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Contents:

News in General

June Linux Journal

The June issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands May 8. The focus of this issue is Connectivity with articles on setting up PLIP, NFS and NIS, using Linux with the PalmPilot, a user-friendly GUI for PPP and much more. Check out the Table of Contents. To subscribe to Linux Journal, click here.

Linux in the News

Scientific Software Packaging Feedback

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)

Purpose?

We at Kachina Technologies, Inc. are very excited about the tremendously increasing popularity of our SAL (Scientific Application on Linux) web site. Based on encouraging user feedbacks, we want to go the extra mile to provide more services to the Linux and the Scientific and Engineering communities.

What is SAL?

SAL (Scientific Applications on Linux) web sites collect thousands of software links for scientists, engineers, and Linux ethusiasts. There is no doubt that SAL has become one of the most important, popular, and exciting software resources for the Linux and UNIX community. SAL was developed by Dr. Herng-Jeng Jou, along with many others at Kachina Technologies, Inc.

While most system/network level applications are packaged by Linux distributors and provided on their CD-ROM distributions, most commonly used free scientific packages are still provided in source code format. Although many users contributed packages which are often found in /contrib directories on Linux distributors' FTP sites, lack of version tracking and centralized control hinder the appreciation of these individual efforts. We are facinated by the team work and coordination of GNU/Debian Linux people and want to pursue the same goal in software packaging for the Scientific and Engineering community.

Our initial goal is to archive Debian (.deb), RedHat (.rpm), and simple binary tree (.tgz) used by many distributions including the popular Slackware distribution. At the same time, SAL's website will function as a repository and users can download the packages and install them on their systems immediately.

However, we'd like to listen to your opinions on the best policies and procedures to get this job done correctly.

Please tell us what scientific and engineering software (those with free source codes that are available of course) you would like to see packaged.

Please email us at [email protected] and simply include:

  1. Software name(s)
  2. Preferred packaging format (RPM, DEB, or others)
Although this is just a survey, we are quite serious and excited about doing this. The established packages will be available through SAL.

Currently, there are 14 SAL sites installed worldwide, and their URLs are:

     Austria             http://nswt.tuwien.ac.at/scicomp/sal/
     Finland             http://sal.jyu.fi/
     Germany             http://ftp.llp.fu-berlin.de/lsoft/ 
     Italy               http://chpc06.ch.unito.it/linux/
     Japan               http://ec.tmit.ac.jp/koyama/linux/SAL/
     Poland              http://www.tuniv.szczecin.pl/linux/doc/other/SAL
     Portugal            http://www.idite-minho.pt/SAL/
     Russia              http://www.sai.msu.su/sal/
     South Africa        http://web.ee.up.ac.za/sal/
     South Korea         http://infosite.kordic.re.kr/sal
     Spain               http://ceu.fi.udc.es/SAL/
     Turkey              http://sal.raksnet.com.tr
     United Kingdom      http://www.ch.qub.ac.uk/SAL/
     USA                 http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM
We welcome your feedback, comments, and suggestions. Please send your messages (including mirroring requests) to [email protected]

For more information:
Herng-Jeng Jou,
Team SAL, Kachina Technologies, Inc.

MAILING-LIST: Linux Speech Recognition

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)
All interested in speech recognition software under Linux are invited to join this new mailing list. The emphasis is on (though discussion is not limited to) finding a means of porting preexisting applications (especially DragonDictate-style ones, or possibly NaturallySpeaking-style) to Linux, rather than developing one from scratch.

To subscribe, remove the spaces from the following address and send mail to:

ddlinux-request @ arborius.net

For more information:
Shore.Net/Eco Software, Inc;

SAS for Linux

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)
SAS is a powerful and popular reporting, analysis, and application development system. The SAS for Linux site is dedicated to the support of SAS on the Linux operating system. Tune in there for information, news, to voice your opinion, and contribute to the cause. Of particular interest is the SAS User Linux Interest Profile, a survey to measure the amount of interest (or not) for SAS on Linux. Stop on by!

