Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader "Red Hat has a set of update rpms that are apparently intended to make 5.2 fully compatible with the 2.2 kernels. (I've been using 2.2.1 since it was released with no ill effects anyway...) " I'm posting this just so people stop emailing me and asking. Besides, the rpms seem to be worki

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.

NikoDemous writes " Red Hat Software has certified a line of Dell Workstations and Servers as compatible with Red Hat Linux. We've heard some talk of this for some time so does this represent a rift in the Win/Dell relationship?"

Ed Bailey wrote in to say that the Linux-7K project to get Linux on the Psion has started Bearing Fruit Fict sent in a link to LinuxApps which recently got a recamp. Looks strangely familiar GVeloper wrote in to say that gdev has been revamped (to use Slash) as well as containing some comments about glide and glade possibly merging. Lincoln sent us a link to a CG short parody of the politics of sfx which will be of interest to Star Wars fans. my copy of xanim won't play it, but several people told me it's really excellent. freejack wrote in to say that the Star Tribune rated Slashdot in top sites for geek gossip mongers. Whatever that means. Shave sent in a link to Jerry Pournelle's web site a where he talks about Refund Day and Slashdot (and neither in particularly cheerful terms) And finally, for the gamers out there, mgix sent a link to a N64 Emulator that can do Zelda64. That game has been a staple in the Geekhouse for weeks now. Addictive.

Donnie Barnes wrote in to say " LinuxExpo apologizes for the confusion and does intend to provide several booth spaces to non-profit organizations on a first come, first served basis. " Interested folks should contact stacy@linuxexpo.org.

Hamlet Batista writes "Last time checked at 1:30 on 21 December 1998, the beta version of RedHat's Linux Intel distribution included KDE-1.1pre packages. This is very good news for Red Hat Linux users. Welcome, Red Hat. "

python_geek writes "Red Hat has announced a new training/certification program for those who want to be certified Linux Geeks. It looks like their certification will actually mean something as it includes a lab exam were you actually have to show you know how to solve problems, unlike the Microsoft tests which anyone who crams hard enough can pass. It looks really cool, now if I could just get my company to pay for the training and test..."

Dr Mike writes "The Rasterman has released a spec for making any window manager compliant with GNOME. Window managers complying with this specification will gain: - the gnome pager will work "out of the box" - gmc will be able to get root window button presses (allowing a root menu which is the same/similar to the panel start menu to be brought up) - icons on the desktop will properly layer - the panel will be a managed app The specification is available at: link " Oh man - how cool is that? This come just in time for the upcoming gnome-libs 1.0 freeze (of which yours truly is assisting with).

Alex deVries from Red Hat wrote in to tell us that they have a network called the Red Hat Contrib Net that will allow the world easy access to the contributed rpms that always seem to be on really slow mirror sites. You can read more at Red Hat's Developer Pages.

Alex deVries from Red Hat wrote in to tell us that they have a network called the Red Hat Contrib Net that will allow the world easy access to the contributed rpms that always seem to be on really slow mirror sites. You can read more at Red Hat's Developer Pages.

Dave Whitinger writes "Oh Boy did Red Hat make some serious announcements today. Check out the press release here. " Indeed. Check out even more news at Red Hat's page. The enterprise, GNOME, messaging, oh my!

Thomas Muldowney writes "Mozilla screenshots using GTK are up on Mozbin " They've also got binaries and stuff if you're interested, I haven't tested them, I have no clue how they are. Probably ought to download one and get Slashdot to render under it *grin*. J Thanks should go to Pavlov and msw. Also, msw just told me Rob's wish has been fufilled: nglayout-slashdot.png.

Unknwn writes "RedHat has announced that they are now splitting Powertools into three separate products. One is RedHat Variety Pack which has RedHat 5.2 for Alpha, Intel, and Sparc along with the source code. Linux Off-Line is mirrors of sunsite, mozilla, GNU, and X. The third product is the Powertools 5.2 which contains many software packages in RPM format. "

Rob Kaper sent us a link to something you might have missed on Freshmeat. It's a nifty site that is tracking Server uptimes. El wrote in to send us a link to "Penguin Lust" which I found silly enough to post. Josh Baugher sent us a link to the so called Christmas Document that you might find amusing. Quazi sent us a link to a ZDNet IE5 Review that normally wouldn't deserve a glance. But apparently a Slashdot fan was involved. Or just as likely, they wanted some hits and figured that this publicity might send some clicks their way *grin*. iota wrote in to send us a link about Mexico using Linux in schools and saving themselves over a hundred million bucks in the process. Mark Woon sent us a link to a funny BMW ad poking fun of MS. Lastly, worth noting (and based on the submissions box, and my msglog, a lot of you did) Red Hat has updated their website with a cleaner, and frameless design. Joy!

