Wired: “He coined the term “snail mail.” He founded one of the Internet’s earliest communities. Wherever he goes, others follow. And now Jim Rutt has left the wide world of Web to get software to think.”

LinuxFocus: “Even though there are various graphical interfaces available for Linux the shell still is a very neat tool. The shell is not just a collection of
commands but a really good programming language.You can automate a lot of tasks with it, the shell is very good for system administration
tasks, you can very quickly try out if your ideas work which makes it very useful for simple prototyping and it is very useful for small utilities that
perform some relatively simple tasks where efficiency is less important than ease of configuration, maintenance and portability.
So let’s see now how it works:”

Wired: “What does the word “geek” mean to you? Wired News’ multimedia producer Jeremy Barna visits San Francisco’s geek-inspired Metreon mall and finds out.”

– by Jack Bryar –
Open Source Business –
Updated at 12:46 p.m. EST –

No one ever accused Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina of mishandling
a PR opportunity. However, more than a few observers may have wondered
why HP delayed the formal announcement of its takeover of Compaq
computer until Labor Day night. It was a curious move, but there are a lot of
things that are curious about this HP move and the timing of the announcement was
the least of them. More interesting was the wealth of promises made
to investors and the role that Linux may be playing in corporate
calculations.

Waiting until late Monday night was a curious strategic move for an
executive who has been a master of public relations. Back when Fiorina worked for AT&T, she was the person most responsible for the spinup that launched Lucent Technologies. Fiorina used PR magic
to reposition that tired old vendor of last-generation telecom switches
into a developer of next-generation communications technology. It was
such an impressive performance that it helped her land the CEO’s job at
Hewlett-Packard. So why HP waited to make the announcement until
exactly one minute after East Coast TV stations had gone to bed, on one of the
lowest ranked viewing nights of the year, is a little hard to understand , but it must have been intentional.

Harder to understand is why Fiorina thinks this merger is a
particularly good idea, or what this is going to mean for role that Linux will play
in the combined companies.

In some ways the fit makes sense. HP is a major player in low-end
consumer hardware markets. It dominates in retail outlets ranging from Staples to KMart.
Compaq has grown into an equally dominant corporate vendor. HP
continues to be a major player in the printer and scanner market — a place where
Compaq has no footprint at all. The combined entity could provide an
end-to-end solutions for many large corporate buyers.

In other areas, the two companies go head on with
competing products and technologies. Both companies have half-developed services
businesses. Both have lots of proprietary servers and competing visions
of the network and Internet access device marketplace. The combined
company will be huge, with a combined employee base approaching
145,000. Although most divisions will be run by HP management, there
will be plenty of places for partisans of those contending visions to hide.

Despite a restructuring Compaq CEO Michael Capellas called “the mother of all reorgs” in 1999, Compaq never was able to integrate its acquisitions of companies
like Tandem and Digital Equipment. The most recent reorg, announced
three months ago, has hardly had time to work itself out. It is a
fair question to ask how or whether all parties in the new venture will
learn to work together.

How the top level managers work out their relationship could be
nearly as interesting. Fiorina and Capellas have
crossed paths before. Both CEOs first met at a government sponsored
public policy committee meeting . They quickly learned neither of
them cared much about public policy. They also found they got along
personally. Last year Hewlett Packard and Compaq put together a B2B exchange to give them greater leverage with hardware component
makers, a deal Fiorina claimed that took “about 20 minutes.” Since
then, both executives have frequently said nice things about each
other in public. If Capellas stays on past the official merger, he
could turn be a major help to Fiorina, if he doesn’t gun for her
job. Back at the time that Fiorina took the job as HP CEO, I
suggested that she and Capellas had the wrong jobs. I thought that
the political knife fighter Capellas was better suited to do battle
with the entrenched corporate fiefdoms at HP, while Fiorina could
have given Compaq a much needed PR boost. Now that the two of them
will be working together, it will be interesting to see how the two of
them work together, and for how long.

