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Thursday, January 4, 2001TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
10 Questions With Miguel de Icaza
Loki's QA Team Talks
IBM Claims Fastest Unix Workstation
Beat 'em to the Punch3) Linux Resources
802.1q VLAN Patch
The Sendmail Boys Have Been Busy...
Solaris-Style Performance Monitoring
BASH Cheat Sheet
The Case For Centralized Computing4) App o’ the week
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1) Sean’s Notes
When will Mom use Linux? Will she ever? Should she?
I was reading an article asking the first question, when the second and third ones came to mind:
http://linux.com/news/newsitem.phtml?sid=1&aid497
This article asks if Linux is ready for the novice who just wants a computer that works. Not one with a web server, database, and enterprise directory, but one that you can plug your hardware into, load up your software, and get going.
It seems that people are willing to pay a huge price for this convenience. It’s no secret that Windows isn’t the most stable thing going, yet people are more than happy to reboot constantly. What good is an operating system that can run for a year without a reboot if it doesn’t work with the latest hardware and play the latest games?
The hardware is probably the hardest problem to solve. There are a lot of tools out there to reverse engineer software, but to figure out how a device works without the specs is difficult. Opening vendors’ eyes to Open Source is difficult. Many put access to specs under NDA, which prevents Linux drivers from being written. What competitive advantage can there be to prevent technical people from using your products? It baffles the mind.
Native ports of software are rare. Some big names like Word Perfect are available under Linux, but when will titles like Quicken start appearing? Compatibility layers like WINE [0] and Trans Gaming [1] are trying to build compatibility layers into Win32 and DirectX/Direct3D respectively, but it will be a long time before they’re at the “Double Click to install” phase.
This brings me to the questions I posed…Do we want this? Can’t we be content with an operating system that serves our needs? I’m willing to sacrifice some usability in order to obtain stability, reliability, and speed. Shouldn’t we dedicate our resources to improving the kernel and developing better server applications?
On the other hand, “dumbing down” (for lack of a better term) the operating system could have benefits across the board. More users mean more vendor support. Widespread acceptance makes it profitable for vendors to target Linux for their applications. Failing that, companies like Loki [2] can make a decent living porting other people’s software. Maybe then hardware vendors will devote some resources to publishing Linux drivers the way that Adapsys [3] does.
So, do we want wide-spread Linux use? I’m not hell-bent on world domination, but I can’t stand to see the technically- better solution being beaten out by a better looking but inferior one. Seeing the latest hardware supported by Linux at Day 1 would be a bonus.
There isn’t one strategy that can accomplish this though. The WINE team is starting to look at issuing “Works with WINE” stickers to vendors whose applications run under WINE. People like you and I are bringing Linux into our workplaces to do a better job for a fraction of the cost.
It’s going to be a long time until Linux sits on a large fraction of the desktops out there. Until then, don’t lose sight of what we have.
What are your thoughts on the future of Linux for the masses?
http://boards.brainbuzz.com:80/boards/vbt.asp?b4
Finally, feel free to email me with your thoughts and comments!
Long live the Penguin,
Sean swalberg@brainbuzz.com
[0] http://www.winehq.com/ [1] http://transgaming.com/ [2] http://www.lokigames.com/ [3] http://www.connectcom.net/downloads/software/os/linux.html
2) Linux News
10 Questions With Miguel de Icaza
Miguel is one of the core GNOME developers, and one of the founders of Helix Code. In this interview, he talks about the future of Helix GNOME, a packaged desktop, and some of the products his company will be coming out with. He also explains why Helix GNOME has been behind in keeping up with packages.
http://www.linuxorbit.com/features/interview3.php3
Loki’s QA Team talks
Loki Software focuses on porting Windows games to Linux. Titles include Q3 Arena, Heretic II, and Soldier of Fortune. Linuxpower had an interview with some of the QA team, and asked them what’s involved in the porting and testing of a new game. Must be a tough life…Playing video games for a living :)
http://linuxpower.org/display.php?id7
IBM Claims Fastest Unix Workstation
IBM has come out with a new RS/6000 model, the 170. Boasting a 450MHz CPU, it has some impressive graphics capabilities. This doesn’t come cheap, however… $30K US for the top of the line, but that gets you 2GB of RAM and a really nice graphics card. You probably won’t see Quake running on this bad dog though; it’s made for high-end engineering applications.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2669346,00.html
Beat ‘em to the Punch
Who is going to support Itanium first…Windows or Linux? I’ll give you a hint…Who already runs on more platforms? According to this article, Windows isn’t expected to have an Itanium-tailored version ready for the chip’s debut. On the other hand, even though the Linux distributions haven’t caught up, the kernel is ready.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-4236527.html?tag=st.cn.1491268 .today.10 03-200-4236527
3) Linux Resources
- 1q VLAN Patch
- 1q is a method of tagging Ethernet packets so that VLANs can be trunked. This patch allows normal NICs to speak dot1q, so you could have your box sit on several VLANs to speed file server access, or act as a router between VLANs.
http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear/vlan.html
The Sendmail Boys Have Been Busy…
Sendmail 8.11.2 was recently released. The 8.11 series has some pretty advanced features like LDAP lookup, TLS (Transport Layer Security), multiple queues, better virtual hosting support, and a whole whack more. Got a simple, one domain setup? 8.9.3 is probably still OK for you. Anything more advanced and you may want to give this a look.
http://www.sendmail.org/8.11.html
Solaris-Style Performance Monitoring
If you’re coming from the Solaris world, you’ll be familiar with tools like sar and iostat for checking on the status of your system. You quickly found out that Linux was a lot different! This fellow has developed some performance monitoring tools, including Solaris-style sar/iostat. It produces some detailed reports, and the documentation is very good.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sebastien.godard/
BASH Cheat Sheet
Shell scripting is one of the more powerful weapons in the administrator’s arsenal. Unfortunately, it can be a tad arcane at times, which is why a good reference can help. I’ve always relied upon my “Unix in a Nutshell” book, but now I’ve found a more concise source.
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/programming/bash_cheat.html
The Case for Centralized Computing
Thin clients: love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re out there. This commentary from freshmeat.net takes a look at some of the options out there (Microsoft, Sun, Linux) and shows how they could fit into a school environment. With the power of computers today, it’s a bit absurd that a secretary doing email and word processing has the latest and greatest, when the same box could serve a few of them just as well.
http://freshmeat.net/news/2000/12/23/977633999.html
4) App o’ the week
Since it’s the holiday season, this week’s app is yet another game. Call this one “Asteroids on crack”. Great graphics, sounds, and fast action make this a fun game. There are even add-ons, like a Star Wars theme.
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/Maelstrom/
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