man") was issued by SonyBMG. It happily installed software on the system, overrode a couple of system calls, and proceeded to hide itself from casual view. This is not the sort of experience that CD purchases are normally looking for. SonyBMG should - and will - take a fair amount of grief from this bit of silliness.Just how silly is just becoming clear: consider this weblog entry which suggests that SonyBMG's DRM activities don't really even have anything to do with copy protection. Instead, SonyBMG is simply trying to make life more difficult for iPod users as a way of trying to muscle in on Apple's turf. It is increasingly clear that DRM is being used as a way of excluding competition, rather than for its stated purpose. With luck, some politicians might begin to understand this, and the tone of the debate in various national capitols may change a bit.
Meanwhile, it is also clear that DRM is increasingly a security issue. We have music discs which install malware, the entertainment industry trying to poison bittorrent streams, and legislators who would like to legalize overt attacks against those who are deemed to be pirates. There will certainly be many computers - including those in companies - which have been infected with the DRM code shipped by SonyBMG, and the full capabilities of that code remain unclear. The next security compromise carried out in the name of piracy prevention may be even worse.
There are some obvious conclusions to be drawn from this episode. The most obvious of all being that automatically running code from an arbitrary CD is a stunningly bad idea. Beyond that, avoiding Windows helps, for now. Even Macintosh systems are unaffected by SonyBMG's DRM. And it has been made clear that security threats can come from unexpected directions. SonyBMG is not a bunch of script kiddies in a basement somewhere; it's a high-profile corporation which, one might expect, would not be in the business of attacking its customers' computers. This is unlikely to be the last episode of this kind we will see.
New vulnerabilities
gallery: privilege escalation
| Package(s): | gallery | CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-2596 | ||||
| Created: | November 2, 2005 | Updated: | November 2, 2005 | ||||
| Description: | The gallery system has a bug which can allow all PostNuke users full access to the gallery. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
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gnump3d: cross-site scripting, directory traversal
| Package(s): | gnump3d | CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-3122 CVE-2005-3123 | ||||||||
| Created: | October 28, 2005 | Updated: | November 7, 2005 | ||||||||
| Description: | Steve Kemp discovered two vulnerabilities in gnump3d, a streaming server for MP3 and OGG files. | ||||||||||
| Alerts: |
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Mantis: multiple vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | mantisbt | CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-3091 CVE-2005-3335 CVE-2005-3336 CVE-2005-3338 CVE-2005-3339 | ||||||||||||
| Created: | October 28, 2005 | Updated: | December 22, 2005 | ||||||||||||
| Description: | Mantis contains several vulnerabilities, including a remote file inclusion vulnerability, an SQL injection vulnerability, multiple cross site scripting vulnerabilities and multiple information disclosure vulnerabilities. | ||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
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openvpn: format string vulnerability
| Package(s): | openvpn | CVE #(s): | CVE-2005-3393 CVE-2005-3409 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Created: | November 2, 2005 | Updated: | December 12, 2005 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description: | OpenVPN 2.0.x contains a format string vulnerability which can be exploited by a hostile server; see this advisory for details. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
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Squirrelmail: preference modification
| Package(s): | squirrelmail | CVE #(s): | CAN-2005-2095 | ||||
| Created: | November 2, 2005 | Updated: | November 2, 2005 | ||||
| Description: | Versions of Squirrelmail prior to 1.4.5 have an error in how the $_POST variable is handled. As a result, a user's preferences can be viewed and modified. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
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TikiWiki: XSS vulnerability
| Package(s): | tikiwiki | CVE #(s): | |||||
| Created: | October 28, 2005 | Updated: | November 2, 2005 | ||||
| Description: | Due to improper input validation, TikiWiki can be exploited to perform cross-site scripting attacks. A remote attacker could exploit this to inject and execute malicious script code or to steal cookie-based authentication credentials, potentially compromising the victim's browser. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
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Resources
mwcollect v3.0.0 released
The Honeynet Project has announced the release of mwcollect v3.0.0. This tool, intended to be run from a Linux system, simulates a number of known vulnerabilities then harvests malware payloads from the resulting exploit attempts. In this way, researchers can attract their own collection of nasty code and see what the crackers are trying to do. Click below for the announcement, or see mwcollect.org for more information.
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Kernel development
Brief items
Kernel release status
The current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.14, released on October 27. A very small number of patches went in since 2.6.14-rc5. Major changes in 2.6.14 include a new version of the wireless extensions, the HostAP system (which allows a Linux system to function as a wireless access point), relayfs, the DCCP network protocol, the filesystems in user space patch, v9fs, securityfs, and more.The first 2.6.15 prepatch has not yet been released, and may not be until the window for new features closes. A major pile of patches has been merged into the mainline git repository; see the separate article, below, for a list of some of the more interesting ones.
There have been no -mm releases in the last week.
The current 2.4 prepatch is 2.4.32-rc2, released by Marcelo on Halloween. It contains a small set of fixes, mostly in the networking subsystem.
Kernel development news
Quote of the week
-- Martin Bligh
The newest development model and 2.6.14
The 2005 Kernel Summit made some tweaks to the kernel development model with the aim of producing higher-quality releases in a more timely manner. To that end, it was said that major changes would only be allowed during the first two weeks of each development cycle; after that, only bug fixes could go in. The hope was that this rule would eliminate destabilizing patches late in the cycle and concentrate developers' minds on making things work.The 2.6.14 kernel is the first to go through the entire cycle since the kernel summit. This kernel, released on October 27, came out almost exactly two months after 2.6.13, which showed up on August 29. That is relatively fast by 2.6 standards, but still too slow for some developers. The complainers feel that the freeze period puts too much of a damper on development, and that, somehow, the kernels should come out faster.
2.6.14 would have come out sooner were it not for a final delay to fix some remaining bugs (some of which turned out not to be real). Linus, however, is pretty happy with how 2.6.14 worked. A number of significant changes were merged, but regressions in the released kernels seem to be within reasonable limits. As a result, Linus doesn't see the need to make further changes to the process at this time:
Andrew Morton, meanwhile, has an answer for those who think the development cycle is still too long:
b) the kernel is in long freeze due to the lack of kernel developer attention to known bugs
The solution seems fairly obvious to me?
It was pointed out that many bugs relate to hardware which most developers do not have. The response was that sometimes developers have to talk to users who encounter bugs and try to track them down anyway. In any case, the ongoing effort to get developers to fix bugs seems likely to be necessary for some time to come.
One other branch of the discussion, meanwhile, took on the question of whether the kernel has gotten too big. Prompted initially by Roman Zippel, Andrew Morton did some compile tests and came out with some disturbing numbers: the size of kernels with similar configurations went from about 600K (2.5.71) to over 800K (2.6.8). He also noted that the use of a current version of gcc adds almost 100K to the final kernel size when compared to gcc 2.95.4. Clearly, some serious inflation is going on somewhere.
Except that it's not quite so clear. Adrian Bunk demonstrated that, by using the -Os compile option (which instructs gcc to optimize for size), current compilers can make kernels which are quite a bit smaller than those made with the old 2.95 release. The resulting discussion suggests that the kernel developers may try making -Os the default for kernel builds in the future. Fedora already builds its kernels this way. The interesting thing is that, in the past, kernels built with -Os have often performed as well as (or even better than) those optimized for speed. Cache effects have a huge impact on kernel performance, and a smaller kernel is more cache friendly.
Compiler issues aside, there truly has been some growth in the kernel. Linus is not surprised by this:
Expect an increase in de-bloating work in the near future. In some areas, this work has been ongoing for a while - consider, for example, the effort to shrink the sk_buff structure used to represent packets in the networking subsystem. For a more extreme example, see Matt Mackall's SLOB allocator, a replacement for the slab subsystem which is much smaller, but which does not perform as well on larger systems. SLOB is not for everybody (it's mainly intended for embedded systems), but it almost certainly foreshadows a surge in Linux weight reduction patches.
What's going into 2.6.15
The release of the 2.6.14 kernel opened the door for new changes. Many developers have been quick to submit their patches, with the result that nearly 2000 commits have been merged for 2.6.15. The door will remain open for two weeks - until around November 11 - at which point the kernel should return to stabilization mode.Many of the patches merged are fixes, and quite a few of them are in architecture-specific code. Among the rest, however, are the following, starting with user-visible changes:
- An update to the generic 802.11 code which includes, among other
things, quality-of-service support, the ability to use hardware crypto
and fragmentation offload functions, and "wireless spy" support.
