Linux News for Jan 28, 2002

• NewsForge: Solaris on Intel out? Does that mean Linux is in? (Jan 28, 2002, 23:43)
  "The marketplace will decide whose vision of the future turns out to be the clearest, but one thing is for certain: Open Source wins. Whether it's BSD, pure Linux or Linux -elated operating systems like Open Unix, or Pentium III and IVs or the Itanium, the only significant Unixes running on Intel platforms in the future will be Open Source."


• Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta Appears (Jan 28, 2002, 23:20)
  "Red alert for all the Mandrake Linux users : After several weeks of sleepless nights spent at taming the cooker snapshot, Mandrakesoft's developers team had to take a short nap. The half-finished distribution immediately spotted its chance, escaped from the captivity, and nested itself on a public FTP server under the name 'Mandrake Linux 8.2 (beta1)'."


• Mandrake Linux Security Update Advisory: enscript (Jan 28, 2002, 23:02)
  "The enscript program does not create temporary files in a secure fashion and as such could be abused if enscript is run as root."


• AllLinuxDevices: New Sun Cobalt Qube Appliance Targets Home Networks, Small Businesses (Jan 28, 2002, 22:48)
  "The Sun Cobalt Qube 3 server appliance extends secure Internet and intranet services to consumers and power users, enabling home offices and small businesses to host their own web sites, set up their own e-mail systems, network home or office PCs, and protect their computing environments from Internet threats such as hackers and viruses. The plug-and-play networking solution includes all of the tools and applications needed to leverage always-on Internet connections and web-enable a home network or small business environment."


• Mandrake Linux Security Update Advisory: rsync (Jan 28, 2002, 22:19)
  "Sebastian Krahmer of the SuSE Security Team performed an audit on the rsync tool and discovered that in several places signed and unsigned numbers were mixed, with the end result being insecure code. These flaws could be abused by remote users to write 0 bytes into rsync's memory and trick rsync into executing arbitrary code on the server."


• LinuxDevices.com: Sharp Zaurus Linux PDA to hit retail shelves in March (Jan 28, 2002, 21:35)
  "Sharp's new Linux-based Zaurus PDA is expected to begin hitting retail shelves this March for a list price $549, a company source told LinuxDevices.com. The model name will be "Zaurus SL-5500", and it will include 64MB of RAM memory and 16MB of built-in Flash storage memory (in contrast to pre-production devices which had 32MB of RAM)."


• IBM developerWorks: LPI certification 101 exam prep, Part 2: Basic administration (Jan 28, 2002, 20:39)
  "In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use regular expressions to search files for text patterns. Next, we'll introduce you to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, or FHS, and then show you how to locate files on your system. Then, we'll show you how to take full control of Linux processes by running them in the background, listing processes, detaching processes from the terminal, and more. Finally, we'll give you a whirlwind introduction to shell pipelines, redirection, and text processing commands."


• Conectiva Security Announcement: openldap (Jan 28, 2002, 20:17)
  "Thomas Fritz reported[3] a vulnerability in the ldap server which could be exploited by remote attackers to delete attributes from an object even if those attributes were protected by ACLs."


• Kernel Traffic #152 by Zack Brown (Jan 28, 2002, 19:49)
  Mailing list threads from the Linux Kernel Development Team.


• CNET News.com: Red Hat to offer high-end Linux version (Jan 28, 2002, 19:15)
  "As Linux is making inroads into the enterprise, we think the days of trying to stuff everything for everyone on one distribution are impractical at this stage," [Red Hat Exec V.P. of Engineering Paul] Cormier said. The new version also won't be updated as frequently as the mainstream version, which is refreshed every six months, he added."


• dot.kde.org: KDE/aRts Video Roadmap Meeting Results (Jan 28, 2002, 18:22)
  "The aRts/KDE Video Roadmap Meeting ending up having a fairly large turnout, peaking at 26 participants on the IRC channel. There was so much turnout, in fact, that participants could not agree on a single strategy for video development in aRts and KDE."


• Trustix Secure Linux Security Advisory: rsync (Jan 28, 2002, 17:52)
  "This update fixes the signed/unsigned remote exploit bug in rsync. In previous releases the rsync program contained several bugs which would allow remote attackers to write 0-bytes to almost arbitrary stack- locations, thus giving them control over the programflow so that they could obtain a shell remotely."


• OpenPHD.net: W3C Patent Policy: Latest News (Jan 28, 2002, 17:20)
  Adam Warner has a page tracking the latest developments in the W3C Patent Policy issue. Mr. Warner wrote the very useful critique that first broke the issue of patents and the W3C to a wide audience and he continues to follow the situation, including the latest news on the proposed procedure for dealing with patent-encumbered standards within the W3C.


• Paul Murphy/Winface.com: RE: IDC Declares Linux 80% Cheaper Than Unix (Jan 28, 2002, 16:22)
  "Let's recognize that Linux, BSD, Darwin, Solaris, Tru64, and Unixware are all Unix varients. The right comparison isn't between Unix and Linux; it's between all of Unix, including Linux, and the range of Microsoft Windows products."


• AbiWord Weekly News #80 by Jesper Skov (Jan 28, 2002, 15:50)
  "It's been a slow week - people have been working on fixing bugs. Unfortunately we're still at about 80 Bugs that should be closed before 1.0 - and that's no different from last week, even though there's been plenty of Bugs closed."


• osOpinion: The Life and Times of the Multics OS (Jan 28, 2002, 15:21)
  "Because of its popularity and influence over the years, many have asked whether Multics could be ported to a modern micro. According to the Multics Web site, the answer to this question is a surprising 'yes.'"


• Encouraged by Intel and HP, Ximian Adopts X11-Style License for Mono (Jan 28, 2002, 14:28)
  "Among programmers writing the class library, about 80 percent said they liked the new license better. However, this opinion wasn't shared by Richard Stallman... 'He doesn't like the license switch,' de Icaza said. 'It allows proprietary companies to benefit from the software.'"


• PCWorld.com: Pogo Linux Pogo Altura Workstation (Jan 28, 2002, 14:04)
  "This speedy, well-rounded, reasonably priced system is a good choice for people who want to use Linux or who would like to try the OS out without having to install it on their own."


• LinuxWorld.com: A streaming media player for the rest of us (Jan 28, 2002, 13:01)
  "After my less than satisfying visit to the land of Linux streaming media viewers just a few weeks ago, I was a little reluctant to try another, in spite of the readers who suggested I look at Xine. I shouldn't have been. I found the Xine experience satisfying in every aspect."


• dot.kde.org: KDE Icon Chatter (Jan 28, 2002, 12:09)
  "As MacOS X (and GNOME to a certain extent) has shown, many people love photorealistic icons despite the theoretical trade-offs with usability. So if you've ever wondered about the philosophy behind KDE's default icons, you might want to read Torsten Rahn's recent article on the matter."


• The Register: That Linux AMD bug in Technicolor detail (Jan 28, 2002, 06:21)
  "...it isn't just in parallel processing where the hairy business of cache coherency is a problem, as we've seen with the AMD Linux bug blame game. This has affected uniprocessor systems, and I was stumped. But Reg readers have provided a wealth of detail, and what follows will take you from a bird's eye view to the low-level nasties."