Linux News for Dec 19, 2001

• LinuxProgramming: ActiveState's Komodo IDE Now Shipping for Linux & Windows (Dec 19, 2001, 22:08)
  "Komodo is a cross-platform integrated development environment for open source technologies and XSLT programming. It is optimized for programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Tcl and now features cutting-edge XSLT and PHP editing and debugging capabilities."


• AMD Zone: AMD Processor-based cluster to run state-of-the-art safety tests for Mercedes-Benz (Dec 19, 2001, 20:36)
  "DaimlerChrysler is utilizing the strength of several hundred AMD Athlon MP processors in one of the largest high-performance Linux clusters in the German automotive industry, to run crash simulations for Mercedes-Benz vehicles."


• The LWN.net 2001 Linux Timeline (Dec 19, 2001, 19:17)
  "Well, it's that time of year again. Keeping to our traditions, we present the LWN.net 2001 Linux Timeline, the fourth in the series. Therein you'll find a month-by-month recap of the major Linux and free software events from the last year. It has, once again, been a most interesting twelve months."


• HP Secure OS Software for Linux security bulletins digest (19 DEC) (Dec 19, 2001, 18:06)
  Multiple vulnerabilities addressed: hplx-sendmail, Ghostscript/lpr/lprng, and updated glibc packages.


• NewsForge: Red Hat's reputation is its business (Dec 19, 2001, 17:32)
  "Why is Red Hat Software picking on a bunch of low-rent CD salesmen about their use of the term "Red Hat" on the disks they are peddling? It is Red Hat's collection of code, although UnixCD and CheapBytes may have every right to peddle it. However, Red Hat has a good reason for complaining. It's the same reason that the company has made a business of selling something you supposedly can get for free. Here's a hint: Red Hat's success has almost nothing to do with the software."


• The Register: Linux takes obscurity route to datacentre (Dec 19, 2001, 16:34)
  "But Matt O'Keefe's GFS long predates Sistina, the company he founded to commercialize the project he began at the University of Minnesota. GFS not only has the potential to unseat the leading vendor in its class - Veritas - but to bring open source commoditisation to servers and storage."


• InternetNews.com: CyberAtlas Report: IT Spending Hits Bottom? (Dec 19, 2001, 15:50)
  "IT/IS spending in the U.S. and Europe hit rock bottom in 2001 and is expected to rebound in 2002, according to the results of a new survey released by CyberAtlas Research."


• StatMarket: Linux More Bark Than Bite with Web Users (Dec 19, 2001, 15:09)
  Press release: "As of December 17, 2001, Linux held a global usage share of only 0.24 percent, according to WebSideStory's StatMarket, a Web development optimization service and the leading source for data on global Internet user trends."


• LinuxPlanet: .comment: I Want One! (Dec 19, 2001, 13:46)
  From a nifty little notebook that's difficult to find to new notebook peripherals standards to a more notebook-friendly Linux distribution, Dennis E. Powell describes things he wants, but won't get, for Christmas.


• NewsForge: Internet World has (some) Linux: An aisle-stroller's sampling of vendors (Dec 19, 2001, 12:58)
  "I strolled the exhibit aisles at... Internet World/Fall 2001 last week -- the show didn't fill up the main floor despite being co-located with Penton's Streaming Media East 2001 and StorageNext 2001 events. While there, I decided to troll for companies making use of Linux, BSD, or other non-Microsoft platforms, and, by extension, some companies that have put Linux to work by buying these products and services."


• EarthWeb Datamation: Case Study: In Redmond's Shadow, An Open (Source) Secret (Dec 19, 2001, 12:07)
  "The Eastside Journal Web site originally used the Solaris operating system and ran on Sun Microsystems hardware. The Eastside Journal Web team, which is responsible for maintaining Web sites for all of the Horvitz Newspapers, realized it needed to look elsewhere at the end of 2000 when it faced an expensive Y2K upgrade on an internal proprietary system that archived old newspaper stories."


• AMD Zone: FIC Aquapad With Midori Linux Review (Dec 19, 2001, 10:18)
  "FIC was demoing their AquaPAD at this year's Comdex. Several pads were connected to a wireless network in their meeting room. They have been working on the AquaPAD design for a couple of years, and the growing popularity of wireless networking could spell a hot product. Immediately upon using the demo pads at the show test units were requested."


• Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter -- Issue #23 (Dec 19, 2001, 08:03)
  This week: Mandrake in the News; Hot topics from the Cooker mailing list; Business Case of the Week; Software Updates; Top Stories from MandrakeForum.


• Mandrake Linux Security Update Advisory: kerberos update (Dec 19, 2001, 07:15)
  "A buffer overflow exists in the telnet portion of Kerberos that could provide root access to local users. MDKSA-2001:068 provided a similar fix to the normal telnet packages, but the Kerberized equivalent was not updated previously."


• Linux 2.4.17-rc2 Released (Dec 19, 2001, 06:43)
  Changelog within.


• H. Peter Anvin: It never rains but it pours... [kernel.org server down] (Dec 19, 2001, 04:02)
  "Well, after spending close to two hours bringing the old kernel.org server back to life it died again after less than 10 minutes. I hereby declare the current zeus.kernel.org officially DEAD. This suddenly meant that getting the new server from Compaq fully provisioned suddenly (and very ill-timedly) became a very high priority. We're still waiting for a set of disk drives from Compaq, so it's not going to happen today or tomorrow."


• Linux Journal: Perceptions of the Linux OS Among Undergraduate System Administrators (Dec 19, 2001, 03:53)
  "At the start of this academic year, I informally surveyed the 31 students enrolled in the module about their exposure to Linux. Most (if not all) had some exposure to the OS. I probed further and asked how many students had used Linux as the basis of their third-year project (the previous year). One or two hands were raised. Then the first shock came: someone blurted out, 'nearly everyone who used Linux last year went on to fail their project'."


• The Register: X/Open, Uniforum vets to push Open Source in the UK (Dec 19, 2001, 01:49)
  "...OpenForum Europe has been formed to push the benefits of Open Source software in the UK. But it is an organisation with something of a past; its moving spirits have been involved in X/Open, Uniforum UK and its successor Interforum, and the inaugural OpenForum Council membership list seems to have a considerable amount in common with the membership of Interforum. The extent to which these organisations succeeded is a matter of opinion."