SilentBob4 writes "Adam Doxtater of Mad Penguin has published a preliminary layout for his proposed cross-distribution package manager capable of adding/removing software from any locale. He is suggesting the interface will basically allow for installation of several major package formats including RPM, DEB, TGZ, as well as source code with the ability to pass build time options. All of this will come at the price of standards of course, including naming, documentation, and package structuring. If this idea were to catch on, it would signify a major leap in desktop Linux usability. This might be a project that UserLinux might benefit from. Read the full column here (complete with GUI mockups)."

An anonymous reader asks: "I started using Linux years ago, with a Red Hat distribution. When Red Hat's custom configurations started getting in my way, I jumped ship to Slackware. I have never looked back except that I cannot stand the BSD style init scripts. I like having a full compliment of run-levels and control on the fly over which scripts will be running, and which ones will not. That is hard to achieve, when you put multiple configurations in the same file. I also liked having the scripts around to start, stop, and restart services. While I was rewriting my own startup scripts [based on Debian's scripts], I discovered that there is a third style, based on dependencies. AFAIK this is the style adopted by Gentoo. I don't want to start a distro war; but, I am curious about what kind of init scripts Slashdot readers prefer, and what they think are the benefits of each."

Saqib Ali writes "Registration for Linux Desktop Summit is now open. Here is the press release and the list of sponsors Highlights will include RedHat's direction for Linux on Desktop, and Sun Java Desktop. Today Sun did a presentation on Sun Java Desktop, the presentation will be available @ Java Desktop System in Action: Secure, affordable and compatible. Revolutionary (View on Demand), or in PDF format."

Oskuro writes "According to this story at news.netcraft.com, Debian was the fastest growing distribution in the last 6 months, closely followed by SuSE and Gentoo. RedHat, while still reigning, has started to lose sites in Netcraft's survey after they announced the end of support for their desktop releases. The survey is based on the stats from webservers which include the distribution name in their webserver's header." Maybe it would grow even faster when Java issues are worked out -- read more below on that.

scubacuda writes "ZDnet and others report that Red Hat now offers the 'Open Source Assurance Program' as protection for customers if they get hit with a copyright infringement case from the SCO Group. From their website: 'A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Red Hat's warranty assures customers that they can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related solutions without interruption. The warranty is available for all customers having a valid registered subscription to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or related solutions.'" Following close behind Novell and Hewlett-Packard, but it looks like Red Hat is not actually indemnifying their customers like Novell and HP, but rather is simply promising to fix any real copyright problems moving forward, which is something I think we would assume they would do in any case.

DrFishstik writes "From the Fedora Project Page: "A test release of Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Like the original x86 architecture release, the AMD64 architecture has three binary ISO images and three source ISO images. This is a single (we hope and intend) test release specifically to check hardware support; the package set is the same versions as an updated Fedora Core 1 for x86 system will have.""

thelenm writes "Red Hat announced today that the 7.x and 8.0 distributions have reached their errata maintenance end-of-life. Red Hat 9 reaches its end-of-life on April 30. The options for those who want to stick with Red Hat are Red Hat Enterprise Linux or the Fedora Project, as described on their Migration Resource Center page. Or of course, you might take this opportunity to select another option." This day's been a long time coming, but it's finally here.

nadamsieee writes "EETimes is running a story that proclaims that the embedded Linux tools market is a myth The author, Dan O'Dowd, sites variety of problems (challenges?) with embedded Linux ranging from poor real-time performance to lack of broad developer support. Dan concludes: "Considering all of the possible support avenues, Linux support ends up being lower quality and more costly than the alternatives of using a homegrown operating system or purchasing a proprietary one." Maybe Dan should check out the success stories at LinuxDevices.com or perhaps try a more traditional embedded OS that also happens to be Free."