- A driver for Marvell serial ATA controllers. There is also a new "ATA
passthrough" ioctl() allowing arbitrary ATA commands to be sent to
devices.
- The old "bluetty" driver has been removed. Everybody should be using
the bluez stack for Bluetooth devices at this point.
- As a result of the device model changes, the 2.6.15 kernel will
require version 071 (or higher) of the udev utility.
- A new uevent device attribute in sysfs can be used to
manually force the creation of a hotplug event for an existing
device. This feature can be used to regenerate hotplug events for
devices which were present when the system was booted.
- The PowerPC 4xx on-chip Ethernet driver has been replaced with a
completely rewritten, more efficient version.
- A new driver for the Freescale Ethernet devices found in some
embedded systems.
- Support for the old Cobalt servers has been restored.
- Basic support for hot-pluggable memory.
- A big NTFS rework with much-improved write support.
- A big InfiniBand update, with support for a wider range of userspace
verbs.
- Support for ARM "RealView" boards.
- A large CIFS filesystem update, with support for change notifications,
mounting from "legacy" servers, case-independent file names, and more.
- DRM support for Radeon PCI Express cards
API changes and other internal patches visible to kernel developers include:
- The nested class devices
patch and associated input subsystem patches. For those who are
curious about where the device model work will go from here, Greg
Kroah-Hartman has posted a roadmap on his
weblog.
- More conversions of internal function prototypes to use the
gfp_t type
introduced in 2.6.14.
- A number of block layer patches, including a rework of the elevator
switch code and the generic
dispatch queue patch. The new I/O barrier code has not been
merged as of this writing.
- A big rework of the remote procedure call code, and a number of
associated NFS updates.
- Some power management changes, including a driver API change; see this article for details.
- A new mechanism allowing code to be notified when USB
busses and devices come and go. Drivers do not normally need to use these
notifiers, but some of the core code benefits from them.
- The driver model class "interface" add() and
remove() methods have picked up a new parameter: a pointer to
the actual interface structure.
- There is a new reader/writer semaphore function
rwsem_is_locked(), which tests whether the rwsem is read
locked without blocking.
- There is a new variant of vmalloc():
void *vmalloc_node(unsigned long size, int node);As one might expect, it allocates memory on a specific NUMA node.
- The "reserved" bit for memory pages - used to mark pages which are not
managed by the kernel page allocator (kernel text, non-memory areas,
etc.) - has been all but removed. No core code uses it now, with the
exception of software suspend, and that will get fixed eventually.
There are reports that this change breaks VMware.
- A set of Linux security module hooks for the (relatively) new
key management functions.
- A new kernel thread function:
int kthread_stop_sem(struct task_struct *kt, struct semaphore *s);This function will stop a kernel thread which might be waiting on the given semaphore.
- A "torture test" module for the read-copy-update mechanism.
Stay tuned: there is still time for quite a few more changes to be merged before the 2.6.15 window closes.
Some power management changes for 2.6.15
The 2.6.14 kernel has brought with it a few changes to the power management API. The first of these has to do with the suspend() and resume() methods found in struct device_driver. These methods would be called three times for each suspend and resume operation, in order to maintain compatibility with an older version of the API. The new versions are called once, and have different prototypes:
int (*suspend) (struct device *dev, pm_message_t state);
int (*resume) (struct device *dev);
This change required updates to a fair number of drivers, so the patch is relatively large.
The other change is for devices which can supply "wakeup events" to the kernel. These devices include network adapters with "wake-on-LAN" capability, keyboards, and simple power switches. The power management core has been reworked to enable these devices to perform their wakeup functions while providing overall control to the system administrator.
The dev_pm_info structure (found inside struct device) has gotten two new, single-bit fields. Drivers for devices which can create wakeup events should set the can_wakeup field to one. The actual issuance of such events, however, should be controlled by the may_wakeup field. If that field is zero, the power management core has decreed that wakeups should not be issued. A device_may_wakeup() helper function has been added to make testing the may_wakeup bit easy.
The patch adds a new wakeup field in sysfs. When read, it will return enabled or disabled (or an empty string if the device is not capable of generating wakeup events at all). The system administrator can also write a new value to allow (or disallow) the generation of wakeup events from the device.
The driver core code has been merged, along with support for wakeups from USB devices. As of this writing, however, the PCI wakeup code has some outstanding issues with G5 systems which has prevented it from going into the mainline.
Fragmentation avoidance
Mel Gorman's fragmentation avoidance patches were covered here last February. This patch set divides all memory allocations into three categories: "user reclaimable," "kernel reclaimable," and "kernel non-reclaimable." The idea to support multi-page contiguous allocations by grouping reclaimable allocations together. If no contiguous memory ranges are available, one can be created by forcing out reclaimable pages. Since non-reclaimable pages have been segregated into their own area, the chances of such a page blocking the creation of a contiguous set of free pages is relatively small.Mel recently posted version 19 of the fragmentation avoidance patch and requested that it be included in the -mm kernel. That request started a lengthy discussion on whether this patch set is a good idea or not. There is, it seems, a fair amount of uncertainty over whether this code belongs in the kernel. There are a few reasons for wanting fragmentation avoidance, and the arguments differ for each of them.
The first of these reasons is to increase the probability of high-order (multi-page) allocations in the kernel. Nobody denies that Mel's patch achieves that goal, but there are developers who claim that a better approach is to simply eliminate any such allocations. In fact, most multi-page allocations were dealt with some time ago. A few remain, however, including the two-page kernel stacks still used by default on most systems. When the kernel stack allocation fails, it blocks the creation of a new process. The kernel may eventually move to single-page stacks in all situations, but a few higher-order allocations will remain. It is not always possible to break required memory into single-page chunks.
The next reason, strongly related to the first, is huge pages. The huge page mechanism is used to improve performance for certain applications on large systems; there are few users currently, but that could change if huge pages were easier to work with. Huge pages cannot be allocated for applications in the absence of a large - and suitably aligned - region of contiguous memory. In practice, they are very difficult to create on systems which have been running for any period of time. Failure to allocate a huge page is relatively benign; the application simply has to get by with regular pages and take the performance hit. But, given that you have a huge page mechanism, making it work more reliably would be worthwhile.
The fragmentation avoidance patches can help with both high-order allocations and huge pages. There is some debate over whether it is the right solution to the problem, however. The often-discussed alternative would be to create one or more new memory zones set aside for reclaimable memory. This approach would make use of the zone system already built into the kernel, thus avoiding the creation of a new layer. A zone-based system might also avoid the perceived (though somewhat unproven) performance impact of the fragmentation avoidance patches. Given that this impact is said to be felt in that most crucial of workloads - kernel compiles - this argument tends to resonate with the kernel developers.
The zone-based approach is not without problems, however. Memory zones, currently, are static; as a result, somebody would have to decide how to divide memory between the reclaimable and non-reclaimable zones. This adjustment looks like it would be hard to get right in any sort of reliable way. In the past, the zone system has also been the source of a number of performance problems, mostly related to balancing of allocations between the zones. Increasing the complexity of the zone system and adding more zones could well bring those problems back.
There is another motivation for fragmentation avoidance which brings a different set of constraints: support for hot-pluggable memory. This feature is useful on high-availability systems, but it is also heavily used in association with virtualization. A host running a number of virtualized Linux instances can, by way of the hotplug mechanism, shift its memory resources between those instances in response to the demands of each.
Before memory can be removed from a running system, its contents must be moved elsewhere - at least, if one wants to still have a running system afterward. The fragmentation avoidance patches can help by putting only reclaimable allocations in the parts of memory which might be removed. As long as all the pages in a region can be reclaimed, that region is removable.
A very different argument has surfaced here: Ingo Molnar is insisting that any mechanism claiming to support hot-pluggable memory be able to provide a 100% success rate. The current code need not live up to that metric, but there needs to be a clear path toward that goal. Otherwise, the kernel developers risk advertising a feature which they may not ever be able to support in a reliable way. The backers of fragmentation avoidance would like to merge the patches, solving 90% of the problem, and leave the other 90% for later. Ingo, instead, fears that second 90%, and wants to know how it will get done.
