Woody Hughes writes: “When I asked my buddy, Corvos, what he thought of Rune, the medieval game released by Loki a few months ago, he made the immediate response of, “Those are nice pics, but I’d rather play something where I could blow stuff up with a few cluster bombs, and a ‘bunker buster.'” I initially laughed at his response, and then I felt a wake of silence come over me. Check out the full review at http://www.reactivelinux.com“

DebianPlanet: “I’ve just installed an elderly 486 with 340M HDD and 12MB RAM with the base installation from latest
“Potato” floppies. 17 floppies later I have a base system but the PLIP module doesn’t want to install,
claiming unresolved symbols. Clues welcome…”

Monica Ortiz writes: “Berkeley, CA — November 1, 2001 — Linux operating system scalability and robustness are quickly catching up to the conventional UNIX systems according to a recent study being presented next week at the Annual Linux Showcase & Conference (ALS 2001) in Oakland, California.The Linux Function Review, published in late September by leading technology assessment firm D. H. Brown Associates (DHBA), shows that the strongest of Linux distributions have surpassed the weakest UNIX systems in scalability and robustness. Although UNIX operating systems remain the standard for enterprise level computing systems, Linux distributions do not fall far behind as they increase the capability of their bundled network infrastructure software and improve directory and security services.

“In previous evaluations, Linux made a good fit with certain key applications such as entry file-and-print sharing or web servers,” said Tony Iams, DHBA Vice President of Systems Software Research, who is presented the findings at ALS 2001. “The growth of its functional capabilities, based on the 2.4 kernel, expand the range of suitable deployment to include a broad range of departmental and workgroup applications.”

The evaluation utilized over a hundred functional categories to compare five major commercial Linux distributions — Caldera eServer 3.1, Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, Red Hat Linux 7.1, SuSE Linux 7.2, and TurboLinux Server 6.5 — against Caldera UnixWare 7.1, Compaq Tru64 UNIX 5.1, IBM AIX 5L v5.1, Hewlett-Packard HP-UX 11I, and Sun Solaris 8.

“D. H. Brown is a technical analyst firm of the highest reputation and competence. They have developed a model for operating system analysis that is without peer and Tony (Iams) is their expert on UNIX and Linux operating systems,” said Jon “maddog” Hall, USENIX Director and ALS 2001 Invited Talks Program Chair. “By exposing both the strong and weak parts of Linux as compared to commercial systems, developers become aware of which parts of Linux they need to improve and how much the user community values the planned enhancements.”

The review is a match with the conference’s objective of providing Linux professionals with a highly technical and cogent research sought after by leading computer companies.

“Technical, accurate, unbiased information is vital in deciding whether Linux is capable of supporting the type of computing that companies are currently doing with more expensive, proprietary, and closed-source UNIX system,” said Hall. “These are exactly the kind of studies, from exactly the kind of analyst company, that companies like Sun, Compaq, and IBM drive future engineering plans. Presenting this kind of research is what ALS was formed for.”

“A Competitive Assessment of Linux in the Enterprise” will be presented by Tony Iams on Friday, November 9, 2001 at the Oakland Marriott Hotel. Registration for ALS 2001 is free of charge and available on-site starting Monday, November 5, 2001. A full conference program is available online at www.linuxshowcase.org.

###

____________________________________________
The 5th Annual Linux Showcase and Conference
November 5-10, 2001
Oakland Marriott City Center
Oakland, California
http://www.linuxshowcase.org

About the USENIX Association
USENIX is the Advanced Computing Systems Association. For over 25 years, it has been the leading community for engineers, system administrators, scientists, and technician working on the cutting edge of the computing world. USENIX conferences are the essential meeting grounds for the presentation and discussion of technical advances in all aspects of computing systems. For more information about the USENIX Association, visit http://www.usenix.org

Press Registration: email your name, publication, title, street address, email, phone/fax, and URL to Monica Ortiz at monica@usenix.org.

“

From CNN: “Monitor makers are bringing 17-inch LCDs into the mainstream by pushing their prices below $1000. Two 17-inch models now shipping from Samsung and ViewSonic make persuasive arguments for moving to a big LCD.”

Slashdot is discussing a Cisco interview with Linux founder Dr. Linus Torvalds “about the past, present, and future of Linux and technology.”

