Salon: “I’ve been thinking about cookies lately because here at Salon, our
new Premium program relies on them in order to work properly,
and we’ve corresponded with a small but vocal group of readers
who feel strongly that All Cookies Must Be Destroyed. And
though I am normally a diehard on issues of Web privacy, I have to
report that cookies have been unfairly maligned.”

– by Robin “Roblimo” Miller –
I have tried to install “pure” Debian on my own and failed, not just once but three times. Enter Progeny. Last week I got a boxed set of this new Debian-based Linux distribution. Less than an hour later I had a functional installation, complete with working printer, sound, and network functions, without a single command line rearing its ugly head.My previous Debian install attempts were frustrated by hardware detection problems more than by any other single factor. Like most “use the computer as a tool and think about it only when it doesn’t work right” people, I can’t tell you my sound or video card specs. For people like me (probably 90% of all computer owners) any operating system that can’t automatically detect hardware during installation is probably going to be set aside after a couple of futile attempts. Microsoft understands this. Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE all have this figured out. Only Debian, among Linux distributions commonly sold in boxed sets from the shelves of mainsteam computer stores, still requires a hardware knowledge test before you are allowed to taste its bounty.

But so many people I know have so loudly sung the praises of apt-get and talked up Debian’s famous stability that I still wanted to try it. I even had a friend install Debian for me once, but he installed a system that met his needs, not mine, and I regretfully had to strip it out a few days later because I had too much work stacked up to spend a week learning all the commands I would have needed to perform basic functions like writing articles and sending them to publishers. I tried an early version of Libranet, confronted the usual lack of Debian hardware detection, and gave up. I tried to get my hands on a copy of Stormix, but they were too busy going broke to send one to me.

Progeny broke my pattern of Debian failure. It installed flawlessly and smoothly, dropped me into an attractive, up-to-date default Gnome desktop, and automatically installed KDE libraries and KOffice in case I wanted to use some of the fine KDE utilities. Sound worked without a thought. My all-time favorite text/HTML editor, Bluefish, was not installed automatically, but I read the surprisingly lucid manual, typed in apt-get install Bluefish, and less than three minutes later I had Bluefish running. Another couple of minutes of reading, and I had a Bluefish icon on the Gnome panel so I could call it up with a single click. Ready to write!

(Realize, though, that I am not a Windows user trying Linux for the first time. I have run nothing but Linux for three years, and the desktop computer on which I installed Progeny was built specifically with Linux compatibility in mind. A Linux newbie trying to put Progeny Debian on a store-bought “Wintel” computer might not have had my instant success.)

So here I am, running Debian at last. I am using Netscape for email and Web browsing, as I have for years, and it works fine. Now I go to cnn.com to catch a few news videos, and whoops! No Real Player. Download. Try to install. Segmentation fault. Try again. It seems to install and configure itself as a Netscape plugin, but even after a system reboot it doesn’t work. Yes, this is a problem I could probably solve with manual reading and some futzing around, but it is taking up time I could use to do other things. Ditto other Netscape plugins; one of Mandrake’s great features, to me and other people on tight schedules, is that it takes care of these details for you. And Mandrake (like most other commercial Linux distributions) includes StarOffice, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and other packages that, like it or not, are essential tools for people doing office-type work who must constantly interact with Microsoft users.

I understand and admire Debian’s adherence to Free Software principles, and I respect Progeny’s decision to abide by them. I wish I could live in a world where it was possible for me to follow them strictly myself and still earn a living, but reality dictates that I must use programs created by people who do not believe in Free Software. Given this caveat, Progeny Debian is not ready for everyday office desktop use without many hours of individual effort; finding, downloading, and installing commercial software in Debian is harder than it is in rpm-based distributions, and is nowhere near as convenient as getting everything I need in a single set of CDs and installing it all at once, a la Mandrake or SuSE.

This is going to be a big competitive problem for Progeny when mainstream computer publications start to review it and it starts appearing on computer store shelves. Stability and apt-get are wonderful, but it is going to take a wider range of included applications to give Progeny the commercial success it deserves.

