Slashdot Mirror

MoreDruid asks: "Not long ago, I was asked to do some research for a blind relative from a friend of mine. I tried searching the sites of Red Hat, Debian, and some other distro's, but only SuSe came up with really useful information. I did find Blinux, but I think it's not really mature yet. Do any other Slashdotters have any experience in this field? What is a good distro to start with? This research is geared towards a blind newbie user, so are there any decent resources for vision impaired people so that he can get going with Linux?" This topic was discussed, in a more general sense, some two years ago, and there have since been questions dealing with several pieces of the puzzle. However, is there anything else out there, aside from the developing Blinux, that puts it all together in one nice package?

enrico_suave asks: "I work for a small-ish Non Profit Organization (less than 20 users) who would like to utilize 'groupware' (calendaring/contacts/etc) sharing software but aren't in a position to spend large amounts of cash on Microsoft Exchange Server. We currently use Outlook 2000's kludgey Net Folders which is often more trouble than it's worth. I've been looking at SuSE Linux's OpenExchange Server as a low cost groupware alternative, and wanted to know if anybody has used this package in a similar setting. A previous Slashdot article was more of an announcement, than a hands on review, and most of the reviews I've seen don't seem very objective or don't delve deep enough into details/practical usage. Has anyone used SuSE's OpenExchange in a primarily Windows shop with Outlook as the desktop mail/groupware client? How is the Outlook integration?"

enrico_suave asks: "I work for a small-ish Non Profit Organization (less than 20 users) who would like to utilize 'groupware' (calendaring/contacts/etc) sharing software but aren't in a position to spend large amounts of cash on Microsoft Exchange Server. We currently use Outlook 2000's kludgey Net Folders which is often more trouble than it's worth. I've been looking at SuSE Linux's OpenExchange Server as a low cost groupware alternative, and wanted to know if anybody has used this package in a similar setting. A previous Slashdot article was more of an announcement, than a hands on review, and most of the reviews I've seen don't seem very objective or don't delve deep enough into details/practical usage. Has anyone used SuSE's OpenExchange in a primarily Windows shop with Outlook as the desktop mail/groupware client? How is the Outlook integration?"

Venotar writes "It looks like SuSE's once more setting the bar pretty high. According to their recent announcement, SuSE 8.2's release date is set for April 12th. Amongst other nifty features, KDE 3.1 apparently includes tabbed browsing, the ability to sync with Exchange servers, a new administration tool called "Desktop sharing" that allows remote control of other desktops, and several interesting new crypto/security features. Gnome 2.2 is also included, as well as a profile manager for mobile users, and gcc 3.3. Have a lot of fun!"

randal writes "A security vulnerability in the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) has been identified by ISS. This bug can give an attacker the ability to gain remote root access to the targeted system. There is no known exploit code of this vulnerability in the wild at this time, but everyone should upgrade immediately. This issue affects all versions since 5.79. Open Source sendmail users can get source for the newest version (8.12.8) as well as patches for 8.9, 8.11, and 8.12 from sendmail.org. Commercial Sendmail customers can find patches at sendmail.com/security. Most major OS vendors will be releasing patches immediately." Update: 03/03 19:23 GMT by T : Reader Patchlevel points out that RedHat and OpenBSD have already issued patches.Update: 03/03 20:45 GMT by T : Reader Claude Meyer links to an update from SuSE, too. Update: 03/03 22:52 GMT by T : djcatnip points out that Apple has released a software update to patch OpenSSL and Sendmail for Mac OS X 10.2.4, and the Slackware site says they have updated to 8.12.8 as well.

PizzaFace writes "SuSE Linux is developing a desktop Linux distribution that will allow Windows users to continue using (some of) their Windows applications, including Microsoft Office. The SuSE Linux Office Desktop will be available for $129 in January, and will include Acronis OS Selector for disk partitioning during installation and Codeweavers CrossOver Office for Windows API emulation."

jmertic writes "SuSE Linux now has the latest Exchange killer, but this time for Exchange Server. Openexchange Server is designed to be a drop in replacement for Exchange 5.5 users who don't want to pay the MS tax of going to Exchange 2000. They say it will be available mid November."

jmertic writes "SuSE Linux now has the latest Exchange killer, but this time for Exchange Server. Openexchange Server is designed to be a drop in replacement for Exchange 5.5 users who don't want to pay the MS tax of going to Exchange 2000. They say it will be available mid November."

Gentu writes "SuSE 8.1 is out and it seems to be the main competitor of Red Hat 8. OSNews has the review of its Professional version. The new SuSE 8.1 seems to be sleekier and more powerful than ever." Eugenia, as usual, isn't shy about saying what she doesn't like. There's a review on Linuxlookup.com as well.

Jon James writes "eWeek is reporting that a number of Linux vendors will announce on Thursday that they have agreed to standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance in the industry. " The vendors in question are SuSe, Caldera, Conectiva, and Turbolinux. However, as the article also points out - Red Hat has a very well established lead in the corporate market - and Sun's decision to create Yet Another Linux Distribution (Sun Linux! Now With McNealy Vision!) will make the waters even more muddy.

