“I found the ultimate rubber duck for your bathing tub. I call them BSD ducks.
They are sold here in Switzerland at Rossi, Torgasse 1, 8001 Zuerich as
Teufelsente (devil duck) for 15.00 CHF.” Find out more at FreeBSD Pages.

“Just about every modem these days comes with voice capability. Given the right
tools, your modem can double as an answering machine too. Linux doesn’t leave
your modem out in the cold. There is a very good utility that can be used to setup
your modem to provide the same functionality.” Read more at FreeOS.com.

InfoWorld: “Weighing in at 3.4 pounds, the new Latitude is powered by Intel’s 700MHz Mobile
Pentium III SpeedStep processor, according to Anne Camden, a manager for the
Latitude notebook line at Dell, in Round Rock, Texas.”

Stephanie Bond writes “BRISBANE, Australia -February 28, 2001-Auran today released JIVE, a development environment for AURAN Jet. AURAN Jet is a game authoring environment that enables developers to create responsive and robust 3D applications.
JIVE stands for Jet Integrated Visual Environment. It is an extendable development environment allowing developers to build tools for editing application resources. JIVE is used in conjunction with Auran?s next-generation game architecture, AURAN Jet.

AURAN Jet was created to support independent game developers by providing game architecture in order to create interactive entertainment with less expense.

Users can download AURAN Jet Beta 2 and JIVE at the AURAN Jet Website for free.

AURAN Jet
Building on the company?s game software expertise and the urgent worldwide need to reduce game development costs, Auran is developing the world?s first accessible game architecture. AURAN Jet has a FREE ACCESS licensing agreement that caters to developers of all sizes. Non-commercial use of AURAN Jet is free whilst commercial use will attract a modest fee. The draft licensing agreement is available on the AURAN Jet Web site at www.auranjet.com.

Auran has a proven track record in engine development. Auran?s first engine, the Tactics Engine, was used to power the hit PC strategy game Dark Reign and has since been purchased by an international games publisher. Auran has invested US$4 million and fifty person years on the research and development of AURAN Jet. AURAN Jet will be used to power all of Auran?s current games in development, from cutting-edge showcase titles, to online collectible games such as Trainz.

Auran
Auran is an Australian interactive entertainment company. The company was established by avid games player Greg Lane and co-founder Graham Edelsten in 1995, and is driven by the mantra, ?Don?t Predict It. Create It.?. Auran has been a successful player in the game industry with hit PC title from 1997 Dark Reign, powered by the Tactics Engine, and continues to create leading edge interactive entertainment and technology. Dark Reign has sold 680,000 copies internationally.”

– by Robin “roblimo” Miller –
I finally got around to a full day of playing with the (proprietary) Opera Browser 5.0 Linux beta. It’s the fastest browser I’ve ever used in any operating system, but I’m not ready to spend $39 or look at annoying ads in return for using it. And with (free, Open Source) Konqueror steadily improving, Opera may never be able to make a living selling its browser to Linux users unless the company has some very big and sexy rabbits waiting to be pulled out of its development hat.First, let me tell you about the ads. The “free” version of Opera throws an ad in the upper right hand corner of the screen. For someone like me whose bad eyes and 14.1″ laptop screen dictate 800X600 screen resolution, this is a major annoyance because it eats up a significant amount of my tiny working space. Then I go to a site that is already as full of ads as I can tolerate (like NewsForge itself, which admittedly rides the edge of readability in this respect) and I simply can’t handle it all.

In return for the ad annoyance I get a browser that won’t handle plugins; now and then I have no choice but to wade through government documents published in Acrobat format, and I’ve got to admit that I like to grab a little sound and fury in Real or Flash now and then. Opera’s current Linux beta also freezes me out of any site that uses Java. I may not love Java-laden sites, but until I have King of the World power over all Web design it is something I must live with.

Opera’s Linux beta also doesn’t have email built-in, a factor that might not bother Pine users, but I’m a lazy cuss who has been using Netscape Messenger for years, and I have gotten spoiled by the ease of simply using one (admittedly bloated) piece of software for virtually all of my online browsing and communication needs.

