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News Bytes

Contents:
Selected and formatted by Michael Conry
Late additions added by the Editor

Submitters, send your News Bytes items in PLAIN TEXT format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better announcement than an entire press release.

November 2000 Linux Journal

The November issue of Linux Journal is on newsstands now. This issue focuses on Hardware. Click here to view the table of contents, or here to subscribe.

All articles through December 1999 are available for public reading at https://www.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/mags.html. Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at https://interactive.linuxjournal.com/. 

Distro News

Caldera

Oct. 3, 2000: Caldera Systems has announced that its Linux management solution, formerly known as Cosmos, is entering open beta. This solution will enable administrators to manage the networked systems of any Linux distribution. Caldera aims to allow network administrators to use policies and profiles to manage a half dozen or thousands of Linux systems, without having to individually manage each.

The Beta is available for download from https://www.calderasystems.com/beta/.

Conectiva

Duke of URL review.

Lute

Oct. 6th, 2000: LuteLinux.com. has announced the addition of ShowMeLinux. to their family of services. LuteLinux will host future issues and will take over as publisher of ShowMeLinux, an on-line magazine 'Bringing news to Business Professionals and Enthusiasts alike.' Contributions to ShowMeLinux are welcome, and should be directed to: info@showmelinux.com. 

In a further initiative LinuxFreeSupport will be authoring ShowMeLinux's 'Support Line'. The Support Line is a column offering answers to questions posed by readers regarding such topics as installations, networking, administration, applications, and the desktop.

Mandrake

Linux-Mandrake 7.2 is now available for download. It includes KDE 2.0, GNOME 1.2, PowerPak's ViaVoice voice-recognition software, the CUPS printing system, laptop profile and synchronization utilities, KOffice, ReiserFS (a journalling filesystem), Supermount (transparent access to removable media) and MandrakeUpdate (free automatic online upgrades of system software). Linux-Mandrake 7.2 speaks several dozen languages and will soon be offered in three commercial versions for home and business users.

Red Flag

Oct. 18, 2000: Red Flag Linux is officially launched by Sun Wah Linux Ltd. Included in this launch are Red Flag Linux Server 2.0 and Red Flag E-business Start Kit 1.0. The former, run on 32-bit, 64-bit or higher-end machines, optimizes server hardware performance. This product can improve the efficiency of office work. It provides a complete business Internet/Intranet connection solution, an ISP/ICP solution which can control website traffic and InterScan VirusWall network anti-virus software. All of these functions combine for the best platform for network business. Targeting the growing m-commerce market, Sun Wah Linux and EdgeMatrix have also embarked on a bundling program with WAPgate, residing on Red Flag Linux platform.

Red Flag Linux Server 2.0 was developed strictly in accordance with international L118NUX standards and General Public License regulations.

Red Flag E-business Start Kit 1.0 is an integrated solution for businesses. It consists of six components: Red Flag Linux Server 2.0; e-Office, for users to easily transfer internal data via the Internet; e-Shop, where users can easily create their own e-shops through the Internet; Web Mail, providing an inter-platform e-mail system manager designed for businesses; Web BBS, for customers to offer feedback and suggestions on the message board; and Ez2min, a remote monitoring software for the Linux system operated through the browser.

Mr. Alex Banh, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of SW Linux has expressed a commitment to developing international markets for homegrown Chinese software and to promoting Linux training in local Chinese institutes.

Rock

ROCK Linux 1.3.11 has been released.

SuSE

SuSE Linux 7.0 Personal Edition equips small office and home users with all the resources needed to install, configure and operate a Linux system and comes on 3 CDs. This package includes over 600 programs including StarOffice 5.2, Netscape and VMWare plus three easy-read manuals. The Personal Edition is retailing at R410.00.

The Professional Edition of SuSE 7.0 contains a collection of power tools including VMWare Workstation for Linux, Emhydra by Lutris Technologies, PostGreSQL. Suse Linux 7.0 Professional is supplied on 6 CDs and four manuals. 90 days of installation and basic configuration support by phone, fax or email are also included in the Professional version, which is available from OS/2 Express for R615. Contact OS/2 Express. We are advised that a limited number of evaluation packages are available. 