Why can't the current patches offer 100% reliability if they only put reclaimable memory in hot-pluggable regions? There are ways to lock down pages which were once reclaimable; these include DMA operations and pages explicitly locked by user space. There is also the issue of what happens when the kernel runs out of non-reclaimable memory. Rather than fail a non-reclaimable allocation attempt, the kernel will allocate a page from the reclaimable region. This fallback is necessary to avoid inflicting reliability problems on the rest of the kernel. But the presence of a non-reclaimable page in a reclaimable region will prevent the system from vacating that region.
This problem can be solved by getting rid of non-reclaimable allocations altogether. And that can be done by changing how the kernel's address space works. Currently, the kernel runs in a single, contiguous virtual address space which is mapped directly onto physical memory - often using a single, large page table entry. (The vmalloc() region is a special exception, but it is not an issue here). If the kernel were, instead, to use normal-sized pages like the rest of the system, its memory would no longer need to be physically contiguous. Then, if a kernel page gets in the way, it can simply be moved to a more convenient location.
Beyond the fact that this approach fundamentally changes the kernel's memory model, there are a couple of little issues with it. There would be a performance hit caused by the higher translation buffer use, and an increase in the amount of memory needed to store the kernel's page tables. Certain kernel operations - DMA in particular - cannot tolerate physical addresses which might change at arbitrary times. So there would have to be a new API where drivers could request physically-nailed regions - and be told by the kernel to give them up. In other words, breaking up the kernel's address space opens a substantial barrel of worms. It is not the sort of change which would be accepted in the absence of a fairly strong motivation, and it is not clear that hot-pluggable memory is a sufficiently compelling cause.
So no conclusions have been reached on the inclusion of the fragmentation avoidance patches. In the short term, Andrew Morton's controversy avoidance mechanisms are likely to keep the patch out of the -mm tree, however. But there are legitimate reasons for wanting this capability in the kernel, and the issue is unlikely to go away. Unless somebody comes up with a better solution, it could be hard to keep Mel's patch out forever.
Levanta's MapFS released
Once upon a time, kernel developers would post their contributions on the linux-kernel mailing list. Now they issue press releases instead. Along those lines, Levanta (the company once known as Linuxcare) has announced the availability of MapFS. This GPL-licensed module allows a read-only filesystem to be mounted locally for write access, with any changes being kept on the local system. It looks like another implementation of the "translucent filesystem" idea.
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
Architecture-specific
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Memory management
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
News and Editorials
Testing Mandriva Linux 2006
When the second beta of Mandriva Linux 2006 was released, I didn't hesitate - I reconfigured my urpmi sources to point to the beta directory on a nearby FTP server and upgraded my 2005LE installation. The upgrade, as well as subsequent upgrades to beta3 and RC1, went without a hitch. Sensing that a final Mandriva 2006 was not far away, I then redirected the urpmi sources to point to the Cooker (Mandriva's development branch) and continued upgrading on a more ore less daily basis. The release was shaping up nicely and I didn't expect any troubles.One day, however, things went wrong. After restarting the X window system, I was greeted by a screen that reminded me of faulty CRT monitors of yesteryear, with ghastly green and pink colors replacing the pleasant light blue of Mandriva's KDE. Worse, the mouse was barely functional, because the pointer was seemingly trapped in an invisible rectangle and the actual pointer was about half an inch to the left of the tip of the arrow. Additionally, some menus, toolbars and window edges were "decorated" by unsightly vertical lines, as if they were perforated.
After recovering from the shock of losing the good-looking desktop, my first reaction was "ah, well, it's a beta, it'll get fixed soon". Only it never did. At one point the Cooker was frozen, but my desktop remained broken. I was hoping that perhaps a clean installation of Mandriva 2006 final would restore the nice colors and revive the handsome penguin gazing at the sky (the default Mandriva 2006 wallpaper), but no joy - the pink and green color combination remained firmly entrenched on my desktop and no amount of xorg.conf tweaking would bring back Mandriva's pretty face from before that fatal upgrade.
To cut the long story short, Mandriva 2006 ships with a development version of X.Org 6.9 pulled from the CVS. Although this particular bug was reported on the distribution's forums and Bugzilla, it was never fixed before the final release and a lone errata entry is the only indication that Mandriva is aware of the issue. Apparently, it only affects a few NVIDIA and ATI cards and a solution is as simple as installing the proprietary drivers (which Mandriva provides to club members in the form of pre-built RPM packages). Unfortunately, my graphics card is a Matrox G450, which most certainly won't be cured by NVIDIA! Not to mention that, as some LWN readers love to remind me from time to time, tainting the kernel with a binary-only kernel module is just plain wrong!
Needless to say, the above trouble thoroughly soured my Mandriva 2006 experience. This was my main test machine with two dozens of other, well-behaved Linux distributions residing on its two hard disks. Interestingly, one of them, the latest test release of PCLinuxOS, also ships with X.Org 6.9 pulled from CVS (from roughly a month later than Mandriva's X.Org), but it has never suffered from any of those ghastly symptoms that made the Mandriva desktop look so horrible. Wading through Mandriva's Club forums, I found further evidence of discontent - some users experienced frequent and random hard lock-ups, while others complained about X.Org consuming 99% of their processing power. Mandriva's new desktop search tool called "Kat" (KDE's answer to Beagle) was also on the receiving end of some users' complaints for being extremely resource-hungry.
Next on test: a Pentium 4 laptop with a SiS graphics card - and the contrast couldn't have been any more different. On this particular piece of hardware Mandriva 2006 installed smoothly and has run beautifully ever since. No ghastly colors, no freezes, none of those bugs that some users and reviewers of the product reported in online forums and media. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience with perhaps a few minor annoyances, but nothing overwhelmingly negative. My only real complaint about Mandriva 2006 is that it ships with OpenOffice.org 1.1 and although several weeks have passed since the release of 2.0, Mandriva has yet to provide new binaries. As OpenOffice.org 2.0 is such a huge upgrade and is included in both SUSE 10.0 and Ubuntu 5.10, it is surprising to see Mandriva sticking to the older version (while, at the same time, quite happy to ship a half-broken development version of X.Org)!
With my opinion about Mandriva 2006 torn between an absolute failure on one system and a thoroughly enjoyable ride on another, it was left up to my main machine to swing the scales one way or the other. This box, powered by an AMD64 3200+ processor with a NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 graphics card and 2 GB of RAM, has had plenty of experience running 64-bit operating systems from all major Linux vendors. I downloaded the x86_64 edition of Mandriva's PowerPack and went on with installation. Incidentally, Mandriva no longer sells the x86_64 edition separately; instead, both the i586 and x86_64 editions are bundled together in one €80 PowerPack box.
When the installation finished and I rebooted the system, I was fascinated once again. A beautiful operating system that is really a joy to use! The installer correctly detected the NVIDIA card and installed the proprietary kernel module without any user intervention. But even with X.Org's native "nv" driver, the screen never suffered from any color disorder. Perhaps the most amazing part about the new Mandriva is its remarkable speed - it seems that the developers have implemented every speed tweak they could come up with in each new release, and version 2006 is possibly one of the fastest Linux distributions available today. Can you imagine a complete Linux OS booting into text console in 22 seconds and into full KDE in 45 seconds? Yes, that's Mandriva 2006!
What started as a complete disaster turned out to be quite a pleasant experience in the end. Unless you have an unlucky hardware combination, Mandriva Linux 2006 is a perfectly usable operating system, in addition to being extremely fast and serenely beautiful. But let my experience serve as a warning to potential customers: don't spend your money on a Mandriva 2006 retail box or on the Club membership until you've tried it out and made sure that it works on your hardware. While the ISO images of the product are, at the time of writing, only available to Club members (no word on when they will be released to general public), Mandriva 2006 can be installed directly from FTP or HTTP servers (after booting from a small "netinstall" ISO image). If it works, then your purchase is money well spent. If it doesn't then, well, let me offer a solution as suggested by a Club member who had experienced frequent lock-ups which no amount of tweaking could fix: "I solved the problem," he declared one day, "I've switched to SUSE 10.0."
