Archived Linux/News Items

RedHat Linux Now Fedora Project Added 10-27-03
All good things come to an end. Sadly the Red Hat Linux Project, from which Red Hat began its journey in Linux has now merged with the Fedora Project. Details can be found at Red Hat's main site http://www.redhat.com. This does pose some interesting questions. How will the North Carolina based company maintain the two development branches and integrate work from one into the other. How will this play into the issues posed by the SCO lawsuit. Tune in next week same Vraxx time... same... oh wait that's batman.

SuSE Releases Professional Edition 9 Added 10-27-03
Of course I shouldn't omit the fact that there are a number of distributions out there besides RedHat/Fedora. SuSE, arguably the king of Linux distros in Europe is also a powerhouse. Tending to go a little overboard when it comes to providing packages SuSE is well organized and designed when it comes to anticipating just about EVERY application you'll ever need as an administrator. The fact that SuSE has been released on DVD as well as conventional CD should give you an indication. If you haven't done so already be sure to check out SuSE

RedHat to Drop Retail Box Sets
While most unfortunate lean times call for drastic measures. An article on Linux and Main details the announcement by North Carolina based RedHat. This move is certainly a setback for the burgeoning Linux community. Most of us who support the various distributions or like to keep up with technology will doubtless continue to download ISO's, however the lack of exposure to the mainstream consumer market will be a detriment. While I'm sure to get flamed I do support the retail push to a degree. Am I a current subscriber to the RHN, sure. I've got enough things on my plate (aside from my IT duties) and while I may not be buying a $99 box set I am certainly comfortable with paying a subscription fee for access to updates and other pertinent information (and of course earlier access to new releases). And besides, if there's a crunch I can always move to Debian. =P

First Look:  Red Hat 9 (Shrike)
In what was to some, a rather quick turnaround for RH, our friends in North Carolina released Red Hat 9 (Shrike) in March. To put it through it's paces I decided to test it as a Desktop workstation and Samba, CUPS test rig. The first thing users will notice is the fairly user friendly install GUI. Unlike the good-old days, the new GUI is fairly uncluttered and should allow most users a quick way to format, partition and configure the most rudimentary options for their OS. Network card detection, CDROM detection work quite well with the newest anaconda package. The Kernel is a bit dated (2.4.20) but naturally that can be compiled post-install.

Among the areas that are a bone of contention are of course Blue Curve, the desktop environment created by Red Hat to create a middle ground between KDE and GNOME. Though the interface is certainly a 'softening' of both workspace environments I believe it does make a good-faith attempt to woo the Windows crowd. KDE or GNOME ardents will easily see the flaws in the modified interface. Many apps that are written with strict adherence to KDE spec may be a bit difficult to organize in BlueCurve.

Samba and CUPS work surprisingly well. My hats off to the CUPS team and of course the hard working Samba dev team (keep up the good work Andrew Tridgell and company). And although they are gone, RH's use of the Nautilus system to simplify file system navigation still provides a pretty good counterpart to IE's integration in Windows.

All in all my experience with RH9 has been a good one. More user friendly than the stalwart 6.2, the RH9 progression appears to be making strides in several areas. While perhaps not what strict GNU compliant users may be after I think it certainly provides a means for people to get "into" Linux with a slightly less aggressive learning curve than past releases (What Vraxx really means is, download it now =P).

Samba flaws and other Security Issues in the news
I'm fairly certain there are going to be MS fans or maybe even OpenSource advocates that will harp on me for my views regarding system security and major services for UNIX/Linux machines. Software is always going to have flaws (such as the recently discovered vulnerabilities in many builds of Samba).  If someone starts espousing the idea that Open Source software never has flaws, they are certainly oversimplifying or outright lying. All software is written by humans, as such we make mistakes.  The real discussion should focus more on the differing approaches to software development and customization between Closed and Open Source projects. The true benefit of an Open Source development strategy is to allow for many minds to collaborate or at the very least suggest improvements. It's by no means a perfect approach. In contrast a Closed Source approach can suffer from tunnel vision. A development team running at full tilt might be looking forward with such intensity that they will forget little things along the way. Neither one is the beginning and end-all of development but I believe both are useful in terms of developing good applications for the consumer/end user market.

United Linux (Next big thing?)
A steady movement in the Linux community is the goal to achieve some baseline for ease of portability. Some of these efforts have led to the LSB -- Linux Standard Base. UnitedLinux on the other hand is an effort by several Linux distributions to create their own standard. While I find the idea intriguing I'd hold off on singing it's praises until it's had at least another year under its belt.

SCO filing against IBM
So some folks have asked what this means to Linux and to IBM and other vendors who are looking to ally themselves with Linux distributors. The long and short of it is like this. SCO wants to enforce patents and Intellectual Property rights under their ownership of the IP developed at AT&T as part of early UNIX development . During a joint venture IBM and SCO shared development duties on a project which eventually IBM dropped as they saw little viability in the project. They eventually developed a UNIX like OS "AIX" for use with their proprietary hardware. Whether the claim actually proves fruitful is somewhat questionable.  IBM has a lot of legal muscle to muster and if anything they could potentially just buy out SCO or settle out of court...

Sendmail security flaw
A recently discovered exploit in Sendmail has many admins checking their configs twice and going to their distro vendor for patches. Is the threat as massive as some might make it out to be?  Depends on how you look at it. Sendmail has been the preeminent large scale Email server for years. The flaw has been present as early as the 5.x.x release. While yes it's unfortunate that a root exploit was present, it has gone unexposed for a very long time. The fixes are readily available and in some cases a simple edit of the sendmail.cf file was all that was needed. Linux fans may say "Hey this just shows that it was hard to find the flaw" while MS advocates would preach "Ha this is just showing you that Open Source software sucks too". My view is, all software is flawed, but how the development team handles those flaws and how readily the fixes can be deployed is what separates good software vendors vs. mediocre.