Linux in the news

Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls covers an ICANN debate on the future of the whois command, the comment period closes at the end of October. "Raise your hand if you use whois every day. Even if your hand isn't up, and you just regard whois as am essential sysadmin tool, this post is for you. Because if you're interested in keeping whois working for the those it was made for in the first place, you need to visit the battlefield where whois' future is being determined right now. That is, you must be Beowulf to the Grendel that is the Intellectual Property Community. Worse, you must confront him in the vast cave that is ICANN."

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Itty-bitty, teeny-weeny Linux PCs (DesktopLinux)

DesktopLinux looks at some small yet full-featured Linux-powered PCs. "When I say full-featured, don't mean Internet tablets, like the Nokia N800, or PDAs (personal digital assistants), such as Palm's Foleo mobile companion. No, what I wanted to see were real desktops or laptops that I could fit into a coat pocket. Here's what I found."

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Second KOffice Sprint in Berlin focuses on release, polish (KDE.News)

KDE.News covers the KOffice Sprint. "This weekend, ten KOffice hackers congregated once again in the hospitable Berlin KDAB headquarters. KOffice has come a long way in six months: all the groundwork has been laid for the new version, KOffice 2.0. From Krita to KPresenter, KWord to KSpread, KChart to Karbon, KPlato to Kexi, and from KFormula to Kivio, the big underlying frameworks are ready. This meeting was called to decide on common look & feel issues and a release plan and schedule."

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SCO claims it has Unix business buyer (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch reports that York Capital Management is interested in buying parts of the bankrupt SCO. "No one would buy this plot element in a TV drama like Boston Legal, but The SCO Group claims it has a buyer lined up, a subsidiary of York Capital Management that wants to buy its Unix business and associated Linux lawsuits. One might well ask, "What business?" SCO is in danger of being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange; it's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; it's lost all claims to the Unix IP (intellectual property) to Linux rival Novell; and its Unix business continues to decline and lose money. Who would want to buy such a company's assets?"

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Novell cries Wolfe (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch reports on Novell's hiring of Tim Wolfe. "Novell appointed Tim Wolfe as president of Novell Americas. In this position, he'll be responsible for the execution of Novell's strategy across the Americas. Before this job, Wolfe, who brings nearly three decades of software, technology and consulting leadership experience to the role, most recently held the position of vice president and general manager of Novell's East region in the United States. He is expected to play a key role in Novell's transition to a greater focus on customers and partners in implementing the company's go-to-market strategy."

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Is Linux really losing market share to Windows? (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch takes a look at an IDG server report that shows Linux losing in the server market. "Let's look closer at what IDG is really doing. First, the actual number of Linux servers is still increasing. What's "decreased" is its rate of increase. Despite the impression you may get from Microsoft ads, almost no one is turning in Linux servers for Windows servers."

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New Desktop Face-Off: Gnome 2.20 vs KDE 3.5 (O'ReillyNet)

Judith Myerson compares the latest versions of KDE and GNOME on O'Reilly. "With the new features that Gnome and KDE (K Desktop Environment) are adding, each desktop environment is challenging the other for a larger share of the market. If Linux-like operating systems come with one desktop environment, the user has the option to add to the other. Because of the ever-increasing sophistication of the new features, some latest versions of the operating system are including packages for both desktop environments, allowing users to have the option of switching from one desktop environment to another. In this article I will briefly talk about the new features of both Gnome and KDE, and then look at some similarities and important differences between the two desktop environments."

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Asus Eee PC 701 review (CNET)

CNET has a review of the Asus Eee laptop, which is a small, lightweight system running Linux. "The Eee PC doesn't use a Microsoft operating system, which is part of the reason it's so inexpensive. Instead, Asus supplies its own Linux-based graphical user interface. The laptop also ships with some 40 applications, which is arguably more than you'd get with a standard Windows laptop. It includes Firefox for browsing the Web, Skype, OpenOffice and SMPlayer for video playback."

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Managing Linux servers made easy with Linux q-Status Rev 5 (Linux-Watch)

Linux-Watch takes a look LogiQwest's Linux q-Status Server Analysis and Configuration software. "q-Status supports summary reports of all servers in the data center. A new feature is dynamic Disk summary reporting. This summarizes not just the total disk space used, on both individual servers and across the server farm. It also enables administrators to track storage space that's available with dynamic file system type filtering (e.g. root, data, var). "We are very proud of the new disk summary report as it easily provides answers IT and finance have long searched for," said Michael Barto, LogiQwest's lead product evangelist. "It identifies which servers have the most free space available and which servers have the most disk space used.""

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Linux-powered PMP sports 7-inch touchscreen (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices looks at the iRiver Unit2. "iRiver is readying a Linux-based media recorder/player comprised of a detachable mobile unit and tethered docking station. The Unit2's base station offers a DVD/CD player, TV tuner, and PC-style I/O, while the detachable display features a 7-inch WVGA (800x480) touchscreen, WiFi, and USB."

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Wubi = super easy Linux installation (Crunch Gear)

Crunch Gear has a short review of Wubi, which runs Ubuntu from within Windows. "I don’t have the patience to go through a full install of Ubuntu but I also don’t think that running the Live CD does the operating system justice. If only there were an easy-to-use Windows installer that didn’t "require you to modify the partitions of your PC or to use a different bootloader." Enter Wubi. Here’s some more information from Wubi’s FAQs… "How does Wubi work? Wubi adds an entry to the Windows boot menu which allows you to run Linux. Ubuntu is installed within a file in the windows file system (c:\wubi\disks\system.virtual.disk), this file is seen by Linux as a real hard disk. Is this running Ubuntu within a virtual environment or something similar? No. This is a real installation, the only difference is that Ubuntu is installed within a file as opposed to being installed within its own partition."

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