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Welsh spurn Windows to
create own Linux
Matthew Broersma
ZDNetUK News
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Countries such as China, Iceland and Estonia are already
creating localised versions of the Linux operating system and
its applications, and now it is the turn of Wales.
Wales-based programmer Kevin Donnelly is taking advantage of
the fact that anyone is allowed to modify and redistribute
Linux to do the work of
localisation himself, with the help of any interested Welsh
speakers. He is soliciting translations of key files from the
general public through a new
Web site, kyfieithu.co.uk, and using the results to create
Welsh-language versions of the open-source KDE and Gnome user
interfaces.
"If I wanted to get a Welsh version of Windows, it would
mean a lot of lobbying and probably spending a lot of money to
get it done," Donnelly
said. "With free software it cuts through all that."
Donnelly appeared at this week's Linux User and Developer Expo
in Birmingham to raise interest in
the project.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2136525,00.html
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Mandrake Goes For High
Performance Clustering
Timothy R. Butler
OPEN for Business
June 24, 2003
At the International Supercomputer Conference 2003 today,
MandrakeSoft announced its latest entry to the company's
growing portfolio of middle-to-high end server products.
MandrakeClustering is a high performance clustering
distribution for IA-32 and AMD64 (Opteron) architectures.
IA-64 support should come in September, the company reported.
The new distribution is based on the Free Software clustering
project MandrakeSoft has been working on with partners known
as CLIC (announcement here). According to today's release, the
project offers "both high calculation performance plus
unequaled comfort of use."
http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=246
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Open source laws likely for SA
Simon Hayes
News.com.au
June 25, 2003
LEGALLY-mandated open source software is a step closer in
South Australia, with a private members Bill that requires
government departments to use it "where practicable"
likely to pass the upper house.
Backed by Democrats MLC Ian Gilfillan, The State Supply
(Procurement of Software) Amendment Bill calls on public
authorities to use open source in preference to proprietary
software.
"Wherever practicable, a public authority should use open
source software in preference to proprietary software,"
the Bill reads.
http://www.news.com.au/common/...
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'Mod chip' design goes open
source
David Becker
CNET News.com
June 24, 2003
An Australian company that manufactures and sells a "mod
chip" for Microsoft's Xbox video-game console has
released the design for the hacking tool under an open-source
license.
Hibana, which makes the DualMod chip and sells it via the
AussieChip Web site, began offering a downloadable version of
the chip design last week to anyone who agrees to a license
that incorporates standard open-source provisions.
Mod chips are gray-market add-ons that, once soldered onto the
circuit board of a video-game console, bypass security systems
in the machines. The chips allow hackers to run homemade
software and import on a console, along with enabling playback
of illegally game discs.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043-1020471.html...
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Getting the Desktop Ready for
Linux: A Historical Analysis
Glenn Stone
Linux Journal
June 25, 2003
One of my non-Linux-savvy friends asked me the question,
what's significant about Linux for her? The fact that she
would ask this question, combined with a note from Phil
Hughes, got me to thinking--is Linux finally ready for the
desktop?
In 1998, I bought my wife a computer. It was a surplus Dell
486/66, into which I stuffed 32MB of RAM and an ET4000 video
card (the VGA module had fried, but otherwise the computer was
good). Add an NE-2000-clone NIC, and it was ready for the home
LAN.
She insisted on Windows, because she was a secretary at the
time and wanted to keep up her chops at home. I grudgingly
dropped Windows 95 on the box. This lasted about three months,
until the registry ate itself twice in as many weeks. At this
point my wife exhibited her penchant for resembling a Sea-Bee
in the audio spectrum and told me to install Linux. Grinning
to myself, I grabbed a Red Hat 5 CD and set to work. Netscape
and Solitaire were installed, and the audio feed from her end
of the table quickly subsided from NC-17 to PG. She's never
looked back, and I thought to myself, surely Linux is ready
for the desktop...
http://www.linuxjournal.com//article.php?sid=6963
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Getting the Desktop Ready for
Linux: A Historical Analysis
Glenn Stone
Linux Journal
June 25, 2003
One of my non-Linux-savvy friends asked me the question,
what's significant about Linux for her? The fact that she would ask this
question, combined with a note from Phil Hughes, got me to thinking--is Linux
finally ready for the desktop?
