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Dave Rosenberg, Principal Analyst, Open Source Development Labs, contributed this commentary piece: Despite all the open source software and services companies funded in 2005, the associated business models are still considered experimental and unproven. The new crop need only to look to the past avoid missteps. At the Open Source Business Conference in November, VCs and open source software company executives wondered aloud if what we’re seeing today is a “bubble” of open source start-ups being funded. One journalist’s recap of the event cited $144 million in open source start-ups receiving VC funding in 2005, double the venture capital flow for open source start-ups in 2004. Bubble or not, there is a company that every would-be open source start-up investor should learn a lesson from: LinuxCare.

LinuxCare was born in 1999 -- venture-backed by top tier VC firms like Kleiner Perkins, with total funding in the ballpark of $70 million.

Those were the frontier days for Linux. There was a ton of industry interest and activity despite the fact that the jury was still out with respect to end user adoption. Nobody really knew exactly how Linux was going to be used – would it be for the desktop, servers, etc.? The company used the vast venture coffers to promote the brand and staff star-power (even Linus Torvalds consulted for them briefly)– and LinuxCare quickly became the recognized name for Linux services and support, doing work for big systems vendors like Dell and IBM in addition to developing device drivers and offering education services.

Red Hat had the Linux OS and software, VA Linux had the hardware – and LinuxCare had the services. It was a theoretically perfect enterprise Linux ecosystem triumvirate.

But it wasn't meant to be.

The demise of LinuxCare can be attributed to many factors. The first was that enterprises were slow to adopt Linux – in the early ‘00s, IT spending came to a grinding halt with the dot-com and stock market crash. But the key factor to LinuxCare’s spectacular death spiral was the fact that they were going up against Red Hat, the very company they were basing their business on. Red Hat not only developed their own distribution of Linux, but also started offering support for it. Red Hat offered a one-stop shop for Linux software and services regardless of hardware. Enterprise customers decided it was easier to buy from one vendor. This same sentiment is what drives sales of Microsoft software in enterprises today.

LinuxCare suffered a painful public death over months of executive departures and layoffs, VA Linux abandoned hardware for software, and RedHat, with the cash to weather the tech spending downturn, expanded its revenue streams and became the de-facto enterprise Linux distribution.

It's easy to dismiss LinuxCare as "ahead of their time", which is definitely true. But the fundamental and fatal flaw was that they based their products on someone else's IP, with no IP of their own. When the market tanked abruptly, LinuxCare didn't have the money to weather the storm and didn't have consistent alternative revenue streams to combat the lack of services income.

Some of the executives from LinuxCare went on to start a new company called Levanta, which focuses on Linux systems management. They have since developed IP in software and hardware that can sustain the business beyond the services revenue.Their LinuxCare experience taught them how to build a sustainable technology business model on top of open source software. No longer do they rely on IP that walks out the door every night in their employees' heads.

In the end, it all comes down to IP. Building a business on top of something you don't own is extremely risky. Companies need to develop their own IP to be innovative and have competitive differentiation. And if they don't develop it themselves, they need to acquire or license the relevant code to protect themselves and ensure they aren't caught without alternatives.

An Open Source Danger Zone?

In my eyes, the bubble associated with open source is less related to the millions of VC dollars and more related to the reliance on software and components that are not part of a company's internal IP. When Oracle acquired InnoDB, it had a less than positive effect on MySQL, but MySQL is a smart enough company to not bet the farm on something it doesn't own. It owns enough IP to sustain its products-and it's business from the risk associated with relying on someone else's code.

IT Groundwork has built a business on top of an open source network monitoring project called Nagios. They don't own the copyrights and they don't employ the creator. Kleiner-backed SpikeSource offers "certified stacks" of open source software components, but they don't actually create the open source components themselves.

And in SpikeSource's case, Red Hat announced that they too would offer "certified stacks." Who do think is going to win that battle? Red Hat, the one-stop shop that offers the OS and the apps, or the company that offers merely a portion of the total package. Does SpikeSource have the IP or alternative revenue sources to withstand Red Hat? Let's wish them luckand hope they know the LinuxCare tale.

If there is a bubble, it will burst when the open source projects these new company's products and services depend on go private, fork, or get acquired. The market for open source is so new we haven't seen much of this yet. Only time will tell if the recently funded open source companies can build sustainable businesses, or if this grand experiment will result in a few 800 pound gorillas and many tiny monkeys.

Have something important to say to the Slashdot community? Email roblimo at slashdot period org with the complete article or an article proposal.

PaxTech writes "Security Enhanced Linux is moving into the mainstream rapidly, bringing its implementation of mandatory access control to a wider audience. The agenda for the 2006 SELinux Symposium has just been announced, distributions such as Fedora are including SELinux in the default build, and ports are underway to bring SELinux functionality to BSD and Darwin. Security minded systems administrators should be learning about this technology as it provides another strong layer of security for Linux servers."

LnxAddct writes "NewsForge is reporting that the first official release of the Fedora Directory Server has been announced. This is good news for members of the open source community longing for an easy to use, enterprise class directory server. Fedora Directory Server is based off of Netscape Directory Server which Red Hat purchased a year ago and released as open source. Screenshots are available on their site." NewsForge is a Slashdot sister site.

