From Jason Spisak: February was a month of rapid growth
for Lycoris. Its flagship product, Desktop/LX, has been selling well and attracting worldwide partners. In addition to favorable reviews in the Linux world and surrounding tech community, Lycoris is responding to users’ needs by providing Hewlett Packard PCs Pre-Loaded with Desktop/LX.

The ranks of Lycoris partners are growing as well. With the addition of The Little Linux Factory in Ireland, Lycoris now has Partnerships with Annexa, OIC Corp., and is currently negotiating with 15 others. Lycoris Partners have access to discounted Lycoris products, back-end technical support, logo and trademark usage, Internet marketing, early access to Lycoris products, and access to exclusive “Partner-Only” forums.

“The reassurance of knowing Lycoris is behind my efforts in terms of account management and support has enabled me to put my money, time and efforts into a product I believe in, because it’s capable of being believed-in by others,” states Mel McWeeny, Founder of The Little Linux Factory.

Recent favorable reviews by independent sources have rocketed Lycoris Desktop/LX to the forefront of the Linux desktop world. Publications such as Extreme Tech, Linux Format UK, and Login: have given Desktop/LX worldwide attention. Ralph Glanz’s glowing review in Extreme Tech had the honor of being picked up by the news service Slashdot, which prompted incredible demand for Desktop/LX. The Lycoris Event Calendar at Lycoris.com is growing rapidly due to the positive press coverage. Lycoris will be appearing at various Linux and tech community festivals and functions such as The Bellingham Linux Festival April 20th in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and Lycoris Partner Annexa will be representing Lycoris at the ITEC in Rochester New York April 9th and 10th.

In an exciting move, Lycoris has also expanded its product line with the addition of pre-loaded Desktop/LX PCs. Currently, Lycoris offers Hewlett Packard 6830e personal computers, which include a 1-year warranty from Hewlett Packard, already installed with a Desktop/LX box set. Lycoris provides 60 days of e-mail support for the software and sells the entire package for $449.99. The specifications for this exciting product are as follows:

• Hewlett Packard 6830e
• Intel Celeron 700 Mhz Processor
• 128MB RAM
• 20GB Hard Drive
• 8MB Integrated AGP Video
• 48x CD-ROM Drive
• 56k Modem
• 10/100 Ethernet Card (NIC)
• Floppy Drive
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Speakers
• 1 Year Warranty from HP

This exciting new product is available for purchase by contacting the Lycoris sales department at sales@lycoris.com.

About Lycoris

Lycoris, located in Redmond, Washington, was founded in 2000 with a vision of making Linux simple enough for anyone to use. Lycoris makes open source
applications easy to use and integrates them into Desktop/LX, their Linux desktop.

About Annexa

Located in downtown Rochester, New York, Annexa is your Total Technology Solutions Partner, offering Linux based desktop, networking, server, and hardware/software sales and support, for businesses of any size. The LTC will be a one-stop resource center for all Linux-based resources. Interested individuals are encouraged to stop in and give Desktop/LX a test drive on Annexa’s network at 439 Central Ave, Rochester, New York. http://www.annexa.com

About OIC Corp.

OIC is a system enabling company. It enables communications between any computers and any data systems for its customers such that all users can work together and share information when necessary. OIC provides detailed configurations and plans for meeting your voice and data challenges. It is certified in all current protocols including Ethernet, IP and ATM. Further, it is one of the few consulting firms that can plan and implement “Voice over…”, such as VoIP and VoATM. http://www.oic-corp.com

About The Little Linux Factory

The Little Linux Factory (LLF) is a small Irish Family-owned consultancy business operated by Mel McWeeney in Longford, Ireland. For 12 years it’s aim has been is to provide expert support services to both commercial and home users of Unix based systems. Having completed an extensive contract with the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, the LLF has redirected it’s efforts to the provision of Linux solutions, and is delighted to have secured the first dealership for Lycoris Desktop/LX in Europe. http://www.linuxfactory.ie/

For Additional Information

Web: http://www.lycoris.com
Sales: sales@lycoris.com
Media Relations: press@lycoris.com
General Information: info@lycoris.com

Lycoris
PO Box 2313
Redmond WA 98073-2313
USA
1+ 425 869-2930
1+ 425 671-0504 facsimile

From PRNewswire: Simplified(R), a software
infrastructure company, today announced that it has successfully completed the
first customer-site deployment of Red Hat(R) (Nasdaq: RHAT) Linux on the
Simplified Open Services Platform(TM).
The carrier-class platform has been installed on servers powered by Intel
processors to control multivendor switch gear in a retail services and
wholesale telecom network environment. The deployment was part of an ongoing
network expansion plan to enable Phonetime(TM) Inc. (CDNX: YPO) to better
manage its rapidly growing traffic demands.

Anonymous Reader writes, “TuxReports has an interesting opinion piece about the need for distributors to put together Linux OEM programs. If Linux is going to gain market share then OEM programs will be required. Maybe now is the time.”

Joe Barr writes, “http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0304.s orcerer.html.

Sorcerer allows you to build and maintain a Linux system based on the very latest stable source code for each component, from the kernel to X, compiled on and for your machine. Unfortunately, Sorcerer’s magic might vanish soon.”

– By Jesse Smith –

People, don’t try this at home. This is not a how-to; it’s more of a “how-not-to” cautionary tale. However, there is a lot of good information
in this story. Among other things, you’ll learn how to get more drive space
under Phat Linux.