In 1998, I bought my wife a computer. It was a surplus Dell
486/66, into which I stuffed 32MB of RAM and an ET4000 video card (the
VGA
module had fried, but otherwise the computer was good). Add an
NE-2000-clone NIC, and it was ready for the home LAN.
She insisted on Windows, because she was a secretary at the
time and wanted to keep up her chops at home. I grudgingly dropped Windows 95
on the box. This lasted about three months, until the registry ate itself
twice in as many weeks. At this point my wife exhibited her penchant for
resembling a Sea-Bee in the audio spectrum and told me to install Linux.
Grinning to myself, I grabbed a Red Hat 5 CD and set to work. Netscape and
Solitaire were installed, and the audio feed from her end of the table
quickly subsided from NC-17 to PG. She's never looked back, and I
thought to myself, surely Linux is ready for the desktop.
http://www.linuxjournal.com//article.php?sid=6963
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Lindows.com Upgrades OS with 4.0
SiliconValley.Internet.com
June 25, 2003
Continuing its efforts to win desktop share away from (Quote,
Company Info), Lindows.com Wednesday launched a new version its Linux-based
operating system which attempts to compete with Windows on ease-of-use
issues and new features.
LindowsOS 4.0 adds Plug & Play support, ad blocking, spam
blocking pornography blocking. The company said it also eases the
install process with a sub-10 minute installation program that installs
operating system and configures all hardware -- including video cards Ethernet,
sound cars and devices -- without the need for from the user.
Additionally, through the company's "Zero
Maintenance" initiative, Lindows.com said users will be able to install or update more
1,000 programs with a single mouse click.
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/2227451
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SuSE To Power Fastest U.S.
Supercomputer
James Maguire
NewsFactor Network
June 25, 2003
Cray (Nasdaq: CRAY) has chosen SuSE Latest about SuSE Linux to
play a key role in helping the supercomputer Latest News about
supercomputer maker build a massive parallel-processing supercomputer for the U.S.
Department of Energy.
Dubbed "Red Storm," the supercomputer is expected
to be the fastest supercomputer in the U.S. It will be powered
by AMD's (NYSE:
AMD) Opteron 64-bit processors featuring hypertransport technology.
The prestigious contract is a major feather in the cap of
SuSE, who competes head to head with Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT)
Latest News about Red
Hat , widely regarded as the leading Linux vendor. SuSE was
a natural choice for Cray in this project because "we've been working with Opteron
64-bit for three years," SuSE marketing vice president
Joseph Eckert told NewsFactor.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21799.html
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Oracle Touts Linux Tool at Show
Clint Boulton
SiliconValley.Internet.com
June 25, 2003
Database software specialist Oracle Wednesday continued to
spread the word of Linux, and its support for the open source operating
system, by backing it up with a new software tool to help companies migrate their
existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications to Linux.
The move appears designed to signal that the company is not
letting its $6.3 billion hostile takeover bid for rival application provider
PeopleSoft affect its own technological momentum.
Announced at the Redwood Shores, Calif. vendor's Oracle
AppsWorld event in London, the move is aimed squarely at moving customers away
from Microsoft's Windows platform. Oracle repeated its mantra that its
applications running on the popular open source software will save customers money
without losing performance. This promise of greater return-on-investment is
alluring at a
time when IT dollars are harder to come by than the heyday of
a few years ago.
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/2227491
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Penguin on Thin Ice?
Anupam Chander
FindLaw's Legal Commentary
June 26, 2003
Earlier this year, SCO, a Utah-based software company, filed a
multi-billion dollar unfair competition lawsuit in Utah federal court
against IBM, one of the world's leading information technology companies.
