"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Contents: News in General Software Announcements

August Linux Journal

The August issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands July 10. The focus of this issue is Navigating Linux and our feature article is an interview with Marc Andressen and Tom Paqin of Netscape done by Doc Searls. Check out the Table of Contents at http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue52/index.html. To subscribe to Linux Journal, go to http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html.

An Invitation: The Future of Linux with Linus Torvalds

On July 14, 1998, at 6:00PM, Taos Mountain ( http://www.taos.com/ ) in association with the Silicon Valley Linux User Group (http://www.svlug.org/) will present a panel discussion on THE FUTURE OF LINUX. Linux is a freely available version of the UNIX operating system.

Panelists will include Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux; Robert Hart from retail Linux distributor Red Hat Software; Larry Augustin of the Silicon Valley Linux User Group and director of Linux International, a non-profit consortium of Linux users and vendors; and Jeremy Allison, the developer of SAMBA. Phillip Hughes, publisher of Linux Journal, will question the panelists.

Complete Press Release

For more information:
Michael Masterson,

LINC: Linux conference in Silicon Valley, California

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 23:56:32 +0000
LINC, the International Linux Conference and Exposition, will be held in Silicon Valley, California next January.

We have just issued a Call for Papers, and we encourage Linux developers to send abstracts for talks or tutorials.

More info at: http://lincexpo.org/

Complete Press Release If you have any questions, please mail me.

For more information:
Don Marti,

Position Available: network security - development/maintenance

Tue, 23 Jun 1998
SecurePipe Communications is currently accepting resumes for a network security support and development position.

Responsibilities will include support of installed firewalls, development and maintenance of open-source network security solutions, and support of existing mail and web servers.

For more information:
http://www.securepipe.com/jobs.html

Joshua Heling,
SecurePipe Communications, Inc.

GNU Utilities Integrated Development Environment project

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:47:02 GMT
GUIDE: GNU Utilities Integrated Development Environment

The purpose of this project is to merge existing GNU and GPL utilities into a graphical GPL Integrated Development Environment, which contain editor, class browser, debugger, profiler, man generator, code checking, testing, animation, and management.

Go to http://sunsite.auc.dk/GUIDE/ and join the mailing list.

For more information:
Knud Haugaard Sxrensen,

WWW: Linux search engine in beta

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:50:18 GMT
Take a look at http://linux.ncg.net/search/

A search engine with a different twist.... We index only Linux related web pages, and in addition to searching in the robot index, we'll look up the keywords in our resource listings as well.

The engine uses heuristics to exclude most pages that aren't relevant to Linux. Currently the engine is in early beta, with a small index of about 75.000 documents as of 11th June, and growing at a rate of a few thousand documents pr. day. It might seem small, but the index contains most of the important Linux sites already, and is getting quite useful.

Since we track what subjects that are most popular to search for, you also help us improve the resource listing by testing the engine.

As soon as the indexer is well enough tested, we'll increase indexing speed dramatically (from 10 documents at a time currently, to about 300).

For more information:
Vidar Hokstad,

The Freefire Project (IT security solutions)

Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:26:28 GMT
After some time in the dark I am happy to Announce the Freefire Project

The Freefire Project tries to support Developers and Integrators in building IT Security Solutions (especially Firewalls) based on Free Tools (Open Source). It is not Operating System dependent, but a lot of the Tools on the Page can be used with Linux.

The Project features a web site where you can find a lot of useful links to free Security Tools and Resources. There is a monthly Bulletin giving some articles about recently discovered tools.

There is a Mailing list for Developers. You DO NOT need to subscribe if you don't develop tools on your own. In this case it will be enough to enter you= r E-Mail in the Announce-Form on the Web Pages or monitor the Web-Pages.

http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/index.en.html

The Start page is also available in German:

http://www.inka.de/sites/lina/freefire-l/index.de.html

Also searching for contributors to the Bulletin and for Links to Tools which are not yet on the Pages.

For more information:
Bernd Eckenfels.

Linux Links

Open Source Devloper Day Press Release: opensource.pr

The Open Source Index: http://home.maine.rr.com/sickthing/osi

List of Linux Mailing Lists: www.linuxrx.com/Lists/Lists.perl

Linux Buyers Guide: http://www.linuxbuyersguide.com/

Linux Applications: http://www.cynetcity.com/cyberzone/497/ Linux Book Guide: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~ptgeiger/guidehome.htm

Article about Linux in Computer Currents Magazine: http://www.currents.net/magazine/national/1612/inet1612.html

The Linux Console Tools: http://www.mygale.org/~ydirson/en/lct/

Article "How Linux Could Kill Windows NT": http://www.zdnet.com/chkpt/adem2fpf/www.anchordesk.com/story/story_2241.html

