Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
X graphics get a boost (NewsForge)
NewsForge takes a look at Novell's Xgl framework improvements. "According to Nat Friedman, Novell's Xgl architecture will allow a move away from a raster model of drawing to a vector model, which will provide a "modern" graphics model that should be usable for the next 10 to 15 years. "We're gonna be in good shape for that now, this takes away major concerns. The only other OS that offers the capability to do this is Mac OS X, and the only reason is because they have a tight link to the hardware ... all we're doing is taking advantage of that hardware too. Windows doesn't have this yet and we do ... we're not going to cede 3D graphics acceleration to proprietary software.""
The Next Battleground for VoIP (O'Reilly)
Andrew Sheppard predicts difficult times for telephone companies in an O'Reilly article. "When the ground upon which we stand moves, it is the result of a tremor, an earthquake, or a tectonic shift. Internet telephony started as a tremor only a few short years ago. It is now an earthquake. And within a decade, or perhaps less, it will have resulted in a tectonic shift in how phone calls are made the world over. Indeed, it will radically alter how people communicate in all manner of ways, not just by voice. Clearly, the future of telephony is the internet, for which geographic location and distance don't matter. To borrow some words from Churchill: the battle between VoIP and PSTN/POTS is over, and I expect the battle for mobile telephony is about to begin."
Fon time (Linux Journal)
Here's a look at Fon from Doc Searls' blog. "At the Fon site, you download software that you install on your FON compatible WiFi routher. Namely, a generic Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL (versions 1x to 4x), which are the ones with Linux inside. You can get one through Fon's store for twenty-five dollars or euros. This is, obviously, below cost."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Novell Linux Desktop Demonstration Videos (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org mentions the availability of a video demo of the Novell Linux Desktop 10 system. "A preview of Novell Linux Desktop 10 (NLD10) was shown to an audience at the Solutions Linux conference this week in Paris. We have a selection of videos which display a variety of amazing effects through the use of XGL, including transparency, wobbling windows, a 3D Cube for desktop switching, and a task switcher which displays a preview of windows."
The Producer Electronics Revolution, Part I (Linux Journal)
Doc Searls is in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. "Next was Larry Page, co-founder of Google. This talk was especially interesting to me, because Larry would seem to be the least likely public speaker among top Google brass. He's shy, tends to mumble and never struck me as a stage hog. (Like, for example, me.) He was terrific. Unlike the earlier keynotes I saw, Larry's speech wasn't scripted, and he didn't read it off a screen. Instead, he paced the stage with a stack of paper in his hand, occasionally telling the techie running the slides to go forward or back, and was charmingly low key and good humored."
The SCO Problem
Report on Hamilton, Canada LUG Special Session on SCO v. IBM (Groklaw)
Groklaw has a report from the Hamilton Linux User Group's special session on the SCO v. IBM litigation. "The Hamilton Linux User Group tonight had a special session nominally on the SCOG vs. IBM court case but actually covering a wide range of topics sometimes only vaguely related -- but all of the topics would be familiar to any regular reader of Groklaw. The panel featured Peter Salus (Unix and Linux historian), Robert Young (co-founder of Red Hat), and Ren Bucholz (EFF Policy Co-ordinater). For the first hour, the panelists discussed a variety of issues."
Companies
To grow, Borland to cut off its roots (ZDNet)
ZDNet looks at Borland's change of direction, noting that free software has closed off its old business model. "Today, Borland's traditional business is being undercut by open-source. In the past two years, the rise of freely available open-source IDEs, notably the Eclipse software, has cut the legs out from beneath the stand-alone tools market, said analysts."
VMware cuts VMware Server price to zero (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports that VMware is planning on releasing a free server. "Raghu Raghuram, VMware's vice president of datacenter and desktop platform products, said that the product would be "an advancement over GSX," VMware's current entry-level server virtualization product, and that VMware would begin directing new customers to VMware Server. Though the release is free as in beer, the product is not being released under an open source license. However, Raghuram said that VMware Server will not offer the advanced management tools found in VMware ESX Server. "It does not have all the capability and advanced functionality ... that you'd need for large-scale rollouts.""
Business
Open Source's New Frontiers (Business Week)
Business Week has put up a series of articles on open source, covering topics like database systems, MontaVista, software patents, and GPLv3. "Stallman's aim is nothing short of utopian. He wants to capitalize on the economy's growing addiction to open-source code as a means of forcing his social vision -- free software for everyone -- on information technology and consumer electronics writ large. 'In the world we're living in right now, no one can make small, cheap consumer electronics without our software,' says Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation and co-author of GPL3. 'Our pre-market clout, our use as a raw material of manufacturing, is now large enough to bring an industry coalition into being.'"