However long that may be, the two executives may both stay employed longer than
many current employees. If the deal is approved, the two companies have
announced they expect to realize “cost synergies” of at least $2
billion a year within 12 months. This is an extraordinary public
announcement. Merging companies frequently announce that they expect “significant”
synergies or use similarly vague language, but to throw up a hard number and to
itemize where the savings are going to come from right at the beginning is
almost unheard of. Both Compaq and HP have had rough going recently, and for a
CEO to promise specific financial goals in a merger document is usually
a good indication of deep trouble.

Where will the “synergies” come from? The official
words, in the corporatespeak announcement and later press conference, were that the company would “rationalize” its product line and
generate “efficiencies” in administration, marketing and
manufacturing. In plain English it meant that entire product lines and
are heading for the dumpster, and so are lots of employees. Happy
Labor Day! Between 15,00 and 17,000 employees may be getting pink slips, and that
could be just the beginning. As Fiorina admitted in the Tuesday
morning press conference, the key to the deal is “taking people out
of the business.” HP announced that it expected to cut costs by
another half billion dollars by fiscal year 2004. Both Fiorina and Capellas
made it clear that corporate sales forces and engineering staffs are
going to get hacked right along with administrators and back-end
personnel.

What role will Linux play? The official merger announcement made
several references to consolidating on Intel’s Itanium architecture
and on “open, market-unifying architectures and interoperability,”
which may refer to Linux.

Or it may not.

Both companies do a fair Windows business. As far back as 1999, both
Compaq
and HP had
announced support for Linux
as an operating systems alternative.
While
both Compaq
and HP continue to support the Linux operating system, neither has been able to make
a convincing break from their old proprietary Unix systems. Compaq,
in particular, has continued to pitch both
Linux and its proprietary version of Unix. In addition, the company has made a
powerful effort to pitch itself as the third member of the Wintel
duopoly. To a great extent, that effort has succeeded. A
disproportionate number of the first large corporate adapters
deploying Windows 2000 as a back-end solution hung that operating system on Compaq
Proliant servers.

While HP has made much of its Linux
initiatives and championed the deployment of Linux-based
infrastructure solutions, the newly combined server, storage and “infrastructure”
division will be headed by a Compaq executive, Peter Blackmore. As Compaq’s v.p.
of sales and services, Blackmore may understand the operational logic of
using Linux to tie the company’s business units together. However, he can
also count, and today the bulk of Compaq’s cash comes from its
Microsoft-related business.

There are additional barriers. Competitors and employees may seek to
block the deal. European regulators, in particular, have been wary
about approving deals that concentrate the market or lead to massive
layoffs. Compaq investors may object as well. Compaq has been
generating revenues at a rate about 90% of that of Hewlett Packard.
However, the deal values the HP business almost twice as high as
Compaq.

Assuming the merger is permitted by investors and regulators, the
newly merged company will have a dramatic impact on Linux acceptance in
the corporate marketplace. If the new HP embraces the approach
taken by IBM and uses Linux and Itanium as the strategic unifiers of
its businesses and technologies, Linux could rapidly become the
dominant back-end architecture. If the combo abandons
Linux, or continues to display an ambivalent attitude about the
platform, Linux could easily revert to the status of a niche operating system, operating on
IBM equipment but largely irrelevant to the larger IT community, despite
all the efforts of its grass-roots evangelists.

PCWorld: “Students will go back to school this year with freshly sharpened pencils, clean new notebooks, and maybe even new cell phones–but probably not a new personal
computer.

PC makers are glumly forecasting dismal back-to-school sales. And even as they slash prices that undermine their profits, the top PC vendors say any sales rise in
the season–one of the most important for the industry–will be subdued.”

LinuxSecurity: “This article discusses a network setup which might prove useful for people who like to put some extra effort into connecting their machines to the
Internet. The goal is to build a secure client and server farm on a single IP address. Next to the clients and servers, the network contains two other
components.”