LnxAddct writes "NewsForge is reporting that the first official release of the Fedora Directory Server has been announced. This is good news for members of the open source community longing for an easy to use, enterprise class directory server. Fedora Directory Server is based off of Netscape Directory Server which Red Hat purchased a year ago and released as open source. Screenshots are available on their site." NewsForge is a Slashdot sister site.

amorelock asks: "I manage a small group of 4-6 Linux software engineers / developers that are part of a larger engineering organization. Our IT department has finally, after several months of pushing-back, decided to support our Linux workstations. The have requested that we use an off the shelf distribution that will be fairly easy to manage and maintain (we're talking about Microsoft folks with practically zero Linux experience). We are evaluating both Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Redhat Enterprise WS. Have any fellow Slashdot folks had experience with either of these two distributions, and if so, what did you like or dislike about either of them?"

linuxbeta writes "redhat.com says the new Fedora 'has just turned 4' and it 'purrs', 'hums', and 'mesmerizes'. Has Steve Jobs taken over Fedora's marketing dept. or is this release something to really get excited about? OSDir has put together a quick tour of this fresh release in KDE and GNOME desktop flavors. Release Overview. You be the judge."

linuxbeta writes "redhat.com says the new Fedora 'has just turned 4' and it 'purrs', 'hums', and 'mesmerizes'. Has Steve Jobs taken over Fedora's marketing dept. or is this release something to really get excited about? OSDir has put together a quick tour of this fresh release in KDE and GNOME desktop flavors. Release Overview. You be the judge."

Limburgher writes "As of a few minutes ago, the torrents listed at duke went live. Nothing on the main site yet, however. The more people get on the torrents, the faster they will be. You all know the drill." Update: 06/13 19:07 GMT by T : Also in Red Hat-related news, halfbyte_hosting writes "CentOS 4.1 is now on the mirrors and ready for download."

ogo writes "The Fedora Documentation Project recently announced that the first Installation Guide for Fedora Core is available. It is specifically for Fedora Core 4, which will be released publicly on June 13, and x86 hardware."

parry writes "Red Hat has released the Netscape Directory server acquired from Netscape Security Solutions under a "GPL + Exception" license. The Fedora Directory Server is made up of a number of different pieces of software, each with their own licensing. "

Tamerlan writes "Ulrich Drepper posted a blog entry titled "Dictatorship of Minorities". He argues that open source projects' attempts to support non-mainstream (read "non-Linux") operating systems slow down development and testing. While Ulrich may be biased (he is a RedHat employee) he has the point: if you ever read mailing list of any large open source project, you know that significant piece of traffic is about platform-specific bugs or a new release broken on some exotic platform."

Tammy Fox writes "The Mac mini is all the rave. Discover how to install the soon-to-be-released Fedora Core 4 on this tiny desktop appliance, including new features in Fedora Core 4 to support the new hardware."

Tammy Fox writes "The Mac mini is all the rave. Discover how to install the soon-to-be-released Fedora Core 4 on this tiny desktop appliance, including new features in Fedora Core 4 to support the new hardware."

rednuhter writes "LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 is the authoritative tree-based text to aid and abet interested parties accomplishing a LPI LPIC level 1 certification, Which (roughly translated) is the first (not quite open source) Linux exam for junior (intermediate) sysadmins; more information is available at Linux Professional Institute. It is (currently) the only (up to date) printed guide for the Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC) Level 1 exam." Read on for the rest of rednuhter's review. LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 author Ross Brunson pages 590 publisher QUE rating 8 reviewer rednuhter ISBN 0789731274 summary Exam cram for Linux LPIC level 1 The LPI is a non-profit organization bringing high-quality Linux certification to the masses, including multilingual exams across continents. LPIC Level 1 is designed to certify a junior sysadmin in Linux and is composed of two exams. This first level (101) has an optional (minor) 'branch' of either RPM or DEB package management, with RPM being used on predominately Red Hat-based systems and DEB being the preferred method for Debian based systems. The second level (102) is much more 'on the job' administration duties (see LPIC objectives).

I purchased the book last year after deciding I had no reason to try and keep my windows 95 MCP up to date and wishing to (formally) extend my Linux knowledge. I hit a wrong turn after spending quality time with Que's "General Linux 1" [ISBN]0-78972292-5] to find (as I went to book the exam) the format and topics had changed a fair amount in four years (LPI is constantly evolving...).

It was fine book with some good Lab sections, however it was not preparing me for the onslaught that is the seriously tough LPIC Level 1 exam. After a quick rant in the LPI mailing lists, a friendly poster [ross@brunson.org] noted that a book did exist (recently printed) that accumulated one of the premier LPI Linux trainers knowledge and experience, and by no coincidence he was the author.

My previous guide had been only 340 pages long so I was concerned to find this was closer to 600! Luckily the author wastes nothing, with a considerably helpful introduction, followed by details of the LPIC 101 (both flavors) and the 102 exam culminating in the full LPIC Level 1.

The first half of the book is dedicated to the 101 exam, which is the first part of the LPIC level 1 certifications. This included a lot of trouble-shooting steps for basic booting of Linux with hardware configuration and included vi usage (key strokes, buffers, regular expressions), XFree86 (config and understanding) to text processing with tee, tac, sed etc. The detail involved also dipped into modems, CHAP scripts, hardware identification, jobs, processes, chmod, grep, exit statuses and much much more. This also where the RPM/DEB specifics some in; although I have used Debian for many years I opted to take the RPM exam simply because I believe RPM is more widely commercially used, not that I think it is a better packaging system. These skills are an excellent grounding for basic Linux use and understanding, giving rounded knowledge of all the key areas a Linux user should be aware of.

Each chapter has an example exam and the author often makes use of these to introduce new ideas and concepts to encourage the user to research further. These answers are accompanied by explanations of not only why the right answers were correct, but why the wrong answers were incorrect.

The second half of the book (after a quick 66-question 101 test exam) is much more geared to a junior sysadmin and I found it quite hard going. Topics range from runlevels, daemons, users/groups, kernel compilation, modules, shells, scripting, networking, services, printing and security. As you may imagine, some of these topics are quite extensive and I personally found this half much more difficult to absorb. Note there is only one 102 LPIC exam, there is no RPM/DEB choice. This list does not really do the subject matter justice, as it goes into such things as custom subnet masks, network time utilities, Apache, sendmail, crontabs and even more.

This was followed by a set of 77 test 102 questions with both a quick answer key and a complete set of explanations.

The book includes a pull-out Cram Sheet which can help you memorize things such as the IRQ/IO address for serial ports, the different man page sections and common printer commands.

The author also notes how best to prepare for taking and even resitting the exam (the LPI has a concise retake policy).

