Anonymous Reader writes, “This is the eighth article in LinuxDevices.com’s series on Exploring Linux PDA Alternatives by Jerry Epplin that explores the history, status, alternative architectures, and future developments of Linux on PDAs and handheld devices. In this installment, Epplin examines G.Mate’s new Yopy Linux PDA, from both a user and developer point of view. Read it here.“

LinuxSecurity Contributor writes, “Back in the summer of 1998, the Linux Security Audit Project was founded as a mailing list.
Inspired by the spectacular work of OpenBSD, LSAP was intended to orchestrate the systematic
security auditing of source code commonly found in Linux distributions. Now the Sardonix Security
Auditing Portal hopes to pick up where LSAP left off.”
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/forums_article-4395.html

Jason Spisak writes: Box sets of the Lycoris flagship product, Desktop/LX, which was formally known as Redmond Linux Personal, are immediately available from Lycoris and approved resellers worldwide.

As with all Lycoris products, Desktop/LX champions usability, familiarity, and economy. Desktop/LX is now available in two box packages, standard or deluxe. The standard box set includes the Desktop/LX CD-ROM, a 30 page installation manual, and 60 days of e-mail support directly from Lycoris. Desktop/LX Deluxe includes everything in the standard package, plus 2 extra CD-ROMs, Source Code and DevTools. These tools allow developers to use Desktop/LX Deluxe as a development platform. Desktop/LX allows consumers to have a full featured desktop for $29.95, and the Desktop/LX Deluxe development set sells for $39.95.

According to Lycoris CTO and Founder, Joseph Cheek, Desktop/LX is now a viable platform for Linux application develpment and inclusion in OEM PC’s.

“We now have a desktop operating system that’s easy to use, stable, and easy to update. It’s an attactive platform for application developers to work their magic and offer an alternative on the desktop.” says Cheek. “We will be leading the way in this area by offering software packages tailored specifically for Desktop/LX soon as well.”

Desktop/LX installation has been touted as one of the easiest in the Linux community, and normally completes in about 20 minutes on current hardware. The installation procedure keeps the process simple by auto detecting supported video, audio, and network hardware, as well as attached printers. Lycoris enhances Desktop/LX with tools like the Desktop/LX Update Wizard. This wizard walks Internet connected users through getting the latest version of Desktop/LX. It’s simple, and keeps systems in sync with the latest Lycoris improvements. Support for HSP Winmodems makes connecting to an Internet Service Provider easier than ever.

The Desktop/LX single CD installation gives the user a complete set of applications with which to work, yet not overwhleming them with choices.

“Desktop/LX doesn’t mob the user with five different web browsers. Instead we give them the best of breed for getting the job done. We have applications grouped in the menu based on what they do for the user. This makes it easy for people who are not familiar with the applications by name to still work quickly,” adds Jason Spisak who is on the Board of Advisors for Lycoris.

Lycoris has shipped box sets to locations all over the world, and their latest offering has proved to be in demand. Liscensing deals with hardware companies are the next step for Lycoris to put Desktop/LX into the hands of consumers from the moment they turn on their PC. The Lycoris Desktop/LX box sets represent a significant move forward for Linux on the desktop.

About Lycoris

Lycoris, located in Redmond, Washington, was started in the year 2000 with a vision of making Linux easy enough for anyone to use. The company makes open source applications easy to use and integrates them into the linux desktop.

About Joseph Cheek (CTO and founder)

Joseph Cheek’s highly technical background has allowed him to work for companies such as Linuxcare (as a Senior Linux Consultant) and Microsoft (as a network and systems tester). He co-authored the book “Integrating Your Network with Caldera OpenLinux 2.3”, was a Technical Contributor to Microsoft’s Windows 98 Resource Kit, and writes a monthly Linux column for Computer Source Magazine. As an entrepreneur Joseph has worked as a freelance computer network consultant in both the Novell NetWare and Linux spaces.