– By Grant Gross –

This week’s news featured a lot of conversion stories: Amazon.com’s converting to Linux, a U.S. court converting a lower court’s ruling on posting Linux-related DVD code being free speech, NewsForge/Linux.com’s corporate parent converting to a new name, and the U.S. government antitrust investigators converting to compromisers.

Let’s take these items one at a time, shall we?

Amazon.com announced this week it has saved about $17 million last quarter by switching its servers to Linux. However, the decidedly Windows-faithful site WinInfo noted that the switch was from proprietary Unix, not proprietary Windows.

Posting the DeCSS code, the software that allows Linux users to decode and play DVDs, was ruled as an act of free speech this week. The victory for several webmasters who’d been barred from even posting the code, came at the hands of a California appeals court.

VA Linux Systems, which owns both NewsForge and Linux.com, announced it plans to change its name to VA Software Corp. to better reflect its new focus on its SourceForge collaborative software development package.

The Microsoft antitrust case, at least as far as the U.S. federal government is concerned, is all over but the shouting. The two sides have reached a tentative agreement, and while the settlement doesn’t break up the monopolist giant, it might have some good news for Linux and other Open Source operating systems. One provision may allow computer makers to include alternative operating systems on the machines they sell without Microsoft retaliating.

What’s new?

Netscape 6.2 was released this week.

OpenLinux 64 release 3.1 for Itanium was released by Caldera

The latest “ac” release of the Linux kernel (at least at the time of this writing; that might change soon) is 2.4.13-ac7. The latest “pre” version is 2.4.14-pre7.

Cox passing the torch

Longtime Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox made news this week when he announced he was passing the torch on maintenance of the 2.4 kernel to Marcelo Tosatti. Linux users everywhere should give Cox a big “thank you” for his work. He’ll continue to work on Linux and related issues, he promises.

In other Cox news, as promised, he has begun withholding security details in Linux updates because of controversial U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act could be used against Linux developers.

Windows XP: Slow sales and big security issues

Microsoft’s Windows XP release this month seems to be meeting with a collective yawn from consumers and a collective groan from security experts. Early reports have the operating system ringing up lackluster sales and its copy-protection features vulnerable to crackers.

NewsForge/Linux.com’s Robin “Roblimo” Miller suggests that even if XP is better than past versions of Windows, it’s time for taxpayers to hold government agencies responsible for using an expensive operating system when much cheaper Open Source alternatives are available.

New at NewsForge and Linux.com

Other stories that NewsForge and Linux.com reported first this week:

Guest author Brian Aker does one of our first enterprise-level hardware reviews by testing OmniCluster’s Slotserver PC-on-a-card.

Another guest author, Adam Cutchin, debuts our weekend “community commentary” column by suggesting Linux users shouldn’t expect support from hardware vendors because Linux runs so well on old machines.

News editor Tina Gasperson reports that Open Channel Software decided to remove several references to “Open Source” from its Web site after it was pointed out that some of the software it features isn’t really Open Source at all.

Also, if you’ve been wondering about the changes happening at Linux.com, here’s what’s going on. We’d love to hear what you’d like Linux.com to become.

From CNN: “Linux evangelists are keeping the faith, even when it comes to the elusive Holy Grail of the open-source operating system: taking a significant chunk of the desktop market.”

Ben Martin writes “A build of ferris and all of its dependencies is now available for Redhat 7.2 Enigma. All packages other than what is provided by Redhat are provided to fully ferris enable a Redhat machine.
See http://witme.sourceforge.net/libferris.web/enigma.html for downloads.”

rmorrell on Advogato discusses the role of the FSF in educating projects about the GPL: “I run and fund the SmoothWall firewall project here in the UK and across the globe in all the countries where it’s installed (107 countries in 14 languages). While we strive totally to make sure that we push and promote the GPL everywhere where possible and make our downloads free, complete with GPL compliant source – sometimes it sucks that it isn’t clear how the key core management of FSF don’t make themselves more available to help GPL projects remain clued up as to the direction of proceeding towards commerciality without screwing up a vital message.”

Wired reports: “Under the tentative Microsoft deal with the Justice Department, computer makers could include multiple operating systems in their products” without Microsoft being allowed to retaliate.