Nirvani writes "check here. Some other mirror have it to, ie: wcarchive. Have fun! " Ok, are we sure that this is the real one? I see files at least *grin*.

Several folks wrote in to tell the world that Red Hat Software has released v5.2 of their distribution. You can snag it from the mirror sites. For those of you on less then speedy connections, LinuxCentral is shipping the official version starting the 9th, and I'm sure the usual places will be carrying super cheap unofficial CDs just as soon as they can burn them.

Edward C. Bailey wished to consult with you all on the following: "I've started to look at upgrading my home system (p166) to something a bit more up-to-date. However, I discovered that my current ATX case has so much stuff overhanging the motherboard there's no room for a PII, and a Xeon is just completely out of the question...;-> And I've yet to see a follow-up article from that earlier /. discussion on making cases from Legos; that might be worth considering, if I could see one first... :-) So does anyone out there have a favorite case supplier? URLs, please!" There's more! Click below... Ed continues... "So far, most of what I've been able to find on the web has either been the standard junk cases that the average "we-build-you-pc-real-cheap" places use, or the standard junk cases with special whizzy front bezels...

Bleagh!! ( Cl: Emphasis mine, I hate cases like that. I used to work in those bloody things...)

I'd like to find a decent case that has the following features:

Wide-open design, with nothing overhanging the motherboard.

Slide-out motherboard tray.

Easily removable side skins (none of this one-piece U-shaped cover stuff)

At least four 5.25in drive bays (and preferably more, so I can use every other one, and keep those 'cudas cool)

PC Power and Cooling's "Solid-Steel Tower" is about the closest to what I'm looking for. I've even considered building my own case using 80/20's "industrial Erector Set" products!"

Microsoft is not going to wait for the outcome of its trial with the DOJ before attacking Linux. The battle scene is France, where Microsoft's new (expendable?) regional director Marc Chardon has just issued an open letter to his clients. Click below to read the translation of the Linux-section (it's in French) and some commentary. The new director of Microsoft France (MF) has just issued an open letter to his clients. Most of the letter says essentially "We're right. Critics aren't. Millions of people use our products." and other fascinating insights. However it does contain two interesting revelations: Microsoft's OS is an integral part of your PC, and Linux is of very limited interest to anyone but fringe groups (students and researchers).

As previously reported, it is illegal in the EU to tie the sale of a product with another in the EU. However Microsoft France (MF) argues that because a computer can be argued non-functional without an operating system (or a hard-drive), what is being sold is a single product, not two. A little later, MF's director contradicts himself by stating that "assemblers" (basically small computing shops that will assemble a computer from standard components according to your desires) will sell you a computer without an OS -- is that a broken computer? Indeed, since the same letter claims there are more OS's for PCs than any other computer, we must be dealing with a product tied to another precisely because no other OS is sold (according to the letter) with a computer.

Further down, you'll see a whole section devoted to Linux. While today Microsoft's lawyers declared Linux to be developed by a single person, MF's director claims it to be a movement. I've translated the rest of what he had to say about Linux since it's interesting...

"It would seem that Linux does not satisfy the requirements of most companies, let alone the general public.

Linux presents limits that will slow down its widespread distribution, particularly in companies and the general public

In terms of the system's stability, Linux has problems of general coordination, and one feels strongly the lack of a project leader. Linus Torvald ( S: Microsoft can't spell!) left university last year to join a Californian company. The development of Linux has since considerably slowed down. Similarly, the maintenance of Linux' functionality depends on the mobilization of its teams. Thus, certain of its functions have not been updated in the last two years.

The installation of Linux is delicate. For optimal system performance, each version must be tuned on each computer at each installation, by a competent computer-technician. Setting it up and its administration are therefore not within the reach of a computer-technician used to more friendly operating systems, let alone basic users. Using Linux is complex, its programs generally take text commands.

Finally most Linux application software has limited functionality. Word processors rarely have functionality common on today's PC or Macintosh: dynamic spelling correction, graphic input of tables, integration of imported graphics. Most Linux word processors bear more resemblance to Microsoft Write written in 1985.