Linux Rally: http://www.penguincomputing.com/svlug-rally.html

Time Magazine Article: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,13820,00.html

PC-Internet

Check out the new PC-Internet at http://www.pc-internet.com/ (the site is in Spanish only)

WrapBit 0.2.1 - virtual object storage and programming environment

Thu Jun 25 12:47:56 1998
The WrapBit version 0.2.1 is now available. Read more about it from the active server at http://public.comput.com/WrapBit/ WrapBit is a virtual, persistant, write once object storage and programing environment. A small kernel serves forge proofed data, meta data and dynamic views (object invocation). XML is featured (but not imposed) for object control messages.

w3mir 1.0.3 - HTTP copying and mirroring tool

Thu Jun 25 12:56:55 1998
w3mir 1.0.3 has been released and is available at http://www.math.uio.no/ now.

Fixes include

• -R/remove option to remove files is no longer more destructive than intended.
• Files with 'unsafe' characters in their filename is now saved as "foo bar" instead of "foo%20bar"
• The -B switch works once again.

w3mir is a all purpose HTTP copying and mirroring tool. The main focus of w3mir is to create and maintain a browsable copy of one, or several, remote WWW site(s). Used to the max w3mir can retrive the contents of several related sites and leave the mirror browseable via a local web server, or from a filesystem, such as directly from a CDROM.

w3mir supports HTML4, and has partial support for CSS, Java, ActiveX and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files.

Alphanumeric Paging Software beta test

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:02:46 GMT
EtherPage(TM) is now available on Linux

Calling beta testers for our EtherPage product running under Linux. If interested, you can download software and request an evaluation license code from http://www.ppt.com/eval/version30.html

EtherPage is a client/server based product for delivering messages from computers to wireless messaging services such as alphanumeric and numeric pagers. The product includes a web interface for interactive use and administration, a command line interface and a C API.

tomsrtbt-1.4.66

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:01:35 GMT
tomsrtbt-1.4.66.tar.gz is available at Sunsite.unc.edu to be placed into system/recovery and http://www.toms.net/~toenser/rb/.

It is a boot/root rescue/emergency floppy image with more stuff than fits. Bzip2, 1722Mb formatting, and tighter compilation options helped jam it on. tomsrtbt is useful for "learn unix on a floppy" as it runs from ramdisk, includes the man-pages for everything, and behaves in a generally predictable way.

The home page is: http://www.clark.net/~toehser/rb/.

MpegTV Player 1.0 released for Linux/Alpha

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 10:30:37 GMT
MpegT@ Player 1.0 has been released for Linux/Alpha. MpegTV Player 1.0 is a realtime software MPEG Video player with audio/sync.

MpegTV Player is a Shareware (US$10) for personal and non-profit use. Commercial licenses available.

Key features include support for 8 bit, 16 bit and 24 bit display, random access, frame capture and a VCR-like graphic front-end.

Download MpegTV Player 1.0 (mtv) for linux-alpha from: ftp://ftp.mpegtv.com/pub/mpeg/mpegtv/player/alpha-unkown-linux/

Motif Interface Builder VDX 1.2

Mon, 15 Jun 1998 11:16:16 GMT
Release 1.2 of VDX, the Motif Interface Builder for Linux is ready for download. The VDX provides the interactive design of user interfaces based on OSF/Motif and generates portable C and C++ source code. Tools like Resource Editor, Browser and the interactive WYSIWYG View make the design process very easy. Their object oriented interface and the adaptable code generation are cool features.

Interested? Visit the VDX Home Page at http://www.bredex.de/EN/vdx/

R 0.62.1 released: statistical computation and graphics

Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:20:17 GMT
R version 0.62.1 has been released and will propagate through the CRAN mirrors within the next few days. The have been lots of changes, any R user should definetely upgrade to this version.

R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files.

CRAN is a network of ftp and web servers around the world that store identical, up-to-date, versions of code and documentation for the R statistical package. Please use the CRAN site nearest to you to minimise network load.

The CRAN master site can be found at the URL http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/

Mobitex Radio Modem Driver

Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:21:40 GMT
Announcing the release of a new network driver which implements the MASC data link layer protocol, enabling Linux to use Mobitex radio modems as network devices. Armed with radio modems and a subscription to a Mobitex operator, you can create a network interconnecting two or more Linux systems wirelessly using TCP/IP or your own custom protocol.

The driver has been verified to be stable on 2.0.30 through 2.0.33 kernels and is hence ready for release. The package includes a basic FAQ list, a HOWTO document, driver source and a couple of tools.

Take a look at ftp://ftp.linuxrx.com/pub/linux-contrib/

sfm 1.4 - Simple File Manager

Wed, 17 Jun 1998 14:02:46 GMT
Announcing the release a new version of sfm. There's a lot of great improvements between this version and the 1.1 version.

