Linux

The Gentoo Linux project has released its first 2005 Linux distribution: Gentoo Linux 2005.0. According to the project's website, the release had "a few setbacks including a complete security rebuild, but with the help of the many teams within the Gentoo developer community, we believe that this release will be one of the best that we have ever had."

"The release includes new installation media from Alpha, AMD64, PPC, PPC64, SPARC, and x86 and includes stages for IA64 and SPARC32," the project's statement continues.

L33tdawg: How much longer will it be before people wake up and realise that security isn't a PRODUCT; it's a PROCESS! There's no silver bullet that's going to 'solve your security problems', Linux or otherwise.

Australian company Cybersource says it's currently talking to two banks in Australia about providing Linux-based bootable CDs to consumers to ensure Internet banking security.

As you investigate various Linux Distributions, you will soon notice that some Distributions excel at certain tasks over other Distributions. For example, Novell/Suse provides an excellent authentication/file server with their SLES9 product, Xandros makes for a great desktop for those transitioning from Microsoft Windows, Slackware can't be beat as a terminal client, Debian excels as a general purpose/backup server because of its security team and it's long release cycle, etc.

While investigating some reports of recent Unix compromises, I ran into a message from the SecurityFocus Incidents mailing list that was forwarded to me by the moderator, Daniel Hanson. It was a lengthy post detailing the compromise of a Linux machine. The post contained an awkward IRC-based discussion between the server administrator and the guy who had broke into the machine.

Reading through this discussion, I discovered the following exchange which immediately peeked my interest:

Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.

The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create ‘best of breed’ solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts.

A new Linux version of Adobe Systems' Reader software for viewing Portable Document Format, or PDF, files is available on the company's FTP download site--but it's not the final product, spokeswoman Rebecca Michals said late Tuesday. Instead, the software is a prerelease version made available to help people in the Netherlands meet tax deadlines, she said.

"The shipping version is not yet available," she said. Adobe began beta-testing Reader 7 for Linux in January, restoring support for the open-source operating system that the company had bypassed with Reader 6.

CeBIT, the world's largest IT trade show, attracted a healthy mix of open source companies and enthusiasts this week, and ZDNet UK was there to get a flavour of the action.

Klaus Knopper attracted a packed crowd on Friday lunchtime when he demonstrated the latest version of his Linux distribution. Knoppix 3.8 contains a full range of open source applications and can be booted directly from a CD.

So-called "enemies of Linux" are conducting a systematic campaign of disinformation which aims to undermine the enterprise credibility of the open-source operating system, a senior executive from the Open Source Development Labs said.

Nelson Pratt, marketing director of the pro-Linux organization, which boasts Linus Torvalds among its top brass, said that unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms with a campaign claiming that Linux is inadequately supported for enterprise use.

The National Security Agency built a version of Linux with more security tools that its technologists believe could help make the country's computing infrastructure less vulnerable. They've won over the Linux developer community with the changes. But success depends on its adoption by U.S. companies and government agencies, something that remains very much in doubt.

The personal computer industry is about to arrive at a "tipping point" in which everything changes and those who get ahead of the curve earn social and cultural advantages over those who don't.