Linux at Work
Linux powers autonomous military ground vehicle (LinuxDevices)
LinuxDevices looks at an unmanned vehicle that is controlled by Linux. "iRobot used embedded Linux to build an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) aimed at military scouting, guarding, and hauling applications. The "R-Gator" is based on John Deere's diesel-powered, 658cc M-Gator military utility vehicle platform, with control, navigation, and object-avoidance systems based on BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks."
Legal
BitTorrent to crack down on use of name (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports that the creators of the BitTorrent file-swapping application will be cracking down on how other software developers use the name. "BitTorrent's speedy downloading features has made it one of the most popular tools online for distributing large files such as movies or software, both legally and illegally. The company is trying to turn its own Web site into a hub for distributing movies legally, and has been in close discussions with Hollywood studios for months."
Interviews
The open-source programmer who means business (ZDNet)
ZDNet talks to Alan Cox about the GPLv3, Sony BMG, software patents and more. "Q: The first public discussion draft of GPL 3 (General Public License version 3) was released a couple of weeks ago. What are your initial thoughts on it? Cox: The majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright information be displayed in an "about" box, rather than relying on command line instructions (as is the case in GPL 2). Some of the more contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional. One of the other nice things is the work to make the GPL compatible with other licenses. That's really important--it will allow people to share more code."
$100 Laptop: Great for the world, great for Linux (ZDNet)
ZDNet interviews Red Hat's Mike Evans about the One Laptop per Child initiative. "ZDNet: Some argue that the $100 target price is unrealistic, and that a machine would already exist at or near this price through market competition if it was possible? M.E.: There are existing models of other technologies, whether it be Dell or Apple, but nothing on this grand a scale, with this price point and with this academic and historical horsepower behind it. The people at the MIT labs have 20-plus years of computer expertise. To me the timing is especially interesting. If someone attempted to do this four years ago it wouldn't have worked, but now I have seen that there is a real will among developing countries to bring their people forward right now."
Interview with Samantha Kleinberg on CL-GODB, Common Lisp & Bioinformatics
Emre Sevinc has published an interview with Samantha Kleinberg. "Samantha Kleinberg from New York University is one of the software developers who participated in Google's Summer of Code in 2005. She has developed CL-GODB project using Common Lisp. Her having used Common Lisp and becoming one of the Google celebrities drew our attention and we didn't hesitate to ask about the details. She has provided clear-cut and right-to-the-point answers."
Richard Stallman on P2P (LinuxP2P)
There is an interview with Richard Stallman on the LinuxP2P site. "I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable. It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely."
FOSDEM: Three New Interviews
FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) is coming up at the end of February. As usual, the FOSDEM team is interviewing the speakers and three new interviews have been posted on FOSDEM's website. Click below for more about FOSDEM and pointers to this week's interviews with Michael Meeks, Developer of OpenOffice.org 2.0, Jon Trowbridge, Maintainer of Beagle, and Jan Janak, Core Team Member of SER (The SIP Express Router).
Resources
Theming Bash (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet takes a look at creating and using (bash) shell themes. "Shell themes are shell presets that, when invoked, customize the shell with various useful commands for working on a specific project. For example, I can type Theme perl/nav-menu, and then gain some shell commands that are useful for working on my navigation menu module. Among other things, it will also automatically change my directory to ~/progs/perl/www/Nav-Menu/trunk/module/, where I work on the module."
Setting up international character support (Linux.com)
Linux.com looks at support for international characters. "Created in 1992 by Ken Thompson on a placemat in a New Jersey diner, UTF-8 has today become a computing standard. Most recent Linux distributions support UTF-8, although many, including Debian, give users the option of using legacy locales that contain only the characters needed for a specific language."
At the Sounding Edge: Article 24 (Linux Journal)
In this edition of At the Sounding Edge Dave Phillips revisits some of the core Linux audio applications to see what's new. "The following notes are mini-reports on the development status of some high-profile Linux audio applications. The basic Linux sound system is in good condition, with mature versions of ALSA, JACK, LADSPA, MidiShare, libsndfile and other low-to-middle level system components now available. The engines behind Linux audio applications are running nicely, thanks to various kernel tunings, and some of those applications have attained the status of professional usability. Of course, problems remain. Hardware support is still narrow compared to what's available for Win/Mac audio people. In addition, configuration difficulties still can be show-stoppers for new users."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)
Linux.com hears from another sysadmin who lists vim, man, mc, ssh, screen, rsync and other favorite tools. "If you need to find differences between two files, you will want to use diff. Running diff -u file1 file2 will show you where they differ. It can also be useful for scripting, if you want to send from a remote system just the changes between certain files. To do this, you can create a cron job and pipe out differences to your email."