News in General

Upcoming conferences & events

Courtesy Linux Journal's Events page.

Linux Business Expo
(co-located with COMDEX event)
November 13-17, 2000
Las Vegas, NV
www.key3media.com/linuxbizexpo
USENIX Winter - LISA 2000
December 3-8, 2000
New Orleans, LA
www.usenix.org
Pluto Meeting 2000
December 9-11, 2000
Terni, Italy
meeting.pluto.linux.it
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
January 30 - February 2, 2001
New York, NY
www.linuxworldexpo.com
ISPCON
February 5-8, 2001
Toronto, Canada
events.internet.com
Internet World Spring
March 12-16, 2001
Los Angeles, CA
events.internet.com
Game Developers Conference
March 20-24, 2001
San Jose, CA
www.cgdc.com
CeBit
March 22-28, 2001
Hannover, Germany
www.cebit.de
Linux Business Expo
April 2-5, 2001
Chicago, IL
www.linuxbusinessexpo.com
Strictly e-Business Solutions Expo
May 23-24, 2001
Location unknown at present
www.stricltyebusinessexpo.com
USENIX Annual Technical Conference
June 25-30, 2001
Boston, MA
www.usenix.org
PC Expo
June 26-29, 2001
New York, NY
www.pcexpo.com
Internet World
July 10-12, 2001
Chicago, IL
events.internet.com
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
July 23-26, 2001
San Diego, CA
conferences.oreilly.com
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
August 10-14, 2001
New York, NY
www.linuxworldexpo.com
Linux Lunacy
Co-Produced by Linux Journal and Geek Cruises
October 21-28, 2001
Eastern Carribean
www.geekcruises.com

Jabber.com Announces Palm Integration and Three-Way Partnership for New Jabber Wireless Initiative

Sept. 25, 2000: Jabber.com Inc. has announced Palm and Jabber integration along with a three-way partnership between Jabber.com, WorkSpot Inc., a premier open source Application Service Provider, and IQ3G, Inc., a leader in enterprise wireless solutions. The three-way partnership has been established as the foundation for a new Jabber wireless initiative and marks the beginning of Jabber's efforts in the wireless market. Under the new initiative, WorkSpot, IQ3G and Jabber.com are working together, along with the open source community, to develop Jabber compatibility with Palm devices.

Jabber has also announced a strategic relationship with Red Hat to deliver real-time messaging infrastructure to Red Hat embedded Linux. Elements of this were showcased at the Embedded Systems 2000 show, September, in San Jose, Calif. Jabber is the only open source, XML-based platform for extensible instant messaging applications. For the latest developments on the Jabber landscape, consult their news site.

Dell First To Market with Red Hat Linux 7

Sept. 25, 2000: DELL has announced availability of Version 7 of the Red Hat Linux operating system on Dell PowerEdge(tm) servers and Dell Precision(tm) Workstations worldwide. The new operating system is also available on select configurations of Dell desktop and notebook PC products. Dell and Red Hat, as part of their One Source Alliance, worked closely during the development of Red Hat Linux 7 to ensure smooth installation and interoperability of the operating system on Dell server and client products. Details of a benchmark test of Dell PowerEdge 8450 and Dell PowerEdge 6400 servers running Red Hat Linux and TUX 1.0 have been posted on SPEC's Web site, https://www.spec.org, since August, 1999, where the Dell machines led the field.

Neoware

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA: Neoware Systems , a leading supplier of award-winning software and solutions for the emerging information appliance market, announces that Security Applications, Inc. has selected Neoware's Eon information appliance platform and NeoLinux software to power its new, fully networkable building security panel, e-Panel. Security Applications has ported its proprietary UNIX software to Neoware's Eon platform running the NeoLinux operating system which is based upon Official Red Hat Linux. NeoLinux is the first embedded version of Official Red Hat Linux. Neoware has also announced that the opening of four new US sales offices to continue its growth efforts. This coincides with an recruitment of several key personnel.