Linux' advantages of zero-cost and open source are not relevant criteria for most users.

The zero-cost of Linux is a non decisive advantage: the cost of an OS is minor in comparison to the other costs of a company. The price of the OS is only one of the elements of computers in companies. Putting a traditional OS into place costs many times the price of the OS itself, and the same goes for the creation of an application program and its maintenance. So, by installing Linux, one saves the cost of the OS, but one increases the cost of installation, and one takes risks for the maintenance of the applications and the system itself.

If certain people consider the permanent availability of source code to be an absolute guaranty of independence from software editors, we fail to see the benefit for a company or a person to have access to the source of his OS.

However, the distribution of the OS source code is very useful for students and researchers, to understand the inner-workings of the OS and eventually to change it. Linux will therefore probably stay for a long time a good subject of study for computer-scientist, rather than an OS destined for widespread distribution. "

I must apologize for any mistakes in my translation. Use babelfish to get an alternative translation. I'm open to any corrections. update! Linux Weekly News has just published a de-babelfished translation of the whole letter.

S: This letter obviously contains many "inaccuracies":

If I buy a car, is the fuel a separate product or not? What about electricity? Computers are non-functional without it. I hope the EU lawyers will notice this wriggling.

His attacks on Linus stating that Linux development has slowed down are not credible with the inflow of new developers and the number of ports now in the standard kernel. The letter very much ignores the fact that Transmeta lets Linus hack on Linux during office hours and has other employees that contribute, underplays Red Hat employing kernel developers, and completely ignores the current tidal surge of major corporations towards Linux: Intel, Compaq, Oracle, Sun, to name but a few.

Anyone who has had to install Windows from scratch, as I do every 3-6 months when it has corrupted its hard-drive beyond repair at work, knows that installing Windows is a royal pain. It takes over an hour, requires minding (yes... I'm just here to click OK)... Linux takes me 20 minutes on an 100 Mhz system. The only argument here is: when Windows is pre-installed (i.e. when you buy your machine) it's easier than it is to install Linux. Duh!

I, and many others don't view GUI's as necessarily friendly. Until they are a substitute for true understanding, I prefer to have control over my system and to be able to repair it. The usual answer for Windows to reinstall everything, and then try eliminating various components until you've found the "culprit". The same applies for source code. Funny that the latest C'T has devoted 19 pages to "Hacks & Bugs & Workarounds: Large Projects with Word, and how one survives them". To me, and many others, this is an unacceptable hit on my productivity.

Indeed, the whole notion that Linux is too hard for the average user is nonsense to me. I gave my mother a Linux box -- I'm living 8 timezones away so I cannot help her fix an unreliable OS. She cannot rely on computer-savvy neighbours either, since she's in a very rural area. But, with Linux as her first computer, she is happy using it laying ridicule on Microsoft's claims about the difficulties that the average layman will experience.

Complaints about Word processors are unfair since most Windows word-processors are also not very advanced. Percentage-wise (if you count all the free, shareware, and old ones), I expect Windows/DOS have a worse ratio. Only a few products provide the features Marc discusses. Similarly, on Linux, we have WordPerfect 7 (hey Corel, port WordPerfect 8!), Applixware, and StarOffice (which I sometimes use), Angoss, Dtop, and Axene's Xclamation, On the free front we have Emacs which is also used by a very large number of people under NT and which will soon have a WYSIWYG interface, Thot, EZ, Papyrus, Cicero, Doc, Maxwell, and new promising upstarts such as Glue. And let's not forget TeX: I and my fellow PhD students wrote their theses in it because it copes well with 700 page documents. Most academic papers must be written, and many books are written in it. It also accepts any graphics as encapsulated postscript. TeX is still the only format which is guaranteed to come out looking the same on any computer, and still looks better to me and many others than the output of any other product. As to dynamic spell-checking, I turn it off: I think, I write, I reread, I spell-check. Dynamic spell-checking just breaks the flow of my thoughts.

The attack on zero-cost software is a pretty obvious diversion, and tries to draw the reader's attention away from the fact people use Linux because of its stability and features rather than its cost.

Finally, Microsoft's attempt to make academics and students irrelevant is interesting, since they are the ones pushing Linux, but also very dangerous. France values intelligence and high education more than most other societies, as Marc Chardon's own CV shows.

So what do you think of all this?

I'd like to thank A Dark Elf, Jacky Liu, and Linux Weekly News Daily for some of the material I used here.

