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Fellow Debian Developer, Jonathan Walther (aka SirDibos) asked me to post this. He has set up a document which explains the proper method for getting your PGP key signed. With Taco, Hemos, and others at LWCE, this is a great place to get your key signed. Read the document here. After the trojan scare awhile ago, people need to be aware of proper security techniques. DCLUG and NOVALUG will begin signing keys shortly, as well.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that Debian has scheduled March 2 as the official release date for v2.1 (codename: Slink) of their distribution.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that Debian has scheduled March 2 as the official release date for v2.1 (codename: Slink) of their distribution.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a Linux Power interview with Wichert Akkerman, the Debian GNU/Linux project leader. Talks about the future of Debian, his role, and more.

Kragen Sitaker has written a brutal reply to the story Sengan posted yesterday on the The Open Source Acid Test. It goes down and point by point shows the factual errors and fud in the story. It pleases me greatly to post this feature. Check it out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Kragen Sitaker

I read Ted Lewis's article, _The Open Source Acid Test_, on your web pages.

I was appalled that an organ of a prestigious international society like the IEEE would publish such error-riddled, poorly-researched, deliberately deceptive nonsense. It's as if the _New England Journal of Medicine_ had published a case study of a zombie animated by voodoo!

The author did not cite sources for any of his dubious statistics, and they are therefore hard to disprove. Given the remarkable lack of factual accuracy in the article, I doubt that they have any basis in fact.

To begin with the most obvious errors:

1. Linus Torvalds's name is not Linus Torvold.
2. Applix, Tower Technology, and NewMonics do not sell open-source software.
3. There is no such company as "Walnut Creek Stackware". www.cdrom.com belongs to Walnut Creek CDROM. There is no such company as "Tower Tech JVM". www.twr.com belongs to Tower Technology, which sells a (non-open-source) JVM. There is no such web site as www.debian.com.
4. www.python.org is operated by the Python Software Association, not CNRI, although it is currently hosted on CNRI's network.
5. Several of the "commercial enterprises" listed in Table 1 are not commercial enterprises at all. www.hungry.com, www.python.org, and www.debian.org are all operated by nonprofit organizations. The Corporation for National Research Initiatives, which was incorrectly listed as operating www.python.org, is actually a not-for-profit research organization.
6. It is absurd to say that Unix was the foundation for Hewlett-Packard and IBM, as Lewis does in his introductory paragraph. Both companies had been established for more than thirty years when the first line of Unix was written.
7. On page 126, Lewis claims that the open-source community admits that its organizational structure is weak. The evidence he adduces is a quote from a document published on www.opensource.org. What he doesn't tell you is that the document is *a leaked internal Microsoft memo*. Unless Lewis missed the 115 references to Microsoft in this document and also failed to read the introductory paragraphs, the only reasonable conclusion is that he is being deliberately deceptive.
8. On page 125, Lewis claims that "Currently, Linux's installed base numbers 7.5 million". As usual, he cites no source. However, the most widely-cited source for such figures is Robert Young's paper, Sizing the Linux Market eight different data sources to obtain an estimate of between five and ten million Linux users. However, this paper has a date of March 1998. If Linux's growth had continued to double yearly in 1998, as it did from roughly 1993 to 1998, the number of Linux users would be between ten and twenty million.
9. On page 128, Lewis says, "Windows NT market share smothers all Unix dialects combined". According to International Data Corporation's Server Operating Environment report, Unix and Linux together had 34.6% of the server market in 1998, while Windows NT had 36%. See more information. The actual number of server Linux shipments IDC tallied in 1998 was only three-quarters of a million; that suggests that if you include people installing multiple servers from the same CD and installing from Internet downloads, you would find that Linux's server market share is much greater than Windows NT's.
10. Lewis remarks, "With few exceptions, open source software has never crossed the chasm into the mainstream without first becoming a commercial product sold by a commercial enterprise." Does he think that Linux is not a commercial product sold by commercial enterprises? If not, there are literally dozens of "exceptions" to this statement -- Perl, Apache, sendmail, BIND, Linux, Tcl/Tk, Berkeley DB, Samba, the X Window system, FORTH, GNU Emacs, and trn, for example. Many of these became popular before they were commercially sold at all.
11. Lewis misstates the business case for Linux and "its open source software cousins". According to Eric Raymond -- whom Lewis quotes extensively elsewhere in this article -- a much more compelling business case is founded on the better quality of the software, choice of suppliers, choice of support and maintenance, freedom from legal exposure and license tracking. More details are available at opensource.org/for-buyers.html.

These minor factual errors, so far, merely indicate that the author knows very little about the topic he writes about and is deliberately trying to mislead his readers; they do not directly undermine his conclusions. However, as I shall show, each of his supporting arguments consist of incorrect facts and lead to faulty conclusions.

One of the author's major contentions is that as Open Source software adds more features and becomes more comparable to proprietary software, it will lose many of its advantages. He cites as examples Linux's supposed lack of video card support, wireless LAN support, and "a good selection of productivity software."; he claims that Unix contains 10 million lines of code, while Linux contains only 1.5 million. On page 126, he says, "Maintenance and support grow more complex, and costs increase due to a scarcity of talented programmers. Success leads to features, and feature creep leads to bloated software."

With regard to video card support, it is true that the Linux kernel does not have video card support in it. That facility is provided by video drivers in other software; nearly all graphical software available for Linux uses X11 for access to those video drivers. Open-source X11 drivers for most video cards are available from www.xfree86.org; the list of supported cards there currently lists 555 different kinds of video cards, many of which include numerous individual models.

For those few cards for which XFree86 support is not available, proprietary X11 drivers are available from Xi Graphics and Metro-Link.

With XFree86, Linux's video card support is better than either Windows 98 or Windows NT, and considerably more extensive than any Unix that does not use XFree86.

To claim that Linux lacks video card support is merely laughable.