OK, fine. Give me plugins, Java, and email, and maybe I’ll love Opera enough to pay $39 for it, because I am not going to want those ads on my screen for any length of time. The basic speed and near-perfect, “full compliance” site rendering job Opera does is awesome compared to either Netscape or Explorer. If I used Windows, I would almost certainly pay to use Opera instead of being forced to choose between the “big two,” both of which are free, but neither of which is less proprietary than Opera. And yes, the Windows version of Opera has all the neat add-ons that make Web browsing fun (plus an integrated email utility) so I would give up no functionality by switching to it.

And then there’s Konqueror

It’s rough writing pay-for Linux software. Applix learned this the hard way. Despite denials by their PR person, not long after I wrote the linked-to article they spun off the “VistaSource” division responsible for ApplixWare desktop products. It seems that while their product was decent, it wasn’t enough better than free StarOffice or its GPL descendant OpenOffice that a whole lot of people wanted to cough up cash for it.

I’m not saying Linux users won’t pay for software — many of us will — but to get our money you need to give us something far better than programs we can download and use for free, like Konqueror, the KDE Web browser.

Konq (Konqueror’s nickname) hasn’t yet won my stodgy heart away from Netscape 4.7X, but it keeps getting closer. It handles Netscape plugins, Java, and most CSS just fine, and the KDE email program, Kmail, is at least as good as Netscape Messenger. (Only inertia has kept me from switching email clients already, and unless an obviously superior point/click Linux email handler crosses my desk in the next few weeks, I’ll probably make the jump to full-time Kmail use within a month or so.)

Opera takes less disk space and renders pages slightly faster than Konq. But these are its only advantages in any practical sense that affects my daily browser usage. Konq is not yet stable enough for my taste (Opera has not crashed on me even once yet), and the Konq version I have (included in KDE 2.01) doesn’t handle the cascading style sheets CNN.com uses to get me to its streaming video and audio features.

But based on my experience with KDE (which I’ve been using almost since it first appeared) I have confidence that Konq development will move along rapidly enough that Opera will have a hard time not just keeping up but staying $39 ahead, and if Opera can’t manage this feat it is going to be toast in the Linux browser marketplace.

Mozilla lurks in the background

Yes, that endless project is still alive, putting out a steady stream of ever-better builds, moving incrementally closer to being consumer-usable every month. Someday there will be a 1.0 release, and when it comes it will have the powerful Netscape name attached to it, although what *many* people I know hope — and I hope myself — is that other developers will take the basic Mozilla rendering engine and make an Opera-speed program from it. The official Netscape version has so many junk features attached to it that it looks like paying $39 for Opera would save at least that much over Netscape in needed hard drive space and processing power. But who can say? Tons of work have gone into Mozilla, and it has had more lines of copy written about it than lines of code that have gone into the darn thing, so it will certainly be a significant Linux browser even if it is less than perfect.

The upshot

Opera will never be used by Free Software purists; it is straight-up, unashamed proprietary commercial software, a defect not shared by Konq or Mozilla. So let’s assume Opera for Linux is aimed — as a product — at Windows users switching to Linux who are in the habit of paying for software and could care less if they or more-skilled friends have access to source code or the right to pass software along to friends free of charge.

Will there be enough of these people out there soon enough, all willing to pay $39 for a browser when other Linux browsers can be had for free?

Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll admit that if the first “finished” release of Opera for Linux has all the features I’m used to in Netscape, maintains its current speed and small footprint, and no other free (beer and/or speech) browser project gives me similar functionality first, I would consider buying Opera.

Would you?

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

Australian IT reports that the Mir is finally about to fall out of the sky, but with 1500 fragments expected to hit the ground, Russia may be held responsible for any damage caused if the crashing space station hits anything other than water.

ZDNet reports on reaction to Red Hat’s recent response to Microsoft’s allegations that Linux prevents innovation and is un-American.

Info World reports on a subpoena by 2TheMart.com against InfoSpace, a message board, for the names of several anonymous posters. 2TheMart says the posters hurt their stock, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are trying to prevent the posters’ real identities from being released.

Info World reports that Intel is releasing a 10/100/1000baseT network device, which is attached directly to the motherboard.

CNN reports on the latest exchange between Microsoft and the US Department of Justice in court. Microsft believes Judge Jackson, who ordered the break up of Microsoft, was biased, but more importantly, the justices of the appeals court seem to agree.