MobyTurbo writes "Well, it's technically a day late, but SuSE Linux 8.0 is now shipping. The increase from 7.3 to 8.0 is due to the inclusion of KDE 3.0, a SuSE-modified kernel version 2.4.18 (with Andre's VM), an improved firewall, among other packages that have been upgraded or added. (Including a couple of new games. :-) )"

Anthony Boyd writes: "At pclinuxonline.com, they are running an uncomfirmed story that Mandrake 8.2 will be released on March 18th. And of course, SuSE Linux 8.0 is going to be released in mid-April. Features for SuSE appear to include KDE 3.0 and a whole lot of games. Features for Mandrake appear to be a super small install and, well, stability. Sounds great to me."

Anthony Boyd writes: "At pclinuxonline.com, they are running an uncomfirmed story that Mandrake 8.2 will be released on March 18th. And of course, SuSE Linux 8.0 is going to be released in mid-April. Features for SuSE appear to include KDE 3.0 and a whole lot of games. Features for Mandrake appear to be a super small install and, well, stability. Sounds great to me."

ackthpt writes "SuSE has this press release as they are submitting enhancements to the Linux kernal particular to the AMD's x86-64 processor instruction set. Anticipated for 2.6 kernel, some enhancements may appear in 2.4, as development is only beginning on 2.5. AMD's take on the announcement as well.". nik notes that SuSE join NetBSD in having ports to Hammer. Usenix members can see the paper Wasabi's Frank van der Linden wrote about the porting effort.

ackthpt writes "SuSE has this press release as they are submitting enhancements to the Linux kernal particular to the AMD's x86-64 processor instruction set. Anticipated for 2.6 kernel, some enhancements may appear in 2.4, as development is only beginning on 2.5. AMD's take on the announcement as well.". nik notes that SuSE join NetBSD in having ports to Hammer. Usenix members can see the paper Wasabi's Frank van der Linden wrote about the porting effort.

Random Walk writes "The German news site Heise Online reports that on behalf of an anonymous client, a lawyer has won a preliminary injunction (German only) against the Linux distributor SuSE. The injunction forbids the delivery of SuSE CDs as long as they contain some program name that apparently violates a registered trademark. No more details available, but SuSE seems to be in negotiations with the other party." Head over to the fish for translation.

A reader writes "Kerneltrap has recently interviewed Dave Jones who currently lives in London, employed by SuSE as a Linux kernel hacker. In the past six months since he graduated from the University of Glamorgan he has gotten involved in an impressive range of kernel related projects, including Powertweak, x86info, OProfile and the Kernel Janitors Project. Additionally, he maintains a -dj patch for the 2.5 development kernel, helping to sync it with the stable 2.4 kernel as well as offering increased stability. "

One of the most-heard complains from people who use distributions like Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE is the "dependency hell" problem. You want to install an RPM and bang -- you have a dependency problem. There have been a few attempts to overcome dependency problems: SuSE with their YOU (Your Online Update), Mandrake with URPMI, and Redhat with their UP2date program. There is also a solution from Aduva called Aduvizor, but it's not supporting the latest distributions yet. Read on to learn about another interesting solution ... One of the solutions is Ximian Red Carpet (which is available to most of the distributions, freely or by subscription for increased download speed), however Red Carpet has one big problem -- if the package is not on Ximian Red-Carpet servers (like, umm, KDE packages), you're (again) on your own.

Then there is another solution from Connectiva in Brazil, which has made something called APT4RPM -- basically an APT wrapper around RPM database on your machines, so you can use all of Debian's APT features (sans DSELECT feature) to upgrade your packages, or your entire distribution. (So now you can use your favorite distribution AND APT to update it.)

Two open source developers have improved Connectiva's solution to work with ANY RPM-4 based solution, and the [not finished yet but seems pretty stable solution] is at APT4RPM project pages in sourceforge. I have decided to give a test on my Redhat 7.2 machine. I installed the binaries, edited the /etc/apt/sources.list (just remove the # from your distribution's mirror), typed "apt-get dist-update," crossed my fingers -- and lo and behold, 48 new packages were installed, 7 were upgraded, and I only had to press "enter" to start the ball rolling!

So, for those of you who want to test it -- the URL is above (and if you could help with creating mirrors for your favorite distribution - that would be very helpful, thank you), you might want to try it. Just don't forget to read the FAQ before doing anything, and report bugs to the authors. Note: although the binaries are for Red Hat, the SRPMS are right there so you can just recompile it on your favorite distribution. Enjoy.

pinqkandi writes: "SuSE Linux 7.3 PowerPC Edition has now gone into distribution. New for this version are more USB drivers, and improved memory management, among other things. It is now based on Kernel 2.4.12 and glibc 2.2.4. For $79.95 you get it and 2000+ apps on 8 CDs, 550 pages of documentation, and 60 days of tech support." Read on for another nice turn for PPC users with an itch for Free software.

If updated PPC distributions interest you, this might too: DocTomoe writes: "The staff at iMacLinux have put together one of the largest PowerPC specific Linux resources. The new site called TuxPPC covers all PowerPC hardware. The site is aimed at not just people with Macs who want to try Linux, but at Linux users who might be interested in getting into the PowerPC platform."guides and web forums, too.

So when will Mandrake release 8.1 for PPC?

pinqkandi writes: "SuSE Linux 7.3 PowerPC Edition has now gone into distribution. New for this version are more USB drivers, and improved memory management, among other things. It is now based on Kernel 2.4.12 and glibc 2.2.4. For $79.95 you get it and 2000+ apps on 8 CDs, 550 pages of documentation, and 60 days of tech support." Read on for another nice turn for PPC users with an itch for Free software.