An anonymous read wrote in to say that Red Hat Software will no longer carry TriTeal CDE for Linux. They instead recommend either GNOME or CDE from XiGraphics

Donnie Barnes from Red Hat Software dropped us a line to let us know how things are going at ISPCON. Click on the link below to see the full report.

I just wanted to write Slashdot and let the readers know how ISPCON is going. I've put up an introductory web page off of my own home page at http://www.redhat.com/~djb that now includes some pictures I took with my new digital camera. I have pictures of Linux running in the Intel, Compaq, IBM, Corel, and Hallmark booths. I might find some more tommorrow. :-)

As of Tuesday morning, ftp.redhat.com has been running from the ISPCON show floor in the Intel booth. We have a 20Mbs network pipe provided by Intel and a Dell PowerEdge 2300 server. In just 24 hours we've done over 170G of data transferred to the Internet from that single server. The server is a Dual P-II 400 with 1G of RAM. It also has 4x9G Seagate Cheetah LVD drives running Linux software RAID 5 on the embedded Adaptec controller. This machine simply *screams*. We had originally spec'ed two machines, but we now simply use one of them as a backup.

That breaks our own personal record for a 24 period. The previous record for us was 129G during the release of 5.1. But we only had 15Mbs to play with. :-)

Donnie Barnes from Red Hat Software dropped us a line to let us know how things are going at ISPCON. Click on the link below to see the full report.

I just wanted to write Slashdot and let the readers know how ISPCON is going. I've put up an introductory web page off of my own home page at http://www.redhat.com/~djb that now includes some pictures I took with my new digital camera. I have pictures of Linux running in the Intel, Compaq, IBM, Corel, and Hallmark booths. I might find some more tommorrow. :-)

As of Tuesday morning, ftp.redhat.com has been running from the ISPCON show floor in the Intel booth. We have a 20Mbs network pipe provided by Intel and a Dell PowerEdge 2300 server. In just 24 hours we've done over 170G of data transferred to the Internet from that single server. The server is a Dual P-II 400 with 1G of RAM. It also has 4x9G Seagate Cheetah LVD drives running Linux software RAID 5 on the embedded Adaptec controller. This machine simply *screams*. We had originally spec'ed two machines, but we now simply use one of them as a backup.

That breaks our own personal record for a 24 period. The previous record for us was 129G during the release of 5.1. But we only had 15Mbs to play with. :-)

Donnie Barnes from Red Hat Software dropped us a line to let us know how things are going at ISPCON. Click on the link below to see the full report.

I just wanted to write Slashdot and let the readers know how ISPCON is going. I've put up an introductory web page off of my own home page at http://www.redhat.com/~djb that now includes some pictures I took with my new digital camera. I have pictures of Linux running in the Intel, Compaq, IBM, Corel, and Hallmark booths. I might find some more tommorrow. :-)

As of Tuesday morning, ftp.redhat.com has been running from the ISPCON show floor in the Intel booth. We have a 20Mbs network pipe provided by Intel and a Dell PowerEdge 2300 server. In just 24 hours we've done over 170G of data transferred to the Internet from that single server. The server is a Dual P-II 400 with 1G of RAM. It also has 4x9G Seagate Cheetah LVD drives running Linux software RAID 5 on the embedded Adaptec controller. This machine simply *screams*. We had originally spec'ed two machines, but we now simply use one of them as a backup.

That breaks our own personal record for a 24 period. The previous record for us was 129G during the release of 5.1. But we only had 15Mbs to play with. :-)

Redhat has now announced that Intel, Netscape, Greylock and Benchmark Partners have invested in it. Intel wants to target ISPs with their Linux strategy. Intel will also be joining Linux International. It will be interesting to see in which way Red Hat will react to UDI given the discussion about it on the kernel list, summarized by Linux Weekly News. (updated) Further info at news.com which is sporting Tux today.

Redhat has now announced that Intel, Netscape, Greylock and Benchmark Partners have invested in it. Intel wants to target ISPs with their Linux strategy. Intel will also be joining Linux International. It will be interesting to see in which way Red Hat will react to UDI given the discussion about it on the kernel list, summarized by Linux Weekly News. (updated) Further info at news.com which is sporting Tux today.

