Ars Technica has a quick overview of SUSE 9 that sounds pretty positive. They say: echo $TITLE|grep Linux.Ars. “SUSE LINUX 9 is out, and Linux.Ars has one of their surprisingly thorough capsule reviews.”
Tag Archives | Linux
OSDL Researches Cross-platform Calendaring Server
I’ve always had a special fondness for date math and trivia and supporting date and time data. I’ve implemented custom solutions for clients on various groupware packages. The Open Source Development Lab recently did some research on finding an optimal server that would run on Linux and support calendaring and meeting processing across several client platforms. A perfect solution was not found (when is one?), but they chose to publish their results to help others in their search, posted here: Cross Compatible Calendaring
Gartner: use different platforms to minimize Day Zero impact
Gartner recommends multiple platform deployment as protection from “Day Zero” attacks.
Enterprises that maintain 10% or more of their desktops on an alternative operating system, such as Linux or Macintosh OS, are much less vulnerable to business outages than those that use only one operating system, such as Windows.
Link from the Hentzenwerke Publishing blog.
OSNews: Thumbs-down to Fedora
Eugenia Loli-Queru, OSNews Editor, had a difficult time with Fedora, the Red Hat -based and -sponsored free Linux distribution, in “Review: Fedora Core 1 is a Mild Disappointment“
Ballmer: Linux is not innovating
Ballmer: Linux is not Innovating Link from OSNews
Always interesting to hear what Microsoft is telling their customers. I have a different view of the computer world.
What do the candidates’ web sites run for software?
http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7239
ComputerWorld interviews Chris Stone on Novell-SuSE
Chris Stone, Vice Chairman of Novell, is interviewed here on the SuSE acquisition by Novell.
Confusion reigns in the marketplace
CNET News.com – Front Door leads off with a story that Novell to acquire SuSE Linux. “The longtime Microsoft foe signs an agreement to acquire SuSE Linux for $210 million in cash, while IBM will take a $50 million investment in Novell.” I’m sceptical that this will be a good move for any of them. Novell does not have a history of successes. SuSE was popular in Europe, with a reputation as a top distribution, but also a positive attribute of *NOT* being an “American distribution,” despite the fact that contributions come from all over the world.
Yesterday, RedHat sent out notices that ‘free’ RedHat would be no more, with a renamed (and possibly incompatible?) Fedora taking over the “enthusiast” market and a “Red Hat Enterprise Linux” raising the price point for a supported, business-grade Linux.
To me, it sounds like the #1 and #2 leading distributions have shot themselves in their respective feet. This is the kind of behavior that a marketing company like Microsoft can take advantage of. Let’s hope in the coming weeks that spin and damage control minimize the FUD sure to develop from these moves.
Cringely: How Microsoft’s Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All
“This week, speaking at a Gartner conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said some fascinating things about Linux and about Open Source software in general. And thanks to those remarks and the blinding realization they caused for me, I finally understand exactly why Microsoft doesn’t understand Open Source.”
Cringely always makes interesting reading. Listen and watch Ballmer’s statements here.
Linux Work
So, this weekend I’ve got some time to spare and dedicated it to restoring my Linux laptop to life. I foolishly tried to update to RedHat 9 from 8 without considering the limitations of a 6 Gb hard drive with 2 Gb already dedicated to another OS. I was surprised that RedHat crashed the machine, rather than gracefully declined, but it left the machine a mess, with two hard drive partitions full to overflowing, and an OS that would boot and then lock up attempting to start X Windows.
My first urge was to just blow away everything and start again. However, that really isn’t the way to learn anything. Instead, I took it as a learning experience. What if a client had a locked-up or corrupted machine, but needed to recover some precious files? Looked at in this light, I hadn’t encountered a problem, but rather an educational opportunity.
I used a Knoppix 3.3 CD to boot into a working Linux OS, and then followed the Repair FAQ on the Knoppix site to clean some space off each partition. I also used the RedHat 9 CDs in “repair” mode to clear off still more files, test the file systems for integrity, and get the system to restart.
There were a number of problems with my last set of installs, and I set off to fix them. First, I got a few of the basic services restarted. I reconfigured the networking software to use the docking station’s ethernet rather than the wireless card. Once I was satisfied that was working properly, I reconfigured TCP/IP for a static address and programmed the router to allow minimal services to be exposed to the outside world – port 8080 for Apache and 23 for SSH. Over Apache, I’m running Twiki, a wiki written in Perl, and I use port 23 for a secure tunnel for shell work and also to run a remote graphical session via VNC.
Next, I tried to set up Samba, and ran into some problems. The RedHat Network insists the latest Samba for my distribution is 2.2.7-5.8.0, while I had somehow installed a 2.2.8a on the system, I suspect by downloading the wrong version directly from the Samba site. The installer wanted the Redhat 8 CDs, which I had given away, so BitTorrent to the rescue, and I was able to download and burn a new set of disks from rpmfind.net. Uninstalling the wrong version and finally getting the correct version installed was an education in the Redhat Package Manager (RPM) command line, but I am up and running.
Today, the goal is to configure MySQL and the MyODBC software so that I can read and write MySQL data from my Windows workstation. Onward and upward!