If updated PPC distributions interest you, this might too: DocTomoe writes: "The staff at iMacLinux have put together one of the largest PowerPC specific Linux resources. The new site called TuxPPC covers all PowerPC hardware. The site is aimed at not just people with Macs who want to try Linux, but at Linux users who might be interested in getting into the PowerPC platform."guides and web forums, too.

So when will Mandrake release 8.1 for PPC?

JoeGee writes: "According to this article on ZD Net, more and more companies born from open source projects are beginning to move towards closed source products as a source of revenue. Version 5 of GFS will be closed source, and even SuSE's director of sales Holger Dyroff has a quote that seems to disparage the service model of revenue. The one company that refuses to change its operations is, surprisingly, Red Hat. Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann says 'We believe the Red Hat brand stands for open-source.'" Yes, this is a dupe. Bad Tim! *whack*

jdfox writes: "According to this press release from SuSE, they have just received another 15 million Euros (about 14 million $US) venture capital, with some big names listed in the consortium's membership. They have also announced that a quarter of their 500 staff will be let go, following on from similar recent cuts. This excellent distro deserves to succeed: I hope this move will see them through the current slowdown." The upcoming release (needs babelfishing from German) of SuSE's version 7.3 promised for October 13th is loaded with a ton of goodies, too -- Kernel 2.4.10, KDE 2.2.1 and GNOME 1.4.1 beta2, among other things.

peterprior writes: "According to this press release, Dirk Hohndel, SuSE CTO and president has left SuSE. The article simply says that 'Dirk steps away from SuSE to pursue his personal and professional interests.' It goes on to say that 'His departure from SuSE comes at a time when SuSE gathers its forces and resources to strengthen SuSE as a business positioning itself to lead the world towards what is the most powerful and acknowledged alternative to the dominance of one proprietary operating system.'"

rstewart points to this press release, writing: "Mandrake has released version 8.0 final for the PPC architecture. Now Mac users have a choice of distributions between Mandrake and Yellow Dog. Now if only we could easily buy parts and build them cheap in our basements. " And PPC choices already include SuSE, LinuxPPC, Debian, NetBSD and more.

jdfox writes: "SuSE announced more layoffs on Friday: 10% reductions in Germany, or about 50 (mainly non-technical) staff. This follows the February layoffs of 30 out of the 45 US staff in Oakland. Perhaps a merger with MandrakeSoft is in order? Both are RPM-based, both offer KDE-based admin tools. OTOH, as MandrakeSoft is right in the middle of an IPO, it might not be the best time to be thinking about a major acquisition. I mainly use Debian, but SuSE is an excellent distro, and I would hate to see the company go bust."

jdfox writes: "SuSE announced more layoffs on Friday: 10% reductions in Germany, or about 50 (mainly non-technical) staff. This follows the February layoffs of 30 out of the 45 US staff in Oakland. Perhaps a merger with MandrakeSoft is in order? Both are RPM-based, both offer KDE-based admin tools. OTOH, as MandrakeSoft is right in the middle of an IPO, it might not be the best time to be thinking about a major acquisition. I mainly use Debian, but SuSE is an excellent distro, and I would hate to see the company go bust."

CarrotLord asks: "Looking at the recent release of IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux got me wondering about distribution compatibility and standards. Personally, I run Debian, and am considering a move to Progeny. However, I am concerned by the fact that many products (particularly commercial ones) are available for only a particular subset of distributions (usually RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux and Caldera, but rarely Debian-based distributions or the BSDs). What is the current state of play, particularly in regards to tools for developers to enable them to create and test installation packages for various distributions?" Such a tool would go a long way in removing the force behind the "Linux fragmentation" argument that most of Linux's detractors often refer to.

"How are the LSB and the FSSTND affecting consistency between distros? What about RPM and APT? What tools are there available for developers of software to ensure that their software runs on the widest variety of systems? Is there some software development or packaging tool to assist developers in making distribution-independant software, so they can create files in dpkg, RPM and tgz formats for any distribution without much additional effort on their part? What about tools to test their software installation on individual distributions, and assist with the resolution of problems? Should this be up to the individual distributions, or should be have a unified approach?"

assbarn writes: "The title pretty much says it all, but LWN daily is reporting that SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. What does this mean for their English distribution? The details are short (and sketchy), but the link is at LWN. " I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. Update: 02/08 12:03 AM by H :A couple people have sent in the LinuxToday piece. SuSE's PR agency has denied it, but LWN is standing by it, and several other readers have substantiated it to LinuxToday and LWN, including the original source on LWN. As well, SuSE did say that a number of positions were being relocated. We'll keep the story updated. Update: 02/08 04:38 AM by T : LinuxGram has some great information -- with real details! Skeleton crew of 12 to remain in the U.S. What's also interesting is that it confirms that the PR agency had "bad communication," which is an interesting statement to say the least.

Several people wrote in to point out that SuSE appears to be the first big Linux vendor to have announced a distro to be shipped with the still-cute 2.4 Linux kernel as default. Here's their announcment in English, and in German. Since they'll also be including a 2.2 kernel "in parallel," this isn't totally earthshaking (some other distros have been shipping 2.2 stock and 2.4 optional for a little while), but it certainly is welcome news that SuSE is willing to reverse that order. Update: 01/26 05:04 PM by T : SuSE's Lenz Grimmer wrote to correct this, saying "Even though we ship with the 2.4 kernel, it is _not_ the default kernel, the user has to explicitly select the kernel during the installation." Thanks for the correction, Lenz.