The suit arose because IBM has made a strong push towards
using the ever more popular Linux operating system for computers. (It's not
alone; Linux is used by millions of people the world over, in companies,
government offices, and private homes.) But SCO claims - astonishingly - that
Linux is an
illegal derivative of software SCO acquired from others years
ago.
Though IBM is the only defendant, SCO's suit threatens Linux
as well. Thus, the suit has captured the attention of the computing industry.
Indeed, it has even inspired comedy - in the form of a parody of SCO's
CEO set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune. But at the same time, it has also
generated FUD--"fear, uncertainty, and doubt"--among Linux
users.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030626_chander.html
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Who Needs Clusters?
Jay Wrolstad
NewsFactor Network
June 20, 2003
In the drive to be well connected, more businesses are taking
a close look at clustering technology -- which used to be viewed as too
pricey for all but the most well-heeled enterprises -- to keep their servers
humming and to boost system performance.
Among the options gaining traction are high-availability (HA)
clusters designed to keep a server Latest News about Servers system
online and responsive with minimal interruptions. They typically use
redundant nodes and applications running on multiple machines that monitor
each other. In
the event of a node failure, the secondary node reacts
instantly and
prevents a system crash.
The basic strategy for HA clusters is to take existing
hardware and raise it to the service level of a mainframe, with availability
assurances. And while a number of companies offer proprietary HA technology, it has
become a commodity drawing interest from the open-source community.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21767.html
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Keep It On The Qt: Linux/Windows
GUI Toolkit Coming to Mac OS X
Alex Allee
The Mac Observer
June 19, 2003
If you've used KDE, a GUI for Linux, you've probably used an
application built using Trolltech's Qt GUI toolkit. According to the
company, it will release an OS X native version of Qt at Apple's upcoming
Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco. The software will be
released under the GPL, and will allow the native compilation of such
software as the Konqueror Web browser and file manager, and the KOffice
productivity suite under OS X without the need of an X11 server such as Apple's
X11 or XDarwin.
From Trolltech:
Trolltech today announced that Qt/Mac will be released under
the GPL (GNU General Public License) at Apple's World Wide Developer
Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco on June 23rd.
With the release of the Qt/Mac Free Software Edition, the
advantages of Qt's dual licensing model are now taken to Mac OS X. Since it's
founding in 1994, Trolltech has successfully used a dual licensing business
model, offering both commercial and Free Software licensing options to
developers.
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/06/19.6.shtml
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Linux: Universities should lead
Ravind Ramesh
TheStar Online
June 20, 2003
SUBANG JAYA: Local universities have a big part to play in
driving the adoption of the open source Linux operating system in
Malaysia, according to IBM Malaysia Sdn Bhd's software division country manager, Hong
Kok Cheong.
"Education is still a problem for Linux. A lot of
developers here are keen to work on Linux but don't know how to go about it," he
said.
"The key to educating the public lies in institutions of
higher learning, which are currently not teaching their students enough about
Linux and the open source movement," he claimed.
According to Hong, IBM Malaysia has been working with a few
local universities to encourage the future of open computing through
its Premier University Programme.
http://star-techcentral.com/tech/...
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SCO dispute leaves IBM road map
untouched
Robert McMillan
InfoWorld
June 20, 2003
If The SCO Group hopes to change the course of IBM's AIX
operating system
and its use by enterprise customers, the Lindon, Utah-based
company appears set to fail.
SCO last week ratcheted up its rhetoric in its lawsuit against
IBM, tripling the damage claims it is seeking to more than $3 billion, and
telling users of IBM's AIX operating system that they no longer have the
right to use IBM' s version of Unix.
