EE Times previews the Linux Business Expo that’s part of Comdex Fall 2000, featuring recent announcements by IBM, SuSE, and Red Hat.

From LinuxPR: Epitera is carving out a brand new niche
in the Linux marketplace-mainstream consumer and corporate PC users. The
Israel-based company announced the launch of a new, easy-to-use
Linux desktop environment targeted at the PC and Internet appliance user.
The new desktop environment will include a complete set of pre-installed
applications, and it features automatic application downloads and updates as well
as remote-access customer support. The most visible example of the desktop’s
user-friendly approach is a genie named
Kandu, which the company says will provide the user with more intuitive and
proactive support than the assistant found on other operating systems.

The ZooLib Cross-Platform Application Framework has been released under the MIT License. You can read about in at
this article at
BeNews.ZooLib allows one to write a single set of C++ sources and compile to native executables for Mac OS, Windows, BeOS, and Posix flavors with X11 (such as Linux).– Submitted by Michael D. Crawford

ZD Net reports on Corel’s pitch at Comdex: The company says its “refocusing” its Linux plans after an investment deal with Microsoft. But the company is still cranking out Linux products, including WordPerfect Office and Corel Draw, according to CEO Derek Burney.

Teamware Group, a subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited,
announced that a 90-day evaluation version of Teamware Office 5.3 for Linux, a
ready-to-run groupware product with a customizable user interface and
state-of-the-art communications features, is available on the new release of
Linux-Mandrake 7.2 from MandrakeSoft, one of the most powerful and
easy-to-use operating systems with a choice of several powerful,
pre-configured graphic interfaces (notably the leaders KDE and GNOME), as
well as more than 2,300 applications including Netscape Communicator, the
StarOffice suite, and the Apache Web server. The
press release is at LinuxPR.

From LinuxPR: Xi Graphics Inc., a six-year-old privately
held firm that specializes in premium graphics support software for Linux and
UNIX systems, announced today the release of Linux graphics support for
two members of the RADEON family of graphics cards — the
RADEON 32 MB DDR and the RADEON 64MB DDR from ATI
Technologies Inc., a world leader in graphics accelerators.

From a Business Wire press release: SuSE Linux has announced the release of SuSE Linux 7.0 PowerPC Edition.
SuSE Linux 7.0 for the PowerPC has numerous improvements over its predecessor. In addition to the renowned comprehensive manual, the five CDs
of this edition contain more than 1,000 applications for virtually any purpose. This includes image processing software, desktop applications, emulators,
and the wide range of available window managers, network tools and editors.

The advisory is at LWN.net: “The modules package is responsible for on-demand loading of kernel
modules/drivers. The /sbin/modprobe command, when executed as a new
task by the kernel-internal function request_module(), runs with the
priviledges of the init process, usually root.
Newer versions of the modprobe program contain a bug
which allows local users to gain root priviledges. modprobe expands
given arguments via /bin/echo and can easily be tricked into executing
commands. In order for this bug to be exploitable, a setuid root program
must be installed that can trigger the loading of modules (such as ping6).”

From LinuxPR:
Turbolinux, a provider of high-performance Linux for Internet infrastructure
solutions, today announced it is demonstrating the power of its EnFuzion
software by breaking Microsoft NT passwords at product demonstrations during
Linux Business Expo at Comdex in Las Vegas this week.

Info World reports on Brian Behlendorf’s search for more money for the Apache Software Foundation at Comdex. The foundation needs cash to “keep up with the demands that developing the leading Web server requires.”