Diary of a Network Geek

When are there going to be too many Linux distributions?

Not yet, apparently. According to this article on Wired News, Bruce Perens, an open-source “guru”, is backing a new Linux distro, called, UserLinux. Apparently, with Red Hat getting out of the user desktop business, Mr. Perens thinks there’s a real need for a good desktop distro. He, along with a number of Linux zealots, have been saying that Linux is making in-roads on the desktop for quite some time. But, so far, they have a dismally small percentage of the market.
Personally, I don’t think Linux will get anywhere with the general public until someone starts making real, consumer-grade applications for Linux. I thought we were getting somewhere when Corel released WordPerfect for Linux, but that was a dismal failure. Of course, it seems like just about everything Corel has done turns into a dismal failure. Except for, maybe, their drawing programs. In any case, until people can run Quicken and TurboTax and Print Shop and other programs like them on Linux, and get support for all of it, Linux will stay a server and geek tool. Now, I like Linux, but even I don’t run it as a desktop at home. I’m one of those people that need Quicken and TurboTax, though I can do with out PrintShop. And, I have other applications that only seem to be developed for Windows. So, I play with Linux and use it at work, but not for a desktop. Still I wish them luck. I’d sure like to see something compete with Windows!

With subpoenas this time, not just FUD.

(That’s Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, by the way.) Well, according to this article on ZDNet, SCO has filed subpoenas with the U.S. District Court in Utah, targeting Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta.
The article said that IBM responded to the Linux-related lawsuit by asking a federal judge to order SCO to identify illegal source code and serving four other companies with subpoenas of its own. Though it wasn’t clear if they filed before or after SCO. In either case, I hope this gets resolved soon. I’m tired of hearing about it and anyone who knows Linux knows that they have no leg to stand on. Oh, well, at least it gets Linux in the news….

Wow, this has generated a lot of buzz!

The Linux news sites are burning up with talk about what this will mean to Linux, SUSE, KDE, Gnome, and Novell. The traffic on this is just HUGE. Personally, I think it’ll be good for everyone involved. People aren’t too familiar with Novell, so they don’t know just how good a company it is. I was suprised at how many people didn’t realize that Novell has an enormous cash reserve. These are some pretty frugal guys. And, they’ve always had good products with minimal bugs. So, while I sit here wearing the Gnome “hoof” on my shirt, I smile at the thought of Novell revitalizing themselves with Linux, even if it means that they’ll be supporting the KDE interface.
But, what do I know about this stuff? I mean, I’ve only been Novell certified for over TEN YEARS and been running Linux, in one form or another, for at least four years. Take a look at what the folks at News Forge have to say about it. Or, if you’d like another, more “mainstream” source, check out the article on ZDNet Australia. I think they’ll both back up what I’ve been saying. (I know that ZDNet Australia confirms what I’ve been saying about the CNE for years.)

WOW!

It looks like I did a good thing by getting my Linux+ cert and then also updateing my CNE to version 6. This announcement from Novell came out yesterday afternoon about how Novell is buying the well known German Linux distro packager SUSE. Cool.
Of course, there are some hard-core Linux people who are afraid of another SCO scam, but, based on what I’ve seen of Novell, I doubt that will happen. More likely they’ll just become more like RedHat. Of course, considering RedHat’s new support policy, that may not be the best thing. Still, it’s nice to see Linux grow up and enter the enterprise big-time. And, hopefully, this will keep Novell competitive. Hell, I just hope it keeps them alive!
In any case, I’m sure this will be all over the geek news, so I’ll keep an eye on it.

for MicroSoft!

At least, according to this article on Wired News. The software giant is starting to feel the tiny arrows of the Linux pygmy. Seems that the State of Massachusetts has been given a mandate by their money-men to embrace an “open standards, open source” policy for all their future software investment. Hmm, I wonder what they could mean by that?

Go, Tux GO!

in my sleep!

I’ve really been bustin’ my hump the past two weeks cranking out Linux servers. Specifically, I’ve been making, and reconfiguring, Red Hat Linux AS2.1 servers out the yin-yang. I made six in one day. Then spent a couple of days going back and cleaning them up. Then, I had to install the Veritas agents and setup backup jobs for them. Then, we found out that at least two of them had to have shared storage!
So, this past weekend, I had to figure out how to do Linux clustering. And it was working fine, until we had to reconfigure the IP addresses yesterday. Now, it’s wacked. It seems to be centered around something with a piece of external hardware. See, to have good, safe fail-over, the cluster relies on an external power “switch” that reboots the servers. That way, it ensures that only one of them is in control of the shared disk-space and the Oracle database that resides there. Anyway, the cluster config only worked if we left out the section that sets up the power switch. So, Friday, I’ll have to try and reconfigure it. Hopefully, that will let us reconfigure the cluster, but who knows… Ah, on the job experience. Gotta’ love it!

Hey, that’s not cool.

Look, I think SCO are a bunch of blood-sucking bottom-feeders, but hacking their website is just not cool. And, it doesn’t help anyone but SCO in court, either. But, according to this story on Australia IT, some, un-named hacker hit SCO with a very directed DOS attack. (That’s Denial Of Service, not Disk Operating System, BTW.) C’mon, they’re going to be proven wrong in court, so why stoop to their level? It just shows some real “fuzzy thinking” on someone’s part. Linux deserves better press than this.

So speaks Linus Torvalds.

In this interview on eWeek, Linus Torvalds, the Father of Linux, refutes the claims that SCO has been making, based on the “leaked” code samples. Basically, what he says is that the code in question is really, really old code found in BSD and the “original UNIX” archive made available by Dennis Ritchie. In fact, it looks to be code written by Ken Thompson, the Father of UNIX, himself. (Ritchie is one-half of the team responsible for the C programming language, among other things.) In short, SCO doesn’t seem to have a leg to stand on, unless they’re hiding a bunch of code somewhere.

And, yes, Mr. Torvalds actually said, “They are smoking crack” in response to a question regarding SCO.

Photoshop running on Linux?

Apparently so, according to this article on eWeek, several studios have gotten together to get Photoshop working on Linux via WINE. Normally, one wouldn’t expect folks like this to get together on a project, since they’re so competitive, but they did. I guess if the need is big enough, any differences can be set aside to get things done. And, isn’t that the premise of the whole Open Source movement?
Anyway, it’s an interesting read.

Can it be true?

Well, according to this story on CNet News, Novell is seriously thinking about moving to an all Linux platform. Is this good, bad, or does it make any difference at all?
I don’t know, but I know it’s interesting. Not too long ago, Novell said they’d “support” Linux. Then, last week, they bought Ximian. Now, this news. I don’t know what it means, but it sure is interesting.
But, this story on eWeek would seem to indicate differently. Two conflicting stories about where Novell is going with Linux. Well, at least they’re in the news!!
But, again, it makes me really, really glad that I’ve been focusing on my Linux skills lately!