This week we launch our new series called "Futurelooks" which we devote to articles on new technology, the future, and other stuff that hasn't happened yet. This week our resident futurist, Gautam, takes us through Top 5 Reasons why Linux will keep Uncle Bill Gates up late at night.
Direct Link: Future Looks.
Salon has an interesting article on the the work ethics of sysadmins, heavily citing the book The Hacker Ethic and the
Spirit of the Information Age and telling the story of Salon's sysadmin
as he plays with the 2.4 kernel. Sysadmin's and ethics? Who here remembers BOFH or the Bastard Operator From Hell?
IBM is hoping with the new acceptance Linux has aquired in the industry that IBM will be able to market these mainframes to companies, who in the past would have laughed at the idea. IBM has noticed that Linux is quickly becoming an alternative to the NT and Solaris platforms, who have been the industry leaders in the past. IBM also believes that with Linux's functionality, that companies who would not have chosen mainframes in the past, may be moved to enter into the mainframe environment.
IBM finnaly realizes what most of us knew already, that Linux could be one of the best buisness OS' to hit the market. Anyone with even minimal experience with Linux could have seen this coming, especially with the functionality the Beowulf project gave Linux.
Read more here
I just hope this does not cause Linux to move even faster in a direction that was not the intent of its original creators.
"LINUX, the free computer operating system developed by thousands of volunteers collaborating over the Internet, is still not taken very seriously in corporate circles. It is used for niche tasks, such as running web servers, but it is generally deemed to be too immature for the most demanding environments, such as heavy-duty database systems. Recent events, however, suggest that Linux—whose mascot is a cheerful penguin—may have outgrown the commune of its birth."
Check it out! Looks like The Economist is quietly endorsing Linux.
The Duke of URL has just posted a review of Conectiva Linux 6.0. This is the first distribution to feature the new
APT-RPM, which was developed by Conectiva. The review features screenshots of the installation, the configuration tools, and a look into
the APT mechanism itself.
There's an interesting story running over at Techweb on whether or not it's time for Linus to surrender control of the Linux kernel to some sort of industry-backed, non-profit consortium.
This looks like a fun LUG project. A simple setup for a Linux cluster called OSCAR
from the Open Cluster Group. The people behind it are Oak Ridge National Labs and the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications and some private companies. According to this Newsforge story their 'Supercomputer on a CD' software is supposed to make it so easy to
put a Beowulf cluster together a high school student or MCSE can do it in a few hours.
SuSE appears to be the first big Linux vendor to have
announced a distro to be shipped with the still-cute 2.4 Linux kernel as default. Here's their
announcment in English, and in German. Since they'll also be including a 2.2 kernel "in parallel," this
isn't totally earthshaking (some other distros have been shipping 2.2 stock and 2.4 optional for a little
By: Infoworld.com newsletter by Nicholas Petreley
ALL OF THE TALK about the recently released Linux 2.4
kernel centers around the improvements that will make
Linux a better operating system for the enterprise. I
have not yet subjected the 2.4 kernel to intensive
server testing. But I do have a lot of confidence in
the 2.4 kernel for enterprise use, if for no other
reason than the fact that IBM and Oracle have already
loudly endorsed this new kernel.
