It's len ux as opposed to lie nix as I hear tell.

Caldera Open Linux distribution is announced. $59 now, $300 later. Like the latest Red Hat, it includes the 2.x kernel with SMP capability. I understand that Dejanews, with its huge daily hit rate, is run on SMP Linux boxes.

I use Linux (Slackware from InfoMagic, but other suppliers and versions are good), along with OS/2, Windows 95, and Windows 3.1/DOS. At work, I use NT. The company I am working for is switching to Linux for development -- we supply one set of software to run on about 8 or so UNIX platforms, all PC platforms, DEC VMS and IBM mainframes. We develop in UNIX (soon, RedHat Linux) and port to the other platforms. From my own experience, I think Linux is easier to use, more efficient than, and more reliable than other PC operating systems. Up to now, however, Linux has been at a severe disadvantage in terms of the availability of off-the-shelf software. Thus, we will find it advantageous to use Linux for R&D, but are not ready to use it for administration. This may change quite rapidly -- Linux was not a strong contender two years ago, and was only MINIX five years ago. Caveat Microsoft!

Linux is still weak on off-the-shelf software (OK, we have Applixware from RedHat, but it's far from enough), but this will change in the near future because a lot of non-tech people is discovering that Linux is a great OS. Long live Linux!

I use both Linux and FreeBSD, but found Linux better for people using DOS previously. I don't need to run GUI so I find Linux the best interm of speed and reliability.

How does it stack up against the BSDI we use here, Ted? You've been aroudn our shell.

I do have 2 BSDI systems around here (in the office) but I think nothing beats Linux (or FreeBSD) as it is free and easy to setup. I find Linux is good for almost everything from a small company web server to a busy medium scale ISP.

I'm going to drift a little. Do you know the step by step procedure to add a 3mb scsi hard drive to barton.spring.com? As you know, we're real short on hard disk space right now. barton:~ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 9727 5459 3781 59% / /dev/sd0f 705727 78737 591703 12% /home /dev/sd0h 198335 177773 10645 94% /usr /dev/sd0g 63535 57297 3061 95% /var barton:~

Terry, which directory is short of space on barton? /home is only 12% used, still have about 600MB left :-)

/var and /usr are both real full. I need to add to /var because that's where a bunch of mail keeps overflowing and filling up the hard drive. I could use a lot more room there. I'm thinking about plugging in a 3 gb Quantum and setting it up as the second drive on www. Any tips on upgrading that system (step by step procedure). I guess the first would be to plug it in and run BSDI's disk formatting program. Then link it to /var as a filesystem.

For short run you can link /var to /home since /home has 600MB of space. To do this, just run run on shell: mkdir /home/var ; ln -s /home/var /var make sure /var is not there in the first place.

cheech

I did this: barton# mkdir /home/var ; ln -s /home/var /var barton# df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 9727 5459 3781 59% / /dev/sd0f 705727 77061 593379 11% /home /dev/sd0h 198335 177773 10645 94% /usr /dev/sd0g 63535 57773 2585 96% /var barton# Do I need to reboot for it to take effect now?

Re: /var on barton Terry, I just did an 'du' on /var at barton and found below directories has eaten the most space: 17818 ./www 60920 ./account 22142 ./log 8218 ./webdocs You don't have to reboot barton. What I found you have not link /var to /home/var, to to this, see below step-by-step: 1. rm -f /home/var 2. mv /var /home/ 3. ln -s /home/var /var This will make a link from /var to /home/var

OK I'll try that now. Check and see if this works ok? Let's move this discussion to the BSDI topic ok?

Torvalds is now the trademark owner for Linux. http://www.LinuxMall.com/announce/lxtm.001.html

Wow, that's a pretty bad deal (the Trademark suit). I guess someone _had_ to try it. so.. what do people like in the way of 'Real Linux Apps' nowadays? Corel's going to give away their suite for Linux soon, I hear. -steven

Welcome Steven! I'm partial to BSDI,a s you can tell, although our newest system is running FreeBSD.

From love@cptech.org Mon Nov 2 18:54:57 1998 Return-Path: Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 18:54:57 -0500 (EST) Errors-To: info-policy-notes-owner@essential.org Reply-To: love@cptech.org Originator: info-policy-notes@essential.org Sender: info-policy-notes@essential.org From: James Love To: Multiple recipients of list INFO-POLICY-NOTES Subject: the Halloween Document ------------------------------------------------------------ Info-Policy-Notes | News from Consumer Project on Technology ------------------------------------------------------------ November 2, 1998 The Halloween Document Microsoft has confirmed that this internal document, which was leaked to Eric Raymond, is authentic. It is the Microsoft strategy to deal with Linux and other free software platforms, referred to as "Open Source Software" or OSS by the MS author. Eric Raymond has placed an annotated version of the document on the web at: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/halloween.html The memorandum offers important insight into Microsoft's understanding of the free/open source software movement. It indicates, for example, that Microsoft needs to attack the process and the culture of the free software movement, more than any particular company. Eric Raymond sees awareness by Microsoft that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its support of open software is a threat to Microsoft's goal of dominating server markets. These are the excerpts from the document that Eric placed in his introduction. Jamie Love 202.387.8030 * OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat. * Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects. * ...to understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company. * OSS is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it. * Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust -- if not more -- than commercial alternatives. The Internet provides an ideal, high-visibility showcase for the OSS world. * Linux has been deployed in mission critical, commercial environments with an excellent pool of public testimonials. ... Linux outperforms many other UNIXes ... Linux is on track to eventually own the x86 UNIX market ... * Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities. * OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market. * The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale. ------------------------------------------------------------- INFORMATION POLICY NOTES: the Consumer Project on Technology http://www.cptech.org, 202.387.8030, fax 202.234.5127. Archives of Info-Policy-Notes are available from http://www.essential.org/listproc/info-policy-notes/ Subscription requests to listproc@cptech.org with the message: subscribe info-policy-notes Jane Doe To be removed from the list, the message should read, unsub info-policy-notes -------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting...

