Posted on LWN.net: This is the fifth revision of Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (codename `potato’)
which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a
few corrections of serious bugs. Those who frequently update from
security.debian.org won’t have to update many packages.

– by Tina Gasperson –
I thought Linuxdot.org was OK right from the start. But I really thought
it was cool after I saw the original, fresh content and the artfully
presented “Newbies Linux manual.”Nothing about the layout of Linuxdot is distracting or unusual. That’s a
good thing in my opinion; as I’ve said before, black backgrounds are
juvenile at best and unreadable jumbles of gobbley-gook at worst. Linuxdot’s design is
patterned after the standard weblog layout that most tech news sites
(including NewsForge) follow. It has a plain white background, a simple logo, and no graphics, save a few small icons.

The staff posts headlines and links to news stories of interest, much
like NewsForge does, and surrounds these with news feeds from other
Linux/Open Source sites, like Slashdot, LWN, LinuxToday, The Register, and yes,
NewsForge.

None of this is particularly exciting. (Except maybe the NewsForge
feed.) But it’s useful.

The Linux Newbies manual, however, is exciting. It explains what Linux
is and how to use it in clear, concise, unintimidating language. (It
does not teach installation because, the author says, of the differences
in installation procedures for each distribution — but installation is
getting easier and more automated with each release, and just about
anyone with a fairly recent hardware configuration and standard
components can do it without a problem.)

The manual will teach you how to login, create a user account, and go
from there. Toward the end, you’ll learn how to write a Perl script or
compile a C program. Laurence Hunter wrote this manual, and did a fine
job at it. It is current, too, with the last update done on January 5,
2002.

The other exciting part of Linuxdot is the columns pages. Hunter, along
with Bill Turner, Stewart Hepburn, and Peter Smart, have filed a
collection of interesting and recent content that includes tutorials,
reviews, and editorials. Perhaps one of the most potentially interesting
and informative is the column by Hunter about Linux from Scratch. I
assumed he would detail his distro-creating adventure for us, but alas,
the column is merely a quick overview of the process. He made it sound
simple, but we have to think that it’s not all quite that easy.

Some other columns at Linuxdot include “Open Source, the GPL, and why it’s important to you” by Bill
Turner, “Linux Java intro” by Stewart Hepburn, and “The new trouble with
crypto” by Peter Smart. Go take a look at Linuxdot — I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

Lisa writes, “The O’Reilly Open Source Convention Call For Participation is up. They’re especially seeking presentations that invoke open source’s innovative, do-more-with-less origins and address the challenges of today’s economic turbulence. It will be held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina July 22-26, 2002.”

SWsoft, Inc., an advanced
server and networking software technology company, today announced the
release of Virtuozzo 2.0, an upgrade of the advanced 1.0 technology that
brings mainframe-like functionality to commodity Intel-based architecture.
Virtuozzo enables service providers the flexibility to offer service-level
agreements (SLAs) and affordable dedicated server plans, in addition to
giving Fortune 1000 enterprises server-consolidation capabilities.

Virtuozzo will replace virtual Web host technology, as it supports shared,
dedicated and virtual private servers and affordably offers customers
advanced and dedicated server capabilities, such as e-commerce and database
functions. To the growing number of companies who are looking to establish
or increase the sophistication of their Web presence, they get the full
support of dedicated servers to host their business-critical applications at
a much lower – closer to that of shared – price point.

Virtuozzo 2.0 is unique and comprised of the following features:

• Multi-tenancy – Hundreds of customers share a single, physical server,
  even though to them it appears as if they have their own dedicated
  environment
• Virtualization – Virtualizes CPU resources and appears to customers as a
  stand-alone, dedicated server
• Resource management – Enables systems administrators to control the
  customer resource levels and offer service-level agreements (SLAs) and
  quality of service guarantees
• Clustering – Allows customers to transparently move in-between servers,
  without affecting the quality of the network

Virtuozzo 2.0 works with Intel-based commodity servers and allows companies
of any size email, firewalls, domain name service (DNS) and other
functionalities usually found only in the enterprise.

“Virtuozzo is the multi-tenancy technology behind our HSPcomplete solution
and is the only solution designed to allow Web hosting companies manage
their data center as a single resource and serve hundreds of customer on a
single, physical server,” said Craig Oda, VP, Business Development, SWsoft.
“As the Internet more deeply permeates the fabric of traditional business,
small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will need a more sophisticated Web
presence. Virtuozzo 2.0 surpasses the Virtual Web Host and enables Web
hosting companies to offer a wide-range of shared and dedicated server
capabilities, at lower price points.”

1-Net, the largest broadband provider in Singapore, upgraded to Virtuozzo
2.0 and used the virtualization, resource management and clustering features
to offer customers a full suite of hosting services – from shared Web
hosting for small- and medium-sized businesses to cluster configurations for
large enterprises. Hosting service providers like 1-Net can easily support
hundreds of customers, each with their own full-featured virtual private
servers sharing a single physical server, without the need for additional
manpower resources.

“1-Net saw enormous potential for a hosting service that would not require
customers to actually own hardware and yet allow them to have access to
dedicated hardware and other resources that are virtually their own,” said
Luke Lee, Director, Business Development Manager, 1-Net. “The Virtuozzo
technology is the backbone of our Web hosting business and has saved us
valuable time, money and resources with customer maintenance and
provisioning.”