Recently, I did the stupidest thing I have ever done
to a Linux system. I deleted the C library. This is the library
(binary code) that nearly all Linux programs (it appears) use. I was
trying to upgrade the C library and without knowing exactly what
I was doing, and deleted the file /lib/libc.so.6.

This file is nothing much, just a small, symbolic link to
the C library. However, the Phat Linux system assumes that, link
or not, there must be a file called /lib/libc.so.6. If not, then
almost nothing works. Commands to restore the link (ln -s) no
longer work. Neither does the move (mv) command. Nor log in.
All that worked, it seemed, was exit and cd. I couldn’t even shut down.

This discovery was quickly followed by a number of words
I am glad my mother didn’t hear. I have left out about five minutes
of my colourful monologue here.

So, after killing the power to my PC, I thought, “Well, maybe
the system will search for the library during boot up.” I tried and, no, it doesn’t search. It’s either there or it is not. I then tried to boot Phat in single user mode. No good, still need the library to boot. So here I need the library to boot and I need to
boot to install the library. You may know that Phat Linux
does not come with a boot disk. As far as I know Tom’s Root Boot
doesn’t support loop-back file systems. Now what to do?

I went online (using Windows) and tried mIRC. They laughed at me for two reasons. One: I had deleted the libc.so.6 file. Big
no-no. Two: I was running Phat Linux which, I was told, isn’t real Linux. But the reason, that Phat Linux uses UMSDOS, was false — Phat Linux does
not even support UMSDOS. It uses a loop-back device.
But moving on, no one could help me. “No boot disk, no work. Re-install.”

I thought there might be another way. Because I develop Phat
Linux as a side project, I have an extra copy of the file system. I
booted up in DOS and renamed my damaged system (linux.img to trash.img).
I then renamed ph4linux.img to linux.img. With the good file system,
I then proceeded to boot. I searched through the Linux start up
files (found in /initrd/). There it seemed, I found the clue I needed.
I ran the losetup program to set /dev/loop6 to point at the file
/dos/phat/trash.img.

Note: losetup prepares a device to be mounted.
I then created a directory (mkdir /initrd/mnt/img/) and typed
mount /dev/loop6 /initrd/mnt/img.
I now had my old (and unusable) file system mounted. Yes! I was
then able to move through the file system. I removed the bad libc
file and re-created the link (ln -s libc-2.1.3.so libc.so.6)
You are supposed to make sure you are in /initrd/mnt/img/lib/
when you do something like that. Not being in /lib would destroy the
good file system. How I know that is another longggg story and
involves more colourful phrases.

Anyway, with the damage repaired, I unmounted the newly-fixed
file system and typed “umount /dev/loop6” to unmount the system. I could
then reboot my computer and put all the DOS files back in
their proper place. I then informed the people on mIRC that I had
performed a minor miracle and had learned my lesson. I didn’t point out
that you usually can’t do things like this with other Linux distros.

The point of my writing this, besides warning you not to
touch things in the /lib directory, is this:
There is a way to mount many Linux file systems
under Phat Linux. Instead of trying to grow your linux.img file under
DOS whenever you need more space (or deleting stuff) you can
simply make a new DOS file and mount it. The only limitations are
hard drive space and the new data must be put in the new file. For example,
if linux.img is full and I want to create a big file called abc.txt
I could create linuxnew.img and mount it. However, because linux.img
is full, all new data (abc.txt and any new files) would have to be
created in linuxnew.img. So, this lead me to the idea that you could create
several of these image files and move your file system into them.
For example, /usr/ could be stored in one loop-back file. /home/
could be held in another. Just don’t put /initrd/ or /lib/ on another
device.

It seems that after being so stupid, I end up feeling smart. But it is really an old idea. Using several partitions or disks to spread
out the file system is as old as UNIX. This would be an interesting
way of storing your files, though, under a same-partition Linux
distro.

To do so, you would need the ext2resize program from
either freshmeat or http://slicer69.tripod.com/phat/upgrade.html. Then by making some interesting start up scripts, you could mount many
parts of your file system. I don’t plan to do this … yet. It’s just
interesting to think about.

On a final note, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then
don’t try this at home, folks. I know I shouldn’t have.

“Christopher Hornbaker and Justin Zeigler are working on a new license, the Free Curricula License. The license is a hybrid; it contains ideas from the GNU FDL,
FreeBSD Documentation License, the Open Publication License, the collaborators, and many others. They’d like feedback on their efforts, especially on (but not
limited to) these questions…” More at SEUL.org.

NewsFactor Network writes: “The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday refereed a debate that pitted content providers against consumer electronics (CE) and components manufacturers. At issue: the appropriate way to stem digital piracy. Each side mirrored the other’s claims, saying the opposition’s position threatens the viability of its business.”

JigSaw writes: “OSNews has a review of the brand new 2nd edition of “Programming with Qt” and names it as the best book ever written for Qt.”

Anonymous Reader writes:”Ahhh, the power of the press … ‘REDSonic, Inc., today announced a product policy change in response to the distinctly positive developer review of RED-Builder 2.0 XE by Jerry Epplin of LinuxDevices.com …’ “Despite the overwhelming positive comments, the review was tempered by comments on the inclusion of a software protection ‘dongle’ …” “… REDSonic (was encouraged) to make immediately available a ‘dongle-free’ version of RED-Builder.” Read the story at LinuxDevices..”

dr frog writes: >”Basically X3D has been accepted by MPEG for baseline 3D in MPEG-4. More here:

Geocrawler.“