But despite the all attention, IBM customers and industry
analysts do not expect the case to have any significant impact on IBM's
products in the foreseeable future.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/06/20/25NNsco_1.html
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Torvalds Speaks Out on SCO,
Linux
Peter Galli
eWeek
June 23, 2003
Linus Torvalds, the founder and lead developer of the Linux
open-source operating system, has some strong views about the legal
dispute between The SCO Group and IBM , which he shared with eWEEK Senior Editor
Peter Galli in an e-mail exchange last week. Torvalds also last week
announced he was
taking a leave of absence from Transmeta Corp. and becoming
the first full-time fellow at the Open Source Development Lab, where he
will continue to drive the next version of the Linux kernel, 2.6, due later
this summer.
...
SCO alleges that you need to focus more on getting
clarification as to where the code that goes in the Linux kernel comes from. Do you have
any plans to change the current Linux development model?
"... No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the
Linux process is already the most transparent process in the whole industry.
Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the
evolution and source of every single line of code out there..."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1133141,00.asp
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Linux untapped gold mine, Corel
shareholders say
Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Ottawa Business Journal
June 23, 2003
Corel Corp. stands to miss an enormous Linux market
opportunity if it submits to Vector Capital's $97.6-million takeover,
shareholders of the Ottawa company say.
Last week, a group of shareholders launched a fight to kill
the takeover deal, saying it severely undervalues the software maker. David
Lutzke, a Wisconsin resident and Corel shareholder for the past five
years, launched CorelRescue.com to outline the problems Corel shareholders
have with the takeover.
One of the biggest issues is Corel's focus on the Linux
market. Despite the initial hype and subsequent disappointment surrounding Corel's
move into the Linux space in 1999, some shareholders maintain Corel is
staring at a gold mine with its Linux capabilities.
http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/278010963259392.php
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Late scores: Germany 1 Microsoft
0
John Naughton
The Observer
June 22, 2003
Something really interesting is going on in Germany. Some time
ago, the city of Munich decided to review what should be done about
upgrading the municipality's computing infrastructure - and specifically the
software running on its 14,000 PCs. A thorough examination by
consultants UnilogIntegrata AG recommended that the city could save money
and increase security by switching from Microsoft to open source software -
ie systems based on the Linux operating system and OpenOffice
applications.
Outside Berlin, Munich is Germany's most prominent local
authority, and the boys at Redmond were not amused at the prospect of such a
major customer defecting to communism - which is how they regard free
software. In fact they were so unamused that shortly before the decision was
finalised, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was dispatched to Munich to
dissuade the Mayor, Christian Ude, from taking the free software plunge. The
conversation between Ude and Ballmer was confidential, but anyone who knows
the Microsoft CEO can guess how it went. Let us say negotiation is not his
forte. Ballmer is no more designed for the art of persuasion than the Abrams
tank is for delivering meals on wheels.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/...
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Developing World Needs Linux
Michelle Delio
Wired News
June 21, 2003
NEW YORK -- To get the economy of a developing country going,
its government must stamp out corruption, ramp up efficiency and use
open-source technology to build a cheap, reliable information infrastructure, experts
at a conference sponsored by the United Nations told investors and
policy-makers this week.
By sticking with basic, low-cost, open-source technology,
developing countries have a better chance of establishing vibrant
economies, executives at the Net World Order conference said. The event was held at
technology trade show CeBIT in New York City and was sponsored by the
Business Council for the United Nations, a U.N. strategy research center.
"These countries need cheap and efficient technology to
make the giant leaps necessary to catch up with the rest of the world," said
Bruno Lanvin from the World Bank. "Many are now using
Linux, which looks to become the No. 1 operating system in
China and India soon."
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59334,00.html
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OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM
Complaint
Eric Raymond and Rob Landley
Opensource.org
While the authors are affiliated with the Linux community, our
argument is also motivated by larger concerns. Unix, Linux, and the
open-source movement are vital components of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
SCO/Caldera's attempt to assert proprietary control of these technologies is
an indirect but potent threat against the Internet and the culture that
maintains it. What is at stake here is not just the disposition of a
particular volume of computer code, but what amounts to a power grab against the
future.