With regard to wireless LAN support, it is true that many of the recent wireless LAN products do not currently have support in Linux. However, Linux has had support for packet-radio wireless networking and several kinds of LANs for years, and has supported several wireless LAN products since at least late 1997, including most of the most popular ones:

Lucent Wavelan
DEC RoamAbout DS
Lucent Wavelan IEEE
Netwave Airsurfer
Xircom Netwave
Proxim RangeLan2
Proxim Symphony
DEC RoamAbout FH
Aironet ARLAN
Raytheon Raylink
BreezeCom BreezeNet

This information is readily available on the Web in the Linux Wireless LAN Howto.

With regard to productivity software, there are several office suites available for Linux, and there have been for several years. ApplixWare and StarOffice are the two most common.

With regard to the size of Linux: first, among the utilities tested in the failure-rate study (the latest report on which is entitled "Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of Unix Utilities and Services". the quote used on page 125 appears to be from the original paper, which I cannot find on the Web) are the standard set of Unix utilities, awk, grep, wc, and so forth. These utilities have a standard set of functionality common across all Unix systems, except that the GNU utilities tend to have a great deal of extra functionality included. If the GNU utilities really are only one-sixth the size of the corresponding utilities on a Unix system, yet provide much more functionality, and still have one-third to one-sixth of the failure rate, that is not an indictment of the defect rate of free software, but rather a vindication of it -- which is why this study is linked to from the Free Software Foundation's Web pages. The study is unfairly biased in favor of less-featureful proprietary software, and that software still came out way behind.

(From my own experience, I know that frequently, the best workaround for a bug in a Unix utility is to install the GNU version.)

Lewis's claim that this represents "a single-point estimate of defect rate" is incorrect. The paper includes detailed results of the tests on 82 different utilities, along with aggregate statistics by operating system. 63 of these utilities were available either from GNU or from Linux, and were tested in this study.

With regard to the lines-of-code figure: it is not easy to measure the number of lines of code that constitute "Linux", because it is not easy to define what constitutes "Linux" -- or, for that matter, "Unix" either.

If we mean just the kernel, this site has some figures for the sizes of several OS kernels in 1994. SunOS 5.2's kernel is listed as containing 680,000 lines of code, while SunOS 5.0's kernel is listed as containing 560,000 lines of code. If the rate of increase per version remained constant (doubtful, because 5.0 and 5.1 weren't really finished products) then the latest SunOS (the one that's the kernel of just-released Solaris 7) would contain 1,280,000 lines of code.

By comparison, the source code of the 2.2.1 Linux kernel totals 1,676,155 lines of code, including comments and blank lines, counting only .c, .h, and .S (assembly) files.

The Linux project's source code has already reached a level where we would "expect Linux defect densities to get worse". They haven't.

On page 125, Lewis cites Apache as an example of support diminishing when "the hype wears off", saying "it is currently supported by fewer than 20 core members" -- implying that the "cast of thousands" is a thing of the past. The truth is that the core Apache team has never been larger than 20 people, and they *still* receive contributions from many people outside the group. He also says that "Apache is losing the performance battle against Microsoft's IIS." But Apache has never been intended to be the fastest HTTP server around -- it's already more than fast enough to saturate a T1 when running on a puny machine, so its developers have been concentrating on things like adding more features and making it more reliable.

On page 128, Lewis says, "The concept of free software is a frequently practiced strategy of the weak". While free-as-in-price giveaways are common -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer strategy is a perfect example -- they are not related to open-source software, and their patterns of success and failure have little relevance for us here.

Nils Lohner submitted to debian-announce that Debian has elected a new leader. Wichert Akkerman won the election and will replace Ian Jackson as the Debian Project Leader. He will serve starting today and running until Feb 4 1900. (sorry, had to do it)

Nils Lohner submitted to debian-announce that Debian has elected a new leader. Wichert Akkerman won the election and will replace Ian Jackson as the Debian Project Leader. He will serve starting today and running until Feb 4 1900. (sorry, had to do it)

Joy of joys! Debian is going to try to get a new logo. They are doing this in conjunction with the latest Gimp Contest. My cheesy entry is on my gimp page *grin*. Anyway, there are more details on the pages linked above- and the winner gets a Debian CDs for their platform of choice (no fair asking for for something that runs on your C64)

James LewisMoss writes "Debian would like to participate in the Linux Expo being held in Raleigh in May. Unfortunately, non-profits are only offered a 20% discount on the cost of a booth. $1200 is still needed. Debian is not able to come up with this money to attend. We are currently seeking companies or individuals who would like to sponsor a Debian booth at Linux Expo. Partial or Full sponsorship would be gladly accepted. Any sponsor would, of course, get a notice at the booth that they had helped sponsor it. " Email James if you can help.

Vincent Renardias writes "Tor Lillqvist has recently tried to port The Gimp on Win32; and not only it works great under Windows 95/98/NT, but it also runs under Linux (Screenshot!) thanks to the Wine emulator.
Now who will dare do say there are no usefull applications running under Wine? ;) " That is amusing.

Nils posted to debian-announce that Debian has passed a Constitution. The highlights of the constitution include the creation of the Technical Committee, the Project Leader postion, the Project Secretary position, Leader Delegate positions and a voting proceedure.

Ed Boraas writes "There has been considerable interest lately in the Hurd, a kernel being developed by the FSF. While the hurd itself is still at 0.2 (debian is helping the FSF get 0.3 ready, which will be a much friendlier install), which has a reputation for tricky installs (it's alphaware, after all), a lot of people have questions on how to get started. Matt Vernon has now posted his "Idiot's Guide to Installing Hurd", which aims to give a more step-by-step guide to installing Hurd. Of course, the FSF Hurd pages are an excellent companion resource. "

Sun has loaned the Debian project three (yes, I said three) Ultra 30 workstations. They are very nice - 1MB cache, 128MB RAM, SCSI, etc. One will be hosted at KachinaTech, while the other two will be sent to Debian developers who do frequent bootstraps and the likes. Have a look at the Debian UltraLinux page. Sorta makes me wish I was leading the UltraLinux port...

Nils sent in a few Debian announcements this morning including links to Software in the Public Interests new web pages and and Open Letter from Corel thanking the Debian guys for their NetWinder port.

Nils sent in a few Debian announcements this morning including links to Software in the Public Interests new web pages and and Open Letter from Corel thanking the Debian guys for their NetWinder port.

