In a further move to alienate the majority of their users, not just the Red Hat CEO's dad, the most well known distributor of Linux, Red Hat Corp., has taken it's consumer based Linux, Red Hat Linux, off the shelf and not announced there is any planned replacement. I am saddened to see the one company who was making great advancements in user targeted Linux has now decided it will no longer do consumer Linux, and that those who have long been users of this brand of Linux are now being told that Linux is too difficult for them. If this was a business decision, I would say that they have made a big mistake. They have taken those who paid $100 a person to join the Red Hat Network and given them the finger. This will undoubtedly prove to be Red Hat's biggest mistake.
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Former owner of the Unix source code, Novell has now bought one of those who are impacted by it's sale of the code to SCO, SuSE, for $210 Million in cash. Novell plans to use the purchase, expected to close in the first few months of the new year, to expand it's enterprise computing options and add support for Linux. It certainly appears that Novell is moving towards open source in big ways as they have followed the purchase of Ximian, maker of the Gnome desktop, by buying the distributor of one of the most popular European Linux distributions, and one that specializes in enterprise installs of Linux. CNet's news.com has a look at what they think is Novell redesigning itself around Linux, and it does make one wonder who, or what they will buy next.
Comodo, a retailer of hardware and software to speed secure Internet transactions, has bought Trustix, the maker of a Linux version meant to be nearly attack resistant. The Register reports "Comodo, which is best known as a certification authority for SSL certificates, said that the deal will allow the developers of Trustix to take advantage of Comodo’s sizable R&D labs to further improve Trustix's software for the benefit of the Linux community at large. The Trustix portfolio of Small Business and Enterprise class Linux-based products will be extended to offer a "complete business package" from Comodo."
Finally reaching the height of their extortion of Linux users, SCO today set a price on their claims that Linux users are violating their copyrights. CNet reports: "Prices are steep, for a free operating system. Introductory prices include $199 to run Linux on a desktop PC and $699 to run it on a server with a single CPU. The server price jumps to $1,399 after the introductory period ends on Oct. 15. By comparison, Red Hat's standard version of desktop Linux sells for $39." Meanwhile, Red Hat, who has sued SCO over the mess, sent it's CEO Matthew Szulik to give a message to LinuxWorld attendees: We will prevail. The company also said it plans to assemble a package of Java-based open-source tools for building corporate Web applications which it will bundle with the OS.
In signs that SCO must be feeling much like the RIAA, a study was released yesterday saying that the obnoxious legal attempts to stifle Linux have had no effect on it's popularity. Other news out of Linux World this week is located here, including the fact that the community is sweeping aside SCO and it's threats, in addition to it's products at many sites around the world. If anything, the fights Linux has been though with Microsoft and SCO has made it more widely known and given it publicity it could never have hoped for. I guess Wired is right, it is hunting season, and this time the penguin's got the gun.
To great applause by all of the open source community, Red Hat today took the fight to SCO, which has been making grandiose claims and threats for weeks now, when they announced they are suing the holder of uncertain rights tot he Unix code. "The seven-count suit seeks, among other things, a declaratory judgement that Red Hat has not violated SCO's copyrights or trade secrets, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik said at a news conference here. "We have asked the courts to declare that no violation of intellectual property and trade secrets have occurred," Szulik said. "We've been patient, we've listened. But when our customers and the whole open-source community are threatened with innuendo and rumour, it's time to act." The action is the most serious attempt so far to seize some of the initiative from SCO, owner of key Unix copyrights, in its legal actions against Linux. But SCO isn't relaxing: Chief Executive Darl McBride warned Szulik in a letter Monday to expect counterclaims." Round 5?.
Former owner of the Unix code Novell has shown it's faith in the open source community by purchasing Gnome Desktop company, Ximian. "Novell pledged to continue fostering two high-profile, open-source efforts under the auspices of Boston-based Ximian, including the Gnome project for creating a Linux desktop and the Mono project, which will allow companies to run Microsoft .Net applications on Linux."(CNet) "Ximian also has some real live products to call its own, notably Ximian Red Carpet, a centralized software management technology. Overtime, Red Carpet is to be tightly integrated into Novell ZenWork, Novell says."(The Register) No price was mentioned on the sale.