Smitty825 writes: "On Tuesday, LinuxPPC released a beta of their next product, while SuSE has announced that they will be shipping SuSE 7.0 for PowerPC on November 20! Both distros come with XFree 4.01 and KDE2, as well as the MacOnLinux emulator product."

Smitty825 writes: "On Tuesday, LinuxPPC released a beta of their next product, while SuSE has announced that they will be shipping SuSE 7.0 for PowerPC on November 20! Both distros come with XFree 4.01 and KDE2, as well as the MacOnLinux emulator product."

This episode of Slashback brings a quartet of deja-vu inducing tidbits for your continuing edification and amusement: SuSE, not just Red Hat, will run on all those fancy schmancy new machines from IBM; DialPad sends a nearly bewildering apology to be-spammed e-mail recipients (bewildering because not enough other companies have done the same); laptops of the non-Transmeta variety; and some more information on optical switching, etc. Brush up on randomness, read at your own risk.

You can put that in your lap and smoke it! (Three from the webpad front) Kazin writes "[G]o and check out www.qbenet.com - they've got a tablet-style laptop thing. A bit pricey ($2900 US), and runs windows, but we can certainly fix the second part."

Strangely, a name that you might recognize from The Soul of a New Machine but might not expect to be selling computers now seems to want some of the webpad action, too. Matthew Peretz writes:

"'Home heating and cooling control giant Honeywell (NYSE:HON) has released a Net appliance based on National Semiconductor's WebPAD reference design.

The $995 device weighs less than three pounds, has a 10-inch LCD touch screen panel and connects to the Internet via a base station that uses a cable or DSL connection. The device can be used with any Internet service provider. It will use a battery that can hold its charge for as long as five hours, the company said.'

You can check out the story and actually see a photo of the thing at: http://www.allnetdevices.com/wireless/news/2000/10/11/honeywell_ships.html"

EdotOrg writes "National Semiconductor is slated to 'release' the Geode WebPAD, come Q4 2000, based on the QNX embedded operating system. It has a web browser (including Macromedia Flash, RealPlayer 7.0), PDF support, an IBM-optimized Java layer, full text anti-aliasing, support for USB, 11 Mb/s wireless, and PCMCIA support. Screensize is 9.5x11.75 inches (800x600), with a touch screen and software keyboard."

When oh when will someone make a webpad with LED backlighting instead of flourescent, though? That would help make a

Shedding light on the subject. ksan writes "I've seen this article on Slashdot and remembered that there is an not old article at EDN Online describing how engineers can switch over 200 THz of a light bandwith using laser tunable diode. It's worth a read to know more about optical communications." Great link.

To err is corporate, to apologize uncommon. FeeDBaCK writes "I recently recieved a newsletter from Dialpad even though I had selected not to recieve mail from them or any of their partners. I just deleted it, as I tend to do with mails that I get which were unsolicited. When I opened my mail this evening I recieved the following e-mail from Linda Crockett, the manager of customer care for Dialpad.

Subject: Apology from the Dialpad Team

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your interest in Dialpad.com. We want to extend our sincerest apology for sending you our newsletter without permission. When you signed up for our service, you indicated that you wish not to receive promotional email from Dialpad or any of its partners. We sent our new company newsletter to all of our users thinking it was more of an informative piece on our services rather than a promotional advertisement from a third party. We now understand this was not in the best interest of all of our users.

Again, we apologize for this inconvenience and will make sure you no longer receive any emails from Dialpad. We encourage you to visit our site and sample the many new products we have recently launched. We hope you continue to use Dialpad to make long distance calls from anywhere in the world to the United States.

Regards,

Linda Crockett

Manager, Customer Care

I applaud Dialpad for showing that they truly care about their users. More companies need to follow Dialpad's example. I know we are all tired of recieving e-mails from various companies and web sites without asking for it. Thumbs up to Dialpad."

Funny, isn't it, that the companies which send me unsoliticed "newsletters" and "company updates" don't get a lot of my business? Sounds like DialPad is exhibiting some of that elusive quality known as enlightened self-interest. And since they have a cool product, it sure would be nice, to to mention smart, for them to release a version for Linux. Sooner or even sooner, telephony will be normal instead of novel.

A Big Blue rising tide floats multiple penguins, or something. An unnamed correspondent points out that in addition to Red Hat, IBM's eServer line and S/390 machines will run other distributions as well, including SuSE. "Here's the link. Goes on to tell you about the eServer's and S/390. Wish I could be posting game company news, too, to show inroads onto the desktop. Guess that will happen with time :-)."

solusthewizard writes: "SuSE, probably Europe's top Linux distro, is available for download as a 'live evaluation' iso image for version 7.0. Not quite sure what that means as opposed to the shrinkwrapped version as I haven't finished downloading it yet! Check out here for the iso (or better still, look for a local mirror). Can't be any worse than Red Hat 7.0, my laptop is still recovering." Read about the things that make 7.0 beam with pride here, if you'd like. I will make a sizeable contribution to The Human Fund in the name of everyone who establishes or points to a mirror :)

solusthewizard writes: "SuSE, probably Europe's top Linux distro, is available for download as a 'live evaluation' iso image for version 7.0. Not quite sure what that means as opposed to the shrinkwrapped version as I haven't finished downloading it yet! Check out here for the iso (or better still, look for a local mirror). Can't be any worse than Red Hat 7.0, my laptop is still recovering." Read about the things that make 7.0 beam with pride here, if you'd like. I will make a sizeable contribution to The Human Fund in the name of everyone who establishes or points to a mirror :)

riggwelter writes: "SuSE has announced a version of their distribution for the Sun SPARC architecture. It's available as four ISO images from their FTP site and mirrors. This mean s that SuSE now supports PowerPC, Alpha and SPARC in addition to i386. Anyone with a SPARC knocking about the place fancy reviewing it?."

chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.

