Linux Archive

If there's one trend that exemplifies the entire state of the application-development world, it's the transformation of Linux from a curiosity to a core competency. And in the process, Linux has gone from an open-systems destination to a solution providers' competitive operating-system weapon of choice with which to design, build and deploy applications and solutions. Read the article at VARBusiness.

Linux 2.6 introduces many new features that make it an excellent operating system for embedded computing. Among these new features are enhanced real-time performance, easier porting to new computers, support for large memory models, support for microcontrollers, and an improved I/O system. This whitepaper at LinuxDevices.com describes the new functions and features of the latest Linux kernel of special interest to embedded system developers. On other Linux kernel news, Linus Torvalds released Linux 2.6.0-test5 for general testing.

The Desktop Linux Consortium (DLC) announced their first conference today, hosted at Boston University's Corporate Training Center (BUTrain) located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts in Tyngsboro on November 10, 2003. The conference marks the group's first event that brings together industry leaders to share their insights and discuss the trends, technologies, and solutions that are driving the next generation of desktops based on Linux.

Tinyminds.org sits down with Linux International Director, Jon "Maddog" Hall. Jon has been in the computer industry since 1969, using Unix since 1977, and Linux since 1994. He has been a software engineer, systems administrator, product manager, marketing manager and professional educator. Jon has been the Executive Director of Linux International since 1995, the first four years as a volunteer. Jon has been employed by VA Linux systems, Compaq Computer Corporation in the Digital UNIX Marketing group and Bell Laboratories among other companies. Read the full interview at Tinyminds.org.

Momentum Computer, a developer specializing in quick turnaround of high-performance board-level solutions, has announced that all of their PowerPC-based single-board computers will now be available with the complete Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) operating system package from Terra Soft Solutions, Inc. Additionally, HackInTheBox recently posted a review of YDL for Macs.

TuxReports has a team review of SuSE, Mandrake, and Lycoris with screenshots. Read it here.

HP will be establishing a laboratory at its Beijing facility for Red Flag Linux developers to work with HP engineers, and will be putting together packages of HP hardware running Red Flag for the Chinese market, and perhaps other markets in the future.

"Forget SCO & Microsoft. The single biggest thing keeping Linux from the desktop is Linux itself. It's time to stop adding new features, and finish what's there." Read the 3-page editorial at ExtremeTech. Our Take: While there is no such thing as "finished software", as software by definition can always be improved, it is true that Linux projects (especially desktop apps) need to outline and release full-featured, solid, well tested versions of their software and offer less smaller ones that require the user to constantly upgrade and be in a state of flactuation. What is needed in smaller projects are real release engineers that can outline goals and releases wisely (the Gnome project, PostgreSQL and Apache are good on that for example, smaller projects could learn a thing or two from these bigger projects).

"Without a doubt, Linux has become fully accepted as a powerful, scalable and stable platform for enterprise deployments. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the cost of deploying Linux is getting pretty close to the cost of deploying some other enterprise platforms." Read the editorial at eWEEK.

L.A.S. Linux is a 'live CD' distribution of Linux (based on Knoppix) with a CD-bootable toolkit for information security professionals and systems administrators. Its small footprint maks it able to fit on a 185MB mini-CD. Despite its small size, L.A.S. contains over 100 security tools including basic desktop applications, an array or forensic, penetration testing, intrusion detection, sniffers, and administrative utilities. Changes in this latest version include the addition of Ettercap-GTK, Clam Anti-Virus, MiniCOM, SpikeProxy, MRTG, and many of the Cisco-centric Open Source Exchange tools.

KernelTrap has a new story showing how to upgrade your GNU/Linux OS from the 2.4 stable kernel to the latest 2.6.0-test4 development kernel. Included among the the eight detailed steps are a number of screen shots.

As we all anxiously await the release of Linux 2.6, we hear speculations on the final date ranging from early September to late December. A fellow optimist from comhem.se has posted this graph showing predictions based on the kernel's current rate of progress. It was composed using the compile statistics from John Sherry of OSDL. This chart suggests a release date of the 12th of October.

Throngs of people flooded into the Moscone center in San Francisco to get a glimpse at what is new in the Linux world. Once again, the Linuxworld Expo came to the West Coast making a stop at the Moscone center in San Francisco August 5-7. The show floor was filled with a mix of software and hardware vendors. Somehow, I was not expecting to find so many hardware vendors at what is otherwise a show about simply an operating system. Editor's Note: Mr. Wread sumbitted this report the day after the expo, and it has been stuck in mailing list server purgatory.

Ernie Ball is a company that makes guitar strings. In 2000 the Business Software Alliance, supported by Microsoft and other proprietary software companies, raided their offices without warning and found a few unlicensed copies of software. They ended up paying $100,000 for their mistake. But CEO Sterling Ball vowed not to give another cent to Microsoft and within 6 months had the whole company switched to Red Hat Linux, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other free software. In the C|Net News.com article he laughs when people call them "trendsetters" for doing what any company can do if it just decides to do it.