While not nearly the 2.6 kernel version people had expected by now, Linus Torvalds did release version 2.5.75 of the highly debated and controversial Linux Kernel, which just might be the last version of 2.5, or the last one touched by Torvalds himself, as he has said he plans to move on to the elusive 2.6. We can expect a 2.6 test kernel within a few days and the usual long wait for a stable full release of an official 2.6, and even longer for 2.6 to be in the actual distro's. It would not be unheard of to see a 6 month gap between this and 2.6, but I for one am happy to see the group move on because 2,5 is, I think we can agree, getting long int he tooth as they say. IBM has said they hope to release new stuff with 2.6 in it by the first half of 2004, though that is a broad time frame.
After posting a bunch of Linux news only yesterday, there was even more on the Open Source front today. The first bit of news is good for Novell customers who also run Linux servers, as Novell has announced they will be porting some of their services to a new product called Novell Nterprise Linux Services. Second we have two articles that act as an analysis of the lack of dedication in the Linux maintenance to the users on the desktop, and ask the question 'Why hasn't Linux lived up to the hype of the last few years?' Bruce Tober goes on to describe the hype that has surrounded Linux, and compares the challenge to that which was faced by IBM competitors in the 70's and 80's PC Market. Lengthy and insightful, both article need to be read in order.
Third, in a still confusing example of right hand/left hand stupidity, the UnitedLinux group, comprising Connectiva, SuSE, TurboLinux oh and SCO, have announced a self certification program for vendors. The group was formed to try to break the Red Hat grip on the market, though I doubt it's success will be notable as long as the Linux bashers are there with the threat of suits against Linux users around their collective necks. Lastly we have an article by Paul Boutin over at Slate(and MSN site) trying hard to convince the readers that Apple has to consider Linux a bigger threat to it's market share of OS installs than Windows. While pointing to Business Week columnist Alex Salkever's article that Linux installs will pass Mac ones, the two are in very different markets, as Mac OS is only on Mac's, and Linux is on everything including Mac's.
I have three stories from yesterday about Linux, two regarding the SCO issue, and one proving Linux can succeed in the face of trouble. The first one is that Linux users in Provo, Utah, where SCO is located, held a protest in front of SCO's headquarters, and while The Register makes it seem like SCO employees were protesting with the Linux users, the other information from the protest show a very different story, with SCO employees, or SCO itself, having put out signs in advance of the protest that made it seem like the Linux users were common software pirates and communists. This displays a complete disrespect of people who have been using this software legally, and likely still are, and is only earning SCO further animosity and embarrassment.
The second story is that Linus Torvalds spoke with an eWeek editor via email this week about the SCO issue and his move to the OSDL from Transmeta, and his obvious aggravations at the attacks he has been subject to due to the SCO and IBM 'spat'. Torvalds, in response to a question about SCO's allegations that he needs to check where code comes form more, said "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. The only party that has had serious problems clarifying what they are talking about is SCO, and now when details start emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that they are confident that they own the collective work of Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from being the actual copyright owner of any specific section of code." I couldn't agree more.
The last story is about a Bloor Research piece covered by The Register that points to several low cost, third word destined computers loaded with Linux as examples that desktop Linux is not that far away. From the India only PC from IBM to Acer made, Linux based multimedia PC's running Red Hat 8, not to mention HP's offering's aimed at the same part of the world and LG Electronics out of Korea. The article goes on to look to the future, meaning China and it's billion potential PC users. From Brazil and the Philippines to major parts of Asia and the Middle East, Linux is catching on and it's cost effectiveness is not to be disputed.
Red Hat announced today that they are once again profitable on the backs of their users who they have successfully screwed over by forcing them to pay $99 for the ability to know their systems need to be upgraded, and actually patch them. "Revenue reached $27.2 million in the quarter ended May 31, up 39 percent from year-ago figures. Red Hat, which sells Linux products, reported net income of $1.5 million, or 1 cent a share, compared with a net loss of $4.6 million, or 3 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts surveyed by First Call expected the Raleigh, N.C.-based company to report net income of 1 cent per share and to generate revenue of $27.3 million. "Red Hat began the year with a continuation of our progress we've made over the past year," company CEO Matthew Szulik said in a conference call with analysts."