The actual exam questions and areas are weighted, and you should ensure you review for the heavily weighted sections at least as much if not more that the lower-weighted ones.

The key 'trick' to passing the exams is to have tried the commands yourself and seen the results, I cannot emphasize this enough! The LPI 'seems' to favor (currently) 2.4.x kernels in the FHS File Hierarchy Standard RPM and DEB varieties, I did most of my investigation either with Knoppix via qemu(in windows) or Debian sid running the 2.6.x kernel. (However, most topics are vendor/distribution neutral and kernel and other obvious differences are noted.)

Although this book contains a lot of examples, it is not for beginners, unless you want to base your Linux learning on it. Sysadmins will find it too simple in places, but should not be complacent as they will find some knowledge nuggets buried that will ultimately help them pass the exams.

The book is easy to read, with some real-world examples that are ideal to reinforce the information presented. (It has been noted that practice lab sections could have been included; see author reply here)

Unfortunately, there are a fair number of misprints, technical inaccuracies and spelling mistakes current errata but a quick session with man will set you straight and very few directly spoil the otherwise accuracy of the book (the author notes that a second reprint is addressing these).

The CD comes with the obligatory PDF version of the book and a test program, this has caused some problems for some Linux users although fixes are now available. The test program tries to recreate the testing environment, with optional timer and instant result features. I personally found it very useful to identify areas I was weak in and required further investigation.

The book does a good job not to stray off into GPL licensing or any other non (LPIC Level 1) related topic, leaving further investigation up to the reader offering links where relevant.

It took me about 15-20 hours to revise for the 101 RPM exam and I passed with (apx) 96% where as the revision for the 102 exam was over a much longer period (and a more turbulent part of my life) taking about 40-50 hours which gave me a (apx) pass of 86% (remember the questions are weighted, my percentage scores are simply against the number of questions I got right and makes me feel good).

Preparing you for the LPI LPIC level 1 exams (part 1(RPM/DEB) and part 2)

Not only did I find the book easy to get on with and an indispensable asset for passing the exam but it has had pride of place on my desktop and makes an excellent reference tome.

The LPI website does now list Ross's book and there are various other resources available for a quick google, or just wait for the Slashdot crowd to fill up the comments below.

You can purchase LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

rednuhter writes "LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 is the authoritative tree-based text to aid and abet interested parties accomplishing a LPI LPIC level 1 certification, Which (roughly translated) is the first (not quite open source) Linux exam for junior (intermediate) sysadmins; more information is available at Linux Professional Institute. It is (currently) the only (up to date) printed guide for the Linux Professional Institute Certification (LPIC) Level 1 exam." Read on for the rest of rednuhter's review. LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 author Ross Brunson pages 590 publisher QUE rating 8 reviewer rednuhter ISBN 0789731274 summary Exam cram for Linux LPIC level 1 The LPI is a non-profit organization bringing high-quality Linux certification to the masses, including multilingual exams across continents. LPIC Level 1 is designed to certify a junior sysadmin in Linux and is composed of two exams. This first level (101) has an optional (minor) 'branch' of either RPM or DEB package management, with RPM being used on predominately Red Hat-based systems and DEB being the preferred method for Debian based systems. The second level (102) is much more 'on the job' administration duties (see LPIC objectives).

I purchased the book last year after deciding I had no reason to try and keep my windows 95 MCP up to date and wishing to (formally) extend my Linux knowledge. I hit a wrong turn after spending quality time with Que's "General Linux 1" [ISBN]0-78972292-5] to find (as I went to book the exam) the format and topics had changed a fair amount in four years (LPI is constantly evolving...).

It was fine book with some good Lab sections, however it was not preparing me for the onslaught that is the seriously tough LPIC Level 1 exam. After a quick rant in the LPI mailing lists, a friendly poster [ross@brunson.org] noted that a book did exist (recently printed) that accumulated one of the premier LPI Linux trainers knowledge and experience, and by no coincidence he was the author.

My previous guide had been only 340 pages long so I was concerned to find this was closer to 600! Luckily the author wastes nothing, with a considerably helpful introduction, followed by details of the LPIC 101 (both flavors) and the 102 exam culminating in the full LPIC Level 1.

The first half of the book is dedicated to the 101 exam, which is the first part of the LPIC level 1 certifications. This included a lot of trouble-shooting steps for basic booting of Linux with hardware configuration and included vi usage (key strokes, buffers, regular expressions), XFree86 (config and understanding) to text processing with tee, tac, sed etc. The detail involved also dipped into modems, CHAP scripts, hardware identification, jobs, processes, chmod, grep, exit statuses and much much more. This also where the RPM/DEB specifics some in; although I have used Debian for many years I opted to take the RPM exam simply because I believe RPM is more widely commercially used, not that I think it is a better packaging system. These skills are an excellent grounding for basic Linux use and understanding, giving rounded knowledge of all the key areas a Linux user should be aware of.

Each chapter has an example exam and the author often makes use of these to introduce new ideas and concepts to encourage the user to research further. These answers are accompanied by explanations of not only why the right answers were correct, but why the wrong answers were incorrect.

The second half of the book (after a quick 66-question 101 test exam) is much more geared to a junior sysadmin and I found it quite hard going. Topics range from runlevels, daemons, users/groups, kernel compilation, modules, shells, scripting, networking, services, printing and security. As you may imagine, some of these topics are quite extensive and I personally found this half much more difficult to absorb. Note there is only one 102 LPIC exam, there is no RPM/DEB choice. This list does not really do the subject matter justice, as it goes into such things as custom subnet masks, network time utilities, Apache, sendmail, crontabs and even more.

This was followed by a set of 77 test 102 questions with both a quick answer key and a complete set of explanations.

The book includes a pull-out Cram Sheet which can help you memorize things such as the IRQ/IO address for serial ports, the different man page sections and common printer commands.

The author also notes how best to prepare for taking and even resitting the exam (the LPI has a concise retake policy).