New Releases
OpenBSD 3.8 released November 1, 2005
OpenBSD has announced (click below) the official release of OpenBSD 3.8. OpenBSD is focused on security and is justifiably proud of its record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install. Version 3.8 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system.Sorcery 1.13.0 Released
The Source Mage Project has released a new version of its package manager, Sorcery 1.13.0. Some of the major features in this release include: "on_cast" triggers integrated into the dependency tree, dispel can now walk up and down the dependency tree, verification level selection for source files has been added, cast now has a screen mode with compilation and downloading displayed in separate terminals, and more. See the release notes for more information.
Distribution News
Debian transition time
Steve Langasek reports (click below for full text) that the bulk of the C++ ABI transition will be pushed into testing soon. "As a result, any packages that have versions in testing and depend on one of these libraries must be updated at the same time. For the first time over the past months, we are now able to get a comprehensive look at just which packages are involved in this transition -- around 300 source packages that need to be updated!"
Debian testing now with secure apt
A new version of apt, 0.6.42 has reached Debian testing. This new apt supports verifying signed apt repositories, adding an important layer of security to Debian upgrades by preventing installation of forged packages. The details are explained in the apt-secure(8) man page.
New Distributions
Nexenta (Debian-based GNU/Solaris) launches
The Nexenta distribution has announced its existence; click below for the full text. Nexenta is a Debian-based distribution built on the Solaris kernel; the developers have "a working prototype" running now, and some 2300 packages are available. There is a site at gnusolaris.org, but it is currently necessary to ask the project for a username and password to get into it; that is expected to change in a few weeks.BeleniX
BeleniX is an OpenSolaris derivative from India. The 0.2 release of BeleniX is available as a LiveCD that can (optionally) boot into an XFce4 desktop. Like its parent, BeleniX has been released under the Common Development and Distribution License CDDL Version 1.0.Nonux
Nonux is a Slackware-based GNU/Linux distribution from the Netherlands. The website is in Dutch and it features Dutch localized applications. Available as a Live CD, Nonux can also be installed to a hard drive. The Nonux CD is currently at v1.6.
Distribution Newsletters
Debian Weekly News
The Debian Weekly News for November 1, 2005 is out, with a look at i386 compatibility in the upcoming etch release, a debhelper script that helps calculate libtool dependencies for development packages, a new version of OpenSSL, a Berlinux event report, and several other topics.Fedora Weekly News
The Fedora Weekly News #20 has the following articles: FreeSoftwareMagazine: FUDCon London 2005, Why we should use OpenOffice.org, Fedora user testimonials, Kernel Security Update fixes NVIDIA issue, HOWTO: OpenLDAP on FC4, HOWTO: F-Spot on FC4, REVIEW: New Linux (FC4) with an Old Laptop, and more.Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of October 31, 2005 is out. This edition looks at a new Korean version of GWN, the introduction of subforums at Gentoo forums, Portage moving toward 3.0, and several other topics.DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 124
The DistroWatch Weekly for October 31, 2005 is out. "Fans of the BSD family of projects can expect an exciting week as NetBSD 2.1, FreeBSD 6.0 and OpenBSD 3.8 are all expected to be announced and released with the next couple of days. On the Linux front, we have some interesting information regarding the Ubuntu Zero Conference, a link to guide describing the installation of Enlightenment 17 on SUSE 10.0 and news about a working graphical front-end for the Debian installer. Finally, the fans of Debian-based distributions will no doubt appreciate our review of The Debian System - Concepts And Techniques, a newly released book written by a well-known Debian developer."
Package updates
Fedora updates
Fedora Core 4 updates: esound (update to 0.2.36), mutt (fixes for crashes), cpio (bug fixes), selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.7, selinux-policy-strict-1.27.1-2.11 (change boolean name), selinux-policy-targeted-1.27.1-2.11 (change boolean name), cman-kernel (rebuilt for new FC4 kernel), gnbd-kernel (rebuilt for new FC4 kernel), GFS-kernel (rebuilt for new FC4 kernel), dlm-kernel (rebuilt for new FC4 kernel).Fedora Core 3 updates: libgnomeui (backports a fix to GnomeDruid), kernel-2.6.12-1.1381_FC3 (fix a failure to mount RAID devices on startup).
Mandriva update MDKA-2005:048
Mandriva has updated mdkonline packages that provide some enhancements, for 10.1, 10.2, 2006.0 and Corporate 3.0.
Newsletters and articles of interest
openSUSE inspires derivative distros (Linux.com)
Linux.com covers SUPER SUSE derivatives. "The SUSE Performance Enhanced Release (SUPER) project is integrating experimental patches, packages, and configurations in an effort to create a faster, more usable, and more attractive bleeding-edge SUSE distribution. Novell, understandably, shies away from implementing these kinds of changes until it has done extensive testing to assure stability for enterprise customers. However, such rigorous standards are not a requirement for the desktop users SUPER targets."
Distribution reviews
Trying out the new OpenBSD 3.8 (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews the OpenBSD 3.8 release. "The most interesting feature in my humble opinion is the trunk virtual network interface. With trunk, you can combine multiple physical network interfaces and treat them as a single virtual interface, allowing for bandwidth aggregation and automatic fail-over. In addition, these virtual interfaces can themselves contain virtual interfaces and handle more complex scenarios, such as seamless hand-off between multiple wireless networks."
Review: Mandriva Linux 2006 (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews Mandriva Linux 2006. "New to Mandriva 2006 is Kat, a Mandriva-sponsored desktop search tool similar to Google's Desktop Search. Cataloging both file metadata and contents, Kat currently supports a wide variety of graphics formats and a more limited selection of text formats, including PDF, HTML, Microsoft Word, Excel, OpenOffice.org 1.0, and OpenDocument. It requires an OS with lnotify activated; lnotify is a kernel module originally designed to search logs for suspect entries and the running of the kat daemon. Once set up, it provides quick and detailed responses. However, considering that Mandriva attempts to organize users by adding subdirectories such as Documents, Download, and Pictures to each home directory, I am uncertain about what advantages Kat itself offers over well-organized directories and a file manager in everyday computing."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
The GNU Bayonne 2 Telephony Application Server
GNU Bayonne is a telecommunications project that is being developed by this group of developers as a Free Software Foundation (FSF) project. Bayonne is derived from the Adjunct Communications Server project (ACS), which was started in 2000.
![[GNU Bayonne]](https://static.lwn.net/images/ns/bayonne2.png)
The
FSF directory listing for Bayonne hints at some of the uses for the
software:
"The project is not fully completed but is moving steadily towards producing a finished project that may be used to build telephony based system administration, home automation, automated attendant, v-commerce, and voice messaging systems.
"
Bayonne features include:
- Programmable via the GNU ccScript event-driven scripting language.
- Understands standard DTMF touch-tone telephone signals.
- Can record and play audio files through the telephone interface.
- Includes Text-to-Speech (Voice synthesis) support via Flite.
- Supports the H.323 teleconferencing protocol through OpenH323.
- Supports the SIP protocol.
- Has preliminary VoIP support.
- Interfaces with external languages such as Perl, Python, PHP and Java using TGI calls.
- Can interface with a web server.
- Supports database interfaces.
- The architecture supports plug-in modules.
- Works with PSTN interface cards such as those made by TrueData/Dialogic and others.
GNU Bayonne version 2 was introduced in May of 2005.
The first 1.0 release candidate for GNU Bayonne 2
was announced this week:
"GNU Bayonne 2 1.0 is composed of a subset of those services and features found in the recently introduced, and very rapidly advancing GNU Bayonne 2 development effort. Features were chosen for introduction in this release candidate that were already stable and effective for production use and supportable under GNU/Linux and other platforms.
"
With the 2.0 release, GNU Bayonne has becoming the obvious choice as a platform for a wide variety of open-source telecom applications, congratulations go to the developers for carrying this important project forward.
System Applications
Clusters and Grids
JPPF version 0.6.1_beta2 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.6.1 beta 2 of JPPF, the Java Parallel Processing Framework, has been released. "This release provides bug fixes and documentation improvements."
Database Software
OpenToro 3.0 released (SourceForge)
Version 3.0 of OpenToro has been announced. "OpenToro is a Web Database Publisher, a tool that allows us developing database-driven web applications in an agile and automatic way. Using OpenToro simply means to forget coding countless SQLs and JSPs every time we want to implement a web application with database access."
PostgreSQL 8.1.0 Release Candidate 1
Release Candidate 1 of PostgreSQL 8.1.0 is available for testing. "As with all pre-releases, but especially now that we are in the final stretch, testing is paramount to a successful, and bug free, release. As such, we ask everyone able who is able to do so to, to run RC1 through its paces and report any bugs to us through pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org."