Linux has been in the news a fair bit, it went to space, it's possible use in Linksys routers has been investigated, and distributor SuSE has begun to look at ways to take business away from Windows on the desktop. First, the Portland State Aerospace Society put a Linux based rocket revealed plans to put a Linux and Open Source hardware powered rocket into space this September. Second, the Linux Kernel Mailing List was the source of accusations against Linksys that the code that runs it's 54 mbps wireless access points is part or wholly based on Linux, and should be brought into the public domain.
Lastly, and a story that really deserves it's own post if not for the lack of time, SuSE has announced it will immediately begin focusing on taking business away from Redmond with a version marketed specifically towards the corporate desktop, SuSE Linux Desktop. "We believe this is the product that will bring Linux to enterprise desktops across the whole world," said SuSE CEO Richard Seibt. and "Dan Kusnetzky, a system-software analyst with market researcher IDC, said that companies with a large number of transactional workers--those people who don't like computers and use them only for specific applications--are likely to become new SuSE customers."
Noted financial firm Merrill Lynch has released information that shows that the company could save millions if it deploys Linux internally. "During a presentation Friday at the Enterprise Linux Forum, Mark Snodgrass, vice president of Merrill Lynch's in-house technology provider, the Global Technology & Services group, said that the company has found that re-architecting its information infrastructure using Linux can reduce administration costs dramatically. In fact, Snodgrass found that, while the software licensing costs of Windows was higher than Linux, the highest cost was in managing traditional Windows infrastructure. "It's the people that cost the most," he said." It is good to see money companies realize the cost savings of free stuff.
SCO, the current owner of the Unix code base, has brought out anger that not even Microsoft can earn from the Linux community by claiming that the Linux code base has proprietary code that does not belong in an open source project that has not paid for the right, and says "Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights," SCO's letter read in part. "… SCO’s actions may prove unpopular with those who wish to advance or otherwise benefit from Linux as a free software system for use in enterprise applications…." As Wired puts it, "Unpopular" is an understatement., while the geeks have far worse to say about and to SCO.
Meanwhile, vnunet.com revealed the existence of this petition with which each of the 600+ signatories at this point is begging SCO to sue them for their use of Linux. This reminds me that I will be very soon doing a new Linux install, perhaps several of them, violating their idea of copyright with every one. Am I pissed? Hell yeah. first SCO sues IBM which fueled rumors that they wanted a buyout, and since Big Blue did not take the bait, they have moved towards the users and tried to stay afloat by screwing them. It is a good thing they said they won;t be putting out their own Linux, as they likely couldn't find anyone stupid enough to use their stuff even with a bribe.
Always the voice of logic and irony, The Register pointed out that SCO's parent company, Caldera, still operates a public FTP server that offers up Linux ISO's for no cost. Linux Journal editor Don Marti, in his take on this, gets a quote from SCO's Chris Sontag that infringing code is all over the Linux code, though in true legal shame it admits they cannot show the evidence at this point. Why exactly they waited more than a decade for this suit when the code has always open and available, any reasonably minded judge must ask, but they will likely say they had not taken the time to do so. In the end, this will hurt SCO, Caldera, and their business than it could ever helped.
Word came out yesterday that a major part of the XBox Linux challenge had been successful, but only due to a game developer's bad code, and not really having anything to do with the discoverer himself. "A hacker using the name Habibi-Xbox revealed the exploit Saturday in a message posted on the Xbox Hacker Web site. Organizers of the Xbox-Linux Project confirmed the method works.The trick involves the "save/load game" function in the James Bond game "007: Agent Under Fire," which normally allows players to save a file recording their progress in the game to the Xbox's hard drive and later reload it. Habibi found that by using one of several USB storage devices recognized by the Xbox, the "load game" screen can also be used to load other software, including compact versions of the Linux operating system."
In a sign that a) Geeks are cheap and will find ways to get what they want, and b) greed will always be overcome, my buddy :nf0: posted on his blog that the site BitConjurer's tool BitTorrent had made the new Red Hat 9.0 ISO's, just released today, available to anyone who wanted them, not just the limited number of people who have paid subscriptions to the Red Hat Network. I just finished downloading the 3 ISO's, and have verified that they a) are not really big viruses and b) MD5 properly based on the actual MD5 file that comes with the ISO's. So, if you have a decent connection, go download the files. They are reasonable in size, and the download speeds are awesome, and the ISO's are free, which is the best thing of all.