About Jason Spisak (Board member)

Jason Spisak has a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his knowledge of marketing and aesthetic design to help Lycoris create and sell attractive, buyer-friendly products. His skills aid in positioning Lycoris as a player in the desktop software marketplace and his focus is to bring Open Source, profitability, and usability together under one roof.

For Additional Information

Web: http://www.lycoris.com
Info: info@lycoris.com
Sales: sales@lycoris.com
Lycoris
PO Box 2313
Redmond WA 98073-2313
USA
1+ 425 869-2930
1+ 425 671-0504 facsimile

NewsFactor Network writes, “In creating a Unix-based operating system with a refined user interface, Apple has delivered an operating system that previously might have been installed on server-oriented hardware and used by computer professionals. This leads one to ask: Does Apple’s Mac OS X Unix/Aqua blend make a good choice for the home family computer? In my opinion, the Aqua UI masks enough of OS X’s Unix underbelly to make it an ideal operating system for even the most inexperienced home computer user.” The column is at osOpinion.com.

From Jeff Gerhardt: Tuesday, February 5th, 2002 from the home of Wayne’s World, Aurora, tonight LIVE on
www.thelinuxshow.com at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et…. Kevin Hill, Jeff Gerhardt, PJ Hyett, Doc Searls(Linux Journal), Arne Flones and Russ Pavlicek; have another great show lined up tonight on The Linux Show!!

In Segment One – Hot News: We will be covering the hot Linux news of
the last few weeks. In particular we will discuss the Gnome DOT NET controversy as well as the latest news on the Microsoft settlement.

In Segment Two- The Road To TOLIS- or The Return of BRU
This segment was to originally be broadcast last December. Due to technical difficulties, it did not happen. So we have invited the Tolis team back for another attempt.

On that road full of good intentions, many a good Linux Company fell by the roadside to become part of carrion making up the IT Road Kill that has littered the American business landscape in this post DOT COM era. It becomes VERY sad when those companies are not only managed and staffed by friends of TLS, but when they actually have a REAL GOOD PRODUCT. The fact of EST and the BRU product failing is one such sad story.

So, it thrills us to know end to see one of those groups of friends with that killer product pull themselves out of the flames and once again stand tall. This is the story of The TOLIS GROUP and their effort to resurrect BRU.

Tonight we will be joined by Tim Jones, President of The Tolis Group. Tim will take us on a wild ride that will include a short trip down the EST vs. TOLIS Group history. We will chat about how many Linux companies (including EST) were being handed too much money for initial capitalization leading to unchecked spending and then eventually their demise. We will talk about how Tolis was able to pull together a number of the key EST employees to put together the Tolis team; and how the “once burned” TOLIS Group has been totally self funded. This conservative business approach has lead to Tolis closing the second quarter in the black!

We will also discuss the current state of the art for BRU. BRU was first developed in 1985 for the general UNIX world, and ported to a build-it-yourself environment with Linux kernel level 0.99.pl12 in the Summer of ’94 before a Red Hat was something more than the Fez worn by Shiners. BRU has always been viewed as a breakthrough product not only because of its reliability in backup, but as a restoration tool as well. The philosophy over at the BRU house was always, “if you can’t restore, what the hell good is your backup anyway?”

Since 1985 BRU has had broad acceptance due to its UNIX platform cross compatibility (backup Linux boxes, restore to Sun, HP, AIX, et al). Future plans (Pending 17.0 release with Quick File Access – shortens restore time on large backups from hours to minutes) – this release will occur the first week of January and so listeners of tonights show are getting an exclusive on the announcement!

For BRU-Pro, Tolis has been hard at work improving what has just won Linux Journal’s Editor’s Choice award for Best Linux Backup for 2001. Tolis has broadened the supported platforms and added client/server encryption and compression to improve the security and performance of BRU-Pro. The 2.0 release of the product is scheduled in January with a planned release date of the end of that month.

Other opinions are welcome at GeekCast. If you would like to join us on the show, check our IRC Chat(irc.thelinuxshow.com #linuxshow).

Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.
Catch the Linux show at www.thelinuxshow.com

– By Russell Pavlicek –

Some of us spend a large amount of time trying to convince the corporate
world that Open Source software is ready for business. But every once in
while, it is refreshing to remember that Open Source can be used to do
things for people who have very little money, like my
recent experimentation with a CIDCO
Mailstation.

The hardware

For those of you who have not seen the device, the Mailstation (also known
as a Mivo 100) is an email appliance for people who do not have — or do
not want — access to a PC. It is literally an attempt at making an email
appliance that your grandmother could use. And it does a pretty good job
of hitting that target.

The unit is smaller than a laptop, weighs about two pounds, and normally
sells at about USD $100 for the cheaper models. The concept is simple: through this basic push-button appliance, you can send and retrieve email (without
HTML, graphics, or attachments) for USD $9.95 per month.

If you have been on eBay lately or visited your local used computer parts
vendor, you may have noticed there’s a significant supply
of refurbished Mailstations on the market. For around US $20,
you can pick up one of these units. But there is a catch: CIDCO will not
allow you to use its Earthlink ISP service with the unit. It’s up to you to
locate an ISP that is compatible with one of these babies.

The scenario

As I considered the fate of these re-tread gizmos, a thought occurred to
me: these items could be the key to email services for cash-strapped
organizations. There are still many people with small
budgets and/or little technical confidence who could benefit from these
devices. And, not so coincidentally, many of these folks come together in
groups, including churches, local theater companies, community centers,
charitable organizations, and senior citizens’ groups.

Refurbished Mailstations could be invaluable for these people — if they
only had access to a cost-effective ISP providing the mail services.
Paying an ISP fee of US $10 to $20 per month per member does not sit well with
groups on a strict budget. If, however, an old PC could be turned into a
simple mail server, even a large group could exchange email for no more
than the cost of one phone line. Because each Mailstation connects with the
server for only a minute or so, one phone line could potentially service
dozens of users. If they need Internet email, then add the cost of a
single monthly fee for ISP services. As all the users will be sending and
retrieving mail through the server, only one ISP account is needed to feed
the server periodically.

Could this be done using a Windows PC? Probably. But then you
would have to deal with the cost of the Microsoft operating system, as
well as the cost of the minimum hardware required to get the system to run
well. Because the problem requires an inexpensive solution for both
hardware and software, the best way to go is Open Source.

The solution

It does not take much to load a first-generation Pentium with Linux and
turn it into a Mailstation server. I suspect an old 486 would probably
work as well, but I did not have a chance to test that scenario.
Furthermore, when I had hardware trouble with the modem on my Linux box, I
quickly replicated the feat on my Pentium 75 NetBSD laptop, so you have
plenty of options here. Described here are the changes I implemented to
my Mandrake 7.2 box to get the link to work. There are other ways of
getting the job done, but this is the approach I used for this problem.

First, add a separate username and password for each Mailstation to be
used. In this case, we will use the username “mailuser” and the password
“mailpass:”

useradd mailuser
passwd mailuser
Changing password for mailuser
(new) UNIX password: mailpass

Then edit the /etc/inittab file to add an entry something like this:

# Mailstation entry:
m0:2345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -s 115200 /dev/modem

This will create the getty process to service the incoming Mailstation
phone calls. In this instance, /dev/modem is a link to the serial port, which connects to the modem.

Next, edit /etc/ppp/options to include the following parameters for use by
pppd. The list is divided in three groups: parameters you should use,
parameters you might use, and parameters useful for debugging purposes:

# Parameters you should include:
# These options will insist that the Mailstation authenticate itself
# against the user accounts on the server. The PAP protocol will be used
# instead of the CHAP.
login
auth
passive
proxyarp
+pap
-chap
server.ip.address.here:mailstation.ip.address.here

# Parameters that the Mailstation will apparently demand through the
# negotiation phase, so you might want to set them now and save time:
default-asyncmap
default-mru
nomagic
novj

# Parameters which you should consider using when debugging the link:
debug
kdebug 7

Now, edit the /etc/ppp/pap-secrets file. This provides the Mailstation
with the permission needed to authenticate against the server for login
purposes. In the instance below, we are using the username “mailuser”.
The password in this file is blank, because we are authenticating against
the login username and password contained on the server.