The actual exam questions and areas are weighted, and you should ensure you review for the heavily weighted sections at least as much if not more that the lower-weighted ones.

The key 'trick' to passing the exams is to have tried the commands yourself and seen the results, I cannot emphasize this enough! The LPI 'seems' to favor (currently) 2.4.x kernels in the FHS File Hierarchy Standard RPM and DEB varieties, I did most of my investigation either with Knoppix via qemu(in windows) or Debian sid running the 2.6.x kernel. (However, most topics are vendor/distribution neutral and kernel and other obvious differences are noted.)

Although this book contains a lot of examples, it is not for beginners, unless you want to base your Linux learning on it. Sysadmins will find it too simple in places, but should not be complacent as they will find some knowledge nuggets buried that will ultimately help them pass the exams.

The book is easy to read, with some real-world examples that are ideal to reinforce the information presented. (It has been noted that practice lab sections could have been included; see author reply here)

Unfortunately, there are a fair number of misprints, technical inaccuracies and spelling mistakes current errata but a quick session with man will set you straight and very few directly spoil the otherwise accuracy of the book (the author notes that a second reprint is addressing these).

The CD comes with the obligatory PDF version of the book and a test program, this has caused some problems for some Linux users although fixes are now available. The test program tries to recreate the testing environment, with optional timer and instant result features. I personally found it very useful to identify areas I was weak in and required further investigation.

The book does a good job not to stray off into GPL licensing or any other non (LPIC Level 1) related topic, leaving further investigation up to the reader offering links where relevant.

It took me about 15-20 hours to revise for the 101 RPM exam and I passed with (apx) 96% where as the revision for the 102 exam was over a much longer period (and a more turbulent part of my life) taking about 40-50 hours which gave me a (apx) pass of 86% (remember the questions are weighted, my percentage scores are simply against the number of questions I got right and makes me feel good).

Preparing you for the LPI LPIC level 1 exams (part 1(RPM/DEB) and part 2)

Not only did I find the book easy to get on with and an indispensable asset for passing the exam but it has had pride of place on my desktop and makes an excellent reference tome.

The LPI website does now list Ross's book and there are various other resources available for a quick google, or just wait for the Slashdot crowd to fill up the comments below.

You can purchase LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

KainX writes "As an alternative to the Red Hat-controlled Fedora project, the community-led cAos Foundation decided to create a fully community-built, community-controlled, RPM-based distribution whose foundation would be a self-hosting, self-sufficient core with a 3-5 year support lifetime. The first stable, production-worthy core has now been officially released! Download an ISO from a mirror and try it out."

rexx mainframe writes "The Fedora Project would like to announce the release of Fedora Core 4 test 3; currently scheduled to be the final test release before Fedora Core 4. Included in this release are many various bugfixes, updated translations, and package updates. Please report problems at: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla Fedora Core 4 Test 3 is available from: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/test/3.92/ and at the mirrors."

rexx mainframe writes "The Fedora Project would like to announce the release of Fedora Core 4 test 3; currently scheduled to be the final test release before Fedora Core 4. Included in this release are many various bugfixes, updated translations, and package updates. Please report problems at: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla Fedora Core 4 Test 3 is available from: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/test/3.92/ and at the mirrors."

hey writes "Red Hat has been working on early login because, among other reasons, 'If we start GDM sooner, the system will "feel" faster because the user will see a login screen sooner.' Very cool."

Kethinov writes "The second test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the popular torrent format. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Additionally, Fedora Core 2 has been transferred to the Fedora Legacy Project."

gmaestro writes "Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is up on the servers. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0 and support for the PowerPC architecture. Use a mirror or torrent and help with testing!"

gmaestro writes "Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is up on the servers. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0 and support for the PowerPC architecture. Use a mirror or torrent and help with testing!"

gmaestro writes "Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is up on the servers. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0 and support for the PowerPC architecture. Use a mirror or torrent and help with testing!"

Lin_Matt writes "OSSI has announced a three year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy to explore and expand the usage of Open Source Software. Barry Duplantis of Red Hat will be serving as the Program Manager for this CRADA which will cover the Navy's use of OSS within the Naval Oceanographic Office's Web services, scientific computing and enterprise architecture systems."

dirvish asks: "I am trying to break into the Linux Server Administration field so I have been doing quite a bit of studying lately. I figured while I am studying the subject I might as well work towards a related certification. I am leaning towards the Linux Professional Institute Certification. Other certifications I am considering are CompTIAs Linux+ and Red Hats RHCE. So which Linux certification is the best? I would say Red Hat is the most reputable of these three but I am concerned that their certification might be too Red-Hat-centric, and I don't want to be locked into one distro. Which one is the easiest/cheapest to obtain? Which is the mostly highly regarded in the industry? Are there others that I missed?"

krunchyfrog writes "The first test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 1 include previews of GCC 4.0, GNOME 2.10, and KDE 3.4, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc4test1, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this release on fedora-test-list. -- The BitTorrent link is already there."

1sockchuck writes "Fedora is the fastest-growing Linux distribution for web sites, according to new data from Netcraft on the popularity of Linux distros. Red Hat continues to be the most widely-used distro, running twice as many sites as Debian. 'Red Hat seems to have the best of both worlds at the moment: market-leading status for Red Hat Linux, plus the fastest-growing community distribution in Fedora,' the analysis notes."

Meostro asks: "I'm looking for the best format to use to distribute arbitrary datasets. Tarballs compressed with gzip seem to be the most common thing out there, with zip coming in a close second. What advanced compression packages are the most widely recognized or available on the widest array of systems? Cross-platform compatibility is my most important goal, followed by compression ratio, decompression time, compression time and extra features (solid archives, support for multiple files, etc.). I'm starting up a free data site to provide test data for anything you can imagine: images for compression and format interpretation, text and audio for language processing, programming language examples to test parsing, and more. I hope this will grow to be a significant (read: multi-gigabyte) archive, so I want to start off right with my distribution format. Right now the plan is data.tar.bz2, but i'm open to anything that will give me better compression as long as it's available for Linux, Windows and Mac."

diegocgteleline.es writes "As it has been noticed by some news sites, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 has been released. RedHat's web site doesn't seem to have any reference, but with Red Hat being probably the most used distro in the enterprise and featuring for first time a 2.6 kernel, this is a major milestone for linux in the server arena. There're already some reviews."