I got a rather aggravating email on Monday from Red Hat which simply increases my reluctance to recommend it anymore, though I am not sure what I will move to, having downloaded Mandrake already downloaded Mandrake 9.0, and now must download and burn 9.1 and with plans to look at SuSE and Slackware in my search for an acceptable Linux distro that I can recommend. The email from Red Hat, by the way, was offering paid members of the Red Hat Network advanced access to the new Red Hat 9 ISO's. I am pissed off that the RHN even requires subscription now, as I find it by far the easiest way to find out if updates are available and how to get them, and this only makes me angrier. The advance is only 1 week, and not nearly enough to pay the cost.
I find myself heart broken. I have long been a fan of Red Hat, ever since my brother installed version 6.2 on my old beat up 486 almost 3 years ago now, but today I got an email that has made me reconsider my recommendation. You see, the email confirms the rumors I have heard that Red Hat is planning on charging for the Red Hat network service, and are currently asking me to fill out a survey to extend my access to the service for more than the next 7 days. I like Red Hat, I really do. They have made a lot of really good improvements to the interface, and they are the standard. Sadly, their improvements are not enough to justify a subscription, no matter how nice they were to warn me about it. Unfortunately this seems to be the way the market is going. Mac's anyone? MORE for a view of the email.
The first story of the penguin-esque variety that we have today is this one from Newsforge via The Register, marvelling at the fact $99 is becoming a standard in Linux box set's. For $99 you can get Lindows with it's inherent problems, limitations, and insecurity, and it will also get you Mandrake and Red Hat. They then go into the software and plugins that users need for everyday use, and the benefits of several of the distro's, from the hated Lindows to the community driven Debian. A very good article for a little heavy reading.
Next, also from The Register, we have an article that describes how a US delegation to a recent summit ensured that a plan to have a pro open source declaration watered down. They provide a decent dissection and point out many points that where glaring loopholes left open. From the line "Development and deployment of open-source software should be encouraged, as appropriate, as should open standards for ICT networking", which leaves far too wide an opening for a certain Washington state based software maker to claim increasingly that there is eventually no appropriate place for Open Source, though it will backfire as the world is beginning to see there is not appropriate use for Windows.
Third we have an awesome story of unity in the Linux world, brought about by the competitive and ass backwards attitude has been showing to users and other distro's. The Desktop Linux Consortium, made up of SuSE, MandrakeSoft, Lycoris, Xandros and ArkLinux; CodeWeavers, which sells software to help run Windows programs on Linux systems; OpenOffice, an open-source competitor to Microsoft Office; and the KDE user interface software.
They are brought together in unity due to the actions of Michael Robertson who, with one face has said he only wants to compete with Microsoft, while the other is slamming all of the other distributors at every chance, and forcing out the only other partner in the Desktop Linux Summit, which everyone agrees should be relabeled the 'Lindows Desktop Summit'. This will be a story to watch for awhile!
Lastly, we have a story that the banks in the world are moving rapidly and happily towards Linux, likely for it's stability, security, and viral resistance. Reuters has moved some of it's system's to Linux, and a lot of firms on Wall Street are seeing how nice it is to have a secure OS that they can count on, with the biggest problem being how the next MS worm is going to hinder traffic flow. Now, if only more businesses would see the many benefits to the OS.
It is clear that the Department of Homeland Security knows when to move their site. This article shows that the site used to be hosted on a Windows box, but the day the new department was official, they moved to Oracle9i on Linux. It is clear that someone in that department knows that using Windows for a server is a mistake that can never be recovered from other than to immediately throw away the computer and get a Linux box. This has to be a bad sign of the times for Microsoft, even though they did hire 1500 new folks to try to recover their losses.
I am really not trying to be a recapper of the day's news, or the news on a topic, but I have had one of those weird days, and spent far too much doing things that are not that important. So, I am going to try to stretch out today's roundup of Linux World news stories. The first story is not a surprising one, but one that is reflected well here in the a User Friendly comic from last Linux World, that Microsoft is once again going to have a booth there, this time bigger, and with more programmers, less sales droids. No doubt from the crowd they are there to try to salvage they dismal server sales.
