– by Robin “Roblimo” Miller –
We regret the passing of these much-loved news outlets and offer condolences to all our friends who have
been writing for them. But don’t despair too much. At least some of their content will continue as part of the
“parent” ITWorld site.On Monday, March 12, LinuxWorld writers received a communique from editor in chief Kathy Badertscher
that said, “It is with great disappointment, displeasure, nausea, etc. that I must tell you that ITworld is
shutting down LinuxWorld.com.

“Yep. You read correctly. Because of the economy and everything else, ITw could no longer support our
endeavors to become one of the best Linux sites. Thankfully JavaWorld will be retained, but UnixInsider also
becomes a casualty. A bit of OK news is that LinuxWorld.com will live on in an abridged fashion on ITw.
However, things will never be the same, and I know we all know that, but we’ll do the best we can. There’s
much more to say, but I’m afraid an email can’t do it justice.”

LinuxWorld columnist Joe Barr, one of many who received this sad message, told us (via email), “I will
continue my column for ITWorld, at least for the time being.” But he added, “LinuxWorld going down is a big
bummer for me, I’ve been with them since they opened.”

LinuxWorld, Unix Insider, and ITWorld are all owned by IDG, a worldwide information conglomerate
headquartered in Boston, Mass., that publishes (according to its Web site), “more than 290 publications in 75
countries, read by more than 90 million people each month.” IDG also owns research firm IDC, promotes trade
shows and expositions, and publishes books (including the famous “For Dummies” series, among other
activities.

Update 1425 US EST: Former LinuxWorld Editorial director Nick Petrley’s column will be appearing on ITWorld even though its original “home” is sailing into the digital sunset.

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

CanadaNewsWire: “LinuxWizardry Systems, Inc. is
pleased to announce that they have signed an agreement with
Outpost.com.”

Yes, that’s really how they spell it. From FreeOS.com: “Bang!inux looks set to become the Linux event in India. This year’s event was
aimed at Linux programmers and getting people involved in Linux and Open Source
development. There was a lot here and we were fortunate enough to be there to see
the IBM Linux-based wrist watch, Kylix in action and interact with many famous
Open Source developers.”

Here’s the link to download the GUI file manager that will be included with the Gnome 1.4 release: http://www.eazel.com/download.

– By Grant Gross –
Chipmaker Transmeta, the employer of Linux godfather Linus Torvalds, has released its first beta version of a Linux designed to run on small devices.

The 1.0.0-beta1 version of Midori Linux, formerly called Mobile Linux, is available for download today at http://midori.transmeta.com/downloads.shtml.

Maybe because of Torvalds’ proximity to the project, Midori has generated a lot of buzz, even though several other “small Linux” projects exist. Already, a couple of companies have lined up to use Midori in their devices. Listed on the Midori in use page are Gateway’s Connected Touch Pad, a small, mobile Web device using America Online as its ISP, and the similar Hitachi FLORA-ie 55mi. Says the Midori site: “We feel that there are many unexplored uses of Midori. More than once, we have been pleasantly surprised when finding out that Midori (or technology from Midori) is being used somewhere we didn’t expect it to be used.”

Midori Linux, released under the GNU General Public License, includes “a build system, a Linux kernel with memory- and storage-conserving features, and system-level support for normal Linux software on platforms which might otherwise require custom ’embedded’ applications” according to the Midori Web site.

The Midori team, hosted at SourceForge, also has started a wishlist of future projects, the first item a router based on Midori. “Midori is small and ideal for tight environments. A router is a perfect application to take advantage of these benefits. Some possibilities include GNU Zebra,” says the wishlist page. GNU Zebra is a free routing software project.

For documentation the the Midori projects, go to http://midori.transmeta.com/manual/. The page even has a neat logo: a space-suited, green-haired woman apparently using Midori on a wrist device. For Midori bug-tracking, go to the SourceForge Midori tracking page.

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

ZDNET: “Eazel, though acknowledging Linux still isn’t good for the average
user, hopes its coming first final version of its Nautilus software will
bring it a step closer.

Eazel will release Nautilus 1.0 as a free download this week, said Tom
Goguen, director of product management at the Mountain View,
California, company.”

Sensei writes “This document assumes that you:
know basic Unix/Linux commands, know how to use a Unix/Linux text editor, know how to read Unix/Linux path names, and know basic Perl.

Why install CPAN?

Quite simply CPAN.pm takes care of those piddling details which can make perl module installation so painful – it will find, ftp, decompress, install and make any module you want, as well as checking you also have any modules further up the chain of inheritance, stopping runtime errors on scripts which are trying to USE modules which themselves USE modules that you didn’t know you needed to install (Net::FTP is a good example of this fish hook behaviour as it basically inherits from Net::cmd, and without that you get nothing but a nice cascade display).

Check it out at Linuxnewbie.org.“

PCWorld: “A variety of
gadgets have come to market this past year that pump consumer data directly back to corporate marketing
systems.

Such everyday “spy” devices include fitness monitors that track heart rates and pump out exercise-related
advertising, digital music players that track listening habits, low-cost wristwatch and wireless surveillance
cameras, as well as location-tracking mobile phones and other monitoring devices.”

Infoworld: “Just as the graphical user interface helped personal
computers become widespread, so XML (extensible markup language) will provide
the enabling technology for delivering new types of applications and services for
the Internet, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive officer, said”

PCWorld: “Every so often, a product comes along like the DVR-A03 DVD-R/CD-RW burner from Pioneer and makes a
host of high-cost computing tasks suddenly more affordable.

The DVR-A03 isn’t cheap. But at $995 for the unit and $10 for each disc many more of us will be able to
create our own DVD home movies that can play on living-room DVD players and make DVD-R data discs that
mimic DVD-ROMs–a blessing for those who work with space-hogging digital video or audio.”