From vnunet.com: “Although some members of the internet community maintain that Linux is a nigh on perfect operating system, it has had, and still has, its problems.

In what he calls an “act of love” one brave geek has stumped up a list of the top 10 things wrong with Linux today.

Adam Wiggins, chief software architect for ecommerce secure payment company TrustCommerce, and Linux enthusiast, posted the list last week in a bid to
stimulate more interest in fixing its faults.

“Three years ago journalists and industry pundits complained loudly that Linux had ‘no journalling filesystem!’. Today it has a dozen. Everyone
complained: ‘No good web browsers!’. Today there are half a dozen. Everyone complained: ‘No good office suites!’. Today there are three or four,” he
said.

“So, in that spirit, I am now going to complain loudly about every major nit pick I can think of.”

Anonymous Reader writes “From the story’s introduction: ‘There has been a great deal written in the last few weeks, both on websites and in newsgroups and mailing lists, complaining about the supposed necessity in Linux of users compiling their own software.
Much of this has been unfair, because modern Linux distributions
require no one to compile anything. But it’s been unfair in another
way, too, acting as if compiling your own software is some kind of
odious black art available chiefly to those who have taken some
fiendish blood oath. Nothing could be more wrong.’ This is an easy primer that explains how and why users can and should learn to compile their own software.”

This month in The Linux Line: Scott Handy details the integration push in today’s enterprise and where IBM Linux fits. Stuart Feldman, leader of the Extreme Blue internship program, has a glimpse of this summer’s program efforts; e-business on demand turns a dramatic corner with the announcement of IBM’s Linux Virtual Services; John Vitkus talks to The Linux Line about the new Linux Center of Competency, which he co-founded. Plus The Linux Line has news on upcoming developer workshops; creating an XML-based customer repository using DB2 XML Extender; Securing Linux for zSeries with a central z/OS LDAP server; and much, much more, at IBM.com.

Washington, D.C. – July 16, 2002 – Hewlett-Packard (HP) has committed to becoming a major industry sponsor of the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI). As part of the commitment, HP will help sponsor OSSI’s ongoing Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy.
The announcement was made during an OSSI presentation to the Open Source & eGovernment seminar hosted by the General Service Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy, Next Generation Strategies and George Washington University’s Cyberspace Policy Institute. The meeting was held at the National Science Foundation facilities in Arlington, VA.

“HP’s commitment to OSSI clearly demonstrates the building momentum of open-source software within enterprise-level users, industry solutions providers and government entities,” said OSSI chairman John M. Weathersby. “We look forward to HP’s participation on the NAVOCEANO CRADA project and with other projects we will be launching in the near future.”

OSSI has joined with the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC) to perform a technical study of the usage of open-source software within the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) based at the Stennis Space Center.

Preliminary findings from the study have indicated wide and accepted usage of open-source software within NAVOCEANO’s enterprise-level systems.

The Open Source Software Institute (www.oss-institute.org) is a non-profit organization who’s mission is to promote the development and implementation of open-source software solutions within U.S. Federal, state and municipal government agencies and academic entities.

PDAJames writes “The latest version of OpenGL is out, according to this story. It will include, among other things, vertex programming, which may or may not be covered by a Microsoft patent — there’s a nice quote from them saying that they’re not going to do anything wrong, but I can trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them… Nokia is also putting OpenGL in cell phones.”

– By Bruce Tober –

If the Cold War Soviet mindset was known for nothing else, it was known
for secrecy. Today’s Russian government
also seems set on maintaining as much secrecy as possible, at least about its
IT infrastructure. This isn’t surprising considering Russian President Vladimir Putin and
most of his ministry
heads are former KGB operatives.

But recently, there has been evidence of Linux use in the Russian government.
Earlier this year, Sergei Antimonov, director general of Russian anti-virus company DialogueScience, Inc., said the
Russian Ministry of Defense and other government
institutions were looking at using “Open Source Unix-like operating
systems” and related software in near future. “There are three
reasons: security, price and openness,” Antimonov says.

Putin may be the stimulus to make Open
Source the ubiquitous IT infrastructure in Russia, according to
Viacheslav Kaloshin, technical manager, for IP-Tel Company. Kaloshin says Putin is
outspoken about his desire to end the country’s dependence on Western
software production by building up Russian development.