For more information:
Karsten M. Self,

New Pages for Linux Users

Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 07:19:12 -0700 (MST)
Here's a page that could prove worthwhile for newbies: "Basic Linux Training"

Here's another new site site dedicated to Lunix. Find links to RPMS, X windows managers, HOWTOS and more. Check it out at:
http://vdpower.gamesmania.com/demoreviews/linux/linux.html

The KDE Free Qt Foundation

Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 14:50:59 GMT
The KDE project and Troll Tech AS, the creators of Qt, are pleased to announce the founding of the "KDE Free Qt Foundation". The purpose of this foundation is to guarantee the availability of Qt for free software development now and in the future.

The foundation will control the rights to the Qt Free Edition and ensure that current and future releases of Qt will be available for free software development at all times. released under the BSD license.

We believe the founding of the KDE Free Qt Foundation to be an ground-breaking step, helping to usher in a new era of software development, allowing the KDE project, the free software community, all free software developers as well as commercial software developers to prosper in a mutually supportive fashion.

For more information:
Bernd Johannes Wuebben, The KDE Project,
Eirik Eng, Troll Tech CEO,

Linux Resources -- we need your help

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:06:04 GMT
Linux Resources is a community effort brought together by Specialized Systems Consultants (SSC), publishers of Linux Journal, to promote the Linux operating system.

We strive to produce the most informative one-stop Linux resource. We do that with the help of many enthusiastic individuals and companies who produce selected content for Linux Resources. If you or your company would like to contribute content or maintain a page within Linux Resources please e-mail us at .

After browsing through http://www.linuxresources.com/ please e-mail us and let us know if it addresses your needs and if not, tell what we can add or do differently. For example, perhaps there are other exisiting sites that you feel we should incorporate into Linux Resources -- e-mail us!

Last, Linux Resources is advertising free. Let us know if this is an important factor for you. Again, we want Linux Resources to be *your* Linux resource. Please let us know how we can be of assistance.

For more information:
Carlie Fairchild, , Linux Journal Sales and Marketing

Open Source Journal, the Magazine for Free Software

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 13:19:03 GMT
The Free Software Union is proud to announce the release of the premiere issue of the 'Open Source Journal, the Magazine for Free Software'.

The Journal is volunteer written and produced, and available free from the Web at:

http://osj.fslu.org/

The Free Software Union ("Free Software Lovers Unite!" = FSLU) is a democratic, non-profit group dedicated to the Free Software/Open-Source community.

For more information:
Braddock Gaskill,

Linux Conference Announcement

Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 09:24:54 +0200
The first Linux conference in Denmark will be held by Denmark's Unix User Group and Skåne/Sjælland Linux User Group May 16, 1998. Among the main speakers are Jesper Pedersen, the creator of the Dotfile Generator, and Image Scandiavia, a large ISP in Denmark using Linux as their main platform. Moreover, experienced Linux users will help novice users by installing Linux on their computers.

The conference has a homepage is at http://sslug.imm.dtu.dk/konference.html, where you can find the programme and more information. Official languages are Swedish and Danish.

For more information:
Kenneth Geisshirt, , The Royal Library
Linux konference i København den 16. maj 1998

Software Announcements

JCam - Digital Camera Software for Linux (with Java)!

Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 14:52:50 GMT
JCam - a single software program for (almost) all OSes and (almost) all Digital Cameras ...

The first public release of JCam is now available from "www.jcam.com", featuring support for Digital Still Cameras from Epsom, Casio, Kodak and coming soon, Fuji, Samsung and Olympus.

JCam is currently available for Win95, WinNT and Linux 2.0 ... future versions will offer - subject to demand - support for Mac, OS-2, PPC and a range of other Unices. JCam requires Java 1.1 to be installed on the host machine; later versions will be available bundled with the JRE, simplifying installation for non-Java users.