Virtuozzo 2.0 is the technology behind HSPcomplete, a full-lifecycle hosting
automation solution that helps manage and provision network, e-commerce and
operations processes. HSPcomplete helps solve business and infrastructure
challenges and is the only hosting automation solution that includes a full
set of business, infrastructure, reseller and customer tools.

For more information on the Virtuozzo 2.0 technology, please see
www.virtuozzo.com or www.sw-soft.com or contact sales@sw-soft.com.

About SWsoft, Inc.
SWsoft is an advanced server and networking software technology company
focused on the development of its patent-pending Virtuozzo technology with
end-to-end solutions and services for hosting service providers such as
Internet data centers, application service providers, managed hosting
providers and Web hosters. SWsoft’s products deliver powerful, comprehensive
solutions that can help data centers automate management, accelerate
operations and provide excellent return on investments.

For more information about SWsoft, please visit www.sw-soft.com.

ZDNet reports on the progress of the Linux-powered Simputer. “The handheld computer is commonly seen as a geek toy for affluent
mobile professionals. However, the Simputer will change all that by bringing portable
computing and the information age to developing countries.

The finished product will be slightly larger than a Palm handheld but will operate as a simple
portable computer.”

Ralf S. Engelschall writes: “A flexible and powerful software packaging facility, OpenPKG eases
installation and administration of Unix software across several
platforms. It primarily targets the Unix platforms FreeBSD, Linux
and Solaris, but is portable across mostly all modern Unix flavors.
Consolidating different vendor approaches into a unified architecture,
it assists in administration of large networks previously complicated by
nonconformant systems.
OpenPKG leverages proven technologies like Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)
and neatly provides an additional system layer on top of the operating
system. It is a fully self-contained with minimal external dependencies
(no RPM pre-installation required), and installs itself by means of a
tricky bootstrapping procedure with minimal operating system intrusion.
OpenPKG especially supports multiple installation instances on the same
system.

The official press release you can find here at OpenPKG.org.”

Martin Andrew (a.k.a. Mayhem) writes: You can now download the 2.4.18-pre3 Kernel patch from Kernel.org, changelog follows.

pre3:

- Cris arch merge				(Bjorn Wesen)
- Finish PPC merge				(Benjamin Herrenschmidt)
- Add Dell PowerEdge 2400 to 
  "use BIOS to reboot" blacklist		(Arjan van de Ven)
- Avoid potential oops at module unload with 
  cyclades driver				(Andrew Morton)
- Gracefully handle SCSI initialization 
  failures					(Pete Zaitcev)
- USB update					(Greg KH)
- Fix potential oops while ejecting ide cds 	(Zwane Mwaikambo)
- Unify page freeing codepaths 			(Benjamin LaHaise)
- Miata dma corruption workaround 		(Richard Henderson)
- Fix vmalloc corruption problem on machines 
  with virtual dcaches				(Ralf Baechle)
- Reiserfs fixes				(Oleg Drokin)
- DiskOnChip driver update			(David Woodhouse)
- Do not inherit page locking rules across 
  fork/exec					(Dave Anderson)
- Add DRM 4.0 for XFree 4.0 users convenience	(Christoph Hellwig)
- Replace .text.lock with .subsection 		(Keith Owens)
- IrDA bugfixes					(Jean Tourrilhes)

Paul Miller writes: “BBC News Online’s Alfred Hermida in Las Vegas says that the Japanese electronics company Sharp has bucked the trend in handheld computing by launching a new personal digital assistant (PDA) using the Linux operating system.”

Dear Lindows.com Friend,

We thought you’d want to be kept informed of developments at
Lindows.com(TM) as we close out 2001 and head into 2002.

First off, I have to apologize for not releasing our Sneak Preview as
we talked about doing by the end of December. We're very close, but
unfortunately an issue came up. (For some screenshots of LindowsOS(TM)
in action see www.lindows.com/screenshots) 

We formed Lindows.com just 5 months ago with the intention of
bringing choice to the computing world. We can't claim the issue
hasn't slowed us down, but it won't deter us. I'd ask for a bit extra
patience during this time. 

A few of you have asked how you can get more involved and so we have
launched our Insider program. To signup go to www.lindows.com/signup
It's a way for those with the inclination to get more information and
insights into our company and to give us their assistance as we forge
ahead. We don't imagine this program is for everyone - just those who
care passionately about what we're doing and want to give us all the
assistance they can to help us succeed. 

We still plan on selling the first version of LindowsOS when we
release version 1.0 in the early part of 2002. It will be a modern,
affordable and feature rich operating system. With your patience and
support we can do it. 

Here's to a great 2002 with lots of choice! 

Michael Robertson 

CEO of Lindows.com 

michaelr@lindows.com

NewsFactor Network writes: “Several Internet security companies disclosed Wednesday that they have been sent a virus designed to infect users of Microsoft’s evolving .NET architecture. The virus in question, W.32 Donut, is what antivirus firm Symantec Corporation labeled a “concept virus.” Because .NET has not reached its deployment stage, W.32 Donut has little chance of causing any widespread damage. However, the malicious code does show that virus writers are paying close attention to the new .NET architecture [in order to] attempt to learn it before the framework will be available on most systems”