Well, RedHat and XBF project keeps coming up with new developemtns. This time is a full X server for the i740 based chipset cards. Here are the outlines: Version 0.9.8 of the XBF_i740 X server is now available, supporting:

* Full support for 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32 bit per pixel depths.
* Hardware cursor support to reduce sprite flicker.
* Hardware accelerated 2D drawing engine support for 8, 15, 16 and * 24 bit per pixel depths.
* Support for high resolution video modes up to 1600x1200.
* Support for doublescan video modes (e.g., 320x200 and 320x240).
* Fully programmable clock supported.
* Robust text mode restore for VT switching.

This server has only been tested with the Real3D Starfighter AGP, but it'll probably work with all of the i740 cards that have cropped up.
It is only available in binary form (even though it's free software) to meet Intel's NDA requirements.
Sorry about the format of the message, I will do my best next time :) Hetz The link to download from is Here

Red Hat Software has won another award. This time RedHat Linux 5.1 receives the Editor's Choice award from the Australian Computer Magazine. Check out the press release for further details.

Mike Hicks writes "Raster has put up some more screenshots of GTK/GNOME themes at this page for those of us who like to look at great desktops... " All I can say is yummy.

Melissa London of Red Hat wrote in to alert us that Raw Hide has been announced, and is up for testing. It's rough stuff, but it shows promise. The system will very possibly get all of us stabler systems, faster. No arguments here.

Melissa London of Red Hat wrote in to alert us that Raw Hide has been announced, and is up for testing. It's rough stuff, but it shows promise. The system will very possibly get all of us stabler systems, faster. No arguments here.

You knew it was coming, but not you know what it is. Raster has taken all his experience from Enlightenment, and hacked GTK to themable. Once the bugs are ironed out, all Gnome applications will be able to be customized to whatever bizarre extremes the user desires. The RHAD Themes Page has been updated with a gigantic screenshot showing what this really means. You will be impressed. Oh, and somebody probably ought to mirror that screenshot somewhere.

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/

Yoav Cohen-Sivan wrote in to tell us that Marc Ewing has posted his take on the Qt License. The final result is that Qt will not be included with future versions of Red Hat's distro.

Elliot Lee wrote in to tell us that Linus is the cover story in the next issue of Forbes. It proclaims "Peace, Love and Sofware". I find it strangely appealing that the Free Software Movement is so often thought of in hippy terms. Peace man. Anyway, uber cool for Linus and big PR for open source. Always enjoyable to see that sorta stuff.

vasquez was the first to tell us that X inside, now Xi Graphics, the makers of Accelerated X, will be releasing a new Linux distribution targeted at Fortune 500 companies. As they already sell and support their own commercial software to the above companies, they know what level of support to provide, and how not to get sued. What's funny is that they were asked to do this by the said companies... what's wrong with Redhat? Suse? Dld? Caldera? Maybe Xig will produce updates at a slower rate. Let's hope they also contribute to all Linuxes, like Redhat, Caldera and Suse have done.

Phil Smyth writes "I toured the under-construction Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at an open house at Brookhaven National Laboratory yesterday. One of their systems people told me that they will be using a massive array of Pentium Pros running Red Hat to analyze the terabytes of data streaming from the experiments. NT was rejected because of the difficulty of administering the array. Incidentaly, the RHIC is an unbelivable piece of engineering. "

Bob Bell was the first to write in and let us all know KDE has finally hit the big 1.0! Something that a lot of you have been waiting for a long time, I'm sure. Markus Fleck (aka python) wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has hired Preston Brown, the author of KOrganizer, and a recent volunteer to the Harmony Project. Harmony is the project to provide a free and superior Qt replacement. An interesting turn of events, indeed...

Bob Bell was the first to write in and let us all know KDE has finally hit the big 1.0! Something that a lot of you have been waiting for a long time, I'm sure. Markus Fleck (aka python) wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has hired Preston Brown, the author of KOrganizer, and a recent volunteer to the Harmony Project. Harmony is the project to provide a free and superior Qt replacement. An interesting turn of events, indeed...

Well folks, its friday, and I'm ready for the weekend. And I'm gonna celebrate by cleaning out the submissions box. What follows is a fairly sizable list of quickies that have been built up over the last week or so. First off, Felix Finch sent us a link to IllusionWorks.com. It is exactly what you would expect. Kinda cool. Frank Berger sent us a link to a Chicken Conversion for Quake II. What a strange world we live. Oliver Fischer, the guy who was working on those Linux Keyboard Keys has updated his page with more information for anyone interested. Mike Roessing wrote a sort of zd parody. It's friday, you might enjoy reading such thing. Christopher Lee sent us a link to a NY Times Writeup on VA Research and Linux. Fict wrote in to tell us that the latest issue of Phrack is now online. Matthew Miller wrote in to say that Red Hat is selling, well, Red Hats like the one in their logo. Fict wrote in to send us a link to Denounce.com (uber cool fake news site) one MS buying Linux.