Debian has announced that they will be feature freezing v2.1 (code name 'Slink') tonight at 8pm EDT. A party will start on irc.debian.org #debian 2 hours prior to the freeze. apt-get is in, but the GUI isn't yet. Also will include the latest Gnome. Related is the 'Highly Commendation' reward Debian recently received from APCM. Congrats guys.

Debian-announce sent out a message today stating that you can now boot Debian on the Corel NetWinders. They used to merely run Red Hat v4.2. You can snag the boot images or A kernel package from Jimpick.com (who also keeps .deb's of most of Gnome around as well)

Nils Lohner posted to debian-announce that Debian will be at the Atlanta Linux Showcase (which seems to be coming together nicely. Wish I could go). Anyway, Debian will be there showing off their distribution running on a Netwinder, as well as t-shirts, CDs, and a demo of the new package manager (I'm getting shivers waiting for that).

The latest release from the debian-announce mailing list says that Debian has announced that they are working on an ARM port of their distribution. This will allow those folks lucky enough to own those Netwinders to run Debian as well as the RH4.2 that they are currently shipping with.

The latest release from the debian-announce mailing list says that Debian has announced that they are working on an ARM port of their distribution. This will allow those folks lucky enough to own those Netwinders to run Debian as well as the RH4.2 that they are currently shipping with.

Aron Hsiao sent us a link to a Mining Co article on the LSA. ZDNet also has another story on the same topic. This one talksd about the division in the Linux community over the issue. Personally, I think the world has spoken and the LSA will be passed up in favor of Linux Compatibility Standards Project, and open collaberation between Red Hat and Debian. Update Michael McLagan of the LSA wrote back in to make this statement. Click on to read it. The following was written by Michael McLagan

They say that you learn something new every day, despite your age. I can honestly say that yesterday, I learned something. After several weeks of behind the scenes planning, organizing and work the announcement for the LSA was finally released. Despite what a number of yesterday's posters would like to think, this has never been a "fly-by-night" operation that was cooked up on a whim.

I would like to start by thanking Rob Malda for running Slashdot. I think he provides a valuable service to a segment of the net community, and he deserves to be commended for it. Slashdot calls itself "News for nerds" and in fact that is what it is. It is not, however, well known or even heard of within the corporate community where decisions are considered and made. Obviously there are exceptions to everything, and this is true as well.

The barrage of messages posted yesterday is, in essence, a tempest in a teacup. I respect the rights of every poster to speak their mind. In fact, I encourage it. Each and every one of you, anonymous or not, has the right to say whatever comes to mind. Of course, there's no requirement that what is said be well thought out or contain a shred of truth. There's not even a requirement that a discussion be held in a civil and reasonable fashion.

I will take this single opportunity to respond to some of the comments and criticisms leveled at the organization. From reading the 250+ messages posted in response to yesterday's announcement, I will address the following points:

1. The principles are unknowns. This despite several postings drawing a nice trail from one to the next to the next. Each or both of the principles in forming the LSA may very well be unknown to individual Linux users. It does not, however, mean that either of the companies involved hasn't been involved in Linux since it's early days. In fact, I would hazard a guess that I've been using/developing/promoting Linux longer than most of you have even known what it is.
2. Web site trivia. Yes, there was a reference to "FrontPage" in the frames page, and yes there's a reference in one other page. Last time I checked, there was no crime associated with using an available tool to do a job. Nobody's bothered to check other pages, obviously, and note that they are devoid of that attribution. What of it? It's a tool, someone used it to build a page. How we jump from a reference to FrontPage to being funded by Bill Gates is one I'll never understand.
3. The VETO. I guess nobody bothered to read the little bit about how if 66.7% of the members voted in favour of an issue that the veto was NULL and VOID. It's a means of maintaining some form of control over the direction and productiveness of discussion, and *NOT* as some would suggest, to ram standards down members throats. Remember, this is a member based organization. The members can, at will, fold up their various tents and go home.
4. The FEE. It amazes me how quickly people forget the facts of life. Telephones, faxes, email, coffee, rent, travel and a whole litany of other things are *NOT FREE*. Standards organizations, with some exceptions, always been membership fee based. The idea of "pay to play" is not something we invented. It is, however, a very useful method of filtering out those who wish to make noise without purpose and those who are willing to get down and work on something productive. And in keeping with Linux, we are allowing participation by one and all in discussions thru the observer membership.
5. Intellectual Property. How "submissions become property" becomes "taking over Linux" is a stretch that doesn't get past first base in a reasoned and well thought out discussion. Linux is FREE SOFTWARE. No amount of claiming otherwise by us or any other organization will *EVER* change that. There's a noticable difference between someone submitting a white paper on an issue and the LSA being allowed to publish it at will and usurping Linux.

   What value is a standards process if the standard isn't owned and copyright by the association that created it? Anybody and their dog can come along, change it to suit their taste, republish it and claim that it's somehow related to the original. Not entirely productive. In addition, the value of a brand without IP protection is equally useless. 'RedHat Linux' is one such example. Based on comments I've gotten from others, I could whip up a distribution that is unrelated, stick a sticker on it taht says 'RedHat Linux' and proceed to give it away. Where does that leave Bob Young & co? Without a leg to stand on.

6. Consulting others. I find it outrageous that a single person on the forum can make a claim that we didn't consult others. Not one of you has participated in the work leading up to the announcement. True enough, I'll bet that not a single forum poster was consulted. Nor was there any need to consult them. However, I spoke personally on the phone to a number of prominant people in relation to Linux and sought comment and feedback.
7. The trademark. Lets clear something up, once and for all. A lot of you are under the seriously misguided belief that "Linux" is trademarked. There is a registration for the mark in the Trademark and Patent office. Dandy. There are certain laws about trademarks which are highly relevant here.

   The first of which is the original registration is invalid. By the same arguments that were made to wrench it away from the idiot in Boston (?) the mark should never have been issued. Had it gone to trial, that would have been the result.

   The second is that the owner of a trademark must vigorously protect the mark against one and all. Having become aware of a misuse, the owner must take immediate steps to protect the mark. Since it's transfer, Linus has not, to anyone's knowledge, sent out a single CEASE AND DESIST letter to anyone. He would have to require licensing from every book, web site, distribution, magazine, etc, etc and have enforced those within a reasonable time of becoming the owner of the mark to protect it.

