How do you present computing to someone who has never used a computer? Federico Pellegrin approached the subject the Open Source way in a 26-hour basic computing course he offered in Italy last year. Take a peek at Pellegrin’s course outline and commentary at

– By Grant Gross –
To some observers, Microsoft’s recent announcements that Linux and the GNU General Public licenses are a threat to its business and the American Way would seem to come at an odd time in the history of Linux.

Someone casually watching the Open Source community might note that just as Linux stocks hit all-time lows and Linux companies began laying off workers, Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux his company’s biggest threat. That was in January, and a month later, Microsoft’s Windows operating-system chief, Jim Allchin, called Open Source a threat to innovation. Allchin later backtracked a little from the story, in which he implied that Open Source development was un-American, instead saying he was just talking only about the GNU General Public License.

Microsoft, never one to shy away from talking smack about perceived and real competitors, seems to have pumped up its Linux rhetoric when there’s scant good news about the Linux market. Sure, IBM is pumping big money into Linux, and bad stock prices don’t stop the thousands of Open Source developers from cranking out new code, but it would seem that Microsoft is kicking a dog when it’s a bit down.

On Wednesday, self-described “Linux hobbyist” and programer Emily Dresner-Thornber posted an opinion piece on the site Netslaves.com titled What Linux must do to survive. Read the whole thing before you fire off a flame; Dresner-Thornber makes some interesting points, some of which have even been made by Open Source advocates. I disagreed with a couple of her points, including that Microsoft doesn’t see Linux as a real threat to its bottom line.

She writes in part: “Microsoft knows what I know: Linux is not a threat. It’s an annoyance. It’s a thorn. It is not, really, a threat. Not now. With enough marketing and cool, new developer toys, Microsoft can sway companies just like they did before with ASP, COM, InterDev and every other new initiative they have started in the last five years.”

On several levels, Linux has some catching up to do before it seriously challenges Windows’ market share. According to an IDC study released recently, Linux outpaced Windows in server sales growth in 2000, with Linux holding a 27 percent share of the server OS market and Microsof with 41 percent. But the study, with numbers some in the Open Source community might argue about, said Microsoft had 92 percent of the desktop/laptop market, with Linux only commanding 1 percent.

Certainly, the Linux server market should make Microsoft nervous, but that’s not a new trend. Dresner-Thornber argues that Linux is nothing special as a target of Microsoft’s FUD. She reminded me of Microsoft’s campaigns against Apple and OS/2, used by the Redmond boys, she says, as no more than a way to drum up buzz about Microsoft products.

She’s correct, to a point: Linux is among a long line of products that have found their way into Microsoft’s crosshairs. But in each case, including Linux, Microsoft has seen the object of its anti-marketing campaign as some kind of threat. As a desktop and an enterprise OS, Linux may not be a huge threat to Microsoft’s bottom line this very moment, but if the boys in Redmond are good at one thing, it’s identifying potential competitors and crushing them like bugs. That’s why the U.S. government considers Microsoft a monopoly.

Certainly, Linux’s threat to Microsoft is not the same as Apple’s or OS/2’s were. Microsoft should be scared because Linux is playing by different rules. Think of Microsoft as a World War II military power that’s used to fighting a ground war against other armies with fewer tanks and fewer guns. The powerful Microsoft has been able to sell its brand of spin because it’s had the biggest and loudest guns.

But the Linux community isn’t playing that game. At the risk of getting the community compared to communists once again, the Linux people are fighting a guerilla war.

What happens when Linux companies’ stock drops? Linus Torvalds and crew pay no attention; instead they release the 2.4 kernel. What happens when Linux companies lay off staff? IBM announces it’s investing $1 billion in Linux.

Unlike Apple and the other objects of Microsoft’s FUD, the Linux developer community doesn’t have to worry about making a payroll or pleasing stockholders. Linux companies have to worry about those things, but the companies aren’t driving Linux development, the community is.

Microsoft is slowly realizing it can’t kill Linux. Even if Linux stock prices never recover, the community will survive mostly unchanged. Microsoft’s spin campaign has never worked on the Linux crowd, and the rest of the world is starting to realize what Microsoft has been feeding it for years.

The huge, ancient monolith that is Microsoft doesn’t know how to fight this war, and that scares the hell out of Gates and Ballmer. Unlike Apple or OS/2, Linux has snuck up on Microsoft, and the company has no idea how to compete.

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

Windows 2000 Magazine reports on comments Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made at a recent conference. “Ballmer disparaged high-end competitor Sun Microsystems and eased into the news that
Microsoft will support the Palm OS and might eventually support Linux (with .NET) as well.”

From BusinessWire: ARM (LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY)), the industry’s leading
provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC microprocessor solutions, today launched the ARM Design Contest for Education.

The contest begins on March 7, 2001 and ends June 30, 2001. Participation is open to any student, or group of students, from
Universities and senior/high schools. The subject of the design is open but the system must include or simulate at least one ARM
processor. Design examples could include hardware & software: uHAL embedded RT Linux applications, cryptography, low-power
applications, IPs, Evaluator(TM) 7T board extensions, simulation, language interpreters and compilers. ARM is not only interested in
new low-cost, low-power solutions; entrants will also be judged upon the innovation of their designs.