PostgreSQL Weekly News
The October 30, 2005 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the weekly PostgreSQL database article assortment.
Mail Software
Sendmail X.0.0.0.0 released
The initial release of Sendmail X (version X.0.0.0.0) has been announced. See the project documentation for more information.
Telecom
Asterisk 1.2.0-beta2 Released
Version 1.2.0-beta2 of Asterisk, an open-source PBX, is out with numerous new features.IHU 0.5.1 released
Version 0.5.1 of IHU, I Hear U Project, is out. "IHU is a Voice over IP (VoIP) application for Linux (using Qt), that creates an audio stream between two computers easily and with the minimal traffic on the network." Changes include new features and bug fixes, see the change log for details.
VPN Software
SSL-Explorer 0.1.14 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.1.14 of SSL-Explorer, an open-source, browser-based SSL VPN solution, has been released. "Release 0.1.14 introduces a new remote forwarding feature which now brings full SSL tunneling support to SSL-Explorer. A series of improvements were also made to the secure proxy web forwarding feature for a more robust intranet browsing experience. Lastly, a number of minor bug-fixes were included with this release."
Web Site Development
Bricolage 1.8.8 released
Version 1.8.8 of Bricolage has been announced. "Bricolage is a full-featured, enterprise-class content management and publishing system. It offers a browser-based interface for ease-of use, a fully-fledged templating system with complete HTML::Mason, HTML::Template, PHP 5, and Template Toolkit support for flexibility, and many other features. It operates in an Apache/mod_perl environment and uses the PostgreSQL RDBMS for its repository." See the change log for release details.
Campsite 2.3.3 Released
Maintenance release 2.3.3 of Campsite, an open-source multilingual content management system for news web sites, is out with bug fixes and minor feature enhancements.Wicket 1.1 released (SourceForge)
Version 1.1 of Wicket is out with numerous new features. "Wicket is a Java component oriented web application framework that takes simplicity, separation of concerns and ease of use to a whole new level. Wicket web applications consist of HTML markup and Java classes. No strange languages, no strange markup, no configuration files, no specialized, expensive tools: just Java, HTML and you."
Zope 2.8.4 released
Version 2.8.4 of the Zope web development platform has been released. "This version obsoletes Zope 2.8.2 and Zope 2.8.3 which shipped with an older Docutils version as expected. For security reasons you should update to Zope 2.8.4. In addition this release fixes a potential security problem when using Zope with Python 2.4 - although Python 2.4. is neither recommended nor supported."
AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons (O'ReillyNet)
Brad Neuberg shows how to add back and forward control to AJAX web applications. "This article presents an open source JavaScript library that finally brings bookmarking and back button support to AJAX applications. By the end of this tutorial, developers will have a solution to an AJAX problem that not even Google Maps or Gmail possesses: robust, usable bookmarking and back and forward behavior that works exactly like the rest of the Web."
Miscellaneous
PowerDNS 2.9.19 released
Version 2.9.19 of PowerDNS, an open-source domain name server, is out. "This is again an important release. In short, better recursor, some DNSSEC support, possibility to run from alternate DNS roots (ORSN, for example), many many bugs fixed and more involvement and support from the PowerDNS community. A recommended upgrade!"
Desktop Applications
Business Applications
phpBMS v0.601 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0.601 of phpBMS, a PHP and MySQL-based billing, scheduling, and client management system, is available. "This is a minor bug fix update that address some issues with associated notes, the quick view screen, and compatibility issues with older versions of PHP".
Desktop Environments
GARNOME 2.13.1
Release 2.13.1 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME desktop environment, is out. "This release of GARNOME includes all of the GNOME 2.13.1 Desktop and Developer Platform, together with GStreamer 0.9 for added 'oomph'. It does include a fair few performance enhancements over it's stable counterpart, but that's because things are still relatively sane in the unstable branch."
GNOME Software Announcements
The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:- GDM2 2.13.0.0 (new features, bug fixes, and translation work)
- GnomePythonExtras 2.12.1 (stable release)
- gnubiff 2.1.7 (bug fixes)
- GtkPerf testing tool 0.40 (new features)
- libgda 1.2.3 (bug fixes and translation work)
- Rhythmbox 0.9.1 (new features, bug fixes, and translation work)
- Scw 0.1.0 (new library)
Cool but abandoned applications (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org looks at some GNOME applications that need adoption by developers. "I don't know if it can be proven statistically but I seem to come across an ever increasing number of incredibly useful GNOME based applications which have been abandoned by their former developers, even though there is no viable alternative to them. Lately I found that at least three apps which have found to be stable, useful and without alternative in the GNOME environment have been either officially abandoned or are slowly fading into oblivion."
This Month in SVN (KDE.News)
KDE.News has announced the October 29, 2005 edition of This month in SVN. "This Month in SVN for October looks at KOffice development. "While much of the rest of KDE is in feature freeze preparing for the imminent release of KDE 3.5, KOffice developers are starting to work hard for their 1.5 release, scheduled for between KDE 3.5 and KDE 4. This release will be able to be used with KDE 3x and Qt 3x, and will have a great deal of improvements over the current stable version." Topics covered include accessibility improvements, Krita one step closer to world domination and how you can help out."
KDE Software Announcements
The following new KDE software has been announced this week:- cb2Bib 0.5.0 (new features)
- kchmviewer 1.1 (security and bug fixes)
- K3b 0.12.6 (new features and bug fixes)
- K3b 0.12.7 (bug fixes)
- Kid3 0.6 (new features)
- KDbg 2.0.1 (bug fixes and translation work)
- kdesvn 0.6.3 (new features, bug fixes, and translation work)
- KLinkStatus 0.3.0 (new features)
- KMPlayer 0.9.1 (new features and bug fixes)
- knoda 0.8 (new features, bug fixes and documentation work)
- Kst 1.1.1 (bug fixes and other improvements)
- kvpnc 0.8.1 (new features and bug fixes)
- Maxemum TV-Guide 5.10.26 (new features and bug fixes)
- RSIBreak 0.0.3 (new features and bug fixes)
- ShowImg 0.9.4-1/0.9.5-rc1 (bug fixes)
- skim 1.4.3 (bug fixes)
KDE/Qt Extension for Traditional Eastern Languages (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers support for new Eastern languages under KDE. "A research group in the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been working on an operating system to support traditional Eastern languages such as Mongolian, Uighur and Tibetan. We have now extended Qt and KDE 3 to support these langages."
Electronics
ASCO 0.3.9 released
Version 0.3.9 of ASCO, a SPICE Circuit Optimizer, has been announced. "This is the first public release of the ASCO tool. You can read more about the features and applications on-line before downloading it. This is still a test release for a wide audience. However, I do not expect you to run into great difficulties in using it. So far it has only been used by me."
Kicad 2005-10-27 released
Release 2005-10-27 of Kicad, an electronics CAD package for KDE, is out. See the change log for details.
Financial Applications
SQL-Ledger 2.6.2 is out
Version 2.6.2 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, has been released with several new capabilities.
Games
Ember 0.3.4 released
Version 0.3.4 of Ember has been announced by the WorldForge game project. "Ember is a fully functional 3d client for the WorldForge project. It takes advantage of the latest graphic cards to present a beautiful, fully interactive world. An easy to use GUI allows the player to interact with both the world and other players with ease. This release is built with the latest version of the Eris (1.3.9) library, which brings much improved stability. Various other libraries used internally have also been updated."
ScummVM 0.8.0 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.8.0 of ScummVM, a cross-platform interpreter for point-and-click adventure engines, is out. "Along with a new improved launcher and in-game GUI, and the usual load of bugfixes, this release adds support for the two game titles "Inherit the Earth" and "Gobliiins", several new ports (Playstation Portable, Playstation 2 and EPOC/SymbianOS), and much improved support for Humongous Entertainment children games."
Vultures 1.10.0 released
Version 1.10.0 of Vultures, an isometric 3D interface for Nethack and Slash'EM, has been released. "We've just released 1.10.0, which brings lots of fixes, some enhancements and a ton of monster artwork (we now have unique graphics for about 60% of Nethack's monsters)".
