Linux

IBM developerWorks has posted a fantastic nine-part guide for transitioning from a Windows to a Linux environment.

This roadmap is designed to help you take the experience and knowledge that you already have in computing and redirect it to working in Linux. It's not the only reference you'll ever need, but it will help you get past some of your first obstacles and adjust to a new and, I think, exciting approach to computing. As you follow this roadmap, you'll discover many new resources to help you learn, troubleshoot, and manage Linux.

Note that this guide is geared towards helping you apply your knowledge of a Windows environment to Linux, rather than guiding you through the Linux installation/migration process itself.

Windows-to-Linux Roadmap: Series Overview

David Berlind from ZDNet has written some great coverage of the LinuxWorld 2004 Conference and Expo.

You can read his two-part report here and here.

As we (should) all know by now, Sun is jumping into the Linux arena with it's own branded Linux distribution: the Sun Java Desktop System 2003. Despite the horribly misleading name, the "Java" Desktop System is actually a re-branded SuSE distro.

Mad Penguin gives us a fairly thorough overview of the new OS. To sum up, he gives it a 2 out of 5, with this quote included in the closing comments:

To be completely honest with you (and this is not meant to disrespect Sun), I would not deploy this OS in any situation (other than maybe the most basic user) at this time due to these and a few other concerns I have. It is not ready for the desktop, though I see potential for it in the future if Sun continues its push for the desktop.

Read the full review here.

John C. Dvorak has written a pretty blunt but thoughtful article about IBM missing a huge opportunity by not releasing it's own Linux OS. And who stands to benefit from this mistake? Why, Microsoft, of course! As Dvorak points out, you think they would've learned their lesson by now.

Full story

Ever wondered how to create your own bootable Linux distribution? Check it out!

Mandrake Linux today announced the release of Mandrake Linux 9.2. You can read the press release here, and also be sure to check out the new features.

Also, Open for Business has a preview of the new Mandrake Linux 9.2 Discovery Edition.

Because of all of SCO's bad press lately with this Linux lawsuit, they decided it'd be a good idea to go on a city-to-city tour to meet with vendors and customers to update them on their roadmap, answer questions, etc.

One Linux supporter (I'm sure there will be many others) showed up at a recent stop for the inside scoop. You can read the full story here, but here's a personal favorite quote:

The other reason the roadmap was entertaining? I now know how retro SCOs OSes are. Riotous, riotous stuff. How they had the ya-yas to declare Linux an infant OS in need of their IP is beyond me. Upcoming features? PAM. files larger than 2 gigs. NFS over TCP. The 80's called, they want their features back. NTPv4 was a listed big feature on a slide of 10 to 15 upcoming enhancements. How does an NTP enhancement get mentioned as a 'big' feature? Wow. I never knew it was this bad. Maybe I should lend my old 486 running Debian from '97 to Pizza Hut - it sounds like they could use the upgrade.

A new article on The Inquirer takes a look at SuSE/IBM's recent CC Enterprise Assurance certification, and compares/contrasts it with Red Hat/Oracle's similar attempt at certification.

However, the article goes on to further discuss the value of these certifications, pointing out that:

As we've recently seen, these certifications don't guarantee that these platforms are secure. These Microsoft "certified" operating systems have just been compromised on a massive international scale by the "LoveSAN" or "MSBlaster" worm. Microsoft has had to front-end its "WindowsUpdate" site with about 15,000 Akamai servers this weekend (and very ironically, those Akamai servers are all running Linux). This vulnerability is even suspected as the root cause of Thursday night's extensive power blackout throughout the Northeast and Upper Midwest US and extending into Canada, as this SecurityFocus posting posits. At this juncture, one might really wonder how much the DoD formal certifications are actually worth, in terms of effective IT infrastructure security.

It also goes on to discuss recent U.S. DoD problems relating to Linux vs. Microsoft, and even political bias against Europen vendors. Overal, a very good read.

Full story

Yes, I know there've been a bunch of posts about this lately, but it's been dominating the news. Here's a couple more tidbits.

OSDL has released a Q&A paper on the SCO Lawsuite:

In his paper, Rosen identifies some of the legal issues raised by the SCO Group's claims as they relate to Linux development and usage. He does not offer legal advice, but rather frames some of the key questions that companies should ask their own counsel about their use of Linux. He points out that SCO has a long way to go before it can assert broad intellectual property claims against an operating system that was written by thousands of open source programmers worldwide.

The press release can be found here, and the actuall paper can be found here.

Also, in the latest (and possibly strangest yet) turn of events, SCO is apparently arguing that U.S. copyright law invalidates the GPL. Supposedly, since the copyright law only permits one backup copy for "fair use," and the GPL is copyright, then the GPL cannot grant permission to make more than one backup copy because it is superceeded by copyright law. Umm... More information can be found in the Inquirer article.

Lots of updates on this, so I'll just put them all in one post:

The big news of the day is that IBM has finally filed a countersuit against SCO. You can read about it on CNet News.com and in the Reuters story. The countersuit centers around two central points; that SCO's of IP infringement are basically null and void becuase SCO themselves distributed their IP under the GPL, and that SCO's nearly entire range of products violates 4 patents from IBM's extensive patent portfolio. You can also read a recent letter sent to IBM's sales force about the SCO suit.

As you can read about in a previous post, Red Hat has also filed suit against SCO, seeking an injuction on its spread of FUD. CNet News.com is now carrying an interview with Matthew Szulik, Red Hat CEO, about the suit, and about Red Hat's place in the market.

Also indirectly related is the transcript of Bruce Perens' Open Source "State of the Union" address, which touches heavily on SCO's claims and it's impact on the open source community.

Finally, Kuro5hin.org has an intersting on how to get your own free Linux "license" from SCO, without paying their extortion fees.