This document, originally proposed as a draft brief of amicus
curiae, has been endorsed as an OSI position paper by OSI's Board of
Directors. The Board has concluded on advice of counsel that OSI cannot seek
amicus status in advance of pleadings. The option to seek amicus status at a
future time remains open.
This document is an evolving work in progress. SCO/Caldera's
complaint against IBM disparaged the work of thousands of individual
open-source contributors. These contributors feel themselves personally
and professionally wronged by SCO/Caldera's unfounded allegations.
In the tradition of the open-source movement, hundreds of individuals
are now sending in their patches to help inform and evolve the OSI's
position.
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
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VMWare Workstation 4.0 Review
Roberto Dohnert
OS News
June 23, 2003
If you have a mixed network like I do sometimes you have to
compromise. At my job we run Windows, Linux and a sole Mac (Graphics dept.)
and lets face it, when you do consulting work and if you design and develop
custom applications you have to be able to develop for your clients
platform and as much as I hate it, it's a Windows world. Before I used to have
2 workstations, one Windows and one Linux, or I had to dual
boot. In the past, virtual machines have been lacking. Either they were too slow
or lacking a certain pizazz to get the job done. Enter VMWare Workstation
4.
VMWare is a virtual machine software. It is like VirtualPC for
Windows. It allows you to run a "guest" Operating System inside
of a "host" operating system. Once this guest operating system is running you can
install Applications and run services that the Guest OS supports. For
example, if your host OS is Linux you can run Windows 2000, Windows XP or
Windows 9x and you will be able to run applications for Windows inside of
that environment. and vice versa. VMWare is built by no other than VMWare Inc.
It is offered in 2 flavors, VMWare Workstation or VMWare Server.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3863
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Engines, steering wheels, and
open source
Jon Udell
InfoWorld
June 20, 2003
The vice president of technology at a leading software
vendor recently told me that he spends a lot of time wondering how open source
projects can possibly work. "You take out the internal combustion
engine, yet somehow the car still runs," he said. But my take was that there is a
powerful engine purring under the hood of open source and creative programming
is addictive. Part of the rush comes from the endorphins released when the
mind enters a state of flow. And part comes from the peer acclaim.
What open source projects often lack is not an engine, but a
steering wheel.
"Too many programmers, but not enough product
managers," says Tony Byrne, who tracks commercial and open source content management
systems at CMSWatch. Paul Everitt, co-founder of Zope, puts it this way:
"We suck at finishing work." Writing documentation doesn't make
endorphins flow. Neither does organizing a usability study, doing triage on bug
reports, writing a bulletproof installer, internationalizing a product for 14
languages, or creating an intuitive user interface.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/06/20/25OPstrategic_1.html
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Linux supercomputer now world's
No. 3
Robert Jaques
VNUNet
June 23, 2003
A Linux cluster supercomputer, built for the US Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2002, has become the third fastest
supercomputer in the world.
According to the 21st TOP500 supercomputing list, the Linux
Networx Evolocity system, known as MCR, can process 7.6 trillion
calculations per second (teraflops) running the Linpack benchmark, and is the
fastest Linux cluster in the world.
It is the highest ranking ever for a Linux cluster, according
to Erich Strohmaier, computer scientist at the National Energy Research
Scientific Computing Center/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and
co-founder of
the TOP500 list.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1141778
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FLOSS Gives India a Boost in
Many Markets and Endeavors
Frederick Noronha
Linux Journal
June 23, 2003
From banks and hospitals to software houses and prestigious
technological institutions, the charm of free/libre and open-source software
(FLOSS) is casting a spell in India that is pushing many here to venture
into uncharted fields.
