Linux News for Aug 28, 2001

• Enterprise Linux Today: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Adds Supercomputing Power to ASCI (Aug 28, 2001, 22:25)
  "SGI Federal has teamed up with Linux NetworX to win a bid to build three Parallel Capacity Resource (PCR) Linux cluster computing systems totaling 472 Pentium 4 processors for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) ongoing computing element. With a theoretical peak performance of 857 gigaFLOP/s, the largest of the three systems with 252 Pentium 4 processors, named PCR P4A, will be one the fastest Linux clusters ever built."


• CNET: Compaq: Big business still leery of Linux (Aug 28, 2001, 22:20)
  "'The No. 1 reason corporations are hesitant to deploy Linux in the enterprise surrounds the very nature of the open-source model,' [Compaq CTO Shane] Robison said at the opening keynote address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Specifically, corporations worry about the large number of companies and individuals responsible for various Linux components, he said. 'Linux lacks a one-stop point of contact.'"


• ZDNet: Microsoft patents a threat to open source (Aug 28, 2001, 22:16)
  Debate continues over the Mono project and whether it's appropriate for open source developers to play ball with Microsoft over .NET: "Samba's [Jeremy] Allison said the Mono Project is "a very bad idea -- in fact, it's a terrible idea. By doing this they are helping .Net become a standard. ".Net will become important if a majority of the clients use it, but it will not be mandatory if only, say, 50 percent use it..." Bruce Perens has also weighed in.


• Yahoo!/Reuters: Corel to Sell Linux Operating System Unit-Sources (Aug 28, 2001, 19:30)
  "A source close to the negotiations told Reuters on Tuesday that a newly formed company called Xandros will pay $2 million for the Linux unit, a division that comprised about 14 percent of Corel's total business as of January 2001."


• Ottawa Citizen: Parliamentary Library defies trade tribunal (Aug 28, 2001, 18:31)
  A Canadian trade tribunal ruled that the Parliamentary Library was obligated to accept bids from a Linux-based business, but the library is ignoring the ruling. The business owner says the ruling "is a major legal victory for software that is based on open standards, open source code and free from the tyranny of proprietary monopoly," the library says it doesn't have a budget left to implement the order.


• LinuxPower.org: Sun's Desktop Division making headway (Aug 28, 2001, 17:06)
  This is a wide-ranging interview (our way of saying 'an excerpt won't do it justice') with a collection of Sun employees working on GNOME that touches on everything from 'why's Sun backing GNOME in particular' to 'what makes an interface usable?': "Hackers are so close to the applications they develop that they might not see how these implementations could trip up someone who is not as familiar with the underlying code. Often user interfaces mimic the code that lies underneath. Most users do not think about accomplishing tasks in the order that a computer system would approach the task. They need a user interface that masks the underlying system architecture from the user level. But hackers are so in tune with their code that their user interfaces are often too revealing of this underlying architecture."


• SuSE CTO and President Says Good-Bye (Aug 28, 2001, 16:43)
  "After three years in the management team of SuSE Linux, Dirk Hohndel announced his decision to leave the company."


• TechTV.com: Leave Linux to the Geeks (Aug 28, 2001, 13:01)
  "I don't run Linux. Why? Because I'm a lazy sucker with limited computer skills and low geek self-esteem. I'm the worst kind of Windows user. I'm the guy who's read all the bad press on Microsoft, felt firsthand the bug-ridden frustration of Windows 98, and witnessed Steve Ballmer beating a competing software developer about the face and neck with a 3.5-inch floppy (OK, not the last one). Yet I continue to patronize Windows for the same reason that Sir Edmund Hillary climbed that big hill: "Because it's there."


• CodeWeavers CrossOver Plugin Enables Display Of Windows Browser Plugins, MS Office Files In Linux (Aug 28, 2001, 11:45)
  "CrossOver Plugin is an exclusive CodeWeavers product designed to operate in conjunction with Wine. CrossOver Plugin allows seamless use of Apple QuickTime and Macromedia Shockwave Director on most Linux Web browsers including Netscape and Mozilla; what's more, the adapter allows Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and eFax email viewers to be used with Linux email clients."


• Consulting Times.com: City of Largo Completes Desktop Transition (Aug 28, 2001, 10:45)
  "In an exclusive interview with ConsultingTimes, Largo's CIO Harold Schomaker described how the city was initially looking to upgrade and migrate their GroupWise system. 'Novell was going to embrace Linux and write Linux clients. But all of a sudden that got dropped.' Schomaker and his staff explored the possibility of upgrading the existing GroupWise system to meet their needs, but the customization costs were prohibitive."


• MIT Sloan Management Review: Innovation by User Communities: Learning From Open Source (Aug 28, 2001, 08:45)
  "If the open-source software movement is any harbinger of future trends, manufacturing companies need to be concerned not only about what they produce, but also about what their customers might produce without them."
  [ This is a for-pay article we linked because it seems like it may be of general interest to our readers. -ed. ]


• Investor's Business Daily: IBM, Software Firm Take Linux-Based System To Street (Aug 28, 2001, 07:45)
  "IBM Corp. plans to announce Tuesday that the electronic trading service that supplies brokers with data from the New York and American stock exchanges is shifting its key applications to Linux."


• LinuxFreak.org: Update on 'Cyber Citizen lands Felony' (Aug 28, 2001, 06:59)
  "In response to the Brian K. West story originally carried on LinuxFreak.org, Sheldon Sperling (of the DOJ) wrote a news release. West's legal defense has its own reply to the situation. West is facing charges of wire fraud in connection with accusations that he illegally accessed the records and software of a local newspaper. West says he stumbled across a glaring vulnerability in the paper's security and was merely trying to help out. The paper says more happened than that."


• Alan Cox: Linux 2.4.9-ac3 (Aug 28, 2001, 06:37)
  "Ok this seems to be stable. The changes in ac3 are actually all queued fixes from before the merge. The bits outstanding are the vm changes which I want to take very slowly, and the min/max thing which needs to be dealt with."