Info World reviews Jabber Enterprise IM, the Open Source instant messaging solution that enables users to chat with other Jabber clients, as well as with users of AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Bottom line: “For companies
not already using integrated collaborative environment solutions — such as those provided
by IBM Lotus and Microsoft, which already include embedded IM functions — Jabber is clearly a solution to consider.”

IDG News Service reports that Napster may be up and running in the “near-term, foreseeable future.”

AustralianIT investigates whether the end-user licence agreement for
FrontPage 2002 prohibits using the software in connection with
Web sites that have disparaged Microsoft.

It’s already been announced elsewhere, but PRNewswire has a press release. andrakeSoft today announced
the immediate availability of Mandrake Linux 8.1 for download via different
Internet servers through http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ . With this new
version, MandrakeSoft widens its range of services and confirms its commitment
to offer the most complete, user-friendly and server-adapted Linux operating
system available.

Wired.com reports on the curious case of Brian K. West, who has pleaded guilty to cracking a newspaper Web site. West was featured on a handful of Open Source news sites as being unjustly charged. Here’s Wired.com: “An Oklahoma hacker portrayed in his community as being unjustly prosecuted admits he invaded a news site with malicious intent.”

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

* Update the VM to Rik’s latest bits
* Merge asorted minor bugfixes
* Merge initial speakup hooks

2.4.9-ac16

o Fix VM breakage from my merge error (Rik van Riel)
o Shmem race fixs (Hugh Dickins)
o Improve scan_swap_map optimisiations (Hugh Dickins)
o Fix swapoff race (Hugh Dickins)
o Fix add to swap cache race (Hugh Dickins)
o Remove the PG_swap_cache bit (Hugh Dickins)
o Remove unused functions (Hugh Dickins)
o Remove unused argument from get_swap_page (Hugh Dickins)
o Make use of exclusive_swap_page when we can (Hugh Dickins)
o Make swap almost ready to lose BKL (Hugh Dickins)
o Add initial pieces for EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL (me)
| kernel symbols for GPL only use
o smc-ircc module inits (Keith Owens)
o Update the hp100 driver (Jaroslav Kysela)
o Update kernel-doc for struct and enum (Tim Jansen)
o Fix mac89x0 skb->len poking (David Weinehall)
o Big chunk of MODULE_LICENSE updates (Arjan van de Ven)
o Add the tainting proc hook (Keith Owens)
o Nand flash driver build fixes (David Woodhouse)
o Fix self-parenting problems in clone properly (Dave McCracken)
o CPIA camera fix (Michael Marxmeier)
o USB serial fixes (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o Fix cisco hdlc protocol for isdn (Bjoern Zeeb)
o Further tunnel driver fixes (Taral)
o ISDN isar driver small fix (Karsten Keil)
o Further sscanf fixes (Paul)
o Fix iph5526 clash with ptrace namespace (Dave Jones)
o First block of block device updates from Al (Al Viro)
o Fix atm ioctl bug (Mitchel Blank)
o ISAPnP updates (Jaroslav Kysela)
o Merge IBM MWave support (Paul Schroeder)
o ISDN return value fixes (Andrew Morton)
o Add Acerscan 1240ut to the USB scanners (Morgan Collins)
o Fix init includes for aironet4500 (Keith Packard)
o Fix GART docs to reference DRI not utah (Robet Love)
o Reiserfs speed ups (Chris Mason)
o Maestro init fixups (Adam J Richter)
o Lock function cleanup (Trond Myklebust)
o Make the DRM options clearer (Keith Owens)
o Add compiler.h from 2.4.10
o Update ns83820 driver (Ben LaHaise)

2.4.9-ac15
o Rik’s next VM handling update (Rik van Riel)
o Update mousedrivers documentation (me)
o Update 53c700 drivers (James Bottomley)
o USB serial pl2303 fixes (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o USB serial modcount fixes (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o USB devfs fix for skeleton driver (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o Fix possible double read_unlock in personality
handling (Christoph Hellwig)
o Switch to maintainers sysrq fix (Crutcher Dunavant)
o Further pnpbios fixes (Thomas Hood)
o Delete the right ipip tunnel (Taral)
o Coda fixes (Jan Harkes)
o Fix sscanf (Paul)
o Clean up the semaphore fix (Leonid Igolnik)
o Merge minimal hooks for speakup (Kirk Reiser)
| Speakup itself needs more cleaning up yet

From The Register: “Things we liked about version 8.0 of Mandrake were its choice of
ReiserFS as the default file system – yum – and the Software
Manager, which makes the business of installing new software look
pretty straightforward. (If you’re being cynical, you could say it takes
dependency hell out of a console, and puts in a nice GUI dialog, but
we still reckon it’s a plus).

Things we didn’t like included its refusal to compile power
management stuff for our notebook, the absence of telnet in the
default installation, and the weird glitch in the installer that puts the
bootloader in the wrong place. (We’re referring to the x86 version
here – LinuxPPC version doesn’t get along with the Nvidia card on
our newish G4 just yet).”

TheRegister reports that the BSA is suing five UK companies for allegedly using unlicensed
software, and it has announced legal settlements with five more.