CodeGeekGuy asks: "I've been thinking of doing the big switcheroo from Windows to Linux. I have, in the past, had various levels of success using Linux, but I generally have to give up as soon as I feel like playing a game. I've done dual booting before, but find it a pain if you're waiting for something to finish and just want a quick game of Half Life 2 or WoW. I'm willing to give this another shot (as I hear that Cedega plays HL2 and WoW quite nicely). I've used Mandrake and Fedora Core and even Redhat, is there another distribution out there that is the best distro to use to get Cedega (and ultimately games) to work well? "

CodeGeekGuy asks: "I've been thinking of doing the big switcheroo from Windows to Linux. I have, in the past, had various levels of success using Linux, but I generally have to give up as soon as I feel like playing a game. I've done dual booting before, but find it a pain if you're waiting for something to finish and just want a quick game of Half Life 2 or WoW. I'm willing to give this another shot (as I hear that Cedega plays HL2 and WoW quite nicely). I've used Mandrake and Fedora Core and even Redhat, is there another distribution out there that is the best distro to use to get Cedega (and ultimately games) to work well? "

zigam writes "The time needed to boot desktop Linux systems is becoming an issue. That's why I recently took the challenge posted by Red Hat's Owen Taylor on the Fedora developers list and came up with a tool for visualization of the boot process. It collects performance data during the boot up and then renders an SVG or PNG performance chart. It immediately helped Red Hat developers solve some issues and I have since received boot charts from other GNU/Linux developers as well. Solaris kernel developers reported success in improving their boot process too." Update: 12/15 20:04 GMT by T : Sorry, someone decided your time was worth wasting; no more mirrored bootchart.

loconet writes "Today Red Hat published the first issue of their online Red Hat magazine, formerly known as the Under the Brim newsletter. Each issue includes Editor's Blog, Red Hat Speaks (interviews with Red Hat personalities), From the Inside (News, Whitepapers, Events), Ask Shadowman, Tips & Tricks, Fedora Status Report, Contests. This month's issue features a detailed article on Fedora Core 3."

loconet writes "Today Red Hat published the first issue of their online Red Hat magazine, formerly known as the Under the Brim newsletter. Each issue includes Editor's Blog, Red Hat Speaks (interviews with Red Hat personalities), From the Inside (News, Whitepapers, Events), Ask Shadowman, Tips & Tricks, Fedora Status Report, Contests. This month's issue features a detailed article on Fedora Core 3."

anyweb writes "Fedora Core Release 3 is out now, Heidelberg, 2.6.9-1.667 kernel, Firefox included ! Gnome 2.8 and more. Here are some screenshots" New release includes Gnome 2.8, KDE 3.3, Kernel 2.6.9, Firefox PR1, Thunderbird 0.8, Ximian Evolution 2.0 and more. Here is a Mirror List and Bit Torrent

base_chakra writes "In response to Steve Ballmer's recent, vague criticisms of Linux and UNIX vendors' product support structures and pricing schemes, I've compiled a reference chart which might help others to compare licensing and support options available from several big-name vendors. Kudos to Red Hat for having the simplest, most accessible licensing and service plan of the pack--as well as one of the most affordable!"

rixdaffy writes "I just received an email from the 'Redhat Security Team' telling me that I needed to download some tar file from fedora-redhat.com. Besides the fact that I don't use Red Hat/Fedora, I immediately smelled something fishy. Maybe it's not the first trojan targeted at Linux users, but together with the official sounding domain, it could trick some users into downloading and running the binary. It looks like Red Hat is already aware of the issue." According to Red Hat's page, "These emails tell users to download and run an update from a users home directory. This fake update appears to contain malicious code." Update: 10/25 01:32 GMT by T : One borked link, unborked.

Halo1 writes "The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign has officially launched today. It has industry support from 1&1, Red Hat and MySQL AB. The website is already available in 12 EU languages (more to be added soon), and contains a ton of information about the dangers of software patents, including the myths that surround them. Hopefully, more large companies will join this campaign in the future."

Allen Zadr writes "Today, the Fedora team has released Fedora Core 3 - Test 3. Just a little behind schedule. It's available for AMD Opteron and Intel i386, with CD or DVD images. To get it, join the torrent. Core 3, Test 2 was previously discussed."

Allen Zadr writes "Today, the Fedora team has released Fedora Core 3 - Test 3. Just a little behind schedule. It's available for AMD Opteron and Intel i386, with CD or DVD images. To get it, join the torrent. Core 3, Test 2 was previously discussed."

Allen Zadr writes "Today, the Fedora team has released Fedora Core 3 - Test 3. Just a little behind schedule. It's available for AMD Opteron and Intel i386, with CD or DVD images. To get it, join the torrent. Core 3, Test 2 was previously discussed."

worm eater writes "On September 29, Terra Soft Solutions delivered the final release of Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 to their CD manufacturer. It is currently available for download by ydl.net subscribers. Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 is built upon Fedora Core 2, offering both KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.6.0 desktops with an all new presentation for both the Installer and post-installed desktop environment. Expanded USB support includes many cameras, printers, adapters, and storage devices. FireWire support is now built-in with bootable FireWire made possible through manual configuration. Mac-On-Linux offers the ability to run Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and now offers automatic network configuration."