Repairing Windows PCs the Linux way (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch takes a look at repairing Windows PCs with live Linux CDs. "Do you want to know the basics of repairing Windows systems with Knoppix Linux? You should. It's incredibly useful information to have, since with Knoppix, or other live CD-based Linuxes, you can do life-saving surgery on near-dead Windows systems."
Reviews
Test drive: D-Link DWL-922 Wireless G Network Starter Kit (NewsForge)
Glenn Mullikin hacks on a D-Link DWL-922 Wireless G Network Starter Kit. "D-Link doesn't advertise Linux support for the kit, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway to see how well it fared. The kit comes with D-Link's DI-524 Wireless G router, which has all the features you would expect a router to have, including plenty of security options, and the DWL-G122 USB 2.0 wireless adapter, which you can use at Wi-Fi hotspots or on your LAN."
Openbox: A lightweight window manager (Linux.com)
Linux.com reviews the Openbox window manager. "Most Linux-based distributions for the masses have either GNOME, KDE, or both desktops, yet the startup times and resources required by both GNOME and KDE make them unsuitable for old or lower-end hardware. My quest for a standards-compliant, fast, lightweight, and extensible window manager led me to Openbox. Openbox complies with both the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) and the Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH). Originally derived from Blackbox, Openbox version 3 was completely rewritten in C. Among its fancy features, it supports chainable key bindings, customizable mouse actions, and multi-head Xinerama."
OpenZoep: An Open Source VoIP Engine (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet covers OpenZoep. "OpenZoep (pronounced "open soup") is a client-side telephony and instant messaging (IM) communications engine. It supports computer-to-computer (peer-to-peer) VoIP calls, instant messaging, and outbound PSTN and SIP calls to free and premium SIP providers. OpenZoep is available under the GPL license, as well as a commercial license for companies that do not wish to publish the source code of their commercial products based on OpenZoep."
Capturing real-world knowledge with Protégé OWL (NewsForge)
NewsForge reviews Protégé OWL. "Protégé OWL runs on my PowerBook all the time, right next to Mail, iCal, and Firefox. I use it daily in places where in the past I might have looked reluctantly at Microsoft Access or an open source alternative. Protégé OWL manages all of the corporate records and information of the small public-sector telecommunications company that I run. The ontology acts as a conventional records-management system, recording file and document numbers, dates, file notes, and cross-references."
Miscellaneous
Ben Goodger Reflects on the History of Firefox
Firefox Lead Engineer Ben Goodger has some reflections on the history of Firefox. "The relationship between Netscape and the Mozilla open source project was uneasy. Mozilla wanted an independent identity, to be known as the community hub in which contributors could make investments of code and trust, while companies like Netscape productized the output. Netscape was not satisfied to let Mozilla turn the crank however; building and shipping a product with as many constraints as the Netscape browser was -- and remains -- a mighty challenge. Netscape was convinced it was the only one that knew what needed to be done. At the time, I think it was true." (Found on MozillaZine)
To GPL 3 or not to GPL 3, that is the Linux question (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch follows ongoing discussions about GPLv3 and the Linux kernel. "Linus Torvalds made it clear on January 25th in a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), that as far as he was concerned, the Linux operating system is going to stay under General Public License 2 and not migrate to GPL 3. Discussion of the matter, however, has not come to an end. Richard M. Stallman, primary author of the GPL and founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) isn't interested in fighting with Torvalds over the matter. "I don't want to have an argument with him about this," Stallman said."
OOo Off the Wall: The Elephant in the Living Room -- OOo and MS Office (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal looks at the relationship between OpenOffice.org and MS Office. "For OpenOffice.org (OOo), MS Office (MSO) is the elephant in the living room. As much as the project might want to ignore MSO, it cannot. Many potential users never have used anything except MSO, and most have to share files with MSO users at some point. The lucky exceptions, of course, are those in a free software work or educational environment, who deal only with equally lucky family members and friends."
Andrew Tridgell Completes OSDL Fellowship (LinuxElectrons)
LinuxElectrons notes that Andrew Tridgell has completed an OSDL Fellowship. "''An enormous amount of progress towards the completion of Samba 4 was made while I was an OSDL fellow, which culminated in the release of the first technology preview release of Samba4 last week,'' said Tridgell. ''Having time to concentrate just on the one project really helped. Many thanks to OSDL for providing the fellowship and supporting Samba development.''"
Which is Better: A Partitioned OS or a Partitioned Machine? (IT-Director)
IT-Director questions Linux-only virtualization technologies. "While we are rather fond of hardware-based virtualizations, software approaches such as VMware or Xen are quite capable, and do support multiple operating systems on a machine. In fact, Xen is already slated to be included in SUSE 10 later this year. Given the push for efficiency evident in the marketplace, combined with a best-of-breed approach to applications and operating systems, virtualization schemes that do not support multiple OSes seem to achieve less than the full potential of virtualization."
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