Right now, I see Progeny primarly as a learning tool. Anyone who wants to get a Debian installation going without stress, then gradually and painlessly learn to control it through a command line interface, will love Progeny. The printed manual included with the boxed set is the most straightforward one I’ve ever seen for Debian newbies. If you have a friend who has talked about getting into Linux or Unix system administration but is worried about getting past the first stages of the learning curve, give them Progeny as a gift and they’ll thank you forever. Two or three old computers with Progeny Debian installed on them should be all most people need to teach themselves the basics of CLI-based networking and server maintenance.

I wish Progeny had more productivity applications both on the CDs and in easy-to-find-and-browse sections on the company’s Web site and ftp servers. I love the way Progeny Debian looks, feels, and runs. It is sad that Mandrake and other rpm-based “workstation” distributions contain just about everything I need to function, while Progeny does not. If Progeny ever decides to produce and maintain an expanded distribution that includes the software I (along with millions of other non-geek computer users) must use to survive and and work in a world dominated by Microsoft and other proprietary software houses, I will almost certainly dump rpm and embrace deb.

PCWorld: “Tired of bad tech support? Here’s how to get better service, even if your vendor fails
you.”

CNET: “On Tuesday, Random House and RosettaBooks will make their first joint court appearance
since the Bertelsmann-owned publisher sued RosettaBooks in February. The suit seeks to
prevent the smaller publisher from selling digital versions of Random House titles by authors
William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Parker.”

Reuters at Yahoo: “Microsoft’s support for Apple is embodied in its Macintosh Business Unit, a team of
185 Mac users who crank out software that many say is better than the stuff made for Windows.”

CNET: “Transmeta, facing increased competition from established chipmakers, has scored a
timely victory, with Toshiba set to announce Monday that it will use the company’s
Crusoe chip.”

The Register: “Eric Engstrom was one of a number of key management who departed as the MS
anti-trust trial wore on. He started and led the Direct X project, was general
manager at MSN, and testified on behalf of the Evil Empire in the trial.

Now, with a group of former Redmond colleagues, he’s backing Linux. Their
start-up Chromium is a Linux ‘pure play’, and he’s effusive in his praise of the
operating system.”

UpsideToday: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, three weeks ahead
of the release of the movie Pearl Harbor, Microsoft
(MSFT) launched a surprise attack of its own. Its
target was the free and open distribution of software
source code. Its weapon was information, adroitly
manipulated and widely disseminated.”

LinuxSecurity: “This week, some of the most interesting articles include “Secure Your Sockets with JSSE,” “Best Practices in Network
Security,” and “DNS and BIND, 4th Edition Online: Chapter 11: Security.” Also this week, take a look at our feature story,
“Open Source Security Testing Methods.”

– By Grant Gross
–

In case you were living under a rock this week, we’ll review the big news. Craig Mundie, a Microsoft senior vice president, announced what he called a “shared source” initiative, while at the same time ripping into Open Source business plans and the GNU General Public License.

After Mundie called the GPL a “threat” to intellectual property, the Open Source and Free Software communities’ retaliations were quick, massive and dead on target.

Among the responses:

• From Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux: “The basic argument seems to be that it’s good for the economy to charge for intellectual property, so open source software cannot be good, while Microsoft is the most far-thinking company around and is doing it all for the good of the public. Gee, what a surprise.”

• Alan Cox, the Linux kernel contributor supreme, countered Microsoft’s .Net idea: “Craig claims, ‘Computers, devices and services will be able to collaborate directly with each other, and businesses will be able to offer their products and services in a way that lets customers embed them in their usage of the Web at their discretion. ‘Somehow the words ‘providing they use Microsoft products’ were left out.”

• Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, defended the GPL: “Microsoft surely would like to have the benefit of our code without the responsibilities. But it has another, more specific purpose in attacking the GNU GPL. Microsoft is known generally for imitation rather than innovation. Its purpose is strategic — not to improve computing for its users, but to close off alternatives for them.”

