LinuxSecurity.com links to an advisory at Symantec.com saying Linux.Simile is “very complex virus that uses entry-point obscuring, metamorphism, and polymorphic decryption. It is the first known polymorphic metamorphic virus to infect under both Windows and Linux. The virus contains no destructive payload, but infected files may display messages on certain dates. It is the fourth variant of the Simile family.” LinuxSecurity says readers should decide on the validity of the virus report.

TheInquirer.net reports that the Free Software Foundation has asked readers to report potential license violations.

CNet offers its own take on Red Hat’s reaction to UnitedLinux. ” A move by four sellers of Linux to unite behind a single version of the operating system might help those allies — and boost Linux’s popularity–but it isn’t likely to dent the dominance of the top dog, Red Hat.”

A story on FastCompany.com describes how one Canadian company is using an “Open Source model” to mine for gold. McEwen believed that the high-grade ore that ran through the neighboring mine was present in parts of the 55,000-acre Red Lake stake — if only he could find it. His strategy began to take shape at a seminar at MIT in 1999. Company presidents from around the world had come there to learn about advances in information technology. Eventually, the group’s attention turned to the Linux operating system and the open-source revolution. “I said, ‘Open-source code! That’s what I want!’ ” McEwen recalls.

His reasoning: If he could attract the attention of world-class talent to the problem of finding more gold in Red Lake, just as Linux managed to attract world-class programmers to the cause of better software, he could tap into thousands of minds that he wouldn’t normally have access to. He could also speed up exploration and improve his odds of discovery.

– By Russell C. Pavlicek –

Recently, the news has been full of products meant to allow Windows
applications to run under Linux. From the maturing of the Wine project,
to the x86 emulator Bochs, to commercial products like CodeWeaver’s
CrossOver Office and the much ballyhooed Lindows, new options appear on
the horizon monthly. Then there are the recent new versions of
applications like StarOffice, OpenOffice, AbiWord, and Evolution, which
seek to replace their Windows equivalents entirely.
In the thunderous noise of this growing herd of desktop alternatives, it
is easy to forget that other options have existed for some time. Such is
the plight of (the non-free) VMware Workstation, a virtual machine architecture that has
been serving Linux users since 1999.

What is it?

Of course, VMware Workstation is more than just a way of using Windows
software on a Linux box. VMware is a virtual machine architecture that
runs x86-based machines under Linux or Windows. It can host a
number of guest operating systems, including Linux, FreeBSD, and various
versions of Windows.

Unlike an x86 hardware emulator (like Bochs), VMware does not actually
emulate the x86 instruction set. This means that you could not run VMware
Workstation on a non-x86 architecture like SPARC or Alpha. But the upside
of this limitation is found in its performance. Because the software does
not have to waste time emulating instructions native to the hardware, the
guest operating system does not suffer undue performance degradation.

The test system

For system testing, I used a 1 GHz Duron MicroTel PC with 128 MB of RAM. The host operating system
was Red Hat Linux 7.1. According to the VMware documentation,
the default kernel in this distribution should support the needs of
VMware workstation.

How easily does it install?

Installation can be simple or complex. If you choose the
default networking option, even a newbie should be able to
install the software easily. If you want to do more complex
networking (such as using network address translation or a custom
network), there will be additional questions that a system administrator
could answer, but a non-sysadmin might flinch at the assignment of unused
subnets, etc. Thankfully, even the more difficult questions have
intelligent defaults, so the configuration process is made as painless as
possible.

But once you install the VMware Workstation software, you are only half
way home. You now need to install the guest operating system — the
operating system that will run in the virtual machine. VMware
Workstation supports many guests, and can even support multiple guests
installed in separate virtual machines. So the single PC on your desk can
suddenly be home to an unlimited number of different machine environments,
limited only by resources like disk space.

In this case, I chose to install Windows XP Home Edition, Windows ME, and
Mandrake Linux 8.2.

Licensing

It is important to note that installing any guest operating system in
VMware is legally like installing it on a normal PC. So if you need a
valid license to install the operating system on a PC, you’ll need a
license under VMware. For most basic Linux and BSD installs, this is not
an issue.

For all versions of Windows licensing is everything — and even more so with Windows XP. Because Windows XP is licensed to a
particular hardware configuration, you should try to configure your
virtual machine correctly the first time. If you decide to increase
memory or change virtual disk size later, you may find yourself needing to
place a call to Microsoft to explain why you need to re-register your
operating system on a “different” machine.