– By Jeff Field –

Today, I’m reviewing two of the latest hard drives from Maxtor, the D540X 80-gigabyte drive and 536DX 100-gigabyte drive. With Maxtor announcing its new 160GB drive, prices for drives in the range of 80 to 100 gigabytes will drop in price, making drives in this range an excellent choice for those are are in need of more space but don’t necessarily need 160 gigabytes of it. Read on to see how these two particular drives stack up.The 536DX and D540X are both 5400RPM drives. Because of that, they seem to be aimed more at the consumer market than at the workstation market, where storage speed is much more of a factor. For the average PC user, 5400 RPM drives are fine, with most of these drives used for storage of MP3s, and things of that nature. Those who need this sort of capacity for things such as video editing and other disk-intensive tasks are going to want higher speed drives.

The 80-gigabyte D540X has two platters of 40 gigabytes each that give it the 80-gigabyte capacity. The 536DX, on the other hand, has three 33-gigabyte platters that make up its 100-gigabyte capacity. The 536DX, which is being succeeded by Maxtor’s new D540X Ultra 133 line of drives, will only be available until October 31st.

When I reviewed the Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, I discussed Seagate’s various technologies aimed at a quieter, more reliable drive. Maxtor certainly wasn’t going to rest on its heals, as it is now using its own Silent Store technology. These drives are as unobtrusive as the Barracuda IV. Maxtor is also using what it calls Quiet Drive Technology in newer models, which is the same type of Fluid Dynamic Bearing motor used in the Barracuda IV. Such developments are most welcomed by people like myself, who value quiet computers.

Performance

System Configuration
Athlon 1.4GHz
256 Megabytes DDR RAM from Crucial
Gigabyte 7DXR motherboard
Slackware 8.0
Kernel 2.4.9
Filesystem used is ReiserFS
bonnie++ results
Bonnie++ is a hard drive benchmark that tests the writing and reading
from both a single large file (such as that of a database) and many files (like a proxy, or mail program). It is
useful for simulating performance under such applications. Bonnie++ was run

Bonnie++ results
Sequential Output
Drive	Per-Character	Block	Rewrite
536DX	12468 K/sec, 77% CPU	14587 K/sec, 9% CPU	7345K/sec, 04% CPU
D540X	15835 K/sec, 99% CPU	36753 K/sec, 23% CPU	9901K/sec, 05% CPU
Barracuda IV	15883 K/sec, 98% CPU	46820 K/sec, 30% CPU	10171K/sec, 06% CPU
Sequential Input			Random
Drive	Per-Character	Block	Random
536DX	12818 K/sec, 70% CPU	29723 K/sec, 11% CPU	155.7 Seeks/sec, 0% CPU
D540X	10032 K/sec, 54% CPU	32319 K/sec, 12% CPU	162.8 Seeks/sec, 0% CPU
Barracuda IV	10622 K/sec, 58% CPU	40949 K/sec, 15% CPU	210.9 Seeks/sec, 0% CPU
Sequential Create
Drive	Create	Read	Delete
536DX	21025 /sec, 100% CPU	none	25278/sec, 98% CPU
D540X	20000 /sec, 92% CPU	none	26391/sec, 99% CPU
Barracuda IV	21993 /sec, 99% CPU	none	26431/sec, 100% CPU
Random Create
Drive	Create	Read	Delete
536DX	20198 /sec, 99% CPU	none	20394/sec, 99% CPU
D540X	20896 /sec, 100% CPU	none	21217/sec, 101% CPU
Barracuda IV	16810 /sec, 84% CPU	none	20601/sec, 100% CPU

You can see here that for the most part, these drives can keep up with the Barracuda IV from Seagate, with the exception of a few key places, namely seeks per second and block transfers. Overall, the bonnie performance of both the D540X and the 536DX is very good for drives of their class.

hdparm results

The hdparm tests give you the raw throughput of the device — essentially, the best you can possibly hope for. Uncached is
the buffered speed of the disk, without the use of the operating system cache. Cached results test the perform of the RAM
and CPU more than they test the drive itself.

hdparm -t (Uncached) Results
536DX	29.36 MB/sec
D540X	32.16 MB/sec
ST380020A	37.43 MB/sec
hdparm -T (Cached) Results
536DX	206.45 MB/sec
D540X	203.17 MB/sec
Barracuda IV	181.51 MB/sec

Here we find that the 5400-RPM drives do lag quite a bit behind the 7200-RPM Barracuda, by about eight megabytes per second. We also see how varied cached results can be, once again pointing out that cached drive results really only reflect memory and CPU performance, and can vary due to the slightest factor. While both of the Maxtor drives lag behind a 7200-RPM drive, they do very well for 5400-RPM drives. I’d go as far as to say that the speed on these is excellent for drives of their size and type. I would think the average PC user would be fine with the performance either of these drives.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a lot of capacity, with decent performance and a low price, you should seriously consider these two drives from Maxtor. Both offer capacity and performance to satisfy most Linux users. Just think of all the different distributions you could fit into 100 gigabytes. Or all the MP3s and other such things you could use to fill even the biggest drives. The 80-gigabyte D540X is available for $174 on Pricewatch, while the 536DX can be found there for around $240.

NationalPost.com checks in with former Linux distro Corel. “Software-maker Corel Corp. said yesterday it made a small profit in its fiscal third quarter, but added economic ‘obstacles’ in coming months could hurt its bottom line.”