Time to drift some more. Linux is probably my favorite UNIX. It's easy to set up and administer, it's free, and it'll run on my cheapo Intel hardware at home (which is what keeps AIX from being my favorite UNIX, by the way). Solaris x86 was also cheap ($18, including postage and handling) but if you don't like the fact that there aren't a whole lot of commercial applications for Linux, you're _really_ going to hate Solaris x86 (at least if you want to be able to _afford_ the commercial apps :-}). There's lso a really limited selection of drivers, and just try and find any useful information for the Intel version on Sun's website... Oh, yeah, it doesn't get along real well with Linux, either. Linux Swap Space and Solaris Native look the same to System Commander, Partition Magic, and a couple different flavors of fdisk. OK. I feel better now...

Technology News Microsoft Saw Linux As Copyright Threat (11/09/98 5:16 p.m. ET) By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb A recently leaked internal Microsoft memo outlining the threat posed by Linux showed that the company has considered taking legal action against the free operating system. "Halloween II" was the second of three memos written by Vinod Valloppillil, a program manager for Microsoft Proxy Server, describing how Linux could hurt demand for Windows NT, particularly in the server market. In a section titled "Process Vulnerabilities," Valloppillil wrote that Linux will "cream skim" NT Server's best features. He added, "The Linux community is very willing to copy features from other OSes if it will serve their needs. Consequently, there is the very real long-term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features and incorporate them into their codebase." Valloppillil concluded: "The effect of patents and copyright in combating Linux remains to be investigated." Linux backers say borrowing an innovative idea in the software industry is something everyone -- including Microsoft -- has done. "For Microsoft to accuse someone of stealing ideas is a little like the pot calling the kettle black," said Bob Young, CEO of Red Hat Software, a Linux vendor. The statement may reflect the author's lack of knowledge, rather than company policy, Young said. Earlier this week, Microsoft admitted the document was genuine, but said it did not plan to act on any of its recommendations. "To bluntly make a statement like that, that Microsoft is the innovator and other people are creaming off them, is a little na�ve," said John "maddog" Hall, executive director of Linux International, a non-profit group. For a company the size and strength of Microsoft to wield the law against a free OS, developed largely by college students and programmers working in their spare time, could also be a public-relations disaster for Microsoft. "I don't think they're that foolish, frankly," said Jerry Davis, founding partner with Davis & Schroeder, an intellectual-property law firm in Monterey, Calif. Davis is counsel for Linux International and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. "Suing the Linux community would do them so much ill will." According to Davis, although a copyright gives the owner exclusive rights to the way in which an idea is expressed, like source code, a fundamental concept of intellectual-property law is that no one owns an idea. And Microsoft has borrowed plenty of ideas in the past. "Microsoft has shamelessly done that with respect to the Apple OS," said Davis. "They also did it to Digital Research from a product that predated Windows called GEM, and they've done it repeatedly with application software." A Microsoft spokesman was unavailable for comment. The company has responded with a rebuttal document in which it acknowledges that the documents are real, but reflect the opinion of one engineer at the company, and not something being used to drive Microsoft policy.

Linus is responsible for the linux kernal, but not for the entire OS. Most olinux systems contain GNU software developed by the Free Software Foundation (Project GNU).GCC, GDB, emacs - all were developed by Richard Stallman who put them under the GNU General Public License so we could all benefit. Gates has o has used GNU/Linux wants to downgrade to any flavor of microsoft. For a better look at GNU software, visit www.gnu.org.

Linux Users Demand Refund Not from Red hat, from Microsoft. Instead of automatically clicking on the "I Agree" button that says they capitulate to every demand MS makes on them as a condition of using Windows, some have decided to follow the instructions to "contact the manufacturer for instructions on return of the unused product(s) for a refund". Although Microsoft wrote the language of the agreement, MS spokesman Tom Pilla says as far as his company is concerned buying the computer with Windows pre-loaded constitutes an agreement to use it and disqualifies users from a refund; another PR triumph for Redmond's Goliath seems to be in the making. [irony alert] More details said to be available at

Interesting. Please let us know more when you have it...

too cool, huh, Tommy?

Mmm...I've now installed RedHat 5.2 linux and it's LUVVVEELLLLY.....no more windows crashes for me! Oh, except when I want to listen to some RealAudio. Or print something out. Or use ICQ. :-)) Such is life with minority Operating Systems :)

Have you read Neal Stephenson's essay on operating systems?

nope. where can i find it?

VA Linux, SGI and O'Reilly (how's about that for a trifecta!) are getting behind Debian Linux with a big co-marketing deal (including a Star Office tie-in). http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/10/biztech/articles/12linux.html

I'll be watching this in the next couple of days: http://webevents.broadcast.com/ibm/pwd102799/index.tl?loc=34