Stories of unanticipated efficiency, innovative solutions and
slashed costs surfaced at a two-day seminar titled "Enterprise
GNU/Linux Implementation: Evaluating Non-Proprietary Software for the Enterprise",
held in mid-June in India's commercial capital of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The
seminar was presented by global business information company MarcusEvans.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6958
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Novell sets out Linux roadmap
Steve Ranger
VNUNet
June 24, 2003
Novell will launch a bundle of its network services running on
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server later this
year.
And in 2004, the entire services stack from Netware will be
running on Linux, the company said, as revealed this April by vnunet.com.
Novell claimed that its Novell Nterprise Linux Services
product, due in the autumn, will give Linux users file, print, messaging,
directory and management services.
The initial offering will include identity services via Novell
eDirectory and DirXML, file services via Novell iFolder, printing
services via iPrint, messaging services via NetMail and management services via
Zenworks for Servers.
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1141807
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Study Shows Broad Use of Linux
Peter Galli
eWeek
June 23, 2003
A recent study of Linux use inside corporations by the Open
Source Development Lab (OSDL) and the SDTimes reveals a broad use of
Linux, but also shows that just a third of those companies have adopted
the open-source operating system as a corporate standard computing platform.
The survey was conducted among 8,000 SD Times readers, mostly
senior managers at corporations with more than 1,000 employees.
Among the survey's findings were that 59 percent of the
managers who responded said they had Linux in their IT departments at work.
Some 64 percent of respondents said they used Linux for Web servers,
while 51 percent used it on application servers and 46 percent ran
their database servers with it. Some 44 percent used it for file servers and
43 percent used it to develop custom applications.
Some 65 percent of the managers cited stability as the top
reason why they used Linux, 63 percent liked its total cost of ownership, 61
percent were
swayed by its deployment cost, 58 percent said its performance
and 50 percent said security.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1134628,00.asp
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Cheap Linux PCs targeted at home
users
Stephen Shankland
CNET News
June 24, 2003
A start-up located near Microsoft's headquarters unveiled an
effort to sell super-cheap Linux computers to home users.
The 30-person company, Linare, on Monday began selling systems
with its own version of Linux for $199 (£119.42), company chief executive
Soma Sundaram said. Linare, founded in 2000 and formerly known as
Aureex,
integrates computers and software.
Linare's system uses a 1GHz Intel-compatible Via Technologies
processor. A $249 2GHz Advanced Micro Devices Athlon model is being planned
for August. The systems have 128MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, no
monitor, the KDE graphical interface, and the OpenOffice software suite.
The Washington-based company isn't the first to try to use the
freely available operating system as a foundation to take on
Microsoft -- efforts that haven't encroached far on the behemoth's turf. But
Sundaram believes some differences will mean his company will be able to thrive.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2136464,00.html
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Jon Hall: Open source should be
protected from 'looters'
Matthew Broersma
ZDNet News
June 24, 2003
The open-source development community is an international
treasure and should be protected as such, said veteran Linux advocate Jon
"Maddog" Hall, in a talk in Birmingham that emphasised the role of
open-source software outside the US.
Hall's speech on Tuesday morning kicked off the Linux User and
Developer Expo 2003, which is taking place this year in conjunction with
Networks for Business (formerly Networks Telecom). The conference is
tapping into growing interest in Linux and open-source software in the UK, where
the government has committed to expanding the role of open source in the
public sector, and some public authorities have already purchased significant
Linux installations.
Hall compared the ongoing legal battle between The SCO Group
and the open-source community to the looting of Iraq's national
treasures following the recent war in the Gulf.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t278-s2136495,00.html
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IBM pushes game as learning tool
for Linux admins
Jan Stafford
SearchEnterpriseLinux.com
June 23, 2003
Taking its cue from purveyors of educational games for
children, IBM Corp. is making games for IT pros. More than 215,000 copies of IBM
AlphaWorks' first game, Robocode, have been downloaded. In this
code-writing tutorial, players build robots to compete in a game. AlphaWorks' second
game release, CodeRally, gives Linux developers and administrators a fun way
to master Java tools. Marc Goubert, manager of IBM's AlphaWorks program,
is responsible for bringing to market new implementations of
emerging technologies. "Linux is an emerging trend in technology,
so we provide a lot of basic components for Linux users, developers and
architects," he said. In fact, he said, more than 30,000 developers are currently
building Linux-based applications for IBM software. In this interview,
Goubert explains how developers and system administrators can learn
from CodeRally and extend the functionality of their Linux systems.