   In short, THERE IS NO VALID TRADEMARK on the term "Linux". And if you will all look in your archives, I believe you will find statements from Linus turning over the mark to the public domain. He retained the physical registration solely to keep some other yutz from registering and trying to extort money from everyone.

In my opinion, most of the posters in the discussion here should be ashamed of themselves. The level of hypocracy only grew and grew thruout the day as more and more emotionally driven people piled into the frenzy. I read more than enough comments about how Linux is Open Source and Free Software and the like, only to be told to dry up and blow away. It got to the point of being hillarous.

I would like to know where, at all, that the LSA indicated that it would DICTATE to any person what they were to use, how they were to use it or why they were to use it. If you find it, you're a much better person than I. I know for a fact that I have certainly never said it. Strangely enough though, each and every one of you telling the LSA to go away has. How is it different for you to tell the LSA that it can't develop and publish a standard? Where is the freedom of those participating in the LSA to use Linux in the fashion that *THEY* choose to?

Seems to me we have a significant problem. It's ok for you to take Linux home, hack it up on a PC and customize it to your liking. It's free source, it's a free country, it's your right. It's *NOT* ok for the LSA to take Linux home, hack it up into a form acceptable to members, customize it to meet user needs and do with it what we will. It's free source, it's a free country, but appearantly it's not our right.

The ZDNet article just about says it all. This has turned into a "family fight" because of a small bunch of self centered, egotistical individuals with a place to post a message. It's true that in any crowd you will find disenters. Doesn't matter what the topic is, some will stand up and lead cries of "fight, fight, fight". However, the vocal minority is just that, A MINORITY. As was stated last night, the mailboxes here have far more positive supportive comments in them than there are posts in response to the press release. There are a significant number of people who signed up as regular and observer members.

While I respect the right of people to express their opinions, I have to wonder if there shouldn't be a requirement that some thought and contemplation be required prior to expressing them. This forum has only served to discredit Linux in the eyes of some, as it indicates that the level of intolerance and hypocracy are very high indeed. It is for this reason that ISVs stay away from providing their popular applications on a Linux platform, because they want to stay away from the strife and the pain associated with dealing with the religious zealot faction of Linux users.

I will note that most of the comments are from USERS and not DEVELOPERS. It seems that those of you who wave the "Free Software" banner are primarily involved in getting free computing and not the least bit involved in contribution to it. I can stand here, today, and say that I have contributed 1000s of man hours and 1000s of dollars in support of Linux, including kernel code, device drivers, working with industry to get support for hardware and providing the linux.org services.

There is an old saying, "Do unto others as you would have done onto yourself". I make every attempt to live my life by it. I fail occasionally, but I'm generally successful at it. I wonder how many of you can look at your comments from yesterday and would feel comfortable on being the receiving end of them ?

I'll let you, and your various Gods, be the judge of that. Michael McLagan
President/CEO
Linux Standards Association
http://www.linuxstandards.org/

Registered Owner,
Linux Online
http://www.linux.org/

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal. From its beginnings in 1993 with about a dozen developers, Debian has grown into a strong organization that develops one of the world's leading Linux distributions. The recently released the 2.0 'Hamm' distribution was developed by over 400 developers and contains over 1500 entirely free packages.

Work on several ports is currently in progress. PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, ARM, m68k, i386-hurd and more are currently under active development. For more information regarding these ports, please visit our web page at debian.org

Plans for the future include moving towards FHS compliance, as well as introducing 'apt,' our next generation package manager. Apt enables system administrators to keep their systems in sync with the latest available software using just a few simple commands to automatically retrieve the latest versions of packages from the Internet, and install and configure them.

Debian is working together with Red Hat and other organizations and individuals from the Linux community in developing the Linux Compatibility Standard (LCS). To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to mailto:lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with the single word 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Debian would like to thank all the people who have made this distribution grow and prosper. These include the founder Ian Murdock, leaders Bruce Perens and Ian Jackson, and all of the developers that have put in countless hours of volunteer work. Debian would not be possible without you. Thank you!

History

Debian has had several leaders since its beginnings in 1993.

• Ian Murdock founded Debian in August 1993 and led it until March 1996. This effort was sponsored by the FSF's GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).
• Bruce Perens led Debian from April 1996 until December 1997
• Ian Jackson led Debian from January 1998 until the present

Here are some of the major Debian release milestones:

• 0.01-0.90 were released between August 1993 and December 1993
• 0.91 released January 1994 (~30 developers, primitive packager)
• 0.93R5 released in March 1995 (dpkg makes its first appearance)
• 0.93R6 released in November 1995 (~60 developers, a.out, first dselect)
• 1.0 was never released. It later became version 1.1
• 1.1 'Buzz' released June 1996 (474 packages, 2.0 kernel, fully ELF, dpkg)
• 1.2 'Rex' released December 1996 (848 packages, 120 developers)
• 1.3 'Bo' released July 1997 (974 packages, 200 developers)
• 2.0 'Hamm' released July 1998 (1500+ packages, 400+ developers, glibc2)
• 2.1 'Slink' is scheduled to be frozen in October or November 1998.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal. From its beginnings in 1993 with about a dozen developers, Debian has grown into a strong organization that develops one of the world's leading Linux distributions. The recently released the 2.0 'Hamm' distribution was developed by over 400 developers and contains over 1500 entirely free packages.

Work on several ports is currently in progress. PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, ARM, m68k, i386-hurd and more are currently under active development. For more information regarding these ports, please visit our web page at debian.org

Plans for the future include moving towards FHS compliance, as well as introducing 'apt,' our next generation package manager. Apt enables system administrators to keep their systems in sync with the latest available software using just a few simple commands to automatically retrieve the latest versions of packages from the Internet, and install and configure them.

Debian is working together with Red Hat and other organizations and individuals from the Linux community in developing the Linux Compatibility Standard (LCS). To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to mailto:lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with the single word 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Debian would like to thank all the people who have made this distribution grow and prosper. These include the founder Ian Murdock, leaders Bruce Perens and Ian Jackson, and all of the developers that have put in countless hours of volunteer work. Debian would not be possible without you. Thank you!

