LINUX NEWS
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December 19, 2002 - Issue #112TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
Calling All Windows Refugees
More NVIDIA News
Red Hat Turns A Profit
Lose Exchange, Keep Outlook3) Linux Resources
Inside comps.xml
How To Ask A Smart Question
Open Source HA Patches
2.6 Kernel Changes
VPNs Demystified4) App o’ the Week
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1) Sean’s Notes
Next Thursday being Boxing Day, this is the last newsletter of the year. So, I’m going to give you my predictions for the upcoming year. If New Years 2004 rolls around and I’m completely wrong, we’ll just blame it on the flu I just recovered from.
First, a major distribution will drop out of the market. Red Hat? Nah. Debian? Doubt it. Caldera/SCO/whatever they’re called today don’t count.
Why? The market is limited, that’s pretty obvious. But with some vendors drastically changing course in terms of licencing and products, something’s amiss. In recent memory, I’m referring to Mandrake looking at putting some of their software under dual licences (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-978040.html), LindowsOS’ change from producing a Windows compatible product to their “Click-N-Run”, and Red Hat’s sudden push toward their expensive Advanced Server and related training.
There are a lot of distributions out there, and I’ll be the first to say that means more choice. But while Linux will certainly see more adoption in 2003, I don’t think the pie will be shared equally.
Second prediction is an easier one. The BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD) will get a lot more attention this year. We’ve seen a flurry of new releases from them in the latter half of 2002. They also rival the reliability and performance of Linux, and have large communities supporting them.
Third prediction – Sun Microsystems. Are they going down the hole? No. But, out of all the proprietary UNIXes out there, I think Solaris has the most likelihood of losing market share to Linux. They’re quite similar. SUN hardware is expensive (not that HP and IBM hardware isn’t). Sean’s prediction? There’s going to be a big shakeup at Sun sometime in 2003.
As you can see, I’m pretty bad with the predictions (if you have any, feel free to send ‘em to me). What I do know is that Linux is becoming a standard offering for many vendors. Lotus Notes Version 6 runs on Linux. Oracle and RedHat have announced partnerships with Dell and HP, the latter hardware showing amazing performance on TPC benchmarks. SAP has released its database into Open Source. We’ve seen Amazon and Ebay move some operations to Linux, governments announce their intentions, and even Microsoft having to work hard to close the deal.
CIOs and VPs of Technology are going to survey their domain and see hundreds of Windows servers, each with a small, unique purpose, sitting mostly idle, but requiring hundreds of hours in maintenance. As they see their budgets cut or stagnant, the questions will be, “Why? Why do we buy the latest and greatest hardware, only to have it sit idle most of the time? Why don’t we run multiple applications on the same server? Why am I always paying overtime to have my staff patch them?”
The staff are going to say “Why do we spend so much time reacting to server problems rather than planning for growth? Why are we always patching and upgrading? I’m sick of the restrictions Windows puts on me!”
It’ll start off small, maybe a file server or a web server. But little by little, you’re going to see more and more Linux popping up. Soon you’ll see handfulls of SQL servers decomissioned and brought back up as a single Linux box.
2003 might not be the year that the Enterprise moves over to Linux, but it’s still going to be a great year. Already, I see managers at various companies looking for a way to break the Microsoft mould. What they need are people like us to not only propose a Linux solution, but to show just how easy it is to implement and maintain.
Happy holidays, and have a great New Year!
Long live the Penguin,
Sean swalberg@cramession.com
2) Linux News
Calling All Windows Refugees
Are you running Windows on your machine, but are unhappy about it? Want to give Mandrake a shot? Make a copy of your licence, or installation guide, send it to them, and for less than $15US they’ll send you your choice of a full set of 8.1 or 8.2CDs, or a CD for the recent 9.0 release.
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/refugee/
More NVIDIA News
“As part of the Company’s ongoing commitment to the Linux community, NVIDIA today revealed details of a technical support program for end users and professional customers; a new software driver package that includes performance enhancements and new features for NVIDIA’s advanced graphics features, including NVIDIA’s CineFX architecture delivered by NVIDIA’s Unified Driver Architecture (UDA); and support for the latest PC technologies, including AGP 8X and OpenGL 1.4.” Great news for those developing games for Linux, and for those looking to move to Linux in the special effects business.
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20021211_7172
Red Hat Turns A Profit
Mostly based on a huge increase in sales of Advanced Server, Red Hat managed to keep a few hundred grand in the bank. Congrats!
http://www.redhat.com
Lose Exchange, Keep Outlook
One of my secret confessions is that I really do like Microsoft Outlook. Samsung’s “Contact” lets you replace your Exchange server, but allow your users to keep their Outlook client. There’s a free download, unfortunately you have to download the 215MB ISO version (with all the Unix platforms) in order to get the Linux install.
http://samsungcontact.com/en/
3) Linux Resources
Inside comps.xml
One thing that’s always impressed me about Red Hat is the flexibility of Anaconda, the installation program. It’s quite easy to add, upgrade, or remove packages to the distributed CDs, the big secret lies in a file called comps.xml. Even if you don’t want to change anything, looking through it will give you the definitive answer as to what installation option or package group installs what package.
http://rhlinux.redhat.com/anaconda/comps.html
How To Ask A Smart Question
The best way to get a good answer is to ask a good question. While I believe there are no stupid questions, there are questions that are asked well, and those that are asked poorly. One of them tends to result in a good answer, one of them often ends up in insults. Here’s a primer on where to look before you ask your question, and guidelines on how to ask it.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Open Source HA Patches
Here are some amazing looking kernel patches for both 2.2 and 2.4 kernels that give High Availability features to the stock kernel. Options include HA NFS, network based disk mirroring, and some shared SCSI add-ons.
http://licensing.steeleye.com/open_source/
- 6 Kernel Changes
This article is pretty high on the technical scale, delving into some kernel data structures, but it’s small in scope so even the newbies can enrich their knowledge of the kernel. 2.6 brings around many changes, adding new functionality, and maturing up existing code.
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/12/12/vanishing.html
VPNs Demystified
Phase 1 vs Phase 2? AH or ESP? If VPN terminology confuses you, this article will set you straight.
http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/3009
4) App o’ the Week
There are many floppy or CD-based distros out there that are specifically geared to the router market. Gibraltar supports IPSEC and PPtP VPNs, not to mention OSPF/RIP/BGP, NAT, QoS, proxies, and a lot more.
http://www.gibraltar.at/
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