GUI Packages
GORM release 1.0.0
Version 1.0.0 of GORM, the GNUstep user interface designer, is out. "Gorm allows developers to quickly create and edit graphical application interfaces using a whole lot of GUI elements: windows, menus, buttons, labels, sliders, tables, textfields, browsers, images, altert panels and more."
Interoperability
Two editions of Wine Traffic
Issues #296 and #297 of Wine Traffic are online with the latest Wine project articles.
Medical Applications
GNUmed hitting Debian mirrors (LinuxMedNews)
Debian packages of GNUmed 0.1, a medical practice management system, have been announced. The CHANGELOG file has the release information.
Music Applications
amSynth 1.1.0 announced
Version 1.1.0 of amSynth, an audio synthesizer, is out with GTK2 support, bug fixes, and more.Sineshaper 0.4.0 announced
The initial release of Sineshaper (version 0.4.0) has been announced. "The Sineshaper synth has two sine oscillators and two waveshapers. The sound from the two oscillators is mixed and passed through the waveshapers, first through the first waveshaper and then the second. You can control the tuning of both oscillators as well as their relative loudness, and the total amount of shaping and the fraction of that amount that each shaper applies. Both waveshapers use a sine function for shaping the sound, but for the second shaper you can shift the sine function (with maximal shift it becomes a cosine function) to produce a different sound."
Office Suites
OpenOffice.org Newsletter
The October, 2005 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is online. Read about OpenOffice.org 2.0 and other OpenOffice.org news.
Web Browsers
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 Release Candidate 1 Test Builds (MozillaZine)
Release Candidate 1 Test Builds of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird have been announced. "These builds are essentially release candidates of the release candidates, intended to be checked out by the Mozilla quality assurance community before the Release Candidate 1 builds are made available to a wider audience. Testers are asked to ensure that webmail and banking sites work as they should, verify that extensions and themes install correctly and check that there are no problems with general browser surfing."
Languages and Tools
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The October 18 - November 1, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online with the latest Caml language topics.
Haskell
Haskell Weekly News
The November 1, 2005 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online with the latest Haskell news. Topics covered this week include possible redesign of the Time module, the Data module hierarchy, GHC assembly code, and what happened to HWN last week.
Java
KSE PWSLIB 0-3-1 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0-3-1 of KSE PWSLIB is out. "JPasswords offers a compact but proficient and user-friendly, Java Swing based application to store and manage passwords on encrypted files. KSE PWSLIB is a backend package to read/create/modify Password Safe encrypted database files. - Release 0-3-1 is a maintenance release. Beside some bug corrections it offers improved speed of file loading and record list handling."
Test-Driven Development Using StrutsTestCase (O'ReillyNet)
John Ferguson Smart explores the StrutsTestCase framework on O'Reilly. "StrutsTestCase is a powerful and easy-to-use testing framework for Struts actions. Using Struts and then StrutsTestCase, in combination with traditional JUnit tests, will give you a very high level of test coverage and increase your product reliability accordingly."
This week on harmony-dev
The October 23-31, 2005 edition of This week on harmony-dev covers the latest from the Harmony open-source Java project.
Lisp
SBCL 0.9.6 released
Version 0.9.6 of Steel Bank Common Lisp has been released. "This is mostly a bug fix release, with an optimization to numeric comparison operators and MIPS/Linux support for saving cores with foreign code loaded."
CL-PDF 2.90 released
Version 2.90 of CL-PDF, a Common Lisp library for generating documents in Adobe Acrobat format, is out. "This version supports basic Unicode and TrueType fonts, extraction and manipulation of pages from existing PDF files, adds new examples and a few fixes."
PHP
PHP 4.4.1 Released
Version 4.4.1 of PHP has been released. "This version is a maintenance release, that contains numerous bug fixes, including a number of security fixes related to the overwriting of the GLOBALS array. All users of PHP 4.3 and 4.4 are encouraged to upgrade to this version."
phpBMS v0.6 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0.6 of phpBMS has been announced. "phpBMS is a PHP, MySQL based billing, scheduling, and client management system. Features include PDF generation for printing, mass e-mailing to clients, repeatable task and event handling, and quote/order/invoice tracking. The package has undergone significant changes and enchancements, but can still be installed over the top of most existing 0.51 installations and upgraded without losing data."
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The October 26, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python articles.
Ruby
Ruby Weekly News
The October 30th, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
XML
4Suite XML 1.0b2 announced
Version 1.0b2 of 4Suite XML, an open-source platform for XML and RDF processing, has been announced. "The most important development is that 4Suite is being split into three separate packages: 4Suite XML - XML, XPath, XSLT, related technologies and support libraries; 4Suite RDF - RDF processing libraries and stand-alone DBMS; and 4Suite Repository - XML and RDF repository."
What Is Atom (O'Reilly)
Ben Hammersley introduces Atom on O'Reilly. "The Atom Syndication Format is the next generation of XML-based file formats, designed to allow information--the contents of web pages, for example--to be syndicated between applications. Like RSS before it, Atom places the content and metadata of an internet resource into a machine-parsable format, perfect for displaying, filtering, remixing, and archiving."
Bug Trackers
Bugzilla 2.20 Released (MozillaZine)
Bugzilla 2.20 has been announced, and the software has been installed on bugzilla.mozilla.org. "Version 2.20 of Bugzilla, the Mozilla bug tracking software, has been released. The Bugzilla 2.20 new features page has more details about the improvements in this release, which include experimental support for PostgreSQL (previously only MySQL was supported) and a new user interface style."
Debuggers
Winpdb 1.0.5 Released (SourceForge)
Version 1.0.5 of Winpdb is available with bug fixes. "Winpdb is an advanced Python debugger, with support for smart breakpoints, multiple threads, namespace modification, embedded debugging, encrypted communication and speed of up to 20 times that of pdb."
Editors
RText Version 0.9.3.0 Now Available (SourceForge)
Version 0.9.3.0 of RText is out with bug fixes and new features. "RText is a customizable programmer's text editor written in Java. Some of its features include: syntax highlighting, editing multiple documents at once, printing and print preview, find/replace/find in files dialogs, undo/redo, and online help."
Version Control
(H)gct 0.3 announced
Version 0.3 of (H)gct, a source code management tool, is out with several new capabilities.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Red Hat looks under Linux's hood (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at Red Hat's open source projects. "Trying to take a more active role in open-source programming, Red Hat has created a team of 34 programmers to work on nothing but next-generation software, the company plans to announce Tuesday."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier lists his top ten software tools, on Linux.com. "The first time I read about GNU Screen, I thought it was a bit of a silly program. Why not just open a bunch of xterms, instead of mucking about with all the complex keybindings used by Screen to switch between its windows? Sure, it might be useful if you only work from the console, but how many folks really do that anymore? Then I actually spent a little bit of time with Screen, and I found out what a valuable utility it really is. Instead of worrying about dozens of xterms, I could have a single terminal window with multiple Screen windows that I could switch between easily and quickly."
Companies
Red Hat Wants Xen in Linux Kernel (eWeek)
eWeek looks at the ongoing process of getting Xen into the kernel. "Ian Pratt, of the University of Cambridge in England and the leader of the Xen project, said there were a number of reasons for the delay in including Xen in the kernel. Primarily, Xen 3.0 had suffered from a bit of feature creep. Physical Address Extension (PAE) 32b support and Virtualization Technology, for example, were added very late in the cycle. 'We were aiming for an end-of-summer release, but this now looks on target for December,' Pratt said."
Linux Adoption
Desktop Linux 'like teenage sex' (ZDNet)
ZDNet covers comments by Red Hat's CEO Matthew Szulik at a recent conference. "One area where open source software hasn't caught on widely is on the desktop, an area where Red Hat has a modest product aimed at a relatively narrow set of customers such as those manning the phones at call centres. Desktop Linux is a tough nut to crack, Szulik said. "The desktop is like teenage sex. Everybody's talking about it, but nobody's doing it," Szulik said." No analogies were given for the Windows desktop, however.
Linux PCs: Customer service or lip service? (ZDNet)
ZDNet has discovered that the major computer vendors are still not going out of their way to offer desktop Linux systems. "While American consumers are having a hard time finding Window-less PCs, their counterparts in Europe, Asia and Japan have a much easier path. Outside the United States, it's easier to buy a desktop with non-Microsoft operating systems pre-installed. HP's Web store in the Netherlands offered three HP Compaq computers with Windows XP, Suse Linux 9.3 or FreeDOS for the same price. These models retail starting at $806 (669 euros), excluding sales tax."
