Cliff asks Slashdotters what they think about Microsoft’s .Net – is it a lot like Java, or not?

Paul Bristow writes “http://complify.org has been unveiled today to start pulling together the different open source pieces that are required to build a viable residential gateway. As we move into the broadband future we will need some piece of hardware to handle the connection to the internet and protect us from “out there”. Complify aims to provide the necessary co-ordination to allow us to do that with open source technology. After all, just because you may run windows today doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use Linux to protect you.

Take a look at the site, and join the discussions at http://sourceforge.net/projects/homenetwork

Mark Hatch writes ” Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS), the developer of BX PRO, the industry?s leading GUI builder for OSF/Motif® on Linux and UNIX systems, and Sitraka Software (formerly KL Group), the leader in Motif components and developer of XRT Professional Developer?s Suite (PDS), today announced a partnership that provides a powerful solution for developers working on mission critical Motif applications.

ICS has developed a kit that allows seamless integration of XRT PDS with BX PRO, providing a complete enterprise solution for UNIX and Linux developers. In addition to offering this integration kit, ICS has also entered into a Reseller agreement with Sitraka for XRT PDS. With this agreement, ICS can now offer the largest selection of Motif development tools on UNIX and Linux systems.

“This partnership is great news for Motif developers,” said Mark Cranley of Sitraka Software, Business Development Manager for XRT. ” The combination of XRT PDS and BX PRO can significantly enhance productivity in mission-critical application development environments that are increasingly using Linux as their platform.”

“We surveyed our customer base and found that many were using Sitraka Software?s XRT products,” said Mark Hatch, Chief Operating Officer for ICS. “In creating this integration kit, we are enabling anyone developing in our BX PRO development environment to be ultra productive, receiving full functionality from Sitraka?s XRT motif components. By reselling XRT PDS we are providing additional value by creating a single source for purchase and support.”

Availability and Pricing
The integration kit for XRT is currently shipping for Linux (Intel), Sun, SGI, HP, Compaq, and IBM systems. It is included at no extra charge for XRT licenses and support purchased through ICS. It is available separately for $1,500/copy and includes 12 months of technical support.

More on Motif
Motif® is the industry standard graphical user interface, (as defined by the IEEE 1295 specification), used on more than 200 hardware and software platforms. It provides application developers, end users, and system vendors with the industry’s most widely used environment for
standardizing application presentation on a wide range of platforms. Motif is the leading user interface for the UNIX® based operating system.

The Motif graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit facilitates the development of applications for heterogeneous, networked computing environments. By providing application portability across a variety of platforms, the Motif environment helps protect valuable investments in software and user training.

About ICS
Founded in 1987, ICS was chartered to create software development tools for developers working with the then emerging X Window System. The company’s first product offerings included X training and a version of Motif for systems manufactured by Sun Microsystems. Prior to widespread adoption of Motif by the UNIX workstation vendors, ICS was the leading independent shipper of the Motif toolkit. In 1998, The Open Group chose ICS to provide technical support for its Motif source code licenses.

Today, ICS is the current market leader in Motif graphical user interface development tools, Builder Xcessory PRO (BX PRO). In its fifth major release representing over 100 person and years of effort, BX PRO defines a level of sophistication, functionality and ease of use that is unmatched in the industry. In November of 1999, the combination of BX PRO from ICS and Code Fusion from Red Hat Software was awarded the Editor´s Choice award by the leading Linux magazine, The Linux Journal, for the Best New Application for Software Development.

For further information on ICS, its products or services, call 617-621-0060, or visit the ICS Website at http://www.ics.com

About Sitraka Inc.
Sitraka (formerly KL Group) is a leading provider of reliable, innovative software solutions that enable enterprise IT organizations to leverage the power of the Internet. A division of Sitraka and a proven leader in the UNIX/Motif and Java marketplaces, Sitraka Software delivers products and solutions that accelerate the development, deployment, and management of applications. Sitraka Software products include: XRT PDS, the world’s leading suite of Motif widgets; DeployDirector, a robust and scalable Java application deployment solution; JProbe Java performance tuning tools; and JClass Java components. Visit Sitraka on the Web at http://www.sitraka.com.

About XRT PDS

XRT PDS is the most complete and versatile set of Motif interface components available. Save yourself the time and effort involved in creating components from scratch. What’s more, when you buy XRT PDS you’ll get the 6 most popular XRT widgets for about half the price of buying each product separately. For more information on XRT PDS visit http://www.sitraka.com/xrt.

###Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Sitraka, XRT, DeployDirector, JProbe, and JClass are trademarks of Sitraka Inc.
Builder Xcessory PRO is a trademark of Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc.
All other registered trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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A column from Sm@rt Partner focuses on what’s missing from Linux 2.4 — actually what Linux needs to overtake Windows — including a journaling file system, and “goodies” such as serious management tools.

Posted at LWN.net: API NetWorks, Inc.
(formerly Alpha Processor, Inc.), engineers of the world’s
highest-performing Linux hardware solutions, and global supercomputer
leader Cray Inc. (Nasdaq NM: CRAY), today announced a strategic
alliance to bring the power, openness and scalability of Alpha Linux
to large, mission-critical technical data centers for the first time.

Slashdotters discuss and debate reports, including one from CNBC.com speculating that AMD will buy rival chipmaker (and Linus employer) Transmeta.

LinuxDevices.com reviews KDE’s past licensing issues with Qt. “The proprietary Qt license complicated the licensing of KDE, which
is distributed under the GPL and LGPL — no one was quite certain
whether it was strictly legal to link it with the
proprietary-licensed Qt. But recent licensing changes by Trolltech
have removed the licensing issues, somewhat tipping the scales
toward Qt — and, by extension, toward KDE in the desktop world.”

Reuters reports on a Wall Street Journal report. Got that? It doesn’t mention it in the article, but Akamai likes using Linux.

IBM.com has a detailed story about Midgard, an Open Source system based on PHP that “takes over the job of looking after content,
allowing you to concentrate on site aesthetics and functionality. Server-side scripting languages such as PHP are great for creating dynamic, creative, and compelling Web sites. Unfortunately they
have always left the mechanics of creating, rendering, and administering dynamic content to the script author — until now.”

From PR Newswire: SGI (NYSE: SGI), a leader in high-performance multiplatform computing,
continues to bring its knowledge of and experience with the SGI IRIX
operating system to the Linux platform by delivering stable, reliable and
optimized Linux OS-based solutions that feature real-time performance and
realism for real data. SGI core technologies focus on customers’ most
challenging problems characterized by the compute power they require, the vast
amount of data involved and the ability to visualize and interact in real-time
with the problem to solve it. SGI has introduced a suite of Linux OS-based
solutions for clustering, Internet, storage and database applications,
including SGI Internet Server for e-commerce, SGI Internet Server
Environment, SGI Advanced Cluster Environment for Linux, and
the SGI 1100 server. This new suite of SGI solutions is targeted toward
technical, creative and business professionals in the Internet, sciences,
manufacturing, government and education markets.