With a planned move to San Francisco next summer, last week saw San Jose's last Linux World Expo, at least for now. The future as always is stubbornly uncertain, but it's impressive that the serendipitous combination of Free tools (from GNU) and a Free kernel (from Linus) has inspired enough interest and prosperity to excite a larger group of people each year. If you've not had the chance to attend one of these expositions, we hope this article will give you a flavor of what it's like. Note: Here are a few pictures from the floor (Day 1 & Day 2) contributed by Sensei^); do you have any cool shots to link to in comments?

First, the prelude: If you've worked on the pre-show aspects of anything from a high-school play to a LAN party, you know all those booths, displays, people and computers don't materialize by themselves. For several days before the show floor opened on Tuesday, forklift crews zipped cargos of wooden, fiberglass, plastic, aluminum and steel cases from moving trucks to exhibit spaces. These contained banners, snap-together modules, computers, lighted signs -- and Yes, more gratis logo-imprinted toys than you can wave a TuxTops LED light at.

Spiderwebs of CAT-5 and electric cord (run beneath the show floor) sprouted from the centerpoints of many booths, with strands for each computer to be connected to the Net during the show. Rolls of padding and carpet came next, then the slow assembly of display booths. These ranged from no-nonsense fabric partitions that housed companies like TuxTops and Sendmail (and legions of volunteers from PerlMonks, the Simple End User Linux project, Flightgear, and many others), to elaborate constructions with motorized signs, projected lasers and huge illuminated logos. Note: Slashdot (the site) was put together last week mostly from the comfy chairs of the PerlMonks booth.

The "C" (as in conference) part of LWCE got started on Monday, and for the days that followed, attendees got instruction -- on everything from Linux security to evangelizing Free software to their bosses-- in half-day doses. Meanwhile, the setup work continued into the wee hours, as exhibitors raced the clock to make sure that at least their signs, if not their networks, were up for the next day. And at the OSDN booth (home of the red-carpeted Slashdot stage and beanbags), prep work included stacking thousands of boxed distributions of Debian, and attempted to pawn a few copies off on every passer by.

Tuesday morning, at a shade before 10:00, visitors willing to miss Michael Dell's keynote began to stream into the halls, on a quest to find new distros, old friends, and swag. It's amazing what companies will give away in order to snag a little nook in your brain. Besides the usual trinkets (keychains, T-shirts, stickers) and the distributions that a Linux show would be empty without, booth visitors were handed everything from knives (Sendmail) to cute monkeys (Helixcode) to embarrassing pictures of themselves (BSDi), as well as too many toys with embedded LEDs to bother counting. Rather than a full swag accounting (which would only annoy those unable to attend), let me just say that you won't hurt for toys when the chance presents itself. (CT:I just wanted to note that VA gave away 2300 pounds of shrink-wrapped boxed Debian. Like 5000 copies. It was beautiful)

The things on display around the LWCE floor were more interesting than the toys, though. (And unlike a museum, most were available for hands-on demonstration, not hidden behind glass.) Indrema showed a prototype player (not in the sleek black box you see on their Web site, but still sporting that cool blue LED) hooked up to a HDTV display, playing a very fast game of Quake. (CT:Actually it was an HDTV demo, they promised the real deal will be less vaporous before I have children) In the Intel booth were server clusters populated with quad Itanium processors, demonstrating failover when one system was rudely but intentionally shut down. The amazing-like-emacs-is-amazing Flightgear project showed a really nice looking demo which is enough incentive by itself to invest in a better video card for my system so I can play with it.

Both Helixcode and Eazel made their first LWCE appearance this time around, exciting for those filling their anti-FUD cannon for the perpetual "Linux is tough to use" argument. The Eazel folks showing off Nautilus seemed to be all but cackling as they showed off the smoothness of the zooming information available for documents and the cool music-integration abilities it contains. It would have been cool if they'd had some sample CDs, but they promise a developers' release soon. (CT:They also promised .deb's, but I'll believe it when I see it. The UI was awesome, I just hope that someone hacks in something like the GUI command line in EFM)

Considering that Sun was showing off the GNOME desktop on Solaris (hinting at its inclusion in stock Solaris systems sometime very soon, too) and that the GNOME project itself was not only in one of the small booths against the wall but the subject of a big announcement -- about the advent of the GNOME Foundation -- it looks it's showing up everywhere. Happily, there seems to be no shortage of room for window managers right now: the KDE folks were also there not only in their own booth, but showing up in software demonstrations all over the floor, as SuSE, Caldera and others demonstrated the very slick KDE 2.0. (Can't we all just get along, anyhow?)

SuSE, by the way, was the only distributor I noticed showing off Linux on Apple hardware, and their current distro was sweet and fast on a G4. Beyond the curious lack of Apples, and the obvious ubiquity of x86 machines, there were machines based on everything from microcontrollers to StrongArm, MIPS, Alpha, Itanium ... even the IBM S/390s which have gotten attention for the ridiculous number of concurrent Linux systems they can support.

