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LinuxWorld 2003 Report

Linux 10 Comments
Throngs of people flooded into the Moscone center in San Francisco to get a glimpse at what is new in the Linux world. Once again, the Linuxworld Expo came to the West Coast making a stop at the Moscone center in San Francisco August 5-7. The show floor was filled with a mix of software and hardware vendors. Somehow, I was not expecting to find so many hardware vendors at what is otherwise a show about simply an operating system. Editor's Note: Mr. Wread sumbitted this report the day after the expo, and it has been stuck in mailing list server purgatory.
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Rockin’ on without Microsoft

Linux 60 Comments
Ernie Ball is a company that makes guitar strings. In 2000 the Business Software Alliance, supported by Microsoft and other proprietary software companies, raided their offices without warning and found a few unlicensed copies of software. They ended up paying $100,000 for their mistake. But CEO Sterling Ball vowed not to give another cent to Microsoft and within 6 months had the whole company switched to Red Hat Linux, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other free software. In the C|Net News.com article he laughs when people call them "trendsetters" for doing what any company can do if it just decides to do it.
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Perens: SCO’s Proof is Bogus

  Submitted by fsw SCO 54 Comments
The first publicly released sample that The SCO Group claims was improperly added to the Linux source code has every right to be in Linux, according to open-source advocate Bruce Perens. In analysis that he's published on his web site, he notes that the code in question is copyrighted by AT&T, but has been released under the BSD license...twice! See tecChannel and lwn for an overview. In other SCO News, McBride has stated his intention to start lawsuits against "illegitimate" end users of the Linux OS.
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Security: Taking Some Responsibility

Editorial 26 Comments
We all know about the recent virus that is floating around, the W32.Blaster.Worm. Obviously, this worm was major threat--Symantec raised it from a level 3 to a level 4. You can't help but read about it on sites like osnews.com or Slashdot.com. But I noticed that one thing that seems to be missing a lot of times, at least with this latest worm. People don't want to take the responsibility for updating their computers when the update was available a month ago.
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Deploy Linux Desktops to Boost Security, Urges Sun’s Schwartz

  Submitted by Nicholas James Privacy, Security 32 Comments
Sun's EVP of Software Jonathan Schwartz uses the popular metaphor of the natural ecosystem to describe the IT world. Most corporate IT departments are what ecologists call a "monoculture." As various blights and famines have proven, when there is too much of the same plant growing in one place, it's suceptable to being wiped out by a disease. Stressing the need for "genetic diversity on the desktop" to combat security threats, Schwartz points to a non-Microsoft desktop as a viable solution. The difficulty in implementing the new OS? Says Schwartz, "you might have to train the user that a home directory named 'My Computer' on Windows has been renamed 'This Computer' . . . "
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Damn Small Linux

  Submitted by ladislav Linux 59 Comments
Damn Small Linux is a Linux distribution based on the Knoppix live CD, but reduced enough to fit on a 50MB business-card shape CD. Damn Small Linux is a general purpose distribution to carry around in one's wallet; it comes with XFree86 and the Fluxbox window manager, while other light-weight applications for email, web browsing, word processing, instant messaging and playing music are also included. Read an interview with the author of Damn Small Linux - John Andrews.
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SCO Reveals Disputed Code at SCO Forum

  Submitted by dmc SCO 87 Comments
SCO showed the disputed code at their SCO Forum conferece in Las Vegas to their partners and customers. SCO's CEO Darl McBride said tat they have hired pattern-recognition experts to find infringing code in linux, and that they have found "a mountain of code" and that "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix" and thus Linux is more competitive because of it. They have also announced new version of their OpenServer code-named "Legend". More at news.com article. Heise News shows the code. The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI. Possibly from here or here?
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SkyOS 4.0a Released

SkyOS 44 Comments
SkyOS 4.0a has now been released. This release supports USB. USB mice/keyboard, HUB's, card readers, harddisks and digital cameras should all work once they are plugged in. SkyOS 4.0a also includes a lot of kernel and application bugfixes. For more infomation, go to the SkyOS website.
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G5 Will Ship with OS X 10.2.7

macOS 189 Comments
It's been known for a while that the new Apple G5 machines would come out before the next major release of OS X, Panther, would be ready. It's confirmed today, though, that Apple will be releasing a new version of OS X with the G5, a version that has been "optimized to take advantage of the 64-bit technology in the Power Mac G5." "The kernel has been updated to take advantage of memory expansion and the vector libraries and math libraries have been optimized," said an Apple executive. "Any application that does dynamic linking to those libraries will get an automatic benefit without having to recompile."
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