LinuxFocus: “This article shows you how parts of the Dutch website of LinuxFocus is generated with XSLT tools from the XML database. It compares this with the (very) much slower DOM tools in Perl.”

CNET: “Hewlett-Packard will acquire Compaq Computer in a stock swap worth about $25 billion, the companies
announced late Monday.

The deal, one of the largest in technology history, would merge two of the biggest names in computers, printers and
computer servers, and would have total revenue only slightly less than IBM, the largest computer company.”

“This Week’s Summary: New Mandrake T-shirts; Mandrake PPC in the news;
Mandrake 8.1 Beta2 available for download & testing; Business Case of
the Week; This Week’s Online Poll; Security-related software updates;
Top Headlines from MandrakeForum; new PPC pages in the L-M Demo &
Tutorial Center.”

Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #12
From: Mandrake Team 
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 01:10:22 +0200 (CEST)


***********************************************************************

                     M A N D R A K E   L I N U X

           C O M M U N I T Y      N E W S L E T T E R


                Issue #12    Monday, 3 September 2001

***********************************************************************

Welcome to the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter -- dedicated to 
keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandrake-related news & info.

You are receiving this newsletter because you have subscribed to one of 
the Mandrake services. To be removed from this mailing list, or to 
request the newsletter in a different language, please see the bottom 
of this page for instructions.

***********************************************************************

This Week's Summary: New Mandrake T-shirts; Mandrake PPC in the news; 
Mandrake 8.1 Beta2 available for download & testing; Business Case of 
the Week; This Week's Online Poll; Security-related software updates; 
Top Headlines from MandrakeForum; new PPC pages in the L-M Demo & 
Tutorial Center.


Product News
----------------------------------------
New Mandrake T-shirts available.
Red & White long sleeve "Mandrake SuperTux" T-shirts are now available 
at Mandrakestore (currently for people living in Europe only). These 
shirts are 100% cotton with a 3-color logo of "SuperTux" on the front, 
and the words "Building a friendly Linux world, www.linux-mandrake.com" 
on the back.
http://www.mandrakestore.com


Mandrake in the News
----------------------------------------
Many stories about Mandrake Linux 8.0 PPC appeared on various web sites:

MacWorld -- Mandrake Linux 8.0 comes to Macs.
"This implementation of Mandrake Linux also features extensive open 
source tools and updates, according to the developers. Improvements 
including better modem detection; CD ROM boot for almost all machines; 
post-installation X configuration via XFdrake; with support added for 
PowerBook G4s, new iBooks and "Pismo"-era PowerBook G3s; and much more. 
MandrakeSoft noted that Mandrake Linux PPC is G3-optimized for 
increased performance, also."
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0108/28.mandrake.shtml

MacSlash -- Mandrake 8.0 PPC Released.
"Mikenet writes 'Finally, Mandrake 8 for PPC release is out!!! 
According to their site, it is G3/G4 optimized. Wahoo!!! Get your copy 
here.'"
http://www.macslash.com/articles/01/08/28/0341220.shtml

iBookLinux.net -- Linux-Mandrake for PowerPC appears on mirrors!!
"It looks like the long awaited Mandrake on the PowerPC is now 
available. The beta release has already appeared on various cooker 
mirrors. Including this one in France. You can find more mirrors on the 
Linux-Mandrake site."
http://www.ibooklinux.net/php/ibooklinux.php3?single=505+index=0


What's Cooking at MandrakeSoft?
----------------------------------------
Mandrake Linux 8.1 Beta 2 "Raklet" is available for download & testing.

