The announcement is posted at LWN.net. From author Dave Jones: “Ok, it’s done. It’s been tested to death by me, and I can’t
break it. We still have a long way to go for some of the
really cool features, but that stuff can wait for later
revisions. I’m very happy with how this release looks.”

CNet has the analysis: ”
A chastened Microsoft? Think again.

During its antitrust battle with the Justice Department and 19 states,
Microsoft showed more restraint–at least publicly–in its business
strategies and tactics. But given George W. Bush’s election and
signs that the Court of Appeals would partly deflate the
government’s victory in the trial court, the software behemoth has returned to the hard-charging
Microsoft of old.”

– By Jeff Field –

Many people know ABIT as a popular manufacturer of motherboards. What a lot of
people may not know is that ABIT also makes other products, among them a line of NVidia-based graphics cards. The MX400 is based on NVidia’s low-end GeForce2 MX400
chipset, intended to replace its previous low-end chipset, the GeForce2 MX. But can it do the job?
Last year, NVidia released the GeForce2 MX chipset, a low-end version of the powerful GeForce2 GTS. The card was very successful because it combined current-generation features and power with a low-priced card. Instead of being
stuck buying something like an older TNT2 Ultra or GeForce card, those users looking for decent-but-not-astounding 3D
performance could just buy a GeForce2 with reduced performance. NVidia accomplished this by lowering the memory bandwidth
and clock speed on the board and slicing the number of rendering pipelines in half, from four to two.

These changes nearly crippled the chip — it still performs well, just not to the level of the GeForce2 GTS or, now,
the GeForce3. With the GeForce2 MX400, NVidia simply increased the clock speed of the GeForce2 MX from 175 to 200 to match
the GeForce2 GTS. Yes, boys and girls, that’s about it. NVidia also added RAM — from 32 to 64 megs, but that does not help at all,
because where the chipset is really hurt is the lack of memory bandwidth.

Documentation and software
Unfortunately, the ABIT Siluro MX400 is lacking Linux documentation and software — no information about Linux is provided in the manual, and no drivers are provided on the included CD. The included documentation is, however, well written, and does cover the basics of physically installing the card, although in most cases (and on all operating
systems) installing the drivers is probably going to end up being the more difficult of the two tasks.

Board design
The board design is very much a reference design (that is, it is based on the basic board design used by NVidia and provided to OEMs). In fact, the only real difference physically between the Siluro GF2MX
and the MX400 is the lack of a TV out on the MX400 and the increased number of RAM chips, due to its extra 32MB of RAM.
Also, the heatsink seems to be of a higher quality than that of the GF2MX, and is adhered better, because unlike my GF2MX
board, the heatsink did not fall off (which is not much of an issue — the GF2MX chipset could run quite well without a
heatsink, and did so since October).

Performance
System Specifications

AMD Athlon-C 750MHz (100 MHz bus)
512 Megabytes Crucial PC133 CAS 2 SDRAM, provided by Crucial
Western Digital 7200RPM 10.2 gig IDE Hard Drive
3Com 3c905TX-C PCI 10/100 NIC
300 Watt AMD-Approved ATX Power Supply
XFree 4.0.3 with 1251 drivers from NVidia
Quake 3 1.27f Beta

QuakeIII timedemos
Quake III timedemos are done by going into Quake III, entering the console (~) and enabling the timedemo function (by
typing timedemo 1. Optionally (and this was done for these tests, because I’m testing the video board and not the
system) you may disable the sound by typing s_initsound 0 followed by snd_restart. Once you have done all
this, type demo four.dm_66 to run the demo.

Timedemos reflect 3D gaming performance, and in no way reflect professional 3D performance.

Quake III results (frames per second)

Resolution	GF2 MX400	GF2MX
800 * 600	60.3	58.5
1024 * 768	56.0	53.9
1280 * 1024	41.1	39.9
1600 * 1200	31.1	30.2

As you can see, the difference between the GF2MX and the GF2 MX400 is negligible — because the only change is increased
memory and clock speed, and neither of those were actually bottlenecks, the GF2MX400 has almost no advantage over the
GF2MX.

