Linux Weekly News has this week’s edition of Debian Weekly News, discussing the upcoming freeze of Debian/woody and a number of fixes.

KDE dot reports that KC KDE issue #27 has been released and this issue has some good information.

ZDNet has this short item: ”
IBM released software on Tuesday to make it easier for Linux computer administrators to control
some IBM storage systems. Big Blue released a Linux version of its Global Array Manager,
software for installing, configuring, monitoring and managing ‘arrays’ of hard disks connected to
a server.”

dot.kde.org has information on printing.kde.org going live, including links to screenshots, an FAQ, and other documentation.

Slashdot points to an article at Embedded.com questioning Linux on embedded devices. The evidence seems to be that Lineo had to lay off some people, like every other tech company in the world.

Ted Kenney writes, “It stands to reason that accessing data from memory will be faster than from physical media. Developers of embedded systems on Linux are encountering a new type of DBMS, the main memory database (MMDB), which claims breakthrough performance and availability via memory-only processing.

But doesn’t database caching achieve the same result? And if complete elimination of disk access is the goal, why not deploy a traditional database on a RAM-disk, which creates a file system in memory?

McObject’s new white paper, “Main Memory vs. RAM-Disk Databases: A Linux-based Comparison” addresses performance and availability implications of different approaches to database management in embedded systems running on Linux. The paper is available at www.mcobject.com/downloads.

McObject’s benchmark tests the company’s MMDB against a widely used embedded database, db.linux, which is used in both traditional (disk-based) and RAM-disk modes. Deployment on RAM-disk boosts the traditional database?s performance by as much as 74 percent, but still lags the memory-only database in this test, performed on Red Hat Linux version 6.2.

Fundamental architectural differences explain the disparity. Performance overhead in disk-based databases includes data transfer and duplication, unneeded recovery logic and, ironically, caching functions intended to avoid disk access. None of these can be “turned off” when the database is deployed in memory. In contrast, the MMDB is streamlined to provide only the functions required for memory-based data management in real-time embedded systems.

More information about McObject is available at www.mcobject.com.

ZDNet UK reports: “The Queen, or at least her new Web hosting company, has dumped GNU/Linux in favor of
Microsoft IIS Web servers, ending the royal family’s two-year flirtation with the
open-source operating system.”

Tosatti: “Duh. I forgot to add tcp_diag.c and tcp_diag.h in -pre3, which avoid it to
compile correctly. Well, here goes -pre4 which fixes that.”

– Added missing tcp_diag.c and tcp_diag.h (me)

Curl Corporation, the leading software
infrastructure company for the development and delivery of content in a
Web-based environment, today announced a Technology Preview program to
support developers using Curl(tm) technology on the Linux operating system.
The Technology Preview is a unique opportunity for the developer community
to test and experiment with the Curl(tm) content language and help define
the upcoming Linux version of the Surge(tm) Lab Integrated Development
Environment (IDE).

The current testing environment allows developers to run and build Curl
applets on Linux within the Surge Lab IDE using the Surge Lab Applet Runner.
The Surge Lab IDE provides a unique and interactive environment for
developers to experiment with and modify sample Curl code and to build rich
and dynamic Web applications using the Curl content language. The Surge
Applet Runner takes the place of a Web browser and provides an environment
in which developers can interact with applets.

Traditionally, Linux has been adopted to create server applications, which
tend to be large, use a lot of memory and can hinder the performance of the
server when users want to download applications. As a client-side language,
Curl reduces download size and moves computation from the server to the
client, thereby delivering the speed and interactivity of a desktop
application to the Web browser. By using the Curl language within the Linux
operating environment, developers can create XML client applications locally
instead of static HTML pages on the server, and can personalize the look and
feel of the application without ever having to interact with the server.

“We believe that Linux is the defacto operating system of the X-Internet and
we want to provide customers with the best technology possible for building
the next generation Web applications,” said Bob Young, CEO and chairman of
Curl Corporation. “By working with the developers and customers to create
the Surge Lab IDE for Linux, we will not only succeed in that effort but
also continue to bring innovation to the development community worldwide.”
Participation in the Surge Lab IDE Linux Technology Preview is currently
limited to 100 alpha users but, based on demand, participation will be
expanded in the future. Curl is inviting the participating Linux developer
community to help form the commercial version of this platform for the Curl
content language by finding bugs and making suggestions for product
features. For more information about the Technology Preview or Curl
Corporation, please visit www.curl.com or
http://www.curl.com/html/products/linux_main.jsp.

About Curl Corporation
Curl Corporation is a software infrastructure company whose content
development and delivery platform enables true client/server functionality
in a Web-based environment. The platform consists of a unified software
environment that incorporates and extends the capabilities of existing Web
technologies in a single integrated content language, and that uses the
power of client-side processing to bring desktop application functionality
to Internet, intranet and extranet applications. The result is better
performing and more powerful Web-based applications; reduced development,
deployment and maintenance costs; and more effective use of existing server
and bandwidth capacity. Curl Corporation was named by Computerworld as one
of the top 100 companies to watch in 2002. For more information, visit
www.curl.com.

Curl and Surge Lab are trademarks of Curl Corporation. All other trademarks
appearing in this press release are the property of their respective owners.

Marc Bintener writes, “TuxPPC has a quite positive review of SuSE Linux 7.3 for PowerPC. I quote: ‘Considering all the positive aspects of SuSE Linux, rapidity, stability, ease of use, enourmous amount of included software, the manuals and last but not least the free 60 day installation support, I think SuSE Linux has made it’s way to being the best retail Linux distribution currently available for PowerPC machines.'”