KrisWithAK writes "According to a press release, Red Hat is acquiring parts of the Netscape Enterprise Suite including the directory server and certificate management system. I am definitely looking forward to more open source competition with OpenLDAP!"

p0 writes "Fedora Core 3 Test 2 is now available for downloading. The official .torrent tracker is here. It is also interesting that the Fedora Steering Committee has transferred Fedora Core 1 into the Fedora Legacy Project. If you would like to know the proposed development and release schedule for Fedora Core 3, you will find it here."

p0 writes "Fedora Core 3 Test 2 is now available for downloading. The official .torrent tracker is here. It is also interesting that the Fedora Steering Committee has transferred Fedora Core 1 into the Fedora Legacy Project. If you would like to know the proposed development and release schedule for Fedora Core 3, you will find it here."

The 10 questions we sent Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser were selected from 37 that were moderated +5 about 24 hours after we posted the "call for questions" last week. As promised, Glaser answered them himself rather than through PR people, but since part of a CEO's job is to be his company's number one booster it's not surprising that his answers have a high PR component to them; yours would too if you were in his position. 1) Apple Support - by ack154
Since RealNetworks is all for "compatibility" and getting their stuff to play on the iPod, when do they plan to offer support for Macintosh users in the Rhapsody music store?

Glaser:
No plans as of now.

We're one of the most active Mac ISVs around, with our RealPlayer running on millions of Macs. We also offer our Superpass and RadioPass premium content products, and we offer more than 45 premium downloadable Mac games such as Shape Shifter, Bounce Out Blitz, and Text Twist.

Having said that, since the Mac is such a small part of the overall market, we make practical decisions about what functionality and services we offer on the Mac. So far, offering a music store or the Rhapsody subscription service on the Mac hasn't made the cut.

2) It still comes down to price, for a lot of us - by erick99
How much wiggle room is there in the pricing of the songs? Forty-nine cents a song has made me a customer of Real's for now ( I haven't tried any .99 cent services - don't want to pay that much). I know it's unlikely that music can be sold that inexpensively but we know it doesn't have to be .99 since WalMart is doing .88. So, I am wondering what RealNetworks' pricing strategy will be. While I understand you cannot differentiate on price alone, the rest isn't going to matter if the price is .99. I just won't buy at that price (yes, obviously others will, but I maintain that multiples more will at a sustained, lower price).

Glaser:
Here's a long answer to a short question.

The music industry supports 2 models of legitimately selling music services that allow consumers to listen to a jukebox in the sky (but not keep the music), and services that sell a permanent copy of the song to the consumer. We have 2 different services depending on which model consumers want.

The best deal out there today for price-sensitive customers who love music is our Rhapsody music service (www.Rhapsody.com). It is a jukebox in the sky type of service that allows consumers to listen to as much music as they want for a fixed price of $10/month. Then, when consumers find a song they want to own permanently, the song costs 79 cents, basically a membership discount for Rhapsody subscribers.

After just a year of us running the Rhapsody service (We acquired listen.com last August), we have hundreds of thousands of Rhapsody subscribers who get great value out of the service. In fact, our average Rhapsody subscriber listens to over 200 songs/month, including over 100 different songs. If the consumer had to purchase all those different songs they'd be paying over 10 times as much as what Rhapsody costs.

Our RealPlayer Music Store is a pure example of the second model. As part of our introduction of our Harmony technology (which allows digital songs to play on a virtually any popular MP3 player), we put every song in the store on sale at 49 cents. The promotion was a smashing success, resulting in us selling over 3 million songs in about 3 weeks.

The 49 cent for everything promotion is now over, but it was such a big success that we decided to continue to feature a Top 10 list of songs for 49 cents each, with the rest of the songs back at the usual price. This is also going well and our store sales are well ahead of where they were before we launched Harmony, which says to us that a lot of people like what Harmony offers and are going to continue to buy from us for reasons of more than just price.

Now let me answer your question about why songs cost 99 cents (or 88 cents or 79 cents, but not usually 49 cents). Selling songs legitimately consists of 3 components: the cost of the recording, which we usually pay to the record company (who then pays the artist); "publishing" cost which goes to the company that owns the rights to the musical composition (who pays the song writer); and other costs such as credit card fees, bandwidth, and technical support.

While wholesale prices vary depending on the label, today most labels charge approximately 65-70 cents per song. Publishing costs a fixed rate of about 9 cents per song. And the other costs average a few pennies per song. Thus, as we have made clear, selling every song in our store for 49 cents a song is not sustainable unless/until the labels change their pricing philosophy.

Based on the data we've seen, we think, long-term, the pricing that will result in the biggest overall market for music will involve some kind of tiered pricing new mainstream songs for 99 cents retail, and up-and-coming artists and back catalog artists at a lower price.

We are working with the labels to prove this to them. We think over time we will succeed, but it will take time. The more that customers support our efforts both directly (by voting with your wallets) and by communicating directly to the music industry, the better.

3) Media formats and proprietary control - by Performer Guy
Given the ongoing struggle for control of content distribution via proprietary formats, do you see any hope for more vendor neutral formats that don't tie customers to one particular 'technology'? It seems that constantly changing formats often have more to do with vendor lock-in than genuine technological differentiation. What is Real doing to improve this situation and are other vendors likely to cooperate?

Glaser:
We have done a number of things in the past few years to address interoperability and to move digital media toward much better and stronger interoperability while also supporting open source development on our platform through the Helix open source licensing program.

The single biggest thing we've done in the past year -- and maybe ever -- was to create Harmony, which (as you probably know) is a technology that translates between the main secure audio content formats Helix DRM, Windows Media DRM, and Apple's DRM.

Going back a few years, we took the core of our media delivery system, Helix, and made it open source. We then built a universal media delivery system -- Helix Universal Server -- on top of that platform. What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology for Helix to a community-based approach. Indeed, we strongly encourage slashdot readers to join the Helix community at helixcommunity.org, as thousands of developers have already done.

We also have been active supporters and drivers of a number of open industry standards including RTSP for streaming and UPnP for media delivery across devices.

We think these initiatives are consistent with where the net is going much more focus on open systems and open formats, and much more focus on interoperability.

