LinuxSecurity: “This week, perhaps the most interesting articles include “Proxy Internet Access With Squid,” “Secrets of Security Policy
Development Revealed,” “Building an E-mail Virus Detection System for Your Network,” and “The Evolution of Intrusion
Detection Systems.”

Meredith Derby writes:”Imagine sitting in Austin, TX and managing desktops in Chicago. “With Windows today, that’s just impossible,” due to Windows’ inadequate remote administration tools, said Jim Curtin. Viewing those desktops from the network, however, is possible when Windows is run on the Linux operating system. Linux’ strong remote administration is just one of the reasons why hosting Windows desktops on a Linux server can help centralize desktop management, according to Curtin, President and CEO of Austin, TX-based NeTraverse, Inc. NeTraverse’s products allow Windows applications to run on Linux. So, searchWindowsManageability asked Curtin to help explain how integrating Linux and Windows works and offer some tips to doing it well.

sWM: Why do companies want to run Windows applications on Linux, or Windows and Linux together?

Curtin: Linux is more efficient in its use of hardware. Those who are running Windows are being forced to upgrade hardware. They’re also just spending too much administering and managing. By lifting up Windows applications and sticking Linux underneath, they get better uptime. Linux also has better remote administration tools. It’s more easily accessible from the network to do configuration, servicing, support and updating. You also improve security of the overall system by introducing Linux. Linux is as much Unix as you can get, so it has the security and robustness of Unix. So, there’s security, reliability, manageability. There are the productivity benefits of starting and stopping faster, and it’s less buggy.

sWM: How does emulation work?

Curtin: We call what we do integration and virtualization, but it achieves the effect of emulation. We require systems to run on the Intel platform, the Microsoft native environment. DOS instruction sets access directly through the processor, and the host services are integrated with Linux. The applications write to the Linux file system. The applications are managed by the Linux task scheduler. So, the device drivers are virtualized: the keyboard, mouse, video, sound and printer. Microsoft thinks it’s talking to a Microsoft keyboard or display, but we virtualize it into a Linux interface.

sWM: What is the difference between various emulation technologies?

Curtin: There’s us, VMWare and WINE. VMWare offers you a complete virtual machine. The file system and kernel are virtualized. You’re running a complete OS in a virtual machine. Virtual machine architecture allows you to reduce your hardware cost and have one support professional run Novell, Mac, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT and Linux.

The full emulation architecture is WINE. If you’re running Word or PowerPoint, for example, there’s literally tens of thousands of calls those applications make. WINE takes all those application calls. It tries to create a pseudo interface on the Linux side, so it maps the Windows application call into Linux. So, it thinks it’s writing to Windows, but there’s no Windows involved. It completely removes Windows, and the applications write directly to Linux. We’re in the middle.

We use part virtual machine, part emulation and part integration. We leverage the DOS piece of the Linux OS and the Windows integration piece.

sWM: When would you use emulation over VMWare’s virtual machine?

Curtin: Well, complete emulation is not going to work. VMWare can be used in three markets. One is in support departments, where they have to support multiple operating systems but don’t want to buy and maintain hardware for every single OS. The second is the development environment, where they want to develop in one environment and test in another. Again, they want to save on hardware. The third is like the mainframe on a PC model, where you create different virtual machines to host multiple servers on one machine. That’s what IBM is doing with Linux on the mainframe.

sWM: Is Linux being adopted by enterprises more frequently now?

Curtin: There’s no doubt a lot of enterprises are using Linux legitimately. A lot have adopted it in the periphery: the mail server, the Web server or the firewall. Companies are starting to run back office applications on it, too. As far as the desktop, it hasn’t seemed like the best thing to do. We see people actually scrapping the whole fat desktop model and go to a thin client model. And those thin clients are more likely to be running Linux. We haven’t seen any 50,000-seat enterprises go to Linux, though.

sWM: Do you have any tips to running Window applications on Linux?

Curtin: It’s pretty straightforward. Move as much of your state, which is your applications, data, configurations, and all your settings, to the server to break the desktop hardware upgrade cycle. Then, all your future processor investments and licensing management can be done centrally. You won’t have to live in this decentralized world.

For more Windows and Linux-related stories, visit searchWindowsManageability.com

“

CNET: “Search engines spiders crawling the Web are increasingly stumbling upon passwords, credit
card numbers, classified documents and even computer vulnerabilities that can be exploited
by hackers.” Cool, let’s all try it now.

Wired: “Spend the extra $100 for Microsoft’s XBox, or go for Nintendo’s GameCube? The real question is predicting which will be the console of the future, and, unfortunately, there’s no clear way to tell. And don’t forget about Playstation2.”

The Register: “Good news! Windows XP’s launch prompted a 24.3 per cent increase in sales of
PCs in Japan, according to Asiabiztech. Bad news! sales of PCs in Japan were
down 16.9 per cent following the Windows XP launch.”

Jeremy Andrews writes: “This week, KernelTrap spoke with OpenBSD creator and maintainer, Theo de Raadt. OpenBSD is widely hailed as being the most secure OS available. The latest version, OpenBSD 3.0, is slated for an official release on December 1st.”

– By John Lettice of The Register –
Next year’s launch of Microsoft’s network gaming service for Xbox has been
pre-empted by an open source/Linux development, Xbox Gateway. Bill is no doubt
absolutely ecstatic about this, but he can console himself with the thought that at
least all the work XboxGW has put into the system is on the outside – the box itself
remains unsullied by viral GPL-related stuff. XboxGW expands the functionality of Xbox system link games, working rather like
an Ethernet bridge, and according to the developers both bridging Xbox game traffic
and splitting it up so it goes between the right players. If two people with broadband
links use it, then they can play one another across the internet. Microsoft itself
proposes to offer this facility, but not until next summer.

The system currently runs on Linux servers, but it’s not absolutely necessary for
users to install Linux (this would kind of reduce the potential market for it), because
users of other OSes can just download a boot disk. Obviously you need a PC, and
equally obviously you need the teensiest bit of networking to join the Xbox, the PC
and the broadband connection together.

Limitations at the moment include it not supporting PC Card network adapters or USB
broadband connections. The developers are working on implementations for Win32,
PPC Linux, Mac OSX and BSD, and say they intend to release the source code
when they deem it fully stable. Now, who’s going to be the first to get one of these to
run on an Xbox?

All Content copyright 2001 The Register

Wired: “Just what all geeks need for the holidays: perfume that smells like a computer. “Because the olfactory is nothing tangible,” a spokesman says, “it’s like a digital experience,” Uh, OK.”

The Dot: “David Sweet wrote in to tell us that the updated, German version of the excellent (and free) KDE 2
development book, KDE 2.0 Development, is now available online at Andamooka. David extends his
thanks to Petra Alm and Dirk Louis (translation), Karl Heinz Zimmer and Carsten Pfeiffer (tech editing) and
Boris Karnikowski (Andamooka version).”

Kelly McNeill writes: “Analysts are forecasting the emergence of a new platform for Internet commerce, based on two innovations. First, there will be executable software code that resides on users’ PCs and mobile devices and lets one machine or individual to talk to any other one on the Internet. Second, there will be tiny integrated circuits embedded within physical objects that will extend the Internet into the material world. This new “X Internet,” as Forrester Research calls it, will begin to emerge around 2004 and is expected to eclipse the Web as the primary e-commerce medium.”