Legal
GPL Undergoes Major Revisions (eWeek)
eWeek takes a look at the GPL v3.0. "There will be eight people working full-time on all the processes around GPL 3, but there will also be some 60 other people chairing committees and playing major public roles in the discussions. "But they will be outsiders with interests and stakes and concerns. I also expect there will be many thousands of people who want to be heard, and they are all important to the process," Moglen said."
Interviews
Free Remote KDE Desktops from CosmoPOD.com (KDE.News)
KDE.News interviews Stephen Ensor of the CosmoPOD project. "CosmoPOD.com offers free remote KDE desktops over NX. Anyone can sign up to have their own desktop accessible from any computer with a network connection. CosmoPOP uses KDE's Kiosk framework to ensure security for their system. To find out more about the service and why KDE was the chosen desktop, KDE Dot News spoke to the man behind CosmoPOD, Stephen Ensor."
Resources
CLI Magic: GNU find (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at the GNU find command. "If you're forgetful like me, you may sometimes need to help finding a file you created or modified just an hour ago because you can't remember its name. You can still use find to locate it. Instead of using find with the -name option, use find -amin -60 to see a list of all files accessed within the past 60 minutes. Note the minus sign before the 60 in that example. In this context, it means less than. If you leave it off, you will only see files accessed exactly 60 minutes ago, or if you use a plus sign instead of the minus, files accessed more than 60 minutes ago."
The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, by Dr. Peter H. Salus - Ch. 20 (Groklaw)
This installment of The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin looks at some of the early Linux distributions. "The first of these was Adam Richter's Yggdrasil (in the Old Norse Edda, Yggdrasil is the "world ash," from a branch of which Odin/Wotan made his spear). Yggdrasil alpha was released on 8 December 1992. It was called LGX: Linux/GNU/X -- the three components of the system. Recall that Gilmore, Tiemann and Henkel-Wallace formed Cygnus in 1989. Richter spoke to Michael Tiemann about setting up a business, but was "definitely uninterested in joining forces with Cygnus." Yggdrasil beta was released the next year."
High-Performance Linux Clustering (developerWorks)
developerWorks shows how to build a working Linux cluster. "This article covers parallel algorithms, and shows you how to write parallel programs, set up clusters, and benchmark clusters. We look at parallel programming using MPI and the basics of setting up a Linux cluster. In this article, meet OSCAR, an open source project that helps you set up up robust clusters. Also, get an overview of cluster management and benchmarking concepts, complete with detailed steps to run the standard LINPACK tests on a cluster."
Advanced Linux LDAP authentication (Linux.com)
"American" Dave Kline continues his Linux.com series on LDAP configuration with part two. "In an earlier look at LDAP, we set up a simple LDAP-based authentication system. We configured client machines to retrieve authentication information from a server running OpenLDAP. Now let's go further by enabling encryption and looking at how to make user modifications through LDAP."
Paranoid Penguin - Single Sign-on and the Corporate Directory, Part I (Linux Journal)
Ti Leggett shows how to use Kerberos and OpenLDAP for managing centralized authentication in a Linux Journal article. "Author Ti Leggett presents the first in a series of articles focused on building a secure corporate directory, including support for single-sign-on that's scalable up to thousands of users."
All hail the speed demons (O'Reillynet)
Here's an O'Reillynet article on the efforts to speed up Linux desktop performance. "What I find so interesting about Waldo's, Federico's and Michael's work is that they are playing with something of a black-art. Performance optimisation is something that not only requires an expansive knowledge of how software is built and represented in memory, but also how to optimise code and the way code is interpreted."
Reviews
Network monitoring with Cacti (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at Cacti for monitoring Linux servers. "I recently set up three new servers at my university. To monitor and track various parameters, I decided to install Cacti to see if it lived up to the description. I previously used MRTG to monitor our network, but I was never able to configure it to my complete satisfaction. MRTG is pretty complex, and takes a lot of getting used to. The network in question comprises about 600 nodes. Three Linux servers prove DHCP, DNS, Squid network caching, and other services. The devices that I needed to monitor were the three servers themselves, some Layer 3 managed switches, Wi-Fi access points, and a few workstations."
Hardware emulation with QEMU (Linux.com)
Linux.com takes a look at QEMU. "QEMU is an open source cross-platform emulator for Linux hosts. It allows you to emulate a number of hardware architectures (x86, x86-64, and PowerPC are currently known to work, with others, including SPARC and MIPS, in development). QEMU thereby lets you run another operating system on top of your existing OS. Going through the process of installing and configuring QEMU not only gave me a worthwhile new software tool, but also helped me learn a few things about Linux."
Does Slackware still matter? (Linux-Watch)
Alan Canton compares Slackware to other distributions on Linux-Watch. "Unlike Slackware, most Linux distros have by now moved on toward newer and better (IMO) package management systems, as well as either full-fledged GUI admin modules or a collection of easy-to-run scripts that you can use to configure your system. Only in Slackware do you actually have to go in and edit xorg.conf. Just about every other distro has a GUI module or a script that will easily let you set the resolution or dpi of your display."
Miscellaneous
BeOS rises from the grave, takes the name ZETA (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the release of ZETA Live CD 1.1. "In the aftermath of Be, Inc.'s demise, several Be-like projects sprang up -- notably OpenBeOS, an open-source clone of the original BeOS (later renamed Haiku), BlueEyedOS, and Cosmoe, both reimplementations of the BeOS APIs running on top of the Linux kernel. But ZETA remains the only true descendant of the real BeOS code."
An open-source rival to Google's book project (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at the current state of online book archiving and the recently launched Open Library effort. "When it comes to digitizing books, two stories appear to be unfolding: One is about open source, and the other, Google. Or so it seemed at a party held by the Internet Archive on Tuesday evening, when the nonprofit foundation and a parade of partners, including the Smithsonian Institution, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, rallied around a collective open-source initiative to digitize all the world's books and make them universally available."
Why Wikipedia isn't like Linux (The Register)
Andrew Orlowski compares Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, to Linux. "Of Encyclopedia Britannica, David says "It's of consistent high quality, it's one of the truly great books of Anglophone culture and it's doomed." Oh. Why does David want to replace something truly great and of high quality with something mediocre? He says it's inevitable: "Commercial encyclopedias are doomed anyway because, as Microsoft is finding out with Linux, it's hard to compete with free. "If we want a good encyclopedia in ten years, it's going to have to be a good Wikipedia, because everything else will have been undercut.""
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
OpenDocument Fellowship petitions Microsoft to support ODF
The OpenDocument Fellowship has organized a petition to convince Microsoft to support the OpenDocument format. "Microsoft has said that they will support the OpenDocument format if there is customer demand. The purpose of the petition is to demonstrate that customer demand." (Thanks to David A. Wheeler.)
Software Freedom Law Center Appoints New Attorneys
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has announced the appointment of two new attorneys. Karen M. Sandler and James Vasile have joined the SFLC and will apply their technology and legal experience to support FOSS projects, developers and vendors.
Commercial announcements
AOpen launches miniPC
AOpen Inc. has announced the new AOpen miniPC. "The 6.5-inch, square metallic miniPC has a slot-load CD drive and a power button in the front, along with two USB ports, one 1394 and speaker out/mic in the back. It features the latest Intel Pentium M notebook processor, allowing near silent cooling without sacrificing performance. In addition, the miniPC boasts a DVI Connection, integrated Ethernet card and slot-loaded DVD-Burner. The product is built with mini-PCI 802.11 a/b/g wireless communication module and Bluetooth support. The miniPC also provides DVI, S-Video, component, composite and YPbPr connectors so that it can be connected to HDTV, plasma display monitor, large screen display panels, and high definition audio products."
CodeSourcery is Newest EEMBC Member
EEMBC has announced its newest member, CodeSourcery. "The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) today announced that its newest member is CodeSourcery, a provider of development tools, software test solutions, and custom software development services for semiconductor and operating system vendors."
Forgent to step up JPEG patent suits
Forgent has sent out a press release on its acquisition of a new lawyer to head the team which is shaking down companies for royalties on its image compression patent. "'Forgent's '672 Patent case is the kind of litigation we like and we look forward to bringing significant value to the licensing and litigation process,' replied Steve Susman, partner with Susman Godfrey LLP." If Forgent continues to be successful, this one will hit the free software community for sure, sooner or later.