History

Debian has had several leaders since its beginnings in 1993.

• Ian Murdock founded Debian in August 1993 and led it until March 1996. This effort was sponsored by the FSF's GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).
• Bruce Perens led Debian from April 1996 until December 1997
• Ian Jackson led Debian from January 1998 until the present

Here are some of the major Debian release milestones:

• 0.01-0.90 were released between August 1993 and December 1993
• 0.91 released January 1994 (~30 developers, primitive packager)
• 0.93R5 released in March 1995 (dpkg makes its first appearance)
• 0.93R6 released in November 1995 (~60 developers, a.out, first dselect)
• 1.0 was never released. It later became version 1.1
• 1.1 'Buzz' released June 1996 (474 packages, 2.0 kernel, fully ELF, dpkg)
• 1.2 'Rex' released December 1996 (848 packages, 120 developers)
• 1.3 'Bo' released July 1997 (974 packages, 200 developers)
• 2.0 'Hamm' released July 1998 (1500+ packages, 400+ developers, glibc2)
• 2.1 'Slink' is scheduled to be frozen in October or November 1998.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal. From its beginnings in 1993 with about a dozen developers, Debian has grown into a strong organization that develops one of the world's leading Linux distributions. The recently released the 2.0 'Hamm' distribution was developed by over 400 developers and contains over 1500 entirely free packages.

Work on several ports is currently in progress. PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, ARM, m68k, i386-hurd and more are currently under active development. For more information regarding these ports, please visit our web page at debian.org

Plans for the future include moving towards FHS compliance, as well as introducing 'apt,' our next generation package manager. Apt enables system administrators to keep their systems in sync with the latest available software using just a few simple commands to automatically retrieve the latest versions of packages from the Internet, and install and configure them.

Debian is working together with Red Hat and other organizations and individuals from the Linux community in developing the Linux Compatibility Standard (LCS). To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to mailto:lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with the single word 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Debian would like to thank all the people who have made this distribution grow and prosper. These include the founder Ian Murdock, leaders Bruce Perens and Ian Jackson, and all of the developers that have put in countless hours of volunteer work. Debian would not be possible without you. Thank you!

History

Debian has had several leaders since its beginnings in 1993.

• Ian Murdock founded Debian in August 1993 and led it until March 1996. This effort was sponsored by the FSF's GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).
• Bruce Perens led Debian from April 1996 until December 1997
• Ian Jackson led Debian from January 1998 until the present

Here are some of the major Debian release milestones:

• 0.01-0.90 were released between August 1993 and December 1993
• 0.91 released January 1994 (~30 developers, primitive packager)
• 0.93R5 released in March 1995 (dpkg makes its first appearance)
• 0.93R6 released in November 1995 (~60 developers, a.out, first dselect)
• 1.0 was never released. It later became version 1.1
• 1.1 'Buzz' released June 1996 (474 packages, 2.0 kernel, fully ELF, dpkg)
• 1.2 'Rex' released December 1996 (848 packages, 120 developers)
• 1.3 'Bo' released July 1997 (974 packages, 200 developers)
• 2.0 'Hamm' released July 1998 (1500+ packages, 400+ developers, glibc2)
• 2.1 'Slink' is scheduled to be frozen in October or November 1998.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal. From its beginnings in 1993 with about a dozen developers, Debian has grown into a strong organization that develops one of the world's leading Linux distributions. The recently released the 2.0 'Hamm' distribution was developed by over 400 developers and contains over 1500 entirely free packages.

Work on several ports is currently in progress. PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, ARM, m68k, i386-hurd and more are currently under active development. For more information regarding these ports, please visit our web page at debian.org

Plans for the future include moving towards FHS compliance, as well as introducing 'apt,' our next generation package manager. Apt enables system administrators to keep their systems in sync with the latest available software using just a few simple commands to automatically retrieve the latest versions of packages from the Internet, and install and configure them.

Debian is working together with Red Hat and other organizations and individuals from the Linux community in developing the Linux Compatibility Standard (LCS). To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to mailto:lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with the single word 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Debian would like to thank all the people who have made this distribution grow and prosper. These include the founder Ian Murdock, leaders Bruce Perens and Ian Jackson, and all of the developers that have put in countless hours of volunteer work. Debian would not be possible without you. Thank you!

History

Debian has had several leaders since its beginnings in 1993.

• Ian Murdock founded Debian in August 1993 and led it until March 1996. This effort was sponsored by the FSF's GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).
• Bruce Perens led Debian from April 1996 until December 1997
• Ian Jackson led Debian from January 1998 until the present

Here are some of the major Debian release milestones:

• 0.01-0.90 were released between August 1993 and December 1993
• 0.91 released January 1994 (~30 developers, primitive packager)
• 0.93R5 released in March 1995 (dpkg makes its first appearance)
• 0.93R6 released in November 1995 (~60 developers, a.out, first dselect)
• 1.0 was never released. It later became version 1.1
• 1.1 'Buzz' released June 1996 (474 packages, 2.0 kernel, fully ELF, dpkg)
• 1.2 'Rex' released December 1996 (848 packages, 120 developers)
• 1.3 'Bo' released July 1997 (974 packages, 200 developers)
• 2.0 'Hamm' released July 1998 (1500+ packages, 400+ developers, glibc2)
• 2.1 'Slink' is scheduled to be frozen in October or November 1998.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.

Nils Lohner announces that " On Sunday, August 16, 1998, Debian will turn a proud 5 years old. There will be an IRC party on irc.debian.org (also irc.openprojects.net) channel #debian on Sunday August 16 at 20:00 UTC. Please join us for the festivities!" Click below to read the whole deal. From its beginnings in 1993 with about a dozen developers, Debian has grown into a strong organization that develops one of the world's leading Linux distributions. The recently released the 2.0 'Hamm' distribution was developed by over 400 developers and contains over 1500 entirely free packages.