Conclusions
So, if there is no performance difference between the MX400 and the GF2MX, what advantage does it have? The answer is,
none. However, it could drive the cost of cards such as the Siluro GeForce2MX down, which is helpful for those in the market for
a low-end card. This is no fault of ABIT’s — the company made the best card it could with this chipset from NVidia. Once it
drops in price to the $45 range where the GeForce2MX is right now, it will be quite a bargain, but for now, I would
recommend a GeForce2MX-based card over an MX400-based one. If for some odd reason you have your heart set on an MX400, however, the Abit Siluro MX400 is a decent card — just held back by a lackluster chipset. Prices were not yet
available for a Siluro MX400 on pricewatch, but other MX400-based boards can be had for $80 on Pricewatch.

IT-director.com looks at Caldera’s per-seat license. “There has always been a fundamental problem with the Open Source
movement. To some extent, it debars businesses from making a decent
living out of its work because of the emphasis on shared code and free
licenses. Finally, Caldera has dared to stick a license fee on its new
OpenLinux Workstation product.”

Computer.org has a long story about the problems it sees with Linux. Among the usual suspects: Multiple distribtions and the two file formats.

IDG News Service reports that the Cult of the Dead Cow is delaying the release of software meant to allow
users to evade government censorship of the
Internet. The project was originally scheduled for
launch next month at
Def Con.

Posted at LWN.net: “IBM is pleased to announce the v 1.0.0 release of the open source
Journaled File System (JFS), a high-performance, and scalable file
system for Linux.”

Posted at LWN.net: “IBM is pleased to announce the v 1.0.0 release of the open source
Journaled File System (JFS), a high-performance, and scalable file
system for Linux.”

LinuxToday has an interview with ESR, the Open Source advocate and member of VA Linux Board of Directors. (VA Linux owns NewsForge.) On VA leaving the hardware business: “The world used to need Linux hardware specialists, but times have changed. In 1998 stuff like server-ready SMP motherboards was still exotic
hardware and Linux was still novel; having expertise in either was unusual and being able to sell the combination was an attractive business, especially with an
Internet buildout in full roar.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. Linux succeeded too well,
and attracted too much money. VA helped that happen; it built damn fine
hardware, it subsidized a lot of open-source projects, sponsored a lot of shows,
and did marketing into places the Linux community never reached before …”

FFII, ENEF.org – a European association
of
Internet startup companies, EuroLinux and VoV — the Internet section
of
the German social democrat party, will organise on July 5th at
LinuxTag in
Stuttgart a seminar to study the concept of the technical invention
in the
European patent system. http://swpat.ffii.org/penmi/linuxtag-2001/.

Recently the patentability of software and business methods has
become a
subject of an intense public debate with expert input from a wide
range of
fields, including engineering, informatics, law, economics and
philosophy.
At the core of this debate lies the distinction between matter-based
“technical inventions” and mind-based “rules of organisation and
calculation”. This requirement of “technicity”, in its original
meaning,
leads to the exclusion of software and intangible services from
patentability. The notion of technicity, in its recent meaning
defined by
judges at the European Patent Office, leads to the patentability of
software and intangible services and to a de facto limitless patent
system.

The seminar will study the evolution of the meaning of technicity in
the
last 15 years. Participants include lawyers, software specialists,
representatives of professional associations, politicians, civil
servants
and researchers.

The seminar will be organised at LinuxTag in Germany, one of the
most
active market for free/opensource software in Europe. LinuxTag is
the
biggest Linux exhibition in the world. Free software is actively
supported
by the German governments which sponsors projects such a GPG as well
as
the Berlios opensource software portal (http://www.berlios.de).

Registration

If you want to participate, please contact linuxtag-2001@ffii.org.

About EuroLinux – www.EuroLinux.org

The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an
open
coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations united
to
promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture based on
Open
Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source Software.
Companies
members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or sell software under
free,
semi-free and non-free licenses for operating systems such as Linux,
MacOS
or Windows.

The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2000-06-15 an electronic petition
to
protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux petition has
received
so far massive support from more than 80.000 European citizens, 2000
corporate managers and 300 companies.

The EuroLinux Alliance has co-organised in 1999, together with the
French
Embassy in Japan, the first Europe-Japan conference on Linux and
Free
Software. The EuroLinux Alliance is at the initiative of the
www.freepatents.org web site to promote and protect innovation and
competition in the European IT industry.

Press Contacts

France & Europe: Stefane Fermigier sf@fermigier.com +33-6 63 04 12
77
Germany & Europe: Harmut Pilch phm@ffii.org +49-89 127 89 608
Denmark and Northern Europe: Anne O/stergaard aoe@sslug.dk
Belgium: Nicolas Pettiaux nicolas.pettiaux@linuxbe.org

Legalese

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective
companies.