An anonymous reader notes "Businesswire reports in this article that RedHat will assign its copyrights for the eCos embedded OS to the FSF. This is great news, considering that they have stopped developing it in 2002. Hopefully this will mean new life for the project."

scubacuda writes "Mark Webbink, Red Hat's general counsel, has written an informative article explaining free and open source software. Geared towards attorneys, he explains the various licenses and addresses several myths about OSS." One to bookmark.

cperciva writes "Many systems around the world have been possessed by penguins and dead rats. It would be nice to exorcize these evil spirits, but this can be difficult without physical access to the machines in question. Thanks to a new depenguinator, it is now possible to upgrade Linux systems to run FreeBSD 5.x without requiring anything more than an SSH connection." Clever idea.

Oskie-wee-wee writes "Infoworld is carrying a story about Bob Young (Red Hat, Lulu, Classy Formal Wear, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, etc.) and his open letter to SCO and Darl McBride - in response to Darl's open letter 'defending, in one breath, the SCO suit, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the Supreme Court Decision in the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case.'"

Slashback tonight with words on the real-life security level of Mac OS X, the fate of stranded polar adventurer Jon Johanson, poetry for JenniCam, more on the Wright brothers & Co, and more. Read on for the details.

An anonymous reader writes "The Fedora website has posted a schedule for their second release. " Now that the 2.6 Kernel is out, I imagine all the major distributions will have updates relatively soon.

Dan Clough writes "I found Linux Power Tools to be a useful book, although it does have some shortcomings. It's a 644-page, well-written book that covers almost all aspects of managing, administering, and optimizing a working Linux system. The book's cover claims the target audience as intermediate to advanced users, but I think that beginner to intermediate would be more accurate. More advanced users may find Linux Power Tools a little beneath their level." Read on for the rest of Dan's review.

zerocool^ writes "In a previous story it was noted that Progeny would offer support to Red Hat 7.2 and 7.3 customers facing an End of Life deadline of 31 December 2003. Progeny has updated their 'transitional software' offerings to include support for Red Hat 8.0 and 9 for $5 per month, per machine. This is great news for IT folks who are faced with the choice of a new OS or abandoned 1-year-old software."

thx2001r writes "According to News.com, Matthew Szulik (perhaps driven by recent slashdot questions in this regard) of Red Hat has set educational pricing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation ($25 per year for students) and (RHEL AS) server ($50 per year for the schools). Here are the details of the versions available at educational discounts." And for business users wary of Red Hat's high-priced Enterprise version (and happy using an older version), iroberts writes "Beginning January 1, 2004, Progeny will offer software updates for users of Red Hat(R) Linux(R) 7.2 and 7.3. Pricing is $5 per machine per month; or a flat rate of $2,500 per month for unlimited machines. The Fedora Legacy Project is discussing how this will impact their work."

mbanck writes "The cause of the recent Debian Project server compromise has been published by the Debian security team: 'Forensics revealed a burneye encrypted exploit. Robert van der Meulen managed to decrypt the binary which revealed a kernel exploit. Study of the exploit by the RedHat and SuSE kernel and security teams quickly revealed that the exploit used an integer overflow in the brk system call. Using this bug it is possible for a userland program to trick the kernel into giving access to the full kernel address space'. This issue has been fixed in 2.4.23. Thus, the Linux kernel compromise was not Debian specific."

jasonbowen writes "In this article from ZDnet, Redhat claims a 90% return subscription rate for its Enterprise line. Sounds like Redhat is doing just fine providing a quality product for people that want to pay the money for it." (And for people who don't want to pay money for it, too.)

DeckerEgo writes "InfoWorld reports on the Linux desktop and how Novell, Sun and RedHat (wha?) are working on making 2004 the year corporations start adopting open desktops. But which desktop? Most interesting to note is how Novell is planning to beef up the number of Ximian, Gnome, Mozilla and OpenOffice developers after its SuSE aquisition is complete. Does this mean that SuSE will stop being one of the best KDE distros out there and follow the way of the Gnome?"