For all the cool hardware and cusp-of-reality, bleeding-edge distros, it's interesting that the announcement which seemed to generate the most buzz of the entire show was the long-awaited release of Debian's Potato. Considering the reputation that Debian has for intelligent upgrading, stability, and diligence in guarding the license of the software which makes it up, it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be that Debian's new release made people sit up a bit more than the newest offerings from the large commercial distros.

(CT: Also extremely impressive was the Pocket Linux booth, where they actually had iPaq's running Linux. The first dude that demoed the box to me was very nice, but what I really wanted to see was X11 running on it ... oddly enough, I encountered one of his cohorts in the bar later that night who showed it to me: X, xeyes, xterm, and twm running on an iPaq. When they get the wireless action going on these things I'm totally there ... I'll just need to hack minimalist interfaces onto pronto and my MP3 player software and use the thing as a portable X terminal on the local 802.11 wireless lan. Yum.)

Oh, and there were people on the floor as well -- close to 20,000, all told. I met some folks I've known previously only through IRC, and quite a few I might never have otherwise encountered.

It's interesting to see in the space of a few hours many of the smart people who you may experience vicariously through writings, speeches, code, art or IRC chatter -- and it also belies the idea that software celebrities of the Free software world are becoming celebrities of the traditional variety, since everyone from ESR to Jon "maddog" Hall (and Linus himself) are willing to talk to anyone who catches up with them long enough to say hello. The atmosphere (especially outside the mondo corporate-castle booths) is mellow and accomodating, and suprisingly so even within most of those castles. There were undoubtably personality conflicts at work, but it seems like most people have the good grace to deal nicely with each other for these few days at least.

At the close of each day, people shuffle out to drop laptops, T-shirts and bags of stuff at their hotels, then thousands of them show up to parties sponsored by companies from AMD to Red hat to VA, which are full-blown events in themselves. Mandrake's party, for instance, had go-go dancers in cages, which may be the most bacchanal thing I have ever witnessed. Ironically, though, many coders couldn't attend even events sponsored by their own companies, or thrown in the honor of their projects, because of strict carding policies. Wouldn't a chem-free party or two be a thoughtful way to include people?

(CT: This has been a consistent problem for several years. Although I know at "Someones" party (no names *grin*) they weren't carding, and I recieved many a happy note from fellow attendees proclaiming that they were able to get in. The parties themselves weren't bad: the OSDN/Potato release party was fun, with San & Zak spinning the tunes (next time we'll force CowboyNeal to scratch for us under threat of death). They had 2 buildings: one was a pool hall, where we tormented The Pope for nearly an hour, carefully distracting him, and then returning his balls to the table. He never noticed. We also met up with Nitrozac from After Y2k, and I snuck accross the street to the Eazel party for a bit, and got to meet Dave "You might remember me from cheat codes in some first person shooter" Taylor.) Attendeees mostly filed out for flights or drives home Thursday and Friday, but some are still in San Jose for the Intel Developers Conference, or otherwise enjoying the Northern California weather. It's a strange familiarity that many of them will feel when the next big conference rolls around, to see many of the same fellow attendees or workers -- of course, by the time the next big conference happens, perhaps we'll all be too excited by the release of 2.4 to notice.

qbasicprogrammer writes: "Security Portal has a review on the security of Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera Linux distributions." Debian and Slackware are absent, but its a decent piece.

appletnc from linhardware.com points us to their article about Athlons and Linux. They're trying to sort out the compatibility problems rumored to exist with the boards and chipsets. He says "Despite SuSE's Athlon workaround and RedHat's (in)compatibility note, etc.) and rumors, we have not seen many reports of problems by LhD users. Are Linux users actually experiencing problems with Athlon motherboards? Given that the outstanding price/performance value of the Athlon, the question is how well do Athlon motherboards work under Linux?"

Maktoo writes: "According to MacCentral, the June 2000 issue of MacTech magazine will include a CD containing a 'SuSE for PowerMac' Linux distribution. The full distribution will be available from SuSE at that time as well. It's nice to see SuSE coming to the PPC market!" It'd also be nice to see some less expensive PPC systems.

Smoking writes "It seems like SuSE 6.4 has been announced at SuSE's german site but not yet at their US site.
It includes an (hum!) enhanced graphical installer and new stuff like XFree 4.0 (not installed by default). The release date for the german version is March 27th and the little mathematical function on the box is cooler than ever. " They also recently announced that they will be working with the folks at SourceForge for some of their new development.

Smoking writes "It seems like SuSE 6.4 has been announced at SuSE's german site but not yet at their US site.
It includes an (hum!) enhanced graphical installer and new stuff like XFree 4.0 (not installed by default). The release date for the german version is March 27th and the little mathematical function on the box is cooler than ever. " They also recently announced that they will be working with the folks at SourceForge for some of their new development.

Syn Ack writes, "SGI and SuSE announced at CEBIT that they are going to team up to bring Iris FailSafe to Linux. Linus is quoted as saying that this is a "piece of the puzzle" that Linux is missing. Here is SGI's press release." The press release says FailSafe for Linux will be open source, but doesn't say under what license.

Maschendrahtzaun writes "After the green chameleon has been the mascot of the SuSE Linux AG for such a long time, we finally want to give it a name. We are therefore announcing a name competition for our chameleon.