Michael Eilers has written a sort of introduction to Beowulf, what it does, what it doesn't do, and why we should care. It really is a sort of quickie distributed computing FAQ that many of you might enjoy. So hit the link below and find out. The following is a feature by Slashdot Reader Michael Eilers Beowulf beyond the Hype A Quickstart to the Beowulf Concept During the last weeks the Beowulf project got a lot of attention in the PC press and even on Slashdot. With Red Hat's Extreme Linux CD the relevant mailing lists show an increasing number of newbie questions. Unfortunately the informat ion Red Hat provides on their Extreme Linux web pages is less than informative and full of hype. This may result in disappointed users. It seems appropriate to make some comments an hardware and software and give some guidance for the v ery beginner.

The name Beowulf stems from an old English tale and was the name of the first e xample of this class of computers. In fact a Beowulf is nothing else as a local computer network. You might say I have a small network in my flat (f.e. an old 486 connected to my newer machine), do I have a Beowulf? The answer is yes. Yo u do own already the hardware to start. Even if your connection is via PLIP/SLI P you can call your construction a Beowulf as soon as ping is successf ul. Forget all the hype about expensive special networking stuff like switches, Myrinet or SCI. For some tasks it is helpful but others won't benefit. A 10/10 0Mb connection seems to be sufficient for serious starting.

A Beowulf is not a solution for all of your speed problems. Building a Beowulf has not the same effect as f.e. the increasing of clock speed. With a Beowulf y ou won't see a speedup of your daily software and the class of software that is already adopted to Beowulfs can have very different speedups.

The hardware part is nothing more than connecting PCs with standard networking hardware. The main idea is to make your PCs to talk to each other. The most com mon solution is message passing. There are two main ways for doing message pass ing: PVM and MPI. The decision between them is mainly a matter of taste (see here for a comparing paper). I will foc us on PVM but keep in mind that MPI is as good. You can get that stuff here. The pvm3.x.x.tar.gz package has a long history and is rock solid stuff. Sinc e 1993 I did install it on half a dozen unices and never met a major problem. A fter unpacking and compiling play around (yes there is a "hello world" example) . After playing with the examples. You will see that the main commands are pvm_ send and pvm_receive and If you think that you do understand the examples start your own programming If you know what matrix multiplication is, try to impleme nt a parallel version. This is an instructive example. If you have problems you may ask for a debugging utility. Try to get xpvm-1.2.5.tar.gz from the above U RL. Its not a debugger but it visualises the behaviour of your parallel code. T he whole thing may take you two or three evenings. After that you know the basi cs of the Beowulf concept of making a pile of PCs looking as one machine.

Now you may have some questions:

Q: Sounds interesting, but I don't have a network at home. What can I do?
A: You have a network (the loopback device) in your Linux box. This means that you can install PVM/MPI and play with it. Of course you won't see a speedup. :-(

Q: I have access to a computer pool but I'm only a common user.
A: You don't have to be "root". You can install PVM/MPI as a normal user and tr ansform this pool in your personal Beowulf.

Q: I'm not a C programmer, but I use [Perl|Tcl|Python]?
A: There are interfaces available at the PVM home page (MPI??).

Q: Im not a programmer. Are there interesting applications?
A: Im sure there are plenty of applications that exploit the power of Beowulfs. Most of the stuff lives in academic environment and this means that availabilit y and quality differs. I use f.e. GAMESS a quantum chemistry program that uses MPI. Maybe one appl ication need's to be specially mentioned. There are two Beowulf-ready patches f or the famous POVray ray-tracing program. PV MPOV is more flexible but less robust and FLY3 is robust but a little inflexible. If you use POVray very o ften and play with the idea of buying a PII[34]00 MHz you may rethink this idea if you checked the povbench res ults at The fastest rendering was done with a messa ge passing version of povray.

Q: If you state that building and using of Beowulfs is that easy why aren't the re more Beowulfs?
A: I don't know why there aren't more, but I think this situation will change.