Using Windows XP

I found that Windows XP Home Edition installed well, with no drag or delay in the process. Once the operating system is in
place, one immediately notices that it is visually unappealing. This is
solved by installing the VMware Tools. By selecting the VMware Tools install option from the VMware menu, the
ugly 16-color VGA driver is replaced with a much better SVGA
driver. Note that XP will complain that the video driver has not been
certified with XP, but that doesn’t seem to be a major issue.

When run in full screen mode, you get the sense that you are
running XP on a dedicated PC. The screen action is crisp
and there is no sluggishness associated with the mouse movement.

Using Windows ME

Windows ME installed about as smoothly as Windows XP. There were
a couple of times during the installation when the process slowed
to a crawl while detecting hardware, an atypical activity for which the virtual machine isn’t optimized. After installing the VMware Tools, the system display was fine, but the display driver was a little jerky
compared to a native Windows ME installation.

Using Mandrake Linux

I could not get
XFree86 to display properly from the default installation. The solution
was to boot up Mandrake in text console mode and install the VMware Tools.
This required that I select VMware Tools install option, which associated
a small ISO image to /dev/cdrom. I then needed to mount the pseudo
device, untar the file, and run the installation script. It is hardly the
type of interaction a normal user wants to undergo, but it works. The
result is a working version of XFree86.

Unfortunately, the text console also had a problem. In my case, non-X
consoles worked fine running as a window in the desktop. But changing
over to full screen mode caused all the characters to become garbled. X
did not have this problem. Based on some notes on Usenet, it appears that
it might be a conflict between full screen console mode and the
framebuffer used by the host operating system. I did not have time to
check to see if this was the case, however.

Glitches

The major glitch that affected all the guest operating systems was sound.
I tried to enable sound in all three operating systems, without much luck.
I did get a little sound when running VMware as root on the host operating
system (not something I would normally want to do), but running VMware
under a non-privileged user name yielded no sound at all. Even under root,
the sound seemed to disappear after a few seconds. A number of Usenet
articles document the same problem, so it appears that getting the sound
to work properly is not necessarily a simple task.

A very minor glitch is that VMware sometimes ignores attempts to put it
into full screen mode when running Windows as a guest. Pressing the full
screen mode button again usually works. It is a little annoying, but
nothing more.

Performance and stability

I was quite pleased with the overall performance and stability. While the
applications felt a little slower than on a native system, everything was
very usable. Going by feel, I’d say the virtual environment cost perhaps
20% in performance. Given the excessive amount of CPU in most systems
these days, I doubt most people will find much to complain about.

System stability seemed to be very strong. Once the guest operating
systems and VMware Tools were installed, the applications seemed
blissfully unaware they were running in a virtual machine
environment. I encountered nothing to indicate that the virtual machine
environment would be any less stable than a normal PC installation.

Conclusion

VMware Workstation 3.1.1 is a sane, solid approach to running a guest
operating system on your PC. It is reasonably simple to install and has
several networking options. It supports a number of guest operating
systems, and receives high marks for performance and stability.

It is probably not a good choice for running games in a virtual machine,
unless you are very sure that the sound will work on your configuration.
However, VMware Workstation could be a sound a method for running certain
Windows-based business applications on your Linux desktop. This
could be very important interim solution for a business seeking to migrate
from Windows to Linux or *BSD. This is one product that has matured quite
nicely over the years.

Brad Kuhn: Last Thursday, I and FSF’s Digital Freedom Organizer (Jonathan Watterson)
had the opportunity to join a Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG)
conference call. BPDG is discussing the most recent installment in a long
series of technology control measures in the USA; BPDG’s recommendation
will follow in the footsteps of DMCA and the CBDTPA (formerly SSSCA, now
S. 2048).

Folks at EFF have been closely tracking BPDG (see
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/). FSF joined when it became clear that BPDG
would declare some Free Software packages to be “Covered Products”, and
thereby effectively forbidding Free Software to decode High Definition
Television (HDTV) (and perhaps other such) signals.

We chose to remain quiet most of the conference call. The discussions
were mostly dominated by the MPAA representatives. This call was intended
to discuss some narrow and last minute changes to the BPDG proposal, but
in the end, there was some general discussion about the process as a
whole, and that’s where we joined in.

It was quite sad that a number of hecklers showed up; disrupting the
process can only serve to justify demand to drive it further underground.
However, it was heartening to us that respectful lurkers from the
community seemed to outnumber the hecklers and the “big players” as well.
At one point during the call, an MPAA executive was going on and on about
how BPDG would decide the “rules” (whatever they may be), and it would
just be “sold” to the public in some way. A community member chimed in
(paraphrased): “The public is already here, listening”.