Unfortunately, competitors of ours such as Apple and Microsoft haven't followed suit. They have their own reasons for this. Apple apparently is focused on controlling an end-to-end secure music system, and Microsoft is focused on extending their proprietary Windows platform everywhere.

In light of this, we remain committed to enhancing interoperability and openness wherever it makes sense. However, what we haven't done is "unilaterally disarm" in the way that, for instance, Netscape did. All that would do is allow competitors with proprietary agendas to "embrace and extend" on top of our formats, while keeping their own proprietary, which ultimately wouldn't achieve anything.

4) Turnabout? - by Elwood P Dowd
What would you do if the next version of Quicktime could play .rm files, even ones with DRM? Suppose that they respect the DRM, and only play on authorized computers. Suppose Quicktime Pro were capable of creating .rm files with DRM.

Why shouldn't Apple do this?

Glaser:
We would be happy to cross-license our DRM and formats to Apple to enable exactly the kind of interoperability you propose.

As has been widely reported, we approached Apple about licensing their DRM several months ago. It was only after they rebuffed those initiatives that we came out with Harmony, which implemented software compatibility with their DRM as well as with Microsoft's.

5) Why is Real's software so intrusive? - by jerkychew
I've been in the computer industry since 1995 or so. In that time, I've seen lots of software come and go, and lots of less-than-ethical tricks to keep users hooked on one piece of software instead of another. In my 9 years or so, I've never seen any product as consistently sneaky as Real's media player. I remember back when RealAudio would make itself the default player for every media type it could without asking, which would annoy the tech-savvy user and scare those of us that are less technical.

While it seems that Real has backed its intrusiveness down a notch during the install, I still feel like Real is telling me what to do on my computer instead of the other way around. For example - Telling Real not to start when windows starts is no easy task. I have to go through 3 or four submenus in the preferences until I find the vaguely-named SmartCenter (or StartCenter? I don't have a machine handy to doublecheck the name). Even then, when I tell it not to start with Windows, I am greeted by a scary warning message. Even with SmartCenter disabled, Real's update service still lives in my registry, starting every time I boot windows.

So my question is, why try so hard to force your software on the user? Is it worth the market share to anger and confuse your core audience? Mention Real to the average user, and their first response is "I hate that software. I wish I knew how to delete it."

I've always been taught that it's best to make your customers happy, instead of holding them hostage. Does your business model say otherwise?



Glaser:
We have put a lot of effort into making our users happy and in giving users lots of choice in how they install and use our software. We have learned a lot over the years and I think if you look at RealPlayer 10 for Windows, Mac, or Linux carefully, you would find that it gives users much more choice and control over how our player works than any other major media player, including Microsoft's Windows Media Player or Apple's iTunes.

While I'm not 100% sure, from your description it sounds like you have a previous version of RealPlayer. In RealPlayer 10, the user can select Tools/Preferences/Automatic Services and configure all of the background activity, including features that remain active when RP is not running. With just a couple of mouseclicks, the user can disable all background services.

Compare how our software works to Microsoft's. Have you ever tried to "uninstall" Windows Media Player? All Windows does, in its own words, is "removes access to Windows Media Player from the Start Menu and Desktop," yet it doesn't actually get rid of the software. If you uninstall RealPlayer, we uninstall the whole enchilada. Same with mime types: we ask you what mime types you want our player to play, and then we only play those. On the other hand, when you upgrade your version of Windows, it takes the mime types it wants to without even asking. What's more, we've been told by reliable sources that Microsoft writes into its contracts with computer OEMs that the OEM MUST make Windows Media Player the default player for major mime types, otherwise the OEM doesn't get access to critical marketing funds that every PC manufacturer needs to stay in business.

Regarding your question of why we have put the features you want on specific menus, I will ask the guy who runs our player product group to take a close look at how we can make control of the specific features you have described even more obvious. My guess would be that the tradeoff is making the features available to technical users without confusing average users. Even so, we'll try to do even better next time. I promise that we will do our best to keep improving our software for both regular consumers and technical users.

6) Helix - by MikeMacK
What prompted the creation of the Helix community? Does Real see open source as a way to differentiate themselves from Apple and Microsoft, or where there other considerations?

Glaser:
Our reasons for creating the Helix community and to making the core of our system open source are the reasons best described in Eric Raymond's classic manifesto The Cathedral & the Bazaar (I imagine you all have memorized your favorite link to it, but in case not: http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/community/cathedral/whitepaper_cathedral.html).

Basically we realized about 3 years ago that digital media was becoming huge and ultimately it made much more sense for us to open up our system so it could be the foundation of great work by everyone rather than the work done just by our company and close allies.

What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology to a community-based approach for Helix. Three years and tens of thousands of Helix community members later, we've made lots of progress. We know that this is a long-term process and that proprietary-based media delivery systems won't go away anytime soon. But this is no different than the Linux versus Windows battle.

7) Legality of Harmony - by halo1982
Are you concerned at all that Apple might sue Real under the DMCA for basically hacking the iPod to allow compatibility between Real and the iPod? If Apple does do this, what measures are you taking to make sure that the files people buy from Rhapsody will continue to play on their iPod after Apple locks Harmony out using a firmware update or something similar, and would you offer refunds to people with iPods who purchased music on Rhapsody?

Glaser:
The legality of Harmony under the DMCA is well established in law. It's important to understand that Harmony simply added a new way to secure the content we've licensed from music companies. We didn't mess with the locks on any of Apple's music. The DMCA contains a specific provision enabling companies to create just this kind of interoperability. Take a look at a recent case, Chamberlain v. Skylink, which describes how courts look at this in the real world.

We think it would be extremely anti-consumer for Apple to stop the music by intentionally breaking compatibility with Harmony. In the event that they do, we have a comprehensive plan in place, but it's not appropriate for me to go into details now. I will point out that Harmony will continue to work for any current iPod user who chooses to have RealPlayer manage that iPod (and who doesn't use iTunes, a future version of which might be the vehicle that Apple would use to break compatibility).