Changes and improvements since Beta1:
* DiskDrake (the graphical disk partitioner) now supports Samba and NFS
  mount points
* New Mandrake Server Wizards: professional configuration wizards for
  quick & easy server setup
* Prelude 0.4.2 (Intrusion detection system): see
  http://prelude.sourceforge.net/ for more info
* Gnomemeeting 0.10 (Video conferencing software H323 compatible)
* Libsafe (Stack Overflow protection), for increased security
* Bug fixes for KDE 2.2, i810, and the Mandrake Software Manager
  (rpmdrake)

Mandrake Linux 8.1 New and Killer Features:
* Draknet (network configuration tool); test and enjoy this thoroughly
  reworked version
* Updated URPMI (package installer) and Software Manager
* The reworked Mandrake Control Center provides a convenient embedded
  root console as well as new tools such as Logdrake (a graphical
  frontend to the system log files) and Drakinst (for easy setup of an
  auto-install disk)
* Updated HardDrake (hardware configurator)
* New version of PrinterDrake to get the most out of your printer

See http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/81beta2.php3 for the complete 
announcement.

To get involved as a beta tester, please download the files from 
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3#81; then install & test on 
your machine and report any bugs to: 
https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Also, please subscribe to the Cooker mailing list by sending an email 
to sympa@linux-mandrake.com with the words "SUB cooker" (no quotes) in 
the subject of your message to report and discuss any problems.


Business Case of the Week
----------------------------------------
Air Force public uses Internet computers with Mandrake SNF.
A system administrator at the Rhein Main U.S. Air Force Base in 
Frankfurt Germany offers Internet access to the public with 
MandrakeSoft's Single Network Firewall:
"The install of the OS was a snap. I could not believe that getting 
Squid with Squidguard working would be such a no brainer... Mandrake 
has played a helping hand in improving quality of life for American 
Airman in Germany at Rhein Main AB."
http://mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=145&mode=thread&order=0

Read many more examples of Mandrake Linux in the workplace at:
http://www.MandrakeBizCases.com/

If you use MandrakeSoft products in your business, please share your 
story by submitting your own personal "Bizcase".


This Week's Online Poll
----------------------------------------
What do you think about the Mandrake "Yellow Star" logo?

1) looks ridiculous
2) looks professional
3) looks friendly
4) looks childish
5) is better than SuSE's logo ;-)

Cast your vote in the Voting Booth and check the results at:
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/pollBooth.php?op=results&pollID=12&mode=&order=&thold=


Software Updates
----------------------------------------
Security-related software updates have been released for:
* rpmdrake for 8.0 PPC only
* fetchmail for 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, and Corporate Server 1.0.1
* xli for 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, and Corporate Server 1.0.1
* WindowMaker for 7.1, 7.2, 8.0, and Corporate Server 1.0.1
* sendmail for 7.2 and 8.0
* xinetd for 7.2, 8.0, and Single Network Firewall 7.2
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1132?=en&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0


Top Stories of the Week from MandrakeForum
----------------------------------------
What do YOU think about Mandrake's logo?
Gael Duval (co-founder of MandrakeSoft) writes:
"There have been discussions here about the Mandrake yellow star. In 
particular it seems that American people find the yellow color 
ridiculous..."
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1140?=en&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Hidden Treasure Development--Xtart.
"Xtart" is a new package from Civileme for people who like to boot into 
console mode and then start a WM, and moreover who don't want to set a 
default WM by any of the methods available.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1130?=en

Read these and other stories at:
SEO Vs SEM Advantages and Disadvantages



Latest headlines from the Linux-Mandrake Demo & Tutorial Center
----------------------------------------
Two new PPC chapters have been released:
Take a walkthrough of the Mandrake 8.0 PPC graphical installer at 
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/PPC/Install/

Then check out some advanced features of Mandrake PPC which include 
Netatalk (file & print sharing for Macintosh systems), Mac on Linux 
(for running MacOS 8 & 9), Samba, and much more:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/PPC/FeaturesII/pages/

Slashdot: “MaxVlast was the first to report: “The New York Times is reporting that HP is buying Compaq to form the second-largest
computer company (after IBM). Wow.”