The image you see here is the problem that I am trying to solve right now so that perhaps I may not need to play songs off CD on my DVD player, and can instead play them here, through XMMS. The option I am investigating now is the installation and running of a program called sndconfig, which I am installing the partner files for now. I mean I like my DVD player, and all, and I have been waiting for it for a long time now, but I would rather be running it through XMMS, thank you very much. Oh, and while I am at it, this is a short list of what I want or need to do here on the Red Hat side. I assure you this is not the complete list, but these are the most ever present right now, and I hope by posting them here for you all that it will result in someone posting a solution, perhaps with a link to a nice RPM download or easy to read and understand HOWTO. Anyone?
- Spell checker that allows copying to and from Mozilla to prevent the 6 step spell check now
- Get sound card working now that I can play MP3's
- Find out how to run GKrellm
- Get Bluefish working
- Decide on a decent background that sums up the machine's name and attitude
- Find a deskcam option for Linux, to take random desktop shots and auto ftp them to server
- Enjoy my new Linux install
Ahh, well, I found a way to disable the drive that was suspected as the problem, and indeed upon reboot the boot time was cut by 85%. Very nice. So, I did reshape the NTFS that Linux can't read, and now have a 500 or so MB FAT32 partition for Linux to use for file swapping. Windows doesn't see the slave drive. So, now that I have Windows working right, what do I do? That's wrong, I don;t enjoy it, I go and work to make all things I like in Linux work fine. First up is finding out why on the first boot into Linux it recognized my sound card, but for some reason now it doesn't, which prevents me from playing MP3's. This is annoying and should not be happening. Sadly, this being a Dell, I know so little about the on board stuff as to not know where to start to get it working, and I can't do any searching due to the same lack of info. I tried the System Settings/Sound card Detection option but it said none were detected. As well, I need to find out why Bluefish will install, show up in the menu, but not run, and why GKrellm will install but not show up in the menu, as well as how to get it to actually run. Ahh, so much to do.
Well, as you can see to the right, I have customized and improved. Sadly, I am up much later than I had planned, but I did solve a few key issues with a Google search page. I found aMSN, or Al's MSN for doing MSN connectivity in Linux, which while it may be an ironic and wholehearted sell out on my part, I am sad to say it is my only option as I use MSN Messenger service far too much to go without. It is a cool app, and looks just like MSN Messenger of old, but without the ad's. Very cool. I am, though, trying to locate something. You see, this rather large image of :tony:'s new Red Hat desktop shows a program or applet called Cerebellum. Google has so many 'Cerebellum' hits as to be useless, and every attempt to narrow it down becomes useless. This does not appear to be a normal part of the Linux install. Grrrrr. Oh well, I gotta go to bed, I am to be up in like 5 hours. Bah! Night.
Sadly it is not a dual processor, instead a dual boot, this is working better than expected, though it took longer than most installs due to the slow processor and less RAM than most systems. This has to be quick, for as you can see, it is getting late. I am writing this from within Mozilla 1.0.1. My command line shows [root@RivenDell /]#, and my OS, or at least one of them, is Red Hat 8.0, and kernel version is 2.4.18[8.0]. this does feel nice, and it is much better than Red Hat Linux 7.2 was over on CodeMeister though that was likely because of the bad video and low memory. I have run up2date, and it is much better than it was before, a reboot actually made it recognize the new Kernel and all the updates. I now have Evolution running, and even have it's own account, L-I-N-U-X-G-E-E-K-@-G-E-E-K-B-L-O-G-.-N-E-T. Feel free to use it.
I like the new feature that has it automatically check for updates, and yes, I know, Windows can do this too, but the unknowledgeable user doesn't know what is safe on either system, and I trust Red Hat more than Microsoft for providing well tested and truly necessary updates. I know a lot of people were complaining about Blue Curve, and I am not really sure what I have here is what they are talking about, but I don't find it XP like nor a hindrance. There are things I miss, and want to find for her,e like an all in one IM client, or at least an MSN replacement, and a decent HTML editor, but for the most part, I like it. I still can't play games like Chromium, still too damned slow, but a 500 MHz or 1 GHz processor would likely fix that issue. I dislike the lack of ability to drag the toolbar higher for more rows like in Windows, but extra desktops could solve that. More soon but back to windows for now.