Work on several ports is currently in progress. PowerPC, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, ARM, m68k, i386-hurd and more are currently under active development. For more information regarding these ports, please visit our web page at debian.org

Plans for the future include moving towards FHS compliance, as well as introducing 'apt,' our next generation package manager. Apt enables system administrators to keep their systems in sync with the latest available software using just a few simple commands to automatically retrieve the latest versions of packages from the Internet, and install and configure them.

Debian is working together with Red Hat and other organizations and individuals from the Linux community in developing the Linux Compatibility Standard (LCS). To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to mailto:lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with the single word 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Debian would like to thank all the people who have made this distribution grow and prosper. These include the founder Ian Murdock, leaders Bruce Perens and Ian Jackson, and all of the developers that have put in countless hours of volunteer work. Debian would not be possible without you. Thank you!

History

Debian has had several leaders since its beginnings in 1993.

• Ian Murdock founded Debian in August 1993 and led it until March 1996. This effort was sponsored by the FSF's GNU project for one year (November 1994 to November 1995).
• Bruce Perens led Debian from April 1996 until December 1997
• Ian Jackson led Debian from January 1998 until the present

Here are some of the major Debian release milestones:

• 0.01-0.90 were released between August 1993 and December 1993
• 0.91 released January 1994 (~30 developers, primitive packager)
• 0.93R5 released in March 1995 (dpkg makes its first appearance)
• 0.93R6 released in November 1995 (~60 developers, a.out, first dselect)
• 1.0 was never released. It later became version 1.1
• 1.1 'Buzz' released June 1996 (474 packages, 2.0 kernel, fully ELF, dpkg)
• 1.2 'Rex' released December 1996 (848 packages, 120 developers)
• 1.3 'Bo' released July 1997 (974 packages, 200 developers)
• 2.0 'Hamm' released July 1998 (1500+ packages, 400+ developers, glibc2)
• 2.1 'Slink' is scheduled to be frozen in October or November 1998.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage.

muggles writes "news from the corporate front: i received email this morning from John "Maddog" Hall stating that an Alpha server is being donated to the Debian Project by the Compaq Computer Corporation. John himself is making a personal donation of an extra 64MB of true-parity memory for the box. the server will be a development platform for the Debian Alpha distribution. much thanks and regards to both John Hall and Compaq for the support of Debian and Linux! muggles ( muggles #debian / mark@debian.org ) "

So many people submitted this story that I wonder if any readers might not know about it yet, but here it is. Debian and Red Hat are now collaberating to produce Linux Compatibility Standards (LCS) Erik Troan (Red Hat) and Dale Scheetz (Debian) are managing the project. I've attached the press release, so click on if you want more. Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat
Linux Compatibility Standards Project
August 11, 1998
Announcing the Linux Compatibility Standards Project

Debian and Red Hat are collaborating on a written specification of the "Linux Compatibility Standard" (LCS). The LCS will clearly outline the specifications necessary to be LCS compliant. This LCS document will be used as a guideline on how to build a "proper" system by those building Linux distributions, and it will be used by developers needing information on the basic system configuration to develop application programs. We expect this LCS effort to complement the example LSB implementation on which Bruce Perens is working.

Erik Troan (Red Hat) and Dale Scheetz (Debian) will jointly manage the LCS working group, which will be working on the written standard using the lcs-eng@lists.debian.org mailing list for the discussion.

lcs-eng@lists.debian.org is an open subscription list. Everyone who is interested is encouraged to subscribe. Most of all, we encourage all current members of the LSB committee to subscribe to this list. Even if you intend to work on the code base, subscribing will be helpful.

The public "at large" is also encouraged to subscribe, with only one suggestion. All non-committee members will be STRONGLY encouraged to "lurk" quietly. If you really have information of pressing importance to the group, you are encouraged to subscribe to the debian-policy mailing list and carry your discussion to that group. All LCS discussions on debian-policy will be collected periodically for review by the LCS group.

Subscribing

To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to:

lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org

with the single word subscribe in the subject line. You will shortly receive a confirmation request. Follow the instructions and you will become subscribed to the list.

This announcement is made jointly by Dale Scheetz
and
Erik Troan

Contact Information

For further information, please send email to press@debian.org or visit the Debian homepage at http://www.debian.org/.

For more information about Red Hat, please visit http://www.redhat.com/

Nils Lohner posted to linux-announce the new board members for Software in the Public Interest (SPI). The board members are President: Ian Jackson, Vice President: Martin Schulze, Secretary:Dale Scheetz, Treasurer: Nils Lohner. Bruce Perens (former President), Ian Murdock (former Secretary) and Tim Sailer (former Treasurer) have decided to pursue other interests in the field of free software.

Shaya "i-cant-run-des-on-the-ultra-enterprise-10000-at-work-because-i'd-get-in-trouble" Potter (don't harass him- it's a joke) brought to my attention the fact that Linus put kernel 2.1.109 on ftp.kernel.org. Now, after the last time I did this, kernel.org got overloaded, so give it a chance for the mirrors to pick it up. Seriously. Update: I'm still waiting on the announcement from the kernel mailing list, but for those of you intent on commenting on our DES situation, we're #1 by an even bigger lead, but we still must push ourselves! I'm very serious about that mirrors thing, too.

Kevin Poorman (Petra) writes " Sunsite, our favorite linux archive, is going down on monday July 13, 1998 for a operating system upgrade. down time should start around 10:30, and finish whenever the y get done."

Brent Fulgham writes "Some members of the Debian project are working with RMS and other Hurd developers to create the first GNU/Hurd distribution. We are seeking volunteers and interested parties to help get this project going. Visit this site for details. "

The Debian Project has officially declared Hamm as entering the second beta phase. With around 44 bugs to stomp out, it hopefully won't be too long before the final product is released. Those of you on the true "bleeding edge" can order CDs from Johnie Ingram, or can get info on downloading the images at the Debian CD image site.

I've got a ton of these things building up, so here we go: Daniel Gould wrote in to tell us that Toshiba will be bundling Solaris with PCs. G. sent us a link to a salon article about trendy technology. A leather mouse? Yowsers. Don Rude wrote in to tell us about a Quake 2 Southpark Total Conversion. Kick ass. Many folks wrote in to tell us that Debian.org has recieved an excellent face lift to corrospond with the Debian 2.0 Beta Release. Lastly, Chris Frost wrote in to tell us that this weeks themes.org victim is tigert (possibly the most talented gimper out there).