For more information:
, http://www.jcam.com/

GTK+ 1.0.0 GUI Library Released!

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:03:14 GMT
The GTK+ Team is proud to announce the release of GTK+ 1.0.0. GTK+, which stands for the GIMP Toolkit, is a library for creating graphical user interfaces for the X Window System. It is designed to be small, efficient, and flexible. GTK+ is written in C with a very object-oriented approach.

The official ftp site is: ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk

The official web site is: http://www.gtk.org/

A mailing list is located at: [email protected]

To subscribe: mail -s subscribe [email protected] < /dev/null (Send mail to [email protected] with the subject "subscribe")

GTK+ was written by Peter Mattis, Spencer Kimball, and Josh MacDonald. Many enhancements and bug fixes have been made by the GTK+ Team. See the AUTHORS file in the distribution for more information.

For more information:
The GTK+ Team,

Poppy 1.3 - Simple POP3 mail program to view/delete/save messages

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:51:59 GMT
This is the announcement for Version 1.3 of Poppy. It is a simple Perl script that allows you to view only the headers of messages from a POP3 server and then allows you to selectively view, save, or delete each message. It is ideal for limited resource systems.

A simple perl script to retrieve mail headers from a POP3 server and individually view, save or delete them. Requires perl. Simple mail reader which relies on the POP3 server to do most the work. A good use is to delete or to skip over huge emails on a POP3 server when on a slow link. You may also view only a specified number of lines from a message to see if you would like to download the whole message.

To download:
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/cbagwell/projects.html

For more information:
Chris Bagwell, Fujitsu Network Communications,

juju/juen - uu/xx/Base64/BinHex-Decoder/Encoder

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:48:53 GMT
The first release of juju has been announced. IT is yet another uu- and Base64-decoder, which also decodes xxencoded and BinHexed data, and includes the following features:

It sould work with MIME data as well.

Also included is juen, a similar powerful encoder, which supports uuencoding, Base64-encoding, xxencoding and MIME. It supports automated mailing and posting if sendmail and inews are present.

Current Version is 0.2.0, which is the first public release. The Program is available as sourcecode only, but should compile on any Unix platform, at least Linux ;-). It is GPL'ed.

The Homepage of juju is: http://hottemax.uni-muenster.de/~grover/juju.html

For more information:
Christoph Gröver,

mon-0.37i - Service Monitoring Daemon

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:45:18 GMT
mon-037i is an extensible service monitoring daemon which can be used to monitor network or non-network resources. Written in Perl 5, this code should be able to run out-of-the-box on many platforms. It supports a flexible configuration file, and can send out email, alphanumeric pages, or any other type of alert when it detects the failure of a service. Service monitors that come with the distribution can test ping, telnet, ftp, smtp, http, nntp, pop3, imap, disk space, SNMP queries, and arbitrary TCP services.

http://ftp.kernel.org/software/mon/ ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/mon-0.37i.tar.gz

For more information:
Jim Trocki,

newsfetch-1.2 - pull news via NNTP to a mailbox

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 18:54:53 GMT
newsfetch: Most Compact and Powerful Utility to download the news from an NNTP server, filter and stores in the mailbox format.

Available from http://ulf.wep.net/newsfetch.html

New version of newsfetch (1.2) is uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu

newsfetch-1.2.tar.gz newsfetch-1.2-1.i386.rpm newsfetch-1.2-1.src.rpm

available in ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/ and in proper place (/pub/Linux/system/news/readers) when they move the files. New version is available in .tar.gz and .rpm format.

For more information:

Mesa/Vista Project Collaboration Intranet for Linux

Warwick, RI -- April 14, 1998 -- Mesa Systems Guild, Inc. announced today the immediate availability of Mesa/Vista for the Linux operating system. Mesa's flagship product line, Mesa/Vista provides web-enabled project management automation for development teams who need to collaborate with access to all data related to their project.

