Linux in the news

Some Advice & a New Book by Larry Rosen, and an Open Source, Open Standards Conference (Groklaw)

Groklaw reports on a new book by Larry Rosen. "Rosen's Preamble says that the book is by a lawyer, but it's not for lawyers -- no citations or academic analyses suitable for a law journal. It's written, he says, for his friends in the free and open source community, who might be confused about which license to use for their software (there is an entire chapter on that), and also for those in business wondering how they and their company might be affected by various software licenses."

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Will 'controlled open source' software take over election work? (NewsForge)

NewsForge interviews Open Vote Foundation founder Scott Ritchie.
"NewsForge: If you could put together the open source code and system, do you think the political and institutional barriers would ever allow an open source election in the U.S.?"
"Ritchie: Absolutely. Because decisions for which voting systems to be purchased are carried out at the local level, there isn't much room for the iron-triangle present in other government projects. The incumbent voting machine vendors, big as they are, don't have much influence over local governments fed up with them."

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Novell to host a 'Linux Day' for India (CIOL)

CIOL reports on the upcoming "Novell Linux Day" conferences for business decision makers, business and IT managers, customers and partners at Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi on August 31, September 2 and September 3, respectively.

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Report from the KDE World Summit (NewsForge)

NewsForge reports from aKademy. "Worries were raised about how KDE should balance the interests of sponsors with the autonomy of the KDE membership. Some felt that members would feel under pressure if in the presence of their boss in a meeting, and so would lose the ability to speak freely. Others raised the problem of KDE members being unhappy with particular companies seeking to become sponsors; on this point, the membership voted that the e.V. board must put new sponsors to the membership before accepting their money."

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Report from the KDE World Summit: Day two (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers day two of the KDE World Summit. "The second day of aKademy, KDE's World Summit 2004, opened the two-day developers' conference, involving a series of presentations and discussions both on ground-breaking topics like KJSEmbed and other subjects important to KDE. When not attending the two parallel tracks of presentations, KDE developers took the opportunity to socialise and hack in the comfortable surroundings of Ludwidgsburg's Filmakademie."

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Report from the KDE World Summit: Day three (NewsForge)

NewsForge continues its series of reports from aKademy. "Parallel to the multimedia presentations were a series on integration. Most controversial of these was the opening presentation on the Linux Registry. Avi Alkalay opened by emphasising that developers should forget the name's association with the Windows registry, and went on to talk about what he describes as a 'bazaar' of 'selfish configuration files' spread across the system. His proposed solution is a single hierarchical configuration infrastructure using a key-pair system, integrated with the current configuration systems in such a way as to make it familiar to experienced users and usable for newbies."

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Open-source developers focus on accessibility (News.com)

News.com reports on accessibility discussions at aKademy. "During the forum, KDE developer Harald Fernengel presented a demonstration of the KDE developer tool, Qt, showing how it could be used with open-source Linux desktop GNOME's GOK, an on-screen keyboard for people who have problems using ordinary keyboards. He also demonstrated KDE working with the text-to-speech screen reader Gnopernicus."

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IBM's Steamroller Just Keeps on Rolling (Groklaw)

Groklaw presents IBM's latest filings (mostly a set of attempts to strike SCO's testimony) with clear pleasure. "What does it all mean? That IBM wishes to strike all the so-called facts in dispute that SCO has attempted to offer. That SCO will be shown no mercy. If they fail to dot an i, IBM will call them on it, with a motion and oral argument requested, all of which costs money to respond to and deal with. It also means that IBM believes that SCO is manufacturing bogus issues, in an attempt to create some fact dispute sufficient to survive IBM's summary judgment on its 10th counterclaim, and they intend to call them on it. It also means that the tide has turned, and IBM is on the offensive now."

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An Interview with Gregory Blepp (Groklaw)

Groklaw talks with Gregory Blepp about his relationship with SCO and 'millions of lines' of code purported to be in his possession. "I have interviewed Mr. Blepp, and he is telling me a different story, and much more. According to Mr. Blepp, he never was staff. He was a consultant for SCO from day one, and he still is, but he's spending much less time on SCO matters now. He has his own business. They announced his "appointment" as VP the way they did for legal reasons. Also, he says SCOSource, to his knowledge, has no full-time employees."

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Actuate pushes open-source data reporting (News.com)

Software maker Actuate has proposed a project to create an open source business intelligence and reporting tool using Eclipse. "If accepted as an Eclipse project, the initiative will result in open-source software to design and generate business reports from Java application servers. A vote at Eclipse on whether to accept the proposal, called the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project, is slated for one month from now."

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European banks embrace the Linux system (Globe and Mail)

The Globe and Mail looks at adoption of Linux by European banks. "And HSBC's decision is not all about dollars. 'Although we're not convinced that Linux is cheaper in terms of total cost of ownership, it does offer us more control and flexibility than Windows, due to its open architecture, for example in terms of security,' Mr. Lashua said."

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Linux may power South Korean schools (News.com)

News.com looks at a proposal to put Linux into South Korean schools. "The project, which would rank as one of the largest Linux installations in the country, aims to link all primary and secondary schools and relevant government departments through a common system known as the National Education Information System."

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Is Linux too good to be true? (Independent)

The Independent has published one of those "installation nightmare" stories that used to be so common. The bottom line on these stories has changed, though: "Will I give up Windows altogether? Probably. The more I use Linux, the better I like it despite the challenges. It hasn't crashed; it's immune to Windows viruses; it won't fall victim to spyware, worms or hackers; and it feels (and looks) refreshingly different. But best of all, Linux promises greater choice at less cost. Just give it time to climb more of the Windows mountain."