# Secrets for authentication using PAP
# client server secret IP address
mailuser * “” 16.72.184.49

We will need to edit /etc/mgetty+sendfax/login.config so that pppd will be
started once the Mailstation dials up. Since the Mailstation does not use
a Unix-like username and password prompt, we will start pppd and have the
Mailstation authenticate using the PAP protocol.

/AutoPPP/ – a_ppp /usr/sbin/pppd 115200

Also, make sure the popd service is uncommented in the /etc/services
files. At this point, you should be able to issue the command “telnet
localhost 110” and see a banner from the POP3 server.

Mailstation settings used:

User Name: YourNameHere
Dial-Up No: phone-number-here
E-Mail Address: mailuser@server.name.here
E-Mail Password: mailpass
POP3 Server: server.name.here
SMTP Server: server.name.here
ISP Account: mailuser
ISP Password: mailpass
Primary DNS: dns.server.number.here
Reply-To:

If you are using a single server, all the server names above should be the
same. If your server does not have a DNS server on it, use IP addresses,
rather than names, for the POP3 and SMTP servers. My testing indicates
that use of numeric IP addresses will eliminate the need for an actual DNS
server.

If you are accessing a single server which will perform all functions, you
are essentially done. If you are using more than one system, such as a
separate DNS server or a separate server for mail functions, you will need
to enable IP forwarding. Under IPV4 on Linux, this can be accomplished
by:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Under NetBSD, the equivalent command is:

sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

If you are fortunate enough to have the server connected to the Internet
full time, you do have the opportunity to substitute the email information
for some free email service with POP3 access. For instance, I discovered
that the free email service at nettaxi.com works in this manner. In that
case, you could substitute the following elements in the Mailstation setup
to access the Internet-based email:

E-Mail Address: myemailname@nettaxi.com
E-Mail Password: myemailpassword
POP3 Server: pop1.nettaxi.com
SMTP Server: mail1.nettaxi.com

Note that older forms of the Mailstation (like the one I own) were never
intended to allow the user to modify the server names and other critical
information. It is possible, however, to erase the user information on
the Mailstation and re-enter it. It requires that you enter Mailstation
test mode and perform one of the tests which re-initializes the
user memory. The
I-Appliance BBS contains the information on this simple
procedure.

Marc Bintener writes, “Yesterday, this article on WinInformant resulted in a knee-jerk reaction from the slashdot crowd. Which resulted in this somewhat misguided response from Paul Thurrott. Comments like Linux being more secure than Windows is impossible just shouldn’t go without some kind of educated response. So John Buswell has responded on TuxPPC.”

NewsFactor Network writes: “Microsoft has reportedly reimbursed the legal fees of the nine states that have settled their antitrust suits against the company, to the tune of approximately US$10 million. The company also will also be required to pay the legal fees of the remaining nine states and the District of Columbia, once those cases are resolved. However, although federal law mandates that corporations found accountable for violations of antitrust laws must reimburse the costs those states incurred for prosecution, they are not obligated to pay for litigation costs incurred by the federal government.”

SEUL.org: “There has been a lot of effort in the last two weeks around Michael Williams’s idea of an open source version of the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Zone
Information Server (ZIS). To recap, the SIF is an XML schema proposed by a consortium of software vendors to allow compliant programs to exchange data. The ZIS is a “gatekeeper”
program that registers the application programs as to what type of data they provide (each “type” can be registered to only one app at a time).”

KDE.org: “My main project is KOrganizer. Kandy is another application I’m responsible for (synchronising data on a
mobile phone with the corresponding KDE apps). Recently I rewrote the KDE addressbook API, and
finally I’m still trying to make kdepim a suite of integrated tools for managing personal data on the desktop
and on mobile devices in a consistent way. The first result of this is KSync, a generic solution for syncing.”