Mesa/Vista provides a way to tie all of the project management and product development tools already in use together on the web so that the information can be accessed using a web browser on any platform, from any location. This enables project managers to make better, faster decisions based on the most up-to-date information and increases the productivity of development engineers by providing immediate access to information they need to complete their tasks.

For more information:
http://www.mesasys.com/
Maribeth McNair, Mesa Systems Guild, Inc.

Blender 3d beta release

Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:20:29 GMT
NeoGeo is happy to announce the Beta release of a Linux and FreeBSD version of Blender. We expect the first Beta users to help us complete testing and evaluating, especially for the various PC configurations. An official version will be released 4 to 6 weeks later.

Blender is the freeware 3D package - up until now only available for SGI - that has become very popular with students, artists and at universities. Being the in-house software of a high quality animation studio, it has proven to be an extremely fast and versatile design instrument. Use Blender to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations, business graphics, to do some morphing, or design user interfaces. You can easily build and manage complex environments. The renderer is reliable and extremely fast. All basic animation principles are well implemented.

For more information:
http://www.neogeo.nl/,

consd 1.0: virtual console management daemon

Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 07:48:06 GMT

consd manages virtual consoles silently in the background. It starts and kills gettys there depending on how many gettys are just sitting around and waiting (and wasting ressources). Usually, consd ensures there's always one (and only one) getty waiting for someone to login. The virtual consoles with lower numbers are preferred.

consd does not interfere with gettys started by init.

As always - if you can't find it on the ftp servers listed below, try the 'incoming' directories. http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/ in the file called consd-1.0.tgz (12KB).

For more information:
Frank Gockel,

dancing_linux - a rendered 3D-Linux-animation / eyecatcher

Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 08:06:23 GMT
The animation shows a nice linux-logo, consisting of the five letters and additional artwork. Everything is in motion and is twisting around (glass-, metal-, and light-effects!). It has a black background and is VERY suitable as an eyecatcher for shopwindows or your own linux-box.

=================================================
Format:         *.flc movie
Resolution:     320*200, 8bit color
                120 frames (about 20 fps)
Renderplatform: Linux-Povray 3.01  (of course)
Rendertime:     15 min/frame on a P133
=================================================
The movie may also be viewed with xanim, but it looks _much_ better fullscreen! I included John Remyn's SVGA-Player "flip" (binary).

The animation is available at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/logos/raytraced/dancing_linux.lsm http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/logos/raytraced/dancing_linux.tar.gz (1.07 MB) and mirrors...

For more information:
Roland Berger [email protected]

Port of InterBase Database to Linux

Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 15:03:18 GMT
InterBase Software Corp has ported InterBase 4.0 to the Linux platform. We plan to allow this database software to be downloaded for free use as of April 29, 1998.

The primary download site will be http://www.interbase.com/

In the July timeframe, we expect to release a commercial version of InterBase 5 for Linux.

There is a monitored news group borland.public.interbase.com available for the users of InterBase.

For more information:
Wyliam Holder,

SECURITY: procps 1.2.7 fixes security hole

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 13:18:42 GMT
A file creation and corruption bug in XConsole included in procps-X11 versions 1.2.6 and earlier has been found. To fix it, you can either remove the XConsole program or upgrade to procps-1.2.7, available from ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/sources/usr.bin/procps-1.2.7.tar.gz

Thanks to Alan Iwi for finding the bug.

A few other bugs have been fixed in this version. Read the NEWS file for details.

If you have Red Hat Linux or another RPM-based distribution, libc5-based RPM packages are available from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/updates/4.2/ and glibc-based RPM packages are available from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/updates/5.0/

Fuller upgrade instructions for Red Hat Linux users have been given in a separate post to [email protected]

For more information:
Michael K. Johnson,

Published in Linux Gazette Issue 28, May 1998

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Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.