Dirk Eddelbuettel writes "Today's Globe&Mail (Canada's national paper) top business story is about Corel closing two units (WordPerfect in Utah as well Corel Computer Corp.) and slashing 20% of the jobs after the sixth quarterly loss in a row. That could well mean the end of the NetWinder story. " Update I've received email from Oliver Bendzsa who says "As an FYI, Corel Computer is alive and well, NetWinder is alive and well, and Linux is alive and well.". Glad to hear it.

Kenneth R. Kinder has written an editorial entitled The Purer OS. He speaks about an issue that has manifested itself in many ways- the desire for Linux to be 100% completely free, from the kernel to every instruction that gets executed on it. I disagree with this one, but it is a major issue that needs to be addressed. So read what he has to say and decide for yourself. Should everything on Linux be free, or is there room for closed source competition on an open source OS?

The following is an editorial by Slashdot reader Kenneth R. Kinder

The Purer OS Many Linux users find themselves struggling between the growth of the Linux and what they feel is "purer" software. True purist will accept nothing but free software, met under the guidelines at http://www.opensource.org/ or http://www.debian.org/. But most users won't commit to only using OpenSource software, and even more users clearly support proprietary software's availability. The dilemma, however, is that with too much commercialism, proprietary software corrupts a standard, bringing fragmentation and lower quality. No free software advocate, and few Linux users would like to see Linux decay to what Unix has, but boycotting proprietary software could stifle Linux's growth as a "mainstream" OS. Besides the inability to modify and distribute the source code freely, the sword of proprietary software has many edges.

Exclusive contracts, of any kind, can poison and severely fragment an open system. Interbase 4, for example, is "licensed only" for Red Hat's distribution. Caldera's "Open"Linux distribution comes with a fair amount of undeniably closed products, some of which can't be found outside of Caldera's re-sales of them. Red Hat and Caldera alone, both innovators (Red Hat, for example, has contributed a great packaging system called RPM), pose future threats of severe fragmentation if they continue to use exclusive contracts with third parties.

Software patents, most of which aren't even patented by the inventor, are deplored by most free and open software advocates with very good reason. An 18 year old in a college dorm can be held back from his own projects by software patents, even if he's writing free software and never heard of software that has a patent he's violating. Linux is not safe from Microsoft, Apple, or similarly villainous anti-innovators patenting algorithms they may use in Linux-based software.

Exclusive "standards," or specifications that can only be used by one company generate monopolies. OS/2, MacOS and Windows are all unacceptable as standards because one company controls the specifications and who can use them. If OS/2, for example, becomes the one true OS, IBM owns the market. Linux advocates have long argued that competition can be preserved in Linux, because you can choose your distribution, and the software you download or buy runs on any distribution. But when Red Hat or Caldera sells software run exclusively on their distributions, one can't help but question whether Red Hat and Caldera are doing far more harm than good.

If Linux's popularity continues to grow, who's to say companies far worse than Red Hat or Caldera will attempt to capitalize in similar or even worse ways to monopolize? Red Hat, for example, seems to be choosing to release their own code under GNU's General Public License, which is exceptionally good behavior compared to most of the software industry. Even Microsoft could do what they tried to do with most popular standards, and make their own Linux "standard" hooked to an exclusive distribution they would sell.

Whether its a change in license, simple boycotts, or something more complex, one thing remains certain. Something must be done to limit just how common place highly proprietary software becomes in Linux. A drop of red paint can ruin a liter of white paint.

Allright we've got a new mysql running. Hopefully things will be stable. Ooo, and older articles will be 'archived' soon (comments remaining intact). It's the last major code change before the Test Site. OK first off steven sent us a link to a Fortune 500 open source stuff Dr.Claw wrote in to tell us that Debian has gone into deep freeze on 2.0. Oh, and we were mentioned in wired yesterday as part of the whole J*va invaders thing. I didn't intend to make a big deal about it, I just wanted to tell everyone why they can't play Invaders anymore, but 2 hours after I post it I've got a phone call from 'em. Oh well.

Ben Gertzfield writes "Richard Stallman's (in)famous song, "Join Us Now and Share the Software" has been remixed as a jazzy techno-mix song by Matthew Loper. This is absolutely hilarious. Join us now and share the remix. " And since RMS is involved, I got to dig up one of my favorite icons. I love the baby gnu.

The Mining Co (I'd never heard of them before, although it looks like a nice site) has posted their Linux "Best of the Net" site awards. The 10 winners include Freshmeat, Debian GNU/Linux, The Linux Documentation Project, LinuxHQ, and last/least, Slashdot.org. I'm sure everyone here has visited all the winning sites many times, but I'm sure all of them appreciate the recognition.

Raj Dutt has done a nice writeup on why you should, or shouldn't try a devel kernel. If you've never tried one, and wonder why or even if you should try, you should read on. Especially timely considering yesterdays feature freeze, we're on the home stretch for 2.2.0. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Raj Dutt

In the world of Linux kernel development, both Development-releases and stable-releases are developed concurrently. This is an extremely effective method of development as it provides the basis for improvement at both unbelievable speed and quantity. However, since the model does not follow the traditonal singular develop-release-develop-release cycle, it can create great confusion among users.

Before detailing the implications of development kernels, it might be beneficial to some to understand the kernel versioning convention:
(Generation.Major.Minor)

It is the Major number that is the key here. An even Major version represents a stable, release kernel and an odd Major version is indicative of an unstable, development kernel. For example, version 2.0.33 means "33rd minor release of the Second generation, 0 (even therefore stable) Major version Linux kernel." Using the same classification, version 2.1.91 means "91st minor release of the Second generation, 1 (odd therefore unstable) Major version Linux kernel"

Hence, the 2.2.x series, which will be released starting with 2.2.0 in the near future, will be the next Major version of stable kernel releases.
With that out of the way, let us examine the PROs and CONs of using development kernels.