The competition will begin in New York at the Linux World, which was staged Feb. 1, 2000 through Feb. 4; the final decision will be revealed at the CeBIT 2000, at the end of of February 2000 in Hanover. From all suggestions which we receive SuSE will select the most funny or best fitting ones, which will be presented to the public on our Web site. From these suggestions the public will then be able to choose the winning name. One of the suppliers of the name which gets the most votes will be invited by SuSE to the largest European Linux event, the "LinuxTag in Stuttgart". SuSE will also draw further winners from the hat, who'll receive a current version of SuSE Linux as well as the newly-named cuddly green chameleon. " Ya know, 'Rob' has a nice ring to it...

Everyone in the known universe has been submitting the news that Loki Software will be publishing and distributing Quake III Arena for Linux. The game will be published Dec. 27. The box will be a limited-edition collector's tin box and will include SuSE Linux 6.3. Asking price is 50$.

Tap noted that SuSE.com notes that 6.3 of the distribution should be released sometime today. Features include NEW X-windows installation, KDE 1.1.2, Star Office 5.1a, and XFree86 3.3.5. It should appear on the ftp site soon, and the Alpha release ought to follow shortly.

C|Net talked with Marc, but we got hold of Red Hat's Donnie Barnes yesterday, and interrogated, er, asked him questions. Click below to learn more about what to do with IPO money (Hint: Think missle-toting Lear jets), software patents, open source licensing, and trademark issues.

One of our first and most pressing questions for Donnie was, "What the heck are they going to do with all of this fresh money?" The answer, as one would expect, was some mumbo-jumbo, with some hints of future plans. Barnes said, "We will certainly grow development, marketing, sales, etc." And to whet the appetite of users, "You can certainly expect the 'grow development' part to include some neat new toys for Linux, though we don't preannounce new features. ;-)."

So the company itself will be growing, as we would expect, and the staff will be growing as well. However, what's interesting is the comments on where it will grow.

According to Barnes, "International expansion is a key area for us," which is "very expensive." It is partly due to the sheer expense that they have not really pursued this area before. Some of the shifting in this direction can be seen already, in actions like the severing of the relationship with their former Japanese distributor. In that case Red Hat "basically chose to enter the Japanese market in a bigger way and bring our products and services into that area directly." At the current time, they plan to focus on a European expansion first, to be followed by an Asian expansion soon after.

Waidaminute! Europe? Isn't there already a certain Germanic company established over there? Well, yes. We pressed Barnes about moving into what's considered to be S.u.S.E. Territory, and, on a broader scale, what's going to happen with the expansion of Linux-based companies and competition that will happen between them.

Barnes's response is one that Bob Young has been giving for quite some time; that rather then trying to play a zero-sum game, taking users away from each other, the aim of the Linux companies is to make the entire pie bigger so that /every/ company can grow. Well, every company but Microsoft, I guess, but the point is still there. Both CT and I find this to be a bit idealistic, but given the current atmosphere of change, maybe it will be how things fall out - we'll see how things shape up over the next six months to a year.

So with all this money: International Expansion, more developers, marketing and saleses staff. And, for the record, "...no, there are no big ticket surprises like Lear Jets..."

However, Marc might be purchasing a Porsche dealership. (Note: Joke! Don't sue me, Marc. Please).

The question that everyone had, whether they got the letter, didn't get the letter or just watched the fireworks was the E*Trade/Red Hat stock situation. In summary, the numbers broke down as following:
5000 open source developers were invited to participate
1300 responded, indicating interest
1150 of those were ultimately able to participate

Looks pretty good, right? It'd be interesting to know how many of those 1150 had to go back and try again, but c'est la vie. When asked about RH's feelings on the stock offering, Barnes said, "We feel that an over 88% participation rate was very good for the community at large." We talked about the people angry about the situation, whether or not a lot of the people originally banned were able to get in. His response: "Most of the angry people were [able to get in], but the bumps we had in the way caused them to be confused as to where they were and what level of participation they could expect. But at the end, most of the angry people were able to participate and I think came away happy."

What I thought was interesting was what precipitated the whole meltdown: Bad Information? Clash of Cultures? Red Hat's answer: "Mostly lack of information, and some bad information from E*TRADE's 'systems.'"

Additionally, "Sure, the open source community meeting big business and high finance was part of it too. Both sides needed education about the other, and I think lots of education happened. :)" I'm sure many of the companes looking at similar situations watched the RH IPO closely, trying to figure out what they did right, and what they can do differently. Barnes recommends examining what happened with them, and also shopping around. The latter part to that comment is the interesting part: Not dissing E*Trade, and Barnes does say they would at least shop them against other brokerage houses, but I think that the lesson learned here is to make sure of the house you use, especially after watching the Red Hat fiasco.

And given the recent hoopla over Unisys's perceived attempt to charge for GIFs that use the LZW patent, and Red Hat's closeness with major patent holders like IBM and Hewlett-Packard it seemed appropriate to talk about software patents. Red Hat's take on software patents: "Well, I think it should be fairly obvious that software patents are a bad idea in general and we are not in favor of them." Additionally, when it comes to big-boys like IBM, HP and others they "...will be working to try to lobby in the proper areas to help this issue. Yes, we do care about that stuff and have already begun talking to folks." (Note: I envisioned Bob Young with a flamethrower in the IBM Corporate Lobby)

Despite this, Barnes allowed for the fact that "Given current regulations you may see RH own patents one day. That may be unavoidable until the current way they are handled is changed." RMS would be displeased, but Barnes said that "What folks do with these patents, otoh, can be vasty different." That's an odd world, but I think it's just a further sign of how messed up the US Patent Office is, regarding software patents.

