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Source: OSNews

Ark Linux has released its first stable version: after 3 years of development and testing, the Ark Linux team have decided to release the first stable version, Ark Linux 2005.1.

Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

arexx writes "Kubuntu, the new Linux flavour based on the fast-climbing Ubuntu but with a KDE desktop as standard has reached its first preview release, with the first full release due next month. ISOs and torrents are available for all major architectures from cdimage.ubuntu.com. Kubuntu is the first distribution to ship with the new KDE 3.4, released just two days ago. Existing Ubuntu users can grab KDE 3.4 with a quick and customarily painless 'sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' in the nearest terminal window." Kubuntu isn't alone, though: as reader fixertechno puts it, "After 3 years of development, testing, and me waiting patiently, the first stable release of Ark Linux has been released; Bero's announcement is here. Ark Linux is a KDE based desktop version of Linux with similar goals of 'it just works' to Ubuntu Linux. If you've been waiting to try Ark Linux -- or any Linux distribution for that matter, now's the time!"

Source: OSNews

Flexbeta.net has got an extensive look at setting up Mandrake Linux as a firewall. The article goes deep inside the setup process from setting the firewall rules to testing and enhancing the firewall.

Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

GerryGilmore asks: "We are a division, specializing in telecommunications equipment, of a very large hardware manufacturer. Our equipment, DSP and PSTN boards, has been supported under Linux through a set of binary driver modules and binary libraries implementing our API set. We are in the process of migrating to a completely open source-based software infrastructure to be more in sync with the rest of the Linux industry. However, not having any real experience with moving from proprietary to an open source model, we wanted to see if the Slashdot crowd has any similar experiences to share: The Good; The Bad; The Ugly; and how best to avoid the most common pitfalls."

Source: OSNews

"It's a sad day when an ancient fork bomb attack can still take down most of the latest Linux distributions." Read through this article at Security Focus for more.

Source: Slashdot Org latest news headlines

wikinerd writes "A few years ago when the GNU OS was almost complete, the kernel was the last missing piece, and most distributors combined GNU with the Linux kernel. But the GNU developers continued their efforts and unveiled the Hurd in 1990s, which is currently a functioning prototype. After the Mach microkernel was considered insufficient, some developers decided to start a new project porting the Hurd on the more advanced L4 microkernel using cutting-edge operating system design, thus creating the Hurd/L4. Last February one of the main developers, Marcus Brinkmann, completed the process initialization code and showed a screenshot of the first program executed on Hurd/L4 saying 'The dinner is prepared!' Now he has granted an interview about Hurd/L4, explaining the advantages of microkernels, the Hurd/L4 architecture, the project's goals and how he started the Debian port to Hurd."

Source: Wired News

A U.S.-style software patent system looks set to be introduced in the European Union. Opponents say the legislation benefits industry moguls like Bill Gates and inhibits open-source software. By Wendy M. Grossman.

Source: MAKE Magazine Weblog

Make group pool Flickr member "tv" posted a couple photos of a the $11 Mattel JuiceBox modified in to a photo frame. He says "I'm working on an LCD frame hacked out of a Mattel JuiceBox ($11 at Wal-mart). The 'Box runs uclinux and accepts MMC cards". Wow, this might be the way we can all have low-cost photo frames.

Source: Privacy Digest

Some Linux Distros Found Vulnerable By Default.
TuringTest writes "Security Focus carries an article about a security compromise found on several major distros due to bad default settings in the Linux kernel.
'It's a sad day when an ancient fork bomb attack can still take down
most of the latest Linux distributions', says the writer. The attack
was performed by spawning lots of processes from a normal user shell.
Is interesting to note that Debian was not among the distros that fell
to the attack. The writer also praises the OpenBSD policy of Secure by Default." [Slashdot]

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Terminal is a modern terminal emulator for the
Unix/Linux desktop, primarly for the Xfce desktop
environment. It was developed because Xfce needed
a lightweight and easy-to-use terminal emulator
that didn't require the user to install the GNOME
libraries, but still provided a worthy alternative
to the GNOME terminal emulator, with all the bells
and whistles.

Changes:
You can now open URLs from the terminal window.
Two new advanced options have been added
(MiscCycleTabs and MiscTabCloseButtons). The
shortcuts to jump to a specific terminal tab work
properly now, even if the menubar is hidden. The
configuration file is watched for changes and will
be reloaded automatically. Both D-BUS 0.23 and
D-BUS 0.3x are supported now. New translations
(fi, he, ja, ru, and zh_CN) are available.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

This driver allows the Linux kernel to use the ATA over Ethernet (AoE) network protocol. Using AoE, a Linux system can use AoE block devices like EtherDrive (R) storage blades. The block devices appear as local device nodes (e.g. /dev/etherd/e0.0).