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/...
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Linux power for quantum grid
Chris Jenkins
AustrialianIT
June 24, 2003
The University of Queensland's Centre for Computational
Molecular Science will build a grid computing cluster running Linux to study
areas as diverse as hypersonic flight, quantum computing and life sciences.
The system, claimed to be the fastest of its kind in
Australia, will use 128 dual-processor 2.8GHz Pentium machines, each with 3GB of RAM,
for a total of 1.4 teraflops of computing power.
This capacity meant calculations that used to take a week
could run in an hour, the centre's director Professor Sean Smith said.
One such calculation, proton transfer in fluorescent proteins,
was typical of the centre's workload, he said. The centre did "molecular-scale simulations applied to
all appropriate areas of modern technology", he said.
"That includes life sciences, material sciences,
molecular electronics, physics and atmospheric science." The selected cluster was ideal for that work, he said.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/...
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Mom Meets Linux - A Lindows 4.0
Review
Jim Lynch
ExtremeTech
June 23, 2003
Lindows has come a long way from our first review of version
2.0. Each release has gotten a little bit slicker and easier to use than
the last and version 4.0 continues along those lines.
This latest version of Lindows adds a number of new features
designed to help new users get up and running quickly. We were
particularly impressed with the slick new flash-based desktop tutorial that lets
newbies become immediately comfortable with how things work on the Lindows
desktop. Experienced users won't need it, but beginners will find it
indispensable.
Also included in this release are Spamsafe and Adsafe - two
built-in utilities to help Lindows users avoid spam and ads on the web
(Lindows has tweaked the spam filter in Mozilla by turning it on by default
and populating it with current spammer information). Lindows.com
is also focusing on lower system maintenance with a Zero Maintenance
Initiative - which makes it possible for the user to upgrade the OS, apps
or drives with one click.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1134574,00.asp
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SCO smear campaign can't defeat
GNU community
Richard Stallman
ZDNet News
June 23, 2003
Unix is a complete operating system, but Linux is just part of
one. SCO is using the popular confusion between Linux and the GNU/Linux
system to
magnify the fear that it can spread. GNU/Linux is the GNU
operating system running with Linux as the kernel. The kernel is the part of
the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs you
run. That part is Linux.
We developed GNU starting in 1984 as a campaign for freedom,
whose aim was to eliminate non-free software from our lives. GNU is free
software, meaning that users are free to run it, study it and change it (or pay
programmers to do this for them), redistribute it (gratis or for a fee), and
publish modified versions. (See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.)
Those who combined Linux with GNU didn't recognize that's what
they were doing, and they spoke of the combination as "Linux."
The confusion spread; many users and journalists call the whole system
"Linux." Since they also properly call the kernel "Linux," the result is even
more confusion: when a statement says "Linux," you can only guess what
software it refers to. SCO's irresponsible statements are shot through with ambiguous
references to "Linux." It is impossible to attribute any coherent
meaning to them overall, but they appear to accuse the entire GNU/Linux system of being
copied from Unix.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/...
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MP: How open source can conquer
government
Matthew Broersma
ZDNet UK News
June 25, 2003
Open-source software is making headway into the UK government,
but faces a major obstacle in the form of a public-sector culture that
tends to stick with large companies and known systems, according to John
Pugh, Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Southport.
However, open-source companies can make headway in the public
sector by competing on price, and through a campaign of "charm and
harrying", Pugh argued. He was speaking at the Linux User and Developer Expo
2003 in Birmingham on Tuesday.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s2136562,00.html
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