Open Source: it isn’t just for software anymore. CNET News.com reports on the hardware side of Open Source, highlighting the chip design work of the OpenCores group. While hardware might never be free, its Open Source alternatives could become an inexpensive alternative. “We hope for some cheaper and better-quality hardware,” said one OpenCores participant. “Just look at the unit price of an Intel Pentium chip.”

From Linux.com. a network services basics tutorial: “Now that you have Linux installed you may have the urge to configure some of your services. For instance, you may not need to have an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server running if you don’t plan on letting people download files from your computer over the Internet, or you may want to make sure your Web server is running.”

“Microsoft’s holier-than-thou standards pitch for .Net could be undermined by its insistence on using its own, non-standard version of Kerberos. And that, reckons Bloor Research in an overview of HailStorm published today here,could prove controversial.” From The Register.

VANCOUVER, BC March 27, 2001 – ActiveState, the leader in open source
programming tools, announces the appointment of many of the top minds in
open source to its Technical
Advisory Board. Joining the team is: Larry Wall, Brendan Eich, Guido
van Rossum, Rasmus Lerdorf, and Jon Udell.

“I enjoy working with ActiveState on Perl development. They really believe
in the Perl
philosophy ‘there’s more than one way to do it.’ They’re in the business of
enabling everyone to get the job done,†said Larry Wall, creator of Perl.

“Python has benefited from ActiveState’s contributions to the community
such as ActivePython and Komodo, and their participation in the Python Software Foundation. I look forward to working with
them,†said Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python.

“ActiveState has the vision and understanding of the Mozilla project. It’s great to see an
organization with a language/tools focus developing with the Mozilla
framework,†stated Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and Architect for
Mozilla.

“ActiveState’s efforts with Perl and Python make them well-suited to provide
similar products and services for PHP. I’m pleased to assist them in their
future development,†commented Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP.

“I’ve been using and writing about scripting languages for years and am
thrilled to see a critical mass of language inventors at ActiveState. The
knowledge transfer and synergies that will develop will be a great benefit
to the community. I’m excited to be a part of this,†stated Jon Udell,
former executive editor Byte.

“ActiveState has demonstrated insightfulness and leadership by integrating
and enhancing many open source technologies to create new products and new
programming environments, such as Komodo.
ActiveState’s ability to recruit these thought leaders to its advisory board
clearly establishes the company as one of the most important players in high
level programming languages,†noted Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat.

“These language innovators have changed the face of technology with tens of
millions of people using their software. They will have a profound
collective influence on our emerging technologies and on our goal of making
open source languages more accessible to both casual programmers and the
business community,†said Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO of ActiveState.

About ActiveState
ActiveState is the leading provider of open source based programming
products and services for cross-platform development. ActiveState’s key
technologies are Perl, the Internet’s most popular programming language;
Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web
programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language.
ActiveState’s easy to use solutions improve programmer productivity and
offer seamless integration with other technologies.

Media & Analysts Contact:Lori Pike, ActiveState Corporation

© ActiveState Corp 2001.
ActiveState and Komodo are trademarks of ActiveState Corporation. All other
company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

When RIAA sleeps, does it dream of China? According to a CNET News.com report, “China plans to levy fees of 10 percent of total revenue to companies that allow people to download copyrighted music, or $2.42 (20 yuan) per year for each item.”

CNET News.com interviews Dan Frye, director of IBM’s Linux Technology Center. “Our job really is to help make Linux better,” says Frye. “The way to do that is not by telling the Linux community to “Do X.” You say, “We’re going to do X.” Then you deliver it and wait for the community to accept it.”

From a ZDNet eWEEK review: “As a desktop operating system, SuSE 7.1 Professional would be a good fit only for Microsoft haters and cash-strapped companies installing systems for the first time. Even with Windows 2000 Professional selling at close to $300 per user and Microsoft Office 2000 Standard at close to $500, we see no compelling reason for companies to shift from Windows on the desktop.”

In this latest edition of the Linux kernel: “Fix es1370 build bug” … “Fix vmalloc mismerge” … “New xircom_cb driver” … “Revert previous wrong bootmem change.” Full details at LWN.net.

The KDE Project today announced the release of KDE 2.1.1, a powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled desktop for Linux. KDE features Konqueror, a state-of-the-art web browser, as an integrated component of its user-friendly desktop environment, as well as KDevelop, an advanced IDE, as a central component of KDE’s powerful development environment. KDE 2.1 is the first stable Linux desktop completely to integrate the new XFree anti-aliased font extensions and can provide a fully anti-aliased font-enabled desktop.
This release follows four weeks after the release of the industry-acclaimed KDE 2.1, which marked a leap forward in Linux desktop stability, usability and maturity. KDE 2.1.1 is suitable for enterprise deployment and the KDE Project strongly encourages all users of the award-winning KDE 1.x series and of the KDE 2.0 series to upgrade to KDE 2.1.1.

