Slashdotters debate reports that Red Hat no longer allows users to freely and anonymously use Red Hat’s Update Agent to download
updated packages.

LinuxPlanet reports on a Linux-usage and brand awareness study by its corporate parent, Internet.com. Some findings: 39 percent of the respondents said they are using Linux, and another 31 percent are exploring Linux usage.
“Internet.com’s survey also examined Linux vendors, and found that Red Hat is the most well known — familiar
to 79 percent of the respondents and recognized as a major player in the Linux market by 55 percent of the
respondents. Even among non-Linux users, two-thirds have heard of Red Hat. However, the survey
shows that Linux vendors still face an upward climb among IT professionals: 35 percent of the respondents said
they didn’t know who the major players in the Linux market were, while only 18 percent of respondents were
familiar with VA Linux as a Linux vendor …” (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From PR Newswire: MontaVista Software has announced that it
had demonstrated the first working version of embedded Linux(R) targeting the
Intel XscaleT microarchitecture. The demo, featured on the MontaVista
booth at the recently-concluded Linux World and Expo in New York, highlighted
Hard Hat Linux running on Intel’s XScale reference platform.

At Mozillaquest.com: “The Milestone 0.8.1 edition of the Mozilla browser-suite release set for today has been delayed. So, in the meantime we took a look at Friday’s 0.8.1 release candidate for a sneak preview of what’s new and improved since Milestone 0.8.

Check the MozillaQuest Magazine front page (mozillaquest.com) every now and then to find out when Milestone 0.8.1 is released.

One nifty new Mozilla feature in 0.8.1 that our sneak preview found is the hierarchical history. It does a nice job of organizing the URL history by days. You can add the hierarchical history to the sidebar by using the sidebar customize procedure.”

Anonymous Reader writes “The Web has come a long way from static html pages linked together. We can now provide complete applications over the web that can do same thing as desktop application. But how do we interface the web to the real world? Well in this article I’m going to show you how to use the web to control electric devices around your office, room, or laboratory using a PC parallel port relay board and Linux/Apache/PHP. It even has some practical purposes allowing you to add a web interface to just about any device that uses electricity. So lets get started. Complete Story“

If you want to get the attention of your elected representatives in Congress, put a stamp on that rant and drop in the nearest mailbox. That’s one conclusion supported by a recent survey that discovered most Capitol Hill lawmakers simply ignore the massive amount of e-mail they receive, despite access to sophisticated e-mail filtering and sorting software. From a story at The Standard.

“Free software gurus including Richard Stallman, founder of the free software foundation and Bruce Perens, author of the Open Source Definition, will speak at Cambridge University next month in a meeting to assess the impact of sharing computer code, copyrighted music and ideas over the Internet.” Full story at ZDNet UK.

– By Grant Gross –

You might think “Project 42” is some kind of secret government effort involving space ships and little green men. You’d be wrong, of course — Project 42 is the code name for Caldera Systems’ OpenLinux server software, released for open beta today.

Interested beta testers can go to http://www.calderasystems.com/products/beta/to volunteer for the project, a Linux 2.4-based software package targeted at medium and small businesses that includes a secure Web server, a file and print server, a set of network infrastructure servers, and a firewall. Joe Ballif, the project’s product line manager, said the company is committed to an “incredibly long testing cycle” of several months so that OpenLinux is as stable as possible.

“Traditionally, we have not been as good as maybe the other companies have been in having open betas and sharing where we’re going and what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ve taken the the approach that it does provide some value to us and the rest of the world to have more eyes look at it.”

Caldera is also touting OpenLinux’s easy “out-of-the-box” setup and its security as its main selling points. Caldera added a couple of intrusion detection packages and had an -in-house security expert pick through the OpenLinux code with a fine-tooth comb and document the changes, Ballif said.

“I read article after article saying the smart money is on security,” Ballif said. “We took of some of the security checklists from the Unix community, and had him take those and go almost line-by-line through the code. We found some processes which we eliminated … we changed permissions, closed ports off.”

OpenLinux’s default “out-of-the-box” configurations are aimed at those small businesses who don’t have a dozen network administrators to set up servers, Ballif said.

Although OpenLinux will run on top of Caldera merger partner SCO’s UnixWare product, Ballif said the company isn’t trying to get customers to abandon that product. OpenLinux allows customers to develop and deploy their projects on one platform.

“UnixWare is an awesome product,” he said. “It’s very scalable, it’s very robust … it does some things in the SMP world Linux is craving to be able to do. Eventually, Linux will get there, but it’s not quite there yet. We’re trying to get people over there sooner than they would by waiting for Linux to get their by itself.”

Expect to see a final release of OpenLinux in the next quarter. “We’re making sure that we’re not rushing at all,” Ballif said. “We’ll make sure we have something that’ll last for awhile, then keep it up to date. It seems that there’s been a lot of emphasis on freshness within the Linux industry, but the reality is that businesses, to some extent, do not like freshness. They want something that works, and leave it.”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments
posted on our discussion
page.

CNET News.com reports: “Several major notebook makers will break the gigahertz barrier next week. Intel plans on Monday to release its 1GHz mobile Pentium III chip for notebooks, along with a 900MHz mobile Pentium III and a 750MHz mobile Celeron chip, sources familiar with the chipmaker’s plans said.”

The Register reports that Verizon Wireless has just inked a 3 year, five billion dollar deal with Lucent Technologies to build and deploy its next-generation wireless network. The rush to upgrade is on, especially since competitor AT&T received a healthy cash infusion from investor NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s leading mobile data service provider.