IBM’s sidewalk advertising campaign is history. After learning that spray painting or drawing ads on city pavement is illegal, the company responsible for placing the ads has agreed to remove them. Read the Bloomberg update at CNET News.com.

LinuxToday: “he 800 and main phone numbers for Stormix are now disconnected, and the
Web site isn’t accepting any orders. We also tried contacting the customer-support and fax
lines, and these numbers were not being answered, either.”

Macworld: “Apple released the much-anticipated first update to OS X last week with all the fanfare of a Vanilla Ice comeback
album. OS X 10.0.1 first appeared on Apple’s Web site late on Friday, before the Easter holiday — a release time sure
to generate as much buzz as the one-time rap sensation’s big screen debut in Cool as Ice. That’s a shame. Because the OS X update, though not revolutionary, does add some nice features for early adopters.
And when you’re facing an entirely new operating system, every little fix helps.”

From LinuxGram: “FSMLabs has ripped Linux out of RTLinux and replaced it with NetBSD, coming up with a new offering called RTL/BSD.”

Kellie writes, “A quick look at the news from the Linux Technology Center (also from IBM.com), which tracks all the Linux-related technologies happening inside IBM. The LTC offers a more detailed site where they track all the technical contributions IBM makes to the Linux community. But those of you who are looking for the news in brief will find it here, along with links to greater detail.”

Linuxgram has a short item on Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann, who says Wind River’s BSD embedded play makes Wind River “a big fish in a little pond” because, as Linuxgram says, BSD “barely has a profile in the embedded
arena.”

Kellie writes, “Firewalls are good and fun, but what do you do when you need to make rapid, complex changes to your firewall rules? Easy. Use Daniel Robbins’ dynamic firewall scripts that are demonstrated in this article at IBM.com. You can use these scripts to increase your network security and responsiveness, and to inspire your own creative designs. The article includes code snipets.”

Kellie writes, “This column continues David Mertz’s introduction to functional programming in Python at IBM.com. His introduction to different paradigms of program problem-solving demonstrates several intermediate and advanced functional programming concepts. The article includes code snipets.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
Independence Linux, or Indy, as is it affectionately known by the developers, is billed as the distribution that belongs to “all of us.” The coders who are working on this project liken themselves to the revolutionaries who broke free from the aristocracy of Great Britain, saying, “It is built by volunteers who no longer accept having an aristocracy of distribution designers providing solutions who have little relation to the problems faced by us, Linux users. It is built by people who don’t accept that present distributions time and again neglect two areas who are vital for Linux future: the desktop and the personal computer.”

Indeed, the distro’s logo enhances the revolution theme, showing a classic liberty figure raising a banner emblazoned with Tux. Project originator Jean Francois Martinez has recently resurrected the team’s efforts. “At one point I became disheartened and Indy has been frozen for
months. However it happens I think something like Indy is needed so I
just cannot let it die,” he says with renewed passion.

It is important that Linux is not restricted only to use by computer royalty — programmers and others who truly understand the guts of an operating system, he says. “It is because RMS, Linus and their likes were willing to share with mere mortals like us that we are able to use — for free — the software jewels created. That is why I will never be able to endure those who say they don’t want to share Linux with those people they call the ‘unwashed masses’ and why I precisely want that: bring Linux to everyone.”

But Martinez also seems to realize that distros are becoming a “seen Red Hat, seen ’em all” phenomenon. He wants to make sure that Independence is truly … independent enough to warrant its existence. He wants to examine other distributions, find out where they are going wrong, and make Indy right.

“I think there is a need for a not-for-profit distribution,” says Martinez, “made by people who are strongly militant about spreading Linux and about helping other users with their problems (perhaps because they were bitten by these problems in the past), people who live the same reality than the users and thus will provide them the right answers.”

Martinez says that most developers are “out of touch with reality,” that they live in “another world” as compared to users and they assume that the people who will be using Linux distributions are as knowledgeable as they are. Martinez plans to change all that.

Right now, he is debating with other interested potential developers about which existing distribution to base Indy on. “The problem with Red Hat is that it basically sucks for desktop and home computers, plus its installer is no longer really state of the art. Mandrake has a wonderful installation and a very good softare selection. But many software vendors still don’t take it seriously
and thus they get no ports (i.e. software will run but could require
tweaking and it will not be supported by vendor). Also at times they
do things I consider dangerous or having a negative effect.” Red Hat had no immediate comment on Martinez’s criticisms.

Other would-be team members have different opinions about the wisdom of creating a new distribution, saying that users would be better served by having patches and applications available to enhance existing distributions, especially focusing on Red Hat, and convincing them to look at Independence as a collaborator instead of a competitor.

And the debate continues. Martinez has one coder committed to working with him so far, and admits the task of creating a new distribution will be difficult to accomplish with so little help. “I cannot set ambitious goals and for now there are far more immediate tasks at hand like putting the web site in working order, explaining what Indy’s goals are,” and perhaps most important right now, “clean up the recruitment page” in order to explain the project and attract more team members.

The project site is located at independence.seul.org, and you can reach Jean Francois Martinez at jfm2@club-internet.fr.

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