The PROS

Nobody (well almost nobody) will deny that the current crop of release kernels work great. Why then should one jump ship and run something that is not nearly as stable as 2.0.33? The development kernels offer three main advantages that often convince people to go with them :

Firstly, after 91 development kernels, ALOT of new hardware is now semi-officially natively supported. If you have a device that you can't use because of the simple lack of a driver, check out the 2.1.x series, there is a good chance that your hardware will be among the hundreds (Color Quickcams, Radio Cards and NCR53C9x SCSI just to name a few) of new components supported.

Secondly, there are numerous technical arguments for the superiority of the latest crop of creations. These include :

• Faster access to user memory (covering the 4GB user space in its entirity)
• Unbelievable improvements in SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor)
• Major tcp/ip updates - (read: faster better networking)
• Better PCI access and support
• Major disk swap / buffer updates (including dcache)
• Lot's of improvements for non x86 (intel-like) architectures
• Improved x86 IRQ handling
• Lot's of filesystem code updates - FAT32 is natively supported, improved VFAT etc.

There are lots more. Literally hundreds. For a complete listing of changes, visit Cutting Edge Linux - a great site which keeps track of the additions on a per kernel basis.

Thirdly, in addition to the technical benefits and new device support that you may grow to love, you can bask in the knowledge that you are helping the Linux Kernel development. By sending in bug reports, you are aiding in the quality control department - something extremely important when talking about code which needs to be bulletproof.

The CONS

The very word Development carries some connotations that cannot be simply ignored. To put it bluntly, when you install a development kernel you are venturing into unchartered territory. Don't expect to receive sympathetic support when something goes wrong. Development is proceeding at an unbelievable rate and nobody is going to stop to hold your hand. "It's broken? Well it's a development kernel, what did you expect?"

Alot of people run Linux for the stability. Be prepared to give some of that up if you choose to run with 2.1.x. Since they have not been tested (at least not as thoroughly as mainstream release kernels =), your mileage with development kernels will vary. Even experiences using the same kernel on different machines can be very different. After running version 2.1.91 for just under a week, I have noticed a few problems. None of them have been serious enough to bother reinstalling 2.0.33 though. Namely, I had to upgrade my pppd to 2.2.3 and twice I had to bear some serious disk thrashing for no apparent reason.

IN CONCLUSION

Obviously, a non release kernel is not for everyone. If you run a mission critical server or have a strong need for stability, stick with the even-numbered kernel releases. But if, like me, you have a personal workstation to fool around on and are always looking to try something new, then you might wish to consider "upgrading" to a development kernel

When it comes down to the crunch, It's really a question of balance. If you can sacrifice a little stability and the possibility of a few problems for the excitement and improvements of being right on the bleeding edge, go for it.

Ed:With yesterday's feature freeze, hammering out those bugs is very important, if you're looking for something new to try, the next few releases in the 2.1.* series should keep getting more stable for the soon-to-be-ready 2.2.0.

Exciting news guys, Ben Gertzfield wrote in to give us This link where he talks about his day at Netscape. They compiled the code that is almost ready for release. They compiled it under Lestif on a Debian Linux box, and it was a bit unstable, but it compiled. Lots of interesting stuff in this one, it is a must read.

I just got confirmation from Bruce Perens that he is indeed resigning from his position at the head of the Debian. He states says "My mission is to bring free software to the masses. Unfortunately, that's not where Debian's developers want to go - they are more into making a great system for other hackers like them. There's nothing wrong with that, but the two mission statements don't overlap at all." Very true Bruce. Both visions are important, and should be pursued.

Open Source/Free software seems to be gaining momentum. Debian has just announced that Bruce Perens will be giving a speech to the University of Chicago's "The Challenge of Modern Democracy" conference on April the 10th. For those unable to attend, you'll be able to watch it on C-Span, the same channel that brought us the very entertaining Senator Hatch inqury into Microsoft. For those not in the USA, real-video feed should be available. Given the callibre of all the speakers, this will be quite a high profile occasion.

Allen wrote in to tell us that Debian has officially frozen, and to warn us that 'Hamm' should be out in 38 (well, 37 now) days. Looking forward to it.

Amos Shapira wrote in to tell us that those nutty Debian guys are planning a feature freeze on v2.0 of their very cool distribution. We should see the final 2.0 a few weeks later assuming nothing explodes.

Redherring has a historical review of the markets that Microsoft tried to dominate... but failed. Unix and NetWare outnumber NT by 5 to 1, MSN did not become the dominant Internet provider, WebTV is somewhat of a flop, and Java (the other technology NASA actually uses) is extremely popular despite Microsoft's disparaging it. Meanwhile Alex St John proud architect of that abomination DirectX, explains why Microsoft chose it as API... The article in the print edition says: "What happens when folks such as ATI and nVidia, who never manage to make a working driver -- even when they are supplied with a DDK, sample code, and a testing procedure -- take it upon themselves to make up their own OGL drivers? BOOM! That's what." Perhaps it's got something to do with the whole driver running at ring 0? I wonder why those clever folks at the GGI-project decided to put the least stuff possible in kernel mode... perhaps security? Ah, yes, I forgot, they did not implement the first idea that gelled in their station-wagons. The article goes on to state that "The day Microsoft encounters a major competitor whose strength arises from the community of game developers is the day game developers will get Microsoft's full, undivided attention.": divide and conquer!

Finally, when confronted with a new threat, the best strategy to keep your sheep^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers is to frighten them. Somehow I'm not losing any sleep about security issues that others might add...

Debian is going to be used to design AMSAT Satellites. That's almost as cool as the impending release of Debian 2.0 which features LIBC6. 2.1 will have a new replacement for dselect.

We have several MS Related Links that I figured I would just clump together quick a second before lunch. First Paul Mickus sent us this one where you can read about the other side to the MS story. Next up is this section at CNN. Jon Webb sent us the link, which is a special section devoted to all the "problems" microsoft has been having lately. Nothing new, but interesting to see it all bunched together. Finally, a bit unrelated, but Jay Kominek told us that a Linux Binary of NetShow is now available. I might have mentioned that before, but it probably is worth mentioning again.

Wichert Akkerman gave us a great article about Corel introducing a new NC, the Corel Video Network Computer. It's based on 230-300Mgz ARM processor and runis Linux as the operating system. All client software will be java-based.