Clearly, the BPDG was not ready for even this small level of public
outcry. BPDG as a whole became flustered when they were forced to deal
with media representatives and members of the public listening in. BPDG
justifies it existence by claiming that all stakeholders were welcome. We
agree with EFF–the public are stakeholders, and we hope everyone will
continue to respectfully dissent and make their concerns known.

The most vocal participants on the conference call were stacked on one
side, and thus we got only one clear chance to make a concise statement as
to BPDG’s effect on software freedom. I spoke for the FSF, stating that:

(a) BPDG’s recommendation would retroactively declare existing Free
Software as “Covered Products”, and

(b) since we cannot, as a matter of ethics, add features to such
Products that “frustrate user modifications”, we are at a complete
impasse. BPDG must take seriously the concerns of Free Software.

In response, I was told that “the recommendation would continue on
schedule”, but that our “comments would be attached”. It is clear to me
that the process remains fundamentally biased; both we and EFF have been
utterly unable to influence the “consensus” in any way. (BTW, when many
callers balked at the idea that the group was at “consensus”, an MPAA
executive quipped that “we have general agreement, though, even if it is
not consensus”. I don’t seem much difference there. No matter what words
they use, those who value freedom won’t “generally agree” nor will we join
that “consensus” that mandates our technology have robot guards.)

We did get some good news yesterday; the schedule for comment has been
pushed back, so we will have until early June to gather forces against
this anti-Free Software BPDG recommendation.

However, the road ahead is rocky. We expect the BPDG recommendation to be
referred to the US Senate Commerce Committee as an “alternative” to the
CBDTPA. Perhaps the Senate will introduce the BPDG recommendation as a
bill, touting it as “more palatable to industry” than the CBDTPA. That
would mean we have an even tougher Congressional fight on our hands.
Perhaps BPDG will break down, but that still means we need to fight the
CBDTPA in Congress.

Either way, the future Free Software for audio/video viewing and
production is threatened by these two measures. Meanwhile, the DMCA is
already on the books, leaving a chilling effect on the creation of any
Free Software that can view copy-protected content.

We at FSF are thinking long-term; we plan to stay the course and fight
CBDTPA, the BPDG recommendation, the existing DMCA, and whatever comes
next. For this purpose, we launched the Digital Speech Project
(http://digitalspeech.org/) earlier this year.

Part of our focus will be to continue the fight BPDG as long as it takes.
However, more importantly, we will spend the summer gearing up for a
serious campus-oriented campaign in the fall. This past spring semester,
we helped launch four pilot campus “Digital Freedom” groups. We hope to
launch more. Getting students involved in the anti-DMCA fight is the best
way to build a groundswell of grassroots support to repeal the DMCA.

The Digital Speech Project can really use your support. We’ve barely
secured enough funding to keep it going for another month or two, and
right now, it’s just two people: Jonathan Watterson (full-time) and me
(whenever I can spare cycles from my overflowing queue). We continue to
look for other avenues of support, but I hope that you can take a moment
to make a directed donation to the project (at
http://donate.fsf.org/digitalspeech/). Alternatively, if you prefer, you
could donate to the EFF; they are doing excellent work on this issue, too.
If you instead have some time to spare, please contact Jonathan at
and get involved as a volunteer.

The fight will be long and hard, but the time to draw the line in the sand
on this issue is now. Please help us continue this fight in whatever way
you can.

Copyright (C) 2002, Free Software Foundation.

Verbatim copying of this entire article is permitted without royalty in
any medium provided this notice is preserved.

There’s nothing new in this article about UnitedLinux, but it is interesting that USAToday is reporting on the latest advancements in the business of Linux.

EuroPython writes: “Leading up to the EuroPython conference we are conducting interviews with some of the speakers. Here’s the first interview, with Paul Dubois, speaking about Python and other languages, and also about bats and cats: http://europython.zope.nl/interviews/entries/paul_ dubois. Have fun and hopefully see you at EuroPython!”

Timothy R. Butler writes: “Time and again, one of the most common excuses about moving to Linux is that it does not have Microsoft Office. Never mind that OpenOffice.org provides most everything one needs, people are use to Office, and are not interested in changing, thank-you very much. Two companies seek to solve this problem in very different ways. Do they succeed? Read the Full Story at OfB.biz to find out.”

dep writes: “In a brief but firmly worded statement to Linux and Main, Free Software founder Richard M. Stallman has spoken out against per-seat licensing, which will apparently be employed in the new “UnitedLinux” core distribution. Developers, he says, should refuse to go along with it.”