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How a new Linux system bolstered a major art museum's presentation (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the use of SUSE linux and IBM hardware for a San Francisco museum's online image archive. "Horio is already noticing a marked increase in performance from the server running Linux. Instead of weekly reboots like they continue to experience with the Windows server, "it's been stable. We just turn it on and it runs." Horio says the image database will be the largest of its kind online, and the only one running on Linux. Searchable by date, country or region of origin, artistic medium, or keywords, each page will display several objects with thumbnails and a short synopsis, and users can click through to a larger image with more information."

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Interview with id Software's Timothee Besset (LinuxGames)

LinuxGames talks with Timothee Besset about Doom3 and other games for Linux. "What's the status of the DOOM 3 dedicated server and the client?
I think there's a very good chance we can get the dedicated server out with the next patch, because it's been running very smoothly in the DOOM 3 tournaments. We still need to polish it a bit, but it will get released pretty soon. I know that the server admins are waiting, and Linux gamers don't really care about it, but we have to follow our priorities."

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PHP creator: Rasmus Lerdof (Builder AU)

Here's an interview with PHP creator Rasmus Lerdof on Builder AU. "You said during your Introduction to PHP talk at Linux.conf.au that you hated programming. What do you prefer doing? I like solving problems, I like building something that solves a real problem and actually helps people or affects people. To do that you normally have to program unfortunately so I end up doing that. I mean I don't hate the industry of programming, I just hate the actual sitting down and doing the programming, it's very boring and very tedious. The end result is cool and that is what I like doing. I enjoy just normal technical geeky things. Other than that there's my new baby."

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Developer Spotlight: Martin Pool (Builder AU)

Builder AU talks with Martin Pool, a Canberra-based software engineer working on open source software for HP. "Why did you decide to develop open source software?
MP: Many years ago I downloaded a copy of GNU emacs and GNU cc (onto 3.5in floppies!) and I was just amazed that people were writing and giving away all this great software. So part of it was reciprocity: the GNU compiler people have given me so much, so I'm happy to be able to give them something useful in distcc."

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Open-Source Backups Using Amanda (Linux Journal)

Phil Moses has written a HOWTO article on the Amanda backup software. "Data probably is the most important element in computing, but in too many cases I see data backups overlooked or approached in such a carefree manner that I shiver. To this end, this article discusses the University of Maryland's Amanda (advanced Maryland automatic disk archiver) backup software, a relatively easy-to-use disk archiver built upon native dump and/or GNU tar tools. I often feel Amanda does not get the respect it deserves in a Linux/UNIX cross-platform environment. I confidently can say, however, that Amanda is a reliable platform for many Linux and UNIX users who are comfortable with a command-line interface."

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Kernel debugging with Kprobes (IBM developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks shows how to use Kprobes to debug the Linux kernel. "The benefits of using Kprobes are many. printk's can be inserted without rebuilding and rebooting the kernel. Processor registers can be logged and even modified for debugging -- without disruption to the system. Similarly, Linux kernel data structures can also be logged and even modified non-disruptively as well. You can even debug race conditions on SMP systems with Kprobes -- and save yourself the trouble of all that rebuilding and rebooting. You'll find kernel debugging is faster and easier than ever."

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The Top Ten Subversion Tips for CVS Users (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has some tips for people moving from CVS to Subversion. "I've seen people spend hours in meetings working out the directory structure and file placement of a project they are preparing to create in their CVS repository--and anyone who's ever tried to move a directory or a file in CVS knows why: CVS doesn't allow you to move anything around in the repository!* With Subversion, you can move files and directories with wild abandon:"

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Building a Diskless 2.6 Firewall (Linux Journal)

Here's a Linux Journal article on building diskless firewall systems. "Because we're going to build a Linux system completely from scratch, we need a fair amount of software. The usual Linux tools aren't built for embedded systems, they're loaded with features we don't need. This is where BusyBox, the Swiss Army knife of embedded Linux, comes into play. We can exchange most of our needed tools with BusyBox, for instance a shell, ifconfig, ip tools and so on."

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Technical Writing Using OpenOffice.org Writer (O'ReillyNet)

O'ReillyNet looks at OpenOffice.org features which are of interest to technical writers. "One major advantage of Writer over Word is that Writer supports conditional content. Word doesn't, although you can use various workarounds to achieve a similar result. Thus Writer has incorporated one of FrameMaker's major attractions for technical writers, although Writer's implementation is more limited than FrameMaker's."

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CyberGuard ships most powerful SnapGear Linux security appliance yet (LinuxDevices)

LinuxDevices.com takes a look at CyberGuard's Snap Gear Linux powered security appliances. "The SG710 is based on an Intel IXP425 security processor, a chip that SnapGear Linux first supported in August of last year. The IXP425 has built-in encryption engines, which the SG710 makes use of in achieving "multi-megabit" throughputs, according to CyberGuard."

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Linux keyboard debuts next month (Desktop Linux)

Desktop Linux takes a look at a keyboard made for Linux systems. "German Electronics firm Cherry is partnering with SuSE Linux on a Linux-compatible keyboard. The company is customizing a keyboard from their CyMotion line that will feature hot keys and other advanced technologies."

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