Changes:
Documentation of the build process has been
improved.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

DirectX support for Wine is a set of patches
against Wine to implement DirectX 9. It allows
modern games and 3D applications to run under
Wine. The patches include many experimental and
beta features that have not yet made it into the
stable Wine source tree. The aim of the project is
to provide full support for DirectX 8 and 9 so
that all games and 3D applications will run on
Linux or any other platform that Wine supports.

Changes:
This version includes support for the majority of
the DirectX 9 feature set, so a lot of games and
demos now are now in a playable state (but with a
few missing textures). Missing features include
shaders and proper offscreen textures.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Linux is a clone of the Unix kernel, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance. It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix kernel, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and TCP/IP networking.

Changes:
Among other fixes, there are bugfixes to IPSec,
SMP rebooting, ALSA surround output, a crash while
reading /proc/net/route, and IRQ freeing.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Pingwinek is a Linux distribution made in Poland. The main desktop is GNOME 2.x. It supports Polish and English languages and can be run as a Live CD.

Changes:
The LiveCD now contains Linux kernel 2.6.11, GNOME
2.10, XFCE 4.2, and full development libraries and
headers for gcc 3.4.x. So it is now possible to
compile programs (including GTK+ programs) when
running the LiveCD. squashfs and unionfs are used,
and over 2100MB of software is included.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Getpkg is used to download and install packages
for Slackware Linux. It is menu-driven, allowing
the user to choose program options by entering
menu choices. Its menus are generated using the
dialog utility. It creates the folder ~/.getpkg
and stores configuration options and downloaded
packages within that folder. It requires Slackware
and Python.

Changes:
A check for Slackware was added. A function to
remove installed packages was added. A function to
view a changelog was added. The executables were
moved to /usr/bin and the symlinks were removed.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

Goodgoat Linux is a simple to use Linux
distribution that can be run from a USB drive,
hard drive, or CD-ROM. Rather than
overwhelming users with a multitude of
applications, it aims to have the best utility for
each job. In addition to including the latest
software, it makes it easy to share a
computer's hard drive over a network.

Changes:
Many packages were added along with menus for extra programs. An installer that can install the full system from the CD to a hard drive was included. The portage database is now available, meaning that an emerge sync will result in a usable Gentoo system. iscsi server and client software and qemu were included along with Bluetooth, modem, and additional network driver support.

Source: Freshmeat Daily News

The Cornfed SIP User Agent is a Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP)-based Softphone for your x86 Linux
systems. It allows you to make Internet phone calls
using an Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) or
Open Sound System (OSS) sound card with speakers
and microphone as your telephone handset.

Changes:
Bugfixes.

Source: Scobleizer

Dave Winer today tells a story about seeing someone floating by his beach house window who waved at Dave.
I had a, um, geekier experience. I walked into Peet's coffee in Petaluma. There a really tall guy kept staring at me like he was trying to figure out who I was. I stared back. Eventually he said something like "I think I've met you before." Then it dawned on him: "you're a blogger." Heh. Yup. Guilty as charged. "You're the Scobleizer."
Yeah. But now I was in the embarrassing place of having someone recognize me that I didn't recognize back.
"What do you do?" I asked, hoping to figure it out.
Turned out it was Doug Cutting. Developer of Open Source search software.
Wow.
An honor meeting him. We had a nice chat about the projects he's worked on (Lucene, which was the engine in LookOut, a desktop search tool I used in Outlook before Microsoft bought it and rebuilt it for MSN Toolbar Suite), his new project, Nutch, which is an open source search project being done with Apache.
We also chatted about the Apache license and various business models that can be used in the open source model. He wants Microsoft not to be afraid of the Apache license. His business model is a consulting one. He gives away the code, but charges companies (and he's worked for many of the big companies) a consulting fee to integrate his software into companies' other systems.
Oh, Doug wasn't the only open source guy I met today. After leaving Petaluma (I was there to pick up my son) I had lunch with Joe Hewitt, one of the developers of Firefox. Shel Israel and I wanted to get the inside story of how Firefox got the large adoption it has gotten.
Joe's a really great guy. Shel took notes and will post those over on the Red Couch later next week.
It's great to get to talk to these two open source leaders. I have a feeling you and I will both be hearing more from them.
Oh, you think they are working to bring down Microsoft, right? Well, both made the point that that isn't driving them at all and that both wondered if there were a way for Microsoft to work with the open source community in the future.
That's an excellent question and one that I've been hearing a lot this week thanks to having the Linux and Java folks on campus. By the way, JavaLobby posted a report of the last day of the competitive influentials summit.
One thing I came away from is that there's a lot that I need to learn from the larger community. These two guys opened my eyes to the open source world and hopefully these relationships will grow stronger. How should Microsoft work closer with the open source community?
Even deeper: how can we help the open source community?