VMware Announces New User Group Program

Palo Alto, Calif., Sept. 28, 2000 - VMware, Inc. today announced the launch of a new and improved user group program. This program will provide support to relevant user groups around the world in the form of software, giveaways, product collateral and technical guides, presentation materials, consideration for VMware speaker participation at events, and more. Further information is available at VMware's site. https://www.vmware.com/news/user_groups/index.jsp.

Sensiva partners with Wacom Asia Pacific

Mountain View, California, Oct. 2, 2000- Sensiva, Inc., a leading manufacturer of computer graphic tablets and electronic pens, announces a partnership with Wacom Co., Ltd., to offer Sensiva clients interactive symbol recognition functionality in all their tablet products. Through this, people will not only be allowed to copy and paste images directly into the computer but to also navigate much faster through Internet and software applications using simple symbols.

China Internet laws

CNN has a scary article about China's Internet laws. "Internet content and service providers must keep records of all the content that appears on their Web sites and all the users who dial on to their servers for 60 days, and hand the records to police on demand, the rules state."

Definitions of illegal content are vague, such as "spreading rumors", "disrupting social stability", gambling and pornography. The rules also forbid "harming ethnic unity" and "advocating cults and feudal superstition" -- terms often invoked to prosecute suspected Tibetan independence activists and members of Falun Gong and other spiritual movements.

Opera, PalmPalm and Trolltech form Strategic Alliance for Asian Embedded Linux Market

Sept. 25, 2000: Opera Software, PalmPalm Technology Inc., and Trolltech announce the formation of a strategic alliance for the Asian wireless Linux market. The companies will jointly develop "Linux Total Solution for Wireless Internet Appliance" for hardware manufacturers in the wireless Internet space.

Linux Total Solution for Wireless Internet Appliance consists of Opera's "Opera for Linux" Web browser, Trolltech's "Qt/Embedded," an embedded GUI environment and windowing system, integrated with PalmPalm's "Tynux," a Linux Operating System optimized for the wireless Internet. This is to provide a complete embedded Linux solution for wireless Internet devices.

Linux Links

Linux.com Talk to Eazel about Linux UI and working in the OSS model

The Duke of URL Links

Why the world needs reverse engineers -- or -- What Digital Convergence (the maker of CueCat) wasn't telling its customers

Did Al Gore invent the Internet?

Anchordesk UK links:

Kernel Wiki invites contributions of documentation/illumination on aspects of the Linux kernel.

Word processing in Linux : a business perspective.

The Ninth International Python Conference.

Gimp-Savvy.com contains a guide called "Grokking the GIMP", which covers the use of the GIMP's core tools and shows how nine major projects were done.

The HP-HOWTO shows how to use Linux with various Hewlett-Packard products, and what level of Linux support there is for each product.

European lawmakers propose to make hacking illegal. (MSNBC)

An interesting proposal to force abandoned copyrighted products into the public domain. (OS Opinion)

A review of four Windows emulators and PC emulators. (Linux World)

Linux in the financial industry. (Tech Web)

Embedded OS licencing fees: how the lack of licencing fees for embedded Linux products will enable many times more embedded devices to appear on the market and allow smaller companies to get in on the act. (ZDnet)

Interview with Vincent Rijmen of the Rindael AES algorithm, a DES replacement which is much harder to crack. Rindael is unencumbered by intellectual-property and patent claims. (Linux Security)

Software Announcements

NetworX Linux Cluster Helps Researchers Fight Disease

SANDY, UTAH, Oct. 3, 2000 - Linux NetworX, Inc., a provider of large-scale clustered computer solutions, announced today that the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI) at Baylor College of Medicine will use the company's clustered computers in its world-renowned molecular imaging research center.

Using a 32-processor cluster system from Linux NetworX, Baylor College of Medicine reconstructs the molecular configurations of disease and illness-causing viruses and other molecules and develops three-dimensional models of their structures. A cutting-edge technique then allows researchers to view the viruses as if they were locks. By properly studying these "locks," they hope to find the "keys" to opening and destroying them. In the past, much of this research was done on large supercomputers costing millions of dollars. But today, because of price-performance issues, clustered-computer alternatives are being selected to handle the large amounts of computation, data handling and storage required.

In the past, scientists used trial and error methods to create vaccines and drugs to fight viruses. But now, using clustered computers and other technologies, they are able to define the structure of these viruses and attempt to design drugs that will solve the specific problems each one presents.