The primary goals of the 2.1.1 release are to improve documentation and provide additional language translations for the user interface, although the release includes a few bugfixes, and improvements to the HTML rendering engine. A list of these changes and a FAQ about the release are available at the KDE website. Code development is currently focused on the branch that will lead to KDE 2.2, scheduled for its first beta release in two weeks.

KDE and all its components are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE server and its mirrors and can also be obtained on CD-ROM. As a result of the dedicated efforts of hundreds of translators, KDE 2.1.1 is available in 34 languages and dialects, including the addition of Lithuanian in this release. KDE 2.1.1 ships with the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment (including Konqueror), developer packages (including KDevelop), as well as the over 100 applications from the other standard base KDE packages (administration, games, graphics, multimedia, network, PIM and utilities).

For more information about the KDE 2.1 series, please see the KDE 2.1 press release and the KDE 2.1.1 Info Page, which is an evolving FAQ about the release. Information on using anti-aliased fonts with KDE is available here.

Downloading and Compiling KDE

The source packages for KDE 2.1.1 are available for free download at http://ftp.kde.org/stable/2.1.1/distribution/tar/generic/src/ or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors (diffs are also available). KDE 2.1.1 requires qt-2.2.3, which is available from Trolltech at ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/ under the name qt-x11-2.2.3.tar.gz, although qt-2.2.4 or qt-2.3.0 is recommended (for anti-aliased fonts, qt-2.3.0 and XFree 4.0.3 or newer is required). KDE 2.1.1 will not work with versions of Qt older than 2.2.3.

For further instructions on compiling and installing KDE, please consult the installation instructions and, if you encounter problems, the compilation FAQ.

Installing Binary Packages

Some distributors choose to provide binary packages of KDE for certain versions of their distribution. Some of these binary packages for KDE 2.1.1 will be available for free download under http://ftp.kde.org/stable/2.1.1/distribution/ or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors. Please note that the KDE team is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third parties — typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant distribution.

KDE 2.1.1 requires qt-2.2.3, the free version of which is available from the above locations usually under the name qt-x11-2.2.3, although qt-2.2.4 or qt-2.3.0 is recommended (for anti-aliased fonts, qt-2.3.0 and XFree 4.0.3 or newer is required). KDE 2.1.1 will not work with versions of Qt older than 2.2.3.

At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

* Caldera eDesktop 2.4: i386
* Debian GNU/Linux stable (2.2): i386 and PPC; please also check the main directory for common files
* Linux-Mandrake 7.2: i586
* SuSE Linux (README):
* 7.1: i386, Sparc and PPC; please also check the i18n and noarch directories for common files
* 7.0: i386 and PPC; please also check the i18n and noarch directories for common files
* 6.4: i386; please also check the i18n and noarch directories for common files

* Tru64 Systems: 4.0e,f,g, or 5.x (README)

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other distributions. More binary packages will become available over the coming days and weeks. In particular RedHat packages are expected soon.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source “Bazaar-style” software development model to create first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

For more information about KDE, please visit KDE’s web site. More information about KDE 2 is available in two (1, 2) slideshow presentations and on KDE’s web site, including an evolving FAQ to answer questions about migrating to KDE 2.1 from KDE 1.x, anti-aliased font tutorials, a number of screenshots, developer information and a developer’s KDE 1 – KDE 2 porting guide.

————————————————————————

Trademarks Notices. KDE and K Desktop Environment are trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Unix is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Trolltech and Qt are trademarks of Trolltech AS. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

————————————————————————

Press Contacts:

United States: Kurt Granroth
granroth@kde.org
(1) 480 732 1752

Andreas Pour
pour@kde.org
(1) 917 312 3122

Europe (French and English): David Faure
faure@kde.org
(44) 1225 837409

Europe (English and German): Martin Konold
konold@kde.org
(49) 179 2252249

It seems that the bottleneck in true broadband is TCP. UniSci reports that researchers have discovered a flaw in the Transmission Control Protocol that prevents users from seeing more than 3Mbps throughput. Working on solution called Web100, “programmers are refining TCP software in the Linux operating system to automatically achieve the highest possible transfer rate.” Full story at UniSci.