Q: I'm a little confused about the many packages that allows computing of Beowu lfs?
A: Indeed there is a whole zoo of packages for programming networked workstatio ns. For a first attempt you don't need them but some of them solve special prob lems. For an overview about the important ones check out the "Linux Parallel Pr ocessing HOWTO" by Hank Dietz.

Q: Is there a PVM/MPI version for Windows95?
A: Yes there are Win32 versions of PVM and MPI, but who cares. In fact every (pseudo)multitasking operating system with network support can in principal be used to build a Beowulf (f.e. there is Win 3.x port for PVM).

Q: Where can I get more Information?
A: As you may have seen from the above the message passing part is the stuff th at is tricky. You find links to books and tutorial for parallel programming on the PVM/MPI home pages. Hardware related information at introductory level you will find in the "Beowulf HOWTO" by Jacek Radajewski and Doug Eadline. A comprehensive overv iew on hardware and software in the "Linux Parallel Programming HOWTO" by Hank Dietz.

Q: Do I need the Beowulf software packages from the Beowulf project at NASA?
A: If you use Linux, then you probably use one of the network driver developed by Donald Becker. So the Beowulf project is already at your home and in this se nse necessary. The rest of NASA's Beowulf software provided for the use with cl usters helps you to manage a large cluster but it's not necessary and probably not the first step to do and beyond the scope of a quickstart. Even the suits a t NASA have realized that Beowulfs are a powerful tool, but the shutdown of the Beowulf web pages is like preventing the production of cars by closing a horn factory.

Q: If you can connect local PC's to look as one computer, why not coupling comp uters via Internet to a supercomputer?
A: Standard message passing software uses communication protocols that are very sensitive to packet loss. But there are activities in this area. Look for the keywords "metacomputing" or "hypercomputing".

Michael Eilers

Redhat recently announced their new partnership with Precision Insight. This met with some opposition as the press announcement only talked about binary drivers. However, PI promises full source code wherever possible. Also, the first fruit of the relationship is ready for downloading. It's a NeoMagic 128 driver.

Redhat recently announced their new partnership with Precision Insight. This met with some opposition as the press announcement only talked about binary drivers. However, PI promises full source code wherever possible. Also, the first fruit of the relationship is ready for downloading. It's a NeoMagic 128 driver.

Andy Tai writes "This Red Hat press release announces that Adaptec will support the Linux community by providing technical information for driver development on Adaptec products.

Redhat has posted a Datapro Survey showing that Linux does better than any other real OS on Overall Satisfaction, Interoperability, Cost of ownership, Price, Internet Readiness, Flexibility (tie), Availability (tie).

NT beats Linux on Percentage Growth (blame the suits for that), Solaris on Java Support (well... they did invent it), and Digital Unix on Product Functionality (anyone know why?) and Performance. Surprisingly NT does rather better than I would expect having used it, which makes me wonder how they built their survey.

Redhat has posted a Datapro Survey showing that Linux does better than any other real OS on Overall Satisfaction, Interoperability, Cost of ownership, Price, Internet Readiness, Flexibility (tie), Availability (tie).

NT beats Linux on Percentage Growth (blame the suits for that), Solaris on Java Support (well... they did invent it), and Digital Unix on Product Functionality (anyone know why?) and Performance. Surprisingly NT does rather better than I would expect having used it, which makes me wonder how they built their survey.

It has been a long wait, but it's out there now: RedHat Linux 5.1 for SUN Sparc. It's available on the Red Hat FTP site and its mirrors. This is the first glibc based RedHat distribution for Sparc. Enjoy.

It has been a long wait, but it's out there now: RedHat Linux 5.1 for SUN Sparc. It's available on the Red Hat FTP site and its mirrors. This is the first glibc based RedHat distribution for Sparc. Enjoy.

Recently Red Hat has announced that they will begin distributing binary X servers for video cards with NDAs and unreleased specs. Personally, I have a NeoMagic chipset, so I'm happy to see it. Frank LaMonica has written up his opinions on this issue and sent them here. In any case, you should read why he thinks that this is a good idea. The following is a feature by Slashdot Reader Frank LaMonica Positive Changes come from a Managed Process

Before you allow yourself to focus only on the negative aspects of releasing a binary only NeoMagic driver, please consider all of the facts. There is much more happening here than is apparent.