In further good news for the company, the Linux NetworX Evolocity (TM) cluster server receives Best of Show Award for Network Servers & Peripherals from InernetWeek and Network Computing at NetWorld+Interop 2000 Atlanta. The Evolocity cluster server, introduced at the show, is designed for managing and optimizing Web traffic in the Internet market.

Tridia

ATLANTA Sept. 25, 2000--- Tridia Corporation, a provider of eSupport tools that facilitate interactive support and remote system administration, has launched Release 2.0 of the company's newest product offering, TridiaVNC (virtual network computing) the first commercially supported release of open-source, virtual network computing software that views and controls Linux consoles. TridiaVNC Release 2.0's Linux viewer and control features make Linux servers remotely manageable from anywhere on the network and from a variety of systems (Linux, Windows, Unix, Mac). A prerelease binary (e.g., beta) will be available by Sept 26 on www.tridiavnc.com. The source code will also be available to the public via CVS at www.developvnc.org. Those wishing to contribute to this open-source endeavour may also like to try their hand at naming the TridiaVNC Alien mascot. Further incentive is the US$5000 prize for the winning entry! Entries can be made on the TridiaVNC website before November 30 2000.

Teamware Office 5.3 for Linux

Teamware Group has a Groupware application for Linux called Teamware Office 5.3 for Linux. The product is available in RPM format for a 90-day evaluation period with a 50-user license at www.teamware.com/linux/. It is a ready-to-run groupware product for corporate collaboration and communication with a customizable user interface and state-of-the-art communications features. It will be sold for $1000 USD for a 100 user server license.

Proven CHOICE Accounting releases Internet Toolkit

Oct. 2, 2000 --- Proven Software, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of the Proven CHOICE Internet Toolkit designed to help developers integrate internet applications to Proven CHOICE accounting. For details, consult this website. A sample application using the Proven CHOICE inventory file is available for inspection. Proven CHOICE is a powerful multi-user accounting system for linux with the attributes needed by organizations of medium size. Proven Software has been developing multi-user business applications for 18 years and exclusively in Linux for over 5 years.

Workstation Solutions Announces Quick Restore 2.7

AMHERST, N.H., Oct. 17, 2000 - Workstation Solutions, Inc., a leader in innovative data protection software, announces major enhancements to Quick Restore 2.7 that provide increased performance and scalability in data protection of network attached storage (NAS) and other platforms. Quick Restore's new performance, scalability, and ease-of-use features allow customers to backup and restore critical business information rapidly and cost-effectively. Quick Restore 2.7 can be used with a host of new devices from Compaq, Exabyte, HP, Breece Hill, Spectra Logic, ADIC, Qualstar, and StorageTek. Quick Restore 2.7 is available immediately from Workstation Solutions. List pricing begins at $2500. As part of their partnership building strategy, Workstation Solutions have formed partnerships with Network Appliance, VA Linux, and Mirapoint to Support Leading NAS Servers. Their aim is for Quick Restore to provide flexible, fail-safe, high-volume data protection for these companies' platforms.

Internet C++ (ICVM) Alpha Release

Bob A. Dayley, inventor of Internet C++ (an open alternative to Java and C-Sharp) recently announced the product's alpha release. This release is a demonstration and test of the virtual machine (ICVM), the compiler (igcc), and libraries. Complete source to Internet C++ and ICVM are available for download, as well as binary releases of ICVM for Unix/Unix-like platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. Internet C++ feature a high-speed virtual machine (ICVM) that is fast enough to run Doom with no JIT compilation. Bob invites anyone interested to download their Doom port and check it out for yourself! Further information is available.

Other software

The Opera web browser 4.0 for Linux is now in beta.

Magic Software is building an e-tailing solution called TISTrade for Toyo Information Systems, based on Magic eMerchant. TISTrade will make it easier for manufacturers and retailers outside Japan to sell to consumers in Japan.

Copyright © 2000, Michael Conry and the Editors of Linux Gazette. Copying license https://www.Linuxgazette.net/copying.html
Published in Issue 59 of Linux Gazette, November 2000
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