Google Supports Open Source Initiatives
Google has a press release touting its recent $350,000 contribution to a joint open source technology initiative of Oregon State University and Portland State University.Doc Searls will be interviewing Google's Open Source Project Manager Chris DiBona soon, and is currently soliciting questions on Linux Journal.
Novell Promotes Ronald W. Hovsepian to President and COO
Novell, Inc. has announced the appointment of Ron Hovsepian as its President and chief operating officer. "Mr. Hovsepian, 44, joined Novell in June 2003 as president of North America, and has led the transformation of global field operations since May of 2005. Previously, Mr. Hovsepian held management and executive positions at IBM Corporation over a 17 year period, including worldwide general manager of IBM's distribution industries, managing global hardware and software development, sales, marketing and services. Mr. Hovsepian also served as a managing director of Internet Capital Group, a venture capital firm."
Novell announces its layoffs
As has been expected for a while, Novell has announced that it is laying off some 600 people. The purpose of the restructuring is to allow the company to focus on its "growth opportunities," defined as Linux and "identity." Hopefully that bodes well for the Linux developers employed there.Pogo Linux: Named As One of the Fastest Growing Private Companies
Pogo Linux has made its way onto the Puget Sound Business Journal's list of fastest growing private companies. "Pogo Linux, a manufacturer of customized computer servers, workstations and storage systems running on the Linux platform, today announced recognition from the Puget Sound Business Journal as one of the fastest growing private companies in the state of Washington. This annual list is an indicator of Washington's most active and successful entrepreneurial companies. The index measures revenue and ranks companies by revenue growth over a three-year period, as expressed in percentages."
SGI and Novell Attain Elevated Security Certification
Silicon Graphics, Inc. has announced a security certification of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on SGI Altix computers. "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on Altix(R) systems has attained Evaluation Assurance Level 3+ (EAL3+) as determined by the Common Criteria for Information Security Evaluation. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 was evaluated under full compliance with the Controlled Access Protection Profile (CAPP) on an SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 supercomputer and an SGI Altix 350 mid-range server."
Trusted Computer Solutions announces NetTop(R)2
Trusted Computer Solutions, Inc. has announced a new Linux-based thin client application. "Trusted Computer Solutions, Inc. (TCS), a leading supplier of secure information sharing products to the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and commercial industry, today announced the addition of SecureOffice(R) NetTop(R)2 - Thin Client to its SecureOffice family of software products."
VA Linux partners with Clara Online
VA Linux Systems and Clara Online, Inc. have announced a partnership. "VA Linux Systems Japan K.K. (VA Linux), Japan's leading Linux and Open Source solutions provider, and Clara Online, Inc. today announced that the latter would adopt VA Balance, the former's load balancer and high-availability service solution, for Clara Online's dedicated server service for Linux. Both companies agreed that Clara Online would sell VA Balance to its housing customers at Clara's data centers and also work closely in marketing VA Balance."
New Books
JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide - O'Reilly's Latest Release
O'Reilly has published the book JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide by Tom Marrs and Scott Davis.Linux Desktop Pocket Guide - O'Reilly's Latest Release
O'Reilly has published the book Linux Desktop Pocket Guide by David Brickner.
Resources
Two new Audio Libre articles on FireWire audio for Linux
Linuxaudio.org is running a pair of articles about FireWire audio for Linux. The article titles include One cable to rule them all - mLAN audio networking and Hot on the wire - the FreeBoB project.The Linux Documentation Project Weekly News
The November 2, 2005 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News is out with the latest new documentation releases.Public domain Lisp logo
A new Public domain Lisp logo is available for Lisp projects. "Conrad Barski has created a logo "for anyone who needs an attractive graphic to indicate their use of, and support for, Lisp"."
Contests and Awards
BitDefender Challenges Linux Community
BitDefender has announced a product testing contest. "BitDefender, an award-winning provider of antivirus software and data security solutions, is inviting Linux enthusiasts and professionals to crash test BitDefender Mail Protection for Enterprise Beta, the upcoming BitDefender antivirus and antispam solution for Linux e-mail servers. The most thorough beta tester will receive 1,000 German beers and a trip to BitDefender's corporate headquarters in Romania, where they will attend meetings with Count Dracula, the BitDefender development team and other local luminaries."
Realm Systems announces Project BlackDog Contest
Realm Systems, Inc. has announced a contest for porting the best application to the BlackDog mobile computing platform. "Realm Systems announces the start of Project BlackDog, a skills contest offering prizes in five categories, including a $50,000 grand prize for the best application created or ported to run on BlackDog(TM). The contest started October 15 and ends January 15, 2006. Prizes will also be awarded for the most bugs reported that are determined to be critical to BlackDog functionality."
Upcoming Events
Linux Audio Conference 2006 CFP
A call for papers and music has gone out for the Linux Audio Conference 2006. Papers are due by January 8. "LAC2006 will take place 27-30 April 2006, again at the ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics in Karlsruhe, Germany."
OSDC open for registrations
Registration is open for the second Australian Open Source Developers Conference. The event takes place in Melbourne, Australia on December 5-7, 2005.Events: November 3 - December 29, 2005
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 3 - 11, 2005 | Ubuntu Below Zero | (downtown Holiday Inn)Montreal, Canada |
| November 6 - 9, 2005 | International PHP Conference 2005 | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 7 - 9, 2005 | Open Source Database Conference 05 | (NH-Hotel Frankfurt-Mörfelden)Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 8 - 9, 2005 | Association Française des Utilisateurs de PHP(AFUP) | Paris, France |
| November 9 - 10, 2005 | Forum PHP Paris 2005 | Paris, France |
| November 12 - 18, 2005 | SC|05 | (Washington State Convention and Trade Center)Seattle, WA |
| November 13 - 15, 2005 | Firebird Conference 2005 | (Hotel Olsanka)Prague, Czech Republic |
| November 15 - 18, 2005 | Embedded Technology 2005(ET2005) | Yokohama, Japan |
| November 15 - 17, 2005 | LinuxWorld Germany | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 18, 2005 | European Gentoo developer meeting | Schloss Kransberg, Germany |
| November 20 - 23, 2005 | 5tas Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre | Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina |
| November 29 - December 2, 2005 | FOSS.IN/2005 | (Bangalore Palace)Bangalore, India |
| December 4 - 9, 2005 | Large Installation System Administration Conf.(LISA) | San Diego, CA |
| December 5 - 7, 2005 | Open Source Developers' Conference(OSDC) | (Monash University's Caulfield campus)Melbourne, Australia |
| December 27 - 30, 2005 | 22nd Chaos Communication Congress | Berlin, Germany |
Web sites
Nokia open source site launches
Nokia has announced the launch of opensource.nokia.com, a gathering point for the company's free software work. There's not a huge amount there yet; look for the new S60 browser to show up early next year, though.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Letters to the editor
Change the name of LWN.
| From: | Greg Wilkins <gregw-AT-mortbay.com> | |
| To: | letters-AT-lwn.net | |
| Subject: | Change the name of LWN. | |
| Date: | Thu, 27 Oct 2005 19:00:46 +0200 |
Dear editor, while I was reading this weeks issue of LWN - it struck me that the L in LWN is not really very accurate anymore. This weeks front page has an article on new ideas in web browsers (some of which don't even work on linux), a piece on the release of Minix (an alternative to linux) and Gnome (a desktop that runs on linux, but other OS's as well). While the sections on kernel and distributions is still very Linux focused, the sections on development and security are broader scope. In light of the ongoing revenue problems for LWN - perhaps a name change could be considered to reflect that LWN contains quality content on a large range of free/open software/systems/document topics. Open Source Weekly News - OSWN Linux and Open Source Weekly News - LOSWN Libero Weekly New - LWN This week in the free noosphere - TWFN Actually - now I come to think of it... The N is not really that accurate either. If I want dry press release style New, then there is heaps of that available at newsforge. If I want rampant opinions, then TSS is the place to be. But LWN offers editorial - news with opinions that one has come to trust. So perhaps: Open Source Editorials and Linux Weekly News OK that suxs as well..... but you get the idea - I don't think your name is doing you any favours in advertising your great content! cheers
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet