Enterprise Unix Roundup: Novell Navigates Linux Ice Floe – page 2

In Other News

» Sun called early this week to let us know that the ninjas in its industry intelligence group uncovered evidence that IBM will be announcing benchmarks on high-end POWER5 kit that wipe the floor with comparable Sun offerings. Plucking throwing stars out of their Herman Millers, IBM's crack PR samurai moved the announcement up to this Friday.

» Sun also made a pair of desktop-related announcements, noting that it's in a partnership with graphics card manufacturer NVidia that will, among other things, enhance NVidia support on Solaris. Sun also released Java Desktop System (JDS) 2 last weekend, making the GNOME-based offering available on Solaris as well as Linux.

Quoth an analyst: "Now, if Sun would only drop the other shoe and deliver JDS for Windows on x86, the enterprise desktop software market could become truly interesting while we all wait for Longhorn to ship."

Memo to the analyst: If you replace Windows with GNOME, it's not precisely Windows anymore. It's like asking General Dynamics to make the automotive industry interesting by releasing tank treads for Camaros.

One free year of Roundup to the first pedant who writes to point out that GNOME can run on Windows. A second free year if he admits it's still a silly thing to say.

» SCO's mad as hell and isn't, well, isn't doing very well lately. CEO Darl McBride told a group of "tech industry leaders" his company has slid to a 10 percent share of the Unix market thanks to "hurricane Linux" and open source advocates. He doesn't, however, take issue with commercial Linux releases, which he says are good. Why? Because they cost money, evidently.

We've generally approved of SCO's recent public silence: It kept us from noticing the company's essential problem is framed around its inability to compete with Linux distributions that don't even bother to offer support. Therefore, we are almost sorry to note the company is launching a Web site to argue with Groklaw.

» It's taken a few years, but embedded Linux company Monta Vista is ready to release patches to the Linux kernel that endow it with so-called "hard real-time" capabilities. Hard real-time functionality guarantees a software developer can write programs that have access to hardware at precise points in time.

In a separate report, Linux kernel development leader Linus Torvalds said he's not interested in introducing the patch to the main Linux kernel tree because "Almost nobody wants hard real-time, even in embedded devices."

» Forbes reports "French officials have said Microsoft cut its prices by 60 percent for Paris City Hall to prevent it 'migrating' to Linux-based operating systems and other open-source software."

Hopefully they threw in some coffee mugs, too.

Security Roundup

• A bug in the Cyrus SASL authentication layer "could be exploited to run arbitrary code with the privileges of a setuid or setgid application." Patches are in from Debian, Red Hat, Trustix, Mandrake, and Gentoo. Expect more.
• SCO released patches for libpng and a potential information leak in CUPS. Gentoo has a patch for the CUPS bug as well.
• In the "Blast From the Past" Department, integer and stack overflows in the Lesstif toolkit library (remember when Linux would die if it didn't have a free Motif replacement?) have been patched by Gentoo and Debian.

Tips of the Trade

Trying to keep organized is a continual challenge for most folks. And if you don't have good organization habits, having a computer will not help. It still takes thought and effort to store and retrieve computer files without wasting time trying to find what you want.

Fortunately, the harried, multiplatform admin now has options other than careful file tree management and learning intricate ways to search techniques. sqlDesktop is one such option. sqlDesktop is an organizer that lets you easily organize e-mail, documents, spreadsheets, images, newsgroup postings — any kind of computer file, any way you like.

It comes in two versions: a single-user edition for a stand-alone PC and a network edition. The network version uses a central database server. It enables users to easily set up file sharing and can integrate with a mail server. sqlDesktop can be used as a stateless desktop, storing all data on the server. It comes with the HSQL database engine, or you may use almost any SQL server of your choice. It runs on both Linux and Windows, in any Java-enabled Web browser.

The single PC version is free. The network edition is priced between $50 and $100 per seat; educational institutions can get it for free. Visit sqlDesktop for downloads, howtos, and screenshots.

Carla Schroder writes the Tips of the Trade section of Enterprise Unix Roundup. She also appears on Crossnodes every Wednesday, and is the author of the site's popular Scripting Clinic, which deals with Unix/Linux scripting issues.

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