Enterprise Unix Roundup: Picking at the Red Hat Lock-In

One of the minor ironies of the Linux world is the slight disconnect between the mantra of "choice" the most ardent advocates use to make the case for a multitude of graphical interfaces and the state of the North American enterprise Linux market, where a single distributor has dominated since the late '90s. That distributor is, of course, Red Hat, and while the numbers analysts produce about its share of the Linux market vary, they consistently hover above 75 percent. The company is so dominant that it's not uncommon to hear less savvy executives simply refer to the distro as "Linux," which infuriates many.

Review: SuSE Linux 9.2 LiveCD

Novell has recently released SUSE Linux 9.2 LiveCD/DVD edition. In line with its impressive track-record, SUSE managed to make yet another step forward each time. Having used SUSE 9.1 for a while now, I was more than looking forward to this new release, so I downloaded and ran SUSE 9.2 LiveCD on my Dell Inspiron, and gave it a try.

The wonders of ‘format c:’

Often the solution given to newbies in response to their computer programs is to format c:. However funny the theoretical outcome of this action may be, this suggestion is often made without the suggester really knowing what will happen. This afternoon I decided to look at format c: and it's cousin rm -Rf / and found some pretty interesting results.

Haiku Kernel Hits Some Milestones

In an announcement today on the offical Haiku website, Axel Dörfler provides an update on the status of the Haiku kernel. Most notably it now has the ability to run Bash, boot to a graphical console from a hard drive on real hardware, and view files on other BeFS-formatted partitions.

OpenBSD looking for better licenses on binary firmware for WiFi

Ryan McBride requests the help of the OpenBSD community in convincing Texas Instruments to change the license of their firmware for the ZCX100 802.11b chipset. Theo de Raadt makes a similar request directed at Intel. A success story from Theo de Raadt in using this tactic on Adaptec. This is also important for Linux and the rest of the BSDs. I had to "pirate" my Prism's firmware files in order to make the pcmcia card work with my Linuces. I don't see the point of keeping these firmware files bound.

Java and .NET security

SUN Microsystems Java and Microsoft's .NET platforms are no more than programming languages that exploit network potential with the idea that the same software should function on different platforms. Both systems are centered around the principle of running software that doesn't reside on the client machine to provide greater functionality or faster execution, saving connection time and improving public perception of the server to which the client connects. Read Article