First of all, this arrangement is not a precedent, it was done by S.u.S.E. with their 3Dlabs drivers because they were initially not allowed to distribute source code. S.u.S.E. recognized the need within the Open Source community to have support for 3Dlabs products and created binary only drivers to satisfy that need. Despite the fact that drivers were then available, things were still happening behind the scenes. S.u.S.E. was not satisfied to release only binary drivers and I was asked to intercede on their behalf to try to get permission from 3Dlabs to allow S.u.S.E. to release its driver source code.

The as-yet unannounced news is that I was able to present to 3Dlabs a solid business case to convince them to allow S.u.S.E. to release its driver source for the Permedia (I & 2) drivers for public distribution. This happened yesterday and has probably not been announced yet by S.u.S.E. The reason that negotiation was successful is because 3Dlabs was led to appreciate the enormous asset which the Open Source community brings to their business. It had nothing to do with threats, rancor, or any venomous attacks levied against their business by the Open Source community. Those types of actions evoke emotional responses from board and chipset vendors which actually undermine the work being done to 1) elevate Linux and other Open Source projects within their reality to the level they should be, and 2) develop the rapport with these vendors that is necessary for a healthy business relationship is to exist. There are very good business reasons which, if presented correctly to a board or chipset vendor, will convince them to allow the driver sources to be released to the public. Once emotions get involved than logic often doesn't prevail.

Getting back to NeoMagic.

As the Red Hat announcement clearly states, the XBF_Neomagic driver is a temporary solution which will exist only until NeoMagic is led to see the benefit to themselves for allowing the source to be freely and openly distributed. Prior to this release, the only way anyone with a NeoMagic based laptop could run X was to purchase a commercial X Server. It could be argued that the pressure of having no free (in $'s) driver could be used to force NeoMagic to allow developers to release their source code because the Open Source community could convince many users to avoid buying a NeoMagic based computer. The theory is that NeoMagic would feel the heat of lost sales and then agree to allow us to release the source. The unfortunate reality of that approach is Windows drives the market, not Linux, so the only people being hurt are the Linux users or, worse still, those people who already own a NeoMagic laptop and want to try Linux.

NeoMagic^Òs policy about holding their intellectual property as confidential information was created with no consideration whatsoever about Open Source or Linux. They are not guilty of undermining the Open Source movement. NeoMagic simply does not yet understand the importance of that movement to their own business. Linux is not yet on their radar scope. Do you remember a time in your life when Linux didn^Òt mean anything to you? Once you were convinced that it was important to you then you did everything that was necessary to promote it. The same thing will happen with every board and chip vendor as each of them are convinced of the importance of Linux to their own business.

I visited NeoMagic at their facility last week and was able to elevate the issue internally within their company. I have convinced their Director of Software Development that allowing us to release our driver source is good for NeoMagic^Òs business. Their legal department is right now reviewing the matter and a decision should be coming within the month. The decision may not be in our favor, and if it^Òs not then I^Òll try again. The important thing is that motion is occurring in the right direction.

My first goal in resolving the NeoMagic issue is to remove the emotional content from the arguments. That is being done to some degree by making the binary drivers available to people who already have machines and can^Òt run X or just happen to want hardware that contains a NeoMagic chipset. I hope that this essay will also move some people to be more patient. Presently, many believers in Open Source have been publicly lambasting NeoMagic and openly declaring war on them because of NeoMagic's policy. The effect of that tactic has been to make my job of championing the business case much more difficult and is actually counterproductive to our mutual goal of having all software available to all users in source form.

Please look at both sides of the issue and try to understand that we can all get what we want, and probably much faster, by working within the limits of acceptable business etiquette.

Mark McCoy was the first to notice a press release over at Red Hat discussing new binary only servers. Basically, binary servers will be made available for chip sets that require an NDA or for chipsets that won't release specs. This seems like a kludge to a bigger problem, but it all is an excellent start to get high end hardware supported quicker.

Elliot Lee wrote in with a link to this page which explains how you can make use of the previously-worthless-under-X knob that is now standard on Microsoft Mice (and like all microsoft innovations, is probably going to be the defacto standard everywhere by sometime next thursday). I actually like the knob sometimes (not as much as those cool IBM mice that had a trackpoint to allow left and right as well as up and down) and wouldn't mind seeing applications made aware of it. The page has Examples for KDE, Netscape and others.

mazeone writes "I'm downloading the gnome 0.20 rpms from RHAD as we speak... looks like they have come put them back out." I'm looking forward to taking a gander at this bad new boy. I've been fiddling with KDE on and off for a few weeks, and I think I'm ready for a change.