8) Nice, but.... - by dacarr
While I find it wonderful that Real has embraced Linux, your subsidiary, listen.com, seems antagonistic toward Linux, making it quite clear that they have no plans at this time to move their Rhapsody player to Linux. This tells me of a bit of a dichotomy in your company. Are there plans to resolve this?



Glaser:
I don't think it's about one division at Real versus another. It's about software versus services. We have made a significant commitment to delivering Linux versions of our software products on both the client and server side, and we're grateful for the support we've received from the linux community.

Delivering consumer services on Linux would be a new step for us; indeed, there are very few content services available today for Linux, reflecting the fact that the Linux desktop market is still quite nascent.

So, what we're doing now is looking at ways in which our Linux efforts can gather enough momentum that makes this a simpler decision. We're working closely with the Linux distributors to grow the market for Linux desktops by having a solid media player solution. And we're investigating which of our service offerings we can offer to Linux users in a cost-effective manner. Our goal is to start building a direct revenue base that we can then use to fund more ambitious efforts.

9) Lessons learned from astroturfing - by michaeldouma
There's a lot of spin going on at Real's new Freedom of Music Choice [freedomofmusicchoice.org] site. Clearly, Real was not expecting such a profound and immediate [slashdot.org] backlash. It must be frustrating [slashdot.org] that Apple gets to be both an underdog and a monopoly at the same time. But despite the feel good claims [freedomofmusicchoice.org] on your Freedom site (did you really write those?), your price drop, reverse engineering, and activism are hardly riling up the public.

What have you learned from this?

Glaser:
We're very happy with how our freedom of choice campaign for Harmony has worked. As you know, we sold over 3 million songs in 3 weeks, well beyond our expectations. Moreover, the tens of thousands of users who have bought songs from us and are continuing to enjoy the benefits of Harmony speak for themselves.

It's certainly true that a small group of Mac lovers gave us a hard time for criticizing Apple. This isn't that surprising because Mac users are very sensitive anytime anyone criticizes Apple, I guess because they emotionally identify with Apple as the "underdog" versus Microsoft. But for every Mac user who didn't like our criticizing Apple, there were literally hundreds of Windows users who enjoyed Harmony, including iPod users who sent us their comments (see http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases/2004/real_3million.html).

The campaign was successful because consumers really do want choice. We hired an independent research firm to ask internet consumers about this. 96% of portable device owner said they thought they should be able to move music they bought to any device, which gives us great confidence that we're on the right side of history.

10) Strategy Question - by Anonymous Coward
Strategically speaking, Real doesn't look to be in a very promising position. Its technology, once unique (RealAudio), is now ubiquitous. Its marketing has been, by any account of which I am aware, a disaster. Now it seems like there is no area in which Real has any real strength or over its competitors - RealMedia is eclipsed by Windows Media, iTunes rules the day in downloading and Microsoft is entering that market as well.

Rob, what advantages does Real bring to the table? What can Real do that no other company can do? Why does Real exist? What the hell are you doing?

Glaser:
Well, your question has more than a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" feel to it, but I'll address the core question, which is what are we trying to do and how are we doing.

Since many SlashDot readers don't necessarily read all the details of our financial statements, let me talk a bit about our business. 2004 is on track to be the biggest revenue year in our history. In the first half of the year we had sales of $125.9 million. Our second quarter sales were 65.5 million, which is 32% over our revenue for the same quarter last year. We ended the quarter with over 1.4 million subscribers to our premium services, including over 550,000 subscribers to our music services, both of which were records and make us #1 in the business.

In terms of our products, Rhapsody is not only #1 in subscribers, it also wins pretty much every review as the music service that is best and easiest to use. RealPlayer 10 was also PC Magazine's editors' choice and also many other awards.

Of course we have competitors if we were a monopoly you would have other reasons to criticize us. :)

Having said that, we're as different from our competitors as Yahoo is from its competitors. We're focused on creating services that deliver great experiences to consumers regardless of what platform they use. This is very different from either Apple or Microsoft, both of whom center their services on their proprietary platforms (Mac/iPod in Apple's case, Windows in Microsoft's case).

I started RealNetworks more than ten years ago because I believe strongly that the Internet can and will transform how people experience media, giving them unprecedented control over what audio and video they experience, and when, where, and how they experience it. While there have been many twists and turns along the way, we're very pleased with the progress we're making both as a company and as an industry. And we feel great about the opportunities in front of us.

With that, I'd like to that you all for your questions and for taking the time to read and think.

Best,

Rob

An anonymous reader writes "It looks as though Sun is going to open source their new Solaris 10 operating system. It seems to include eveything except some device drivers. They plan to model the Darwin and Fedora projects. Sounds very interesting."

Havoc Pennington writes "Red Hat developers have been working on a generic framework covering all cases of sharing a single operating system install between multiple physical or virtual computers. This covers mounting the root filesystem diskless, keeping a read-only copy of it cached on a local disk, or storing it on a live CD, among other cases. Because OS configuration state is shared rather than local, the project is called 'stateless Linux.' The post to fedora-devel-list is here, and a PDF overview is here."

Havoc Pennington writes "Red Hat developers have been working on a generic framework covering all cases of sharing a single operating system install between multiple physical or virtual computers. This covers mounting the root filesystem diskless, keeping a read-only copy of it cached on a local disk, or storing it on a live CD, among other cases. Because OS configuration state is shared rather than local, the project is called 'stateless Linux.' The post to fedora-devel-list is here, and a PDF overview is here."

Love to Learn Linux asks: "My company is making the move to Linux. I've been a Windows admin the last 5 years and have been asked to learn Linux. I've got some O'Reilly books but I need some hands on experience. My company will pay for any Linux training I choose. I'd prefer an online course to one of those 4 day classroom courses since I'd like to take my time and really learn it. So far, I've been recommended the Red Hat eLearning course and the O'Reilly Learning Lab. Would you recommend either of these over the other, or are there some better choices?"