• Even the software industry group, the Software & Information Industry Association, dug into Microsoft for the speech. “Microsoft is once again publicly making the case that innovation in the software industry should happen only at the discretion and direction of Microsoft,” said Ken Wasch, SIIA president. “There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for the software needs of corporations throughout the world. Yet Microsoft is employing public relations tactics to incite fear among businesses that are considering migrating to the Open Source model.”

• Of course, the whole debate was touched off by Open Source advocate Eric S. Raymond, who got wind of the Microsoft speech the day before it happened. Raymond wrote: “What Mr. Mundie will hope you don’t notice is that Microsoft wants all the ‘sharing’ to be in one direction. What they’re doing is what we
  call ‘source under glass’ — you can see it, but you can’t modify or
  reuse it in other programs. They want to be able to get the huge benefit
  of having thousands of outside people review their code without allowing
  any of those people to use what they learn on other projects.”

The general tone of the technology press coverage of the Mundie speech seemed to be, “more of the same from Microsoft.” Salon.com made fun of the speech by saying Microsoft was calling Free Software “the devil’s work.” TheStandard noted the irony in Mundie’s speech: “Redmond lets its customers look at source code but doesn’t let them tinker with it. In fact, the company says free code is potentially criminal.” A ZDNet columnist asked, “What’s so scary about Open Source?” He added: “I’m surprised that Mundie wasn’t leerier about raising the issue of competitiveness. By
taking this kind of pot-shot at open source in general, Microsoft leaves itself open to criticisms that it’s afraid of competition. “

Reuters played the speech more straightforward, but noted that source sharing has roots in scientific and academic traditions and that companies such as IBM and Oracle have experimented with Open Source.

Whew! If you’re still interested in more coverage, search on “Microsoft” at NewsForge.

Microsoft and security (or lack thereof)

Just before the speech, Raymond added to his earlier comments with a challenge of Microsoft’s security record by noting a new flaw in Windows 2000 running the IIS Web server. “What this means is that unless a knowledgeable sysadmin has taken explicit action to prevent it, any 15-year-old who can copy code off the Internet can use Microsoft’s IIS to bypass your firewall, bypass your password system, and gain administrator-level access to the machine that hosts your webserver. They
can inspect, alter or delete files at will no matter how you have them secured. They can also use root-level access to that machine as a springboard for attacks on other systems inside your firewall.”

Ironically, on the day of the speech, Microsoft wasn’t able to keep crackers from defacing three of its own corporate Web sites.

Argentina: No more proprietary software?

Really, there was other news in the Open Source world this week. The Argentina legislature is considering a bill that would require all government offices to use Open Source software. That legislation should be interesting to watch — it could be the start of widespread adoption of Open Source software in Latin America.

No more mergers

A proposed merger of supercomputer-maker Linux NetworX and Ebiz fell through this week, with Linux NetworX saying only that it had “other opportunities” on the horizon. That announcement came in the same week that Linuxcare and Turbolinux called off their merger. Apparently, the two companies had trouble marrying their finances and operations.

In other news, 2600.com and the motion picture industry were back in court this week, on an appeal of the ruling against 2600 for linking to the DeCSS Linux DVD-playing code. Several reports noted that the panel of judges seemed to side with the motion picture giants.

Also, Jason Haas, leader of the popular Linux-for-Macs project, LinuxPPC, announced he was leaving the project. Haas said he was burned out and looking for something new.

New in NewsForge

Original reporting from NewsForge this week:

Hardware and software reviewer Jeff Field compares two recent Linux releases, Red Hat 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0. He likes Mandrake, partly because it has more up-to-date software.

Check out new editor Dan Berkes’ Open Source stock report, complete with a chart of how leading Open Source stocks did during the week.

We also report on Red Hat’s attempts to work with the backers of the controversial Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, to make changes that would benefit the Open Source community.