Rajesh Goyal of LinuxCertified.com again announces a weekend system administration
bootcamp for busy IT professionals, in which all attendees get a free Linux laptop.

Media Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com

http://www.linuxcertified.com/

LinuxCertified.com, a leading provider of Linux training, will
offer its next weekend system administration bootcamp on April
7-8, 2001 in San Francisco bay area (south bay). This
workshop is designed for busy information technology professionals
and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas.

In addition to carefully designed lecture material delivered by
experienced Linux professionals, there is a heavy emphasis on
hands-on learning. The training starts two weeks before the actual
class, with access to an online Linux server, where students
complete few challenging pre-class activities. Attendees get a
powerful Linux laptop on their arrival, along with other class
materials. They load Linux on their laptop during the class, and
use it for all the class activities and assignments. At the end
of the class they take this laptop with them to further enhance
their Linux expertise. Absolute beginners with no UNIX experience
can first come to the popular “Linux for Beginners” class and
subsequently join the system administration bootcamp.

Rapid growth of Linux into corporate and government IT
environments is fueling the need for Linux certified professionals. CIOs
and managers are eager to have Linux experts in their organizations.
A certification provides a tangible mechanism for their
hiring evaluation, as well as a means to market the prowess of
organizations.

“As an independent IT consultant I am always on my toes to learn
new technologies, without much free time to devote to classes.
The LinuxCertified.com bootcamp was a perfect way for me to jumpstart
my Linux knowledge. I can now use Linux as a valuable
tool in my career,” said Taylor Cottam, an independent consultant
who joined one of the LinuxCertified.com weekend bootcamps.

This weekend bootcamp is specially designed to prepare the
attendees for the objectives of Level 1 certification exams offered
by Linux Professional Institute (LPI). The workshop also
meets the objectives of the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam
and Sair Linux & GNU certification (LCA).

Our attendees build a strong sense of community with our instructors,
fellow students, and our network of recruiters and companies looking for
Linux consultants.

About LinuxCertified.com

The mission of LinuxCertified.com is to bring Linux to mainstream
IT usage. We firmly believe that Linux has an enormous potential,
once it crosses over from the early adopters to the more
mainstream users. Our goal is to help this transition by providing:

– Linux trained and certified professionals

– Linux certified products that cater to mainstream users rather
than early adopters.

Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com

http://www.linuxcertified.com/

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Linux Professionals Institute and the LPI logo are trademarks of the Linux
Professional Institute, Inc.

RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

LinuxCertified.com is an independent entity from organizations providing Linux
certification exams, and they do not sponsor our classes.

All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
“

From PR Newswire: Voxeo Corporation, which
manages a nationwide network and web development platform for creating and
deploying Phone+Web applications, today announced that the developers who have
signed up for the Voxeo Community have created more than 300 Phone+Web
applications. Voxeo also announced its Phone+Web Killer Apps contest, which,
in conjunction with the relaunch of the Voxeo Community site
( http://community.voxeo.com ), will accelerate the development of innovative,
new Phone+Web applications.

Additionally, Voxeo has upgraded the Voxeo Community website with an
improved account and application management system, a new “Application
Provisioning Wizard” and a new look and feel. New resources at the Voxeo
Community site include tutorials and open source applications for the upcoming
release of Borland Kylix (a new Linux development tool), and Borland JBuilder,
which will also be included in the Companion Tools CD for each product.

From LWN.net: “The following problems have been reported for the version of proftpd in
Debian 2.2 (potato):

1. There is a configuration error in the postinst script, when the user
enters ‘yes’, when asked if anonymous access should be enabled.
The postinst script wrongly leaves the ‘run as uid/gid root’ configuration
option in /etc/proftpd.conf, and adds a ‘run as uid/gid nobody’ option that
has no effect.

2. There is a bug that comes up when /var is a symlink, and proftpd is
restarted. When stopping proftpd, the /var symlink is removed; when it’s
started again a file named /var is created.”

From LWN.net: “The joe text editor looks for configuration files in the current
working directory, the user’s home directory, and finally in /etc/joe.
A malicious user could create their own .joerc configuration file and
attempt to get other users to use it. If this were to happen, the user
could potentially execute malicious commands with their own user ID and
privileges. This update removes joe’s ability to use a .joerc
configuration file in the current working directory.”

Wired.com has an article about a “new, slimmed-down version of DVD descrambling now exists: a mere seven lines of Perl code. It’s so lean, you too can attach it to your e-mail signature file.” How do the music industry lawyers fight that?

It’s at LinuxDoc.org. Among the new documents: VCR HOWTO http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/VCR-HOWTO.html, Version 0.01, Brian Hayward, twivel@slothmud.org. This is a guide to setting up your GNU/Linux workstation as a digital VCR using the video4linux driver and a supported tuner
card.