Kaloshin says that’s all to do with a perception in the country — that
imports of Western products are killing off domestic ones. “In all
aspects of our life,” he says, “from medicine to heavy machinery, our
manufacturers face strong pressure from Western manufacturers and the
president has called to develop Russian, instead of using Western. Many
people are afraid Western industry will kill Russian software
development completely. But the situation is starting to change.

“The law about software piracy is beginning to work,” Kaloshin adds. “Many companies try to legalize all software that they use. Many system administrators after
calculating the cost of software from Microsoft start looking at free
operating systems.” In his view, it’s still virtually impossible to use
Linux or FreeBSD exclusively on all desktop computers, “but on servers, it is a perfect choice. In government structures the situation is the same —
desktop computers run Windows, but servers on FreeBSD or Linux OSes.”

The Ministry of Defense is using MSVS, an acronym for the Russian name
which translates as “Armed Forces’ Portable System,” an operating system approved
for use in 1998. According to Vitaly Fedrushkov, a network security
specialist with a major Russian company, MSVS is currently based on
Linux 2.2 kernels and has a security certification higher than NetWare 5.1 or Windows NT.

Fedrushkov says MSVS is similar to the U.S. National Security Agency’s SELinux. A long-time Linux fan and co-founder of the Chelyabinsk Linux User Group, he
explains that each ministry used to have its own research
facilities and there were competing departments, for example the
Ministry of Electronic Industry, and Ministry of Radio Equipment
Industry. “The former attended the church of IBM, the latter believed in
DEC hardware,” he says.

“Nowadays, with benefits of commercial-off-the-shelf-based systems widely accepted,” Fedrushkov adds, “the strategy of many competing efforts was canceled. Apart from legacy systems, the primary vendor is chosen in most areas, and all potential
government clients merge their financial efforts to sponsor a single
project. Both Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal
Affairs approved MSVS.”

The use of MSVS is mandated when the work is of a confidential nature
and security is a major concern, as in military applications. For more
mundane chores, such as letter-writing, whatever the user prefers may be used.

Asked why Russian Linux distributions ASP or ALT weren’t used rather
than developing MSVS, he says: “You can ask developers of SELinux as
well. Security features of stock Linux kernels and user-space software
are insufficient to obtain even a minimal certification.”

Svetlana Semavina of ASPLinux says the Linux distribution is introducing itself to some Russian ministries. “Ministries are too big to make decisions fast,” she says, “so we can’t yet speak about the adoption of ASPLinux or other distribution.” She
says it’s still too early to discuss any results of meetings with ministry officials,
other than that those ministries “agreed to test our ASPLinux.”

But within the ministries, she explains, some departments such as
Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering,
and KosmoService, which is developing software for Centers of Satellite
Flying Monitoring, are migrating to ASPLinux. “They
know that one day they must migrate to MSVS and understand that it is
Linux-like OS. We are supporting them with it, it includes consulting,
training, porting their applications to ASPLinux. Projects are not yet
finalized.”

Jeremy Andrews writes: “KernelTrap has interviewed Robert Love, author of the kernel preemption patch which has been merged into the 2.5 development kernel. In this interview, Robert discusses the status of Linux kernel preemption, talks about his recent involvement with the O(1) scheduler and explains his recent VM overcommit work. He also reflects upon Linus’ use of Bitkeeper, the future of Linux, and the recent Kernel Summit in Ottawa. Find the full interview here.”

“Well-intentioned hackers are creating tools to help people circumvent web browsing controls in countries where the net is censored.

The group of technology experts have produced two programs that help people swap messages that would otherwise be banned or to set up their own networks that help them keep in touch.” More at BBC.co.uk.

Mikael Pawlo writes: “As previously reported by Greplaw, Peru considers a law requiring governmental software to be free software. The prosposed law mandates that the government use only open source software. The move may stimulate the IT industry in the region, hence more development will be carried out locally. Yesterday Mr Bill Gates had a tete-a-tete with Peru president Toledo. The meeting ended with Microsoft donating 550 000 USD worth of software, cash and consulting to Peru. How this will affect Peru’s move for free software is unknown, but The Register has an idea…”

Norway’s Minister of Labor and Government Administration, Victor Norman, decided against renewing its Select 5.0 software licensing program, which expires Nov. 30, in order to encourage other software companies to compete in the public sector IT market, the spokesman said….In Norway, Microsoft has up to 95 percent of the government market for some types of applications, according to the spokesman.

The use of open-source software, such as the Linux operating system, could promote competition, the spokesman said.” More at InfoWorld.