The issue of software patents led to talk about the other software licenses that have come out, like the APSL and Sun Community Source License. As you would expect, Red Hat would like to see fewer open source licenses, but "...at the end of the day, as long as they are truly open source and companies are *using* them, I don't really care." Barnes is pleased to see that Sun is taking steps to making good software more widely availible. I asked if Sun was viewed as being a competitor. Barnes says that perhaps, but that RH is trying to make fundamental changes to the way software is built. "Perhaps Sun will join. They have taken steps in that direction so far, so they could be an ally."

Oh, and again for the record, Hurricane Dennis got Barnes "personally quite wet."

The last question sparked a lot of back-and-forth, regarding the whole Red Hat trademark issue.

(Note: To get background on this, read the original article, and the subsequent follow-up with a letter from Bob Young.)

The following, according to Barnes, is what's going on: "We have to protect our trademark. People were selling hand-burned CDs and using our name, box image, and logo to do it. We had customers complain vehemently to us directly about that as they felt burned. We had to take action to keep that from happening." This was what sparked the original issue with Amazon, and how it appeared that Red Hat was banning anyone from using their name in any way unlicensed by them. The issue, then, is, how do people know what they're getting? For example, people want to know what they're getting when they buy Cheapbytes/LinuxMall/Bob's1$LinuxEmporium/LinuxCentral Linux. Are they getting Debian, Suse, Red Hat, Caldera etc.? Recognizing that Red Hat has a valid brand they must protect, where does that leave the manufacturers? RH's answer: "If they ship "Red Hat Linux" as their own "Cheapbytes Linux", then it must *be* Red Hat Linux. We can verify that with PGP signatures and the like. They can say it contains Red Hat Linux, but they can't explicitely *call* it that." For example, under this scheme, they could "call it `Foo Linux which contains Red Hat Linux 6.0' or something similar." What they can't do, however, would be to release a CD with a PGP signature that checks out, but call it Red Hat Linux. Only Red Hat can explicity title their distribution "Red Hat Linux". And if a company puts out a CD saying it "Contains Red Hat" and the PGP doesn't check out (e.g. modified from original or something, then "they can't say that and we'd have cause to have the product sales stopped."

Phew. So, how do you handle something like Mandrake-Linux? Can you call say "Derived from Red Hat Linux?" Barnes points out that he's not a trademark lawyer, so don't hold him to be a legal litmus test, but that, yes, that will be possible. (Note:More guidelines on this will be coming out soon. Keep an eye on Red Hat's site for details.)

But when it comes to recognition, of course Red Hat appreciates being recognized for having contributed, e.g. Mandrake putting "Derived from Red Hat" on the CD. As Barnes says, "Acknowledgment of one's hard work is always welcome. We just want it done properly... they can take Internet bits and build their own name. You don't see us claiming the name of every other distribution that contributed some code to RH, do you? But they can take our code and use it. That's what this is all about."

Wrap-up:: Interesting to talk with Donnie, and you can see that the quiet period has been hard on them - being unable to respond to comments would be, I suppose. It seems that the basic direction of Red Hat remains unchanged; that is, commitment to the GPL, working with the industry on software patent issues, and trying to get people to join the "movement." The greatest concern that CT and I is how all of this money will affect them as an organization, but I suppose that's an issue for the greater Linux universe as well. Only time will tell. And, on that platitudianal note..

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

Desperado wrote in to tell us that according to This InfoWeek Story, the 6.2 release of SuSE is scheduled for August and will have new/updated packages including IBM's ViaVoice, XF86 3.3.4 and VMware 1.0.

Philipp Rumpf writes "SuSE began shipping the first official version of their SuSE distribution for Compaq's (former Digital's) 64-bit Alpha architecture this week in Germany. " I'm glad to see SuSE finally expanding into non-x86 platforms. With any luck, it'll be available in the states soon.

kris writes "German c't magazine has a story about SUSE (english site: suse.com) reporting a larger turnover that RedHat (26.6 Mio. DM == 15 Mio US$ vs. RedHat with 11 Mio. US$). Suse also reported earnings, while RedHat reported a loss of $130,000 during the same time." kris has translated the article below if you want. Else use babelfish. Here is a rough translation of the article:

Suse: We are the largest.

As a reaction to the IPO of RedHat, which requires the company to disclose its earnings, german Linux distributor Suse has disclosed their own numbers. While RedHat reported a turnover of $11M between March 1998 and February 1999, Suse reported a turnover of almost $15M (Deutschmark 26.6 M) between 01-Apr-1998 and 31-Mar-1999. Like RedHat, most of this is due to their distribution sales (Deutschmark 17.4M). Unlike RedHat, who lost $130.000 during this time, Suse was able to report earnings of an undisclosed amount during this time.

Both companies employ approx. 130 people each at the time and are growing rapidly: In 1Q1999 Suse reported a turnover of Deutschmark 9.5M, an increase of 230% compared to the year before. Since the funding of SUSE Inc. in the USA, german Distributor Suse is focusing more and more on the international market. CEO Roland Dyroff reported a larger than proportional growth of the US daugther. He did not want to answer direct questions about an IPO, though. "