Some important changes:

• you can associate actions with files (using its extension or its type given by file(1))
• a popup menu gives you the available commands and shortcuts

For more information look at http://www.chez.com/prigaux/sfm.html

You can find there a binary (i386, glibc, gtk+) version. It has been tested (not fully) on i386 and solaris.

Any remarks and bug reports are welcome at .

Linux Router Project v2.9.2 - networking centric mini-distribution

Sat, 20 Jun 1998 17:32:40 GMT
v2.9.2 of linux router is out. LRP is now fully glibc based, and this is a very solid release.

You can download it from: ftp://ftp.psychosis.com/linux/linux-router/

And get more info from: http:/www.psychosis.com/linux-router

Slidedraw-0.10 - drawing/presentation program

Sat, 20 Jun 1998 17:29:11 GMT
Slidedraw is a drawing program for presentation slides.

Some new features added:

• distinct canvas-window/drawing/print size
• grouping of objects, creating composites
• new and improved menu hierarchy

Get it at http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming

SFS Software's iavaZIP

04 Jun 98 0100 WN
SFS Software announced a new version of it's certified 100% pure Java compression utility iavaZIP. The full-featured, pioneering file compression program offers some unique features.

iavaZIP's key advantage is that it lets you create archives containing files from multiple folders and subfolders--even from different volumes--in the same session.

iavaZIP is compatible with PKZIP, supports 10 compression levels and runs cross-platform on every Java 1.1 supported operating system like Windows 95/NT, Unix, Linux, SGI, AIX and OS/2. The Java Archive format (JAR) is also supported. The product is available now through shareware distribution and is priced at $49 for the standard single user license. Also available are Academic Single user licenses ($29) and attractive high volume discounts.

SFS Software's WebSite at http:www.sfs-software.com

Protecting Networks w/SATAN

Mon, 8 Jun 1998 15:48:49 -0700 (PDT)
Because SATAN (Security Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks) could detect weaknesses on other systems (as well as your own) through its web interface, it earned notoriety when released in April 1995 as the tool that would "wreak havoc" on the Internet. The Oakland Tribune even wrote: "It's like randomly mailing automatic rifles to 5000 addresses. I hope some crazy teen doesn't get ahold of one."

But as more and more "mission critical" applications are accessible through the web, administrators are turning their attention to the danger of attempted intrusion from outside the networked host. SATAN is a powerful aid for system administrators. It performs "security audits," scanning host computers for security vulnerabilities caused by erroneous configurations or by known software errors in frequently used programs. O'Reilly's latest release, "Protecting Networks with SATAN", is an invaluable tool for network and security administrators working with SATAN.

Protecting Networks with SATAN
By Martin Freiss
1st Edition June 1998 (US)
112 pages, 1-56592-425-8, $19.95 (US$)
http://www.oreilly.com

Conix 3D Explorer

Wed, 17 Jun 1998 19:51:05 -0800
Conix Enterprises, Inc. announce the release of Conix 3D Explorer on Linux. With a single command 3D Explorer brings your Mathematica graphics to life in an interactive OpenGL window, providing advanced rendering capabilities previously reserved for high-end rendering systems.

3D Explorer provides a new graphics type, GLGraphics, with extended graphics primitives and directives. New features include continuous surfaces, display lists, inline transformations, and per-element control over all graphics options.

3D Explorer comes with online documentation, including user's guide, reference manual, programming examples, and demos. Quality email technical support is provided by Conix Enterprises Inc., . For more information, see http://www.conix3d.com

LinuxCAD v 1.55

• output to LaserJet family of printers,
• output to PostScript Black and White as well as Color,
• output to HP-GL compatible plotters,
• output to LinuxCAD MS-Windows print server, in the base version.

LinuxCAD v 1.55 will be priced at the same level $75+tax and shipping. All users who will prepay LinuxCAD v 1.55 before July 25, will get extended free upgrades until July 1999.

To learn more about LinuxCAD visit http://www.linuxcad.com

Nighthawk 2.1 and FunktrackerGOLD 1.5 (announcement)

Mon, 22 Jun 1998 23:13:50 +0930 (CST)
Nighthawk 2.1 (nighthawk-2.1.tgz) and FunktrackerGOLD 1.5 (funktracker-1.5.tgz) have now been released. You can find them on: http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno/rel/unix_projects

Nighthawk is an X11 arcade game with sound and music. FunktrackerGOLD is a digital music tracker. Read my page for more details on them. Take a look at http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno both come under the GNU GPL.

CYBERSCHEDULER FOR LINUX v2.1

Wed, 24 Jun 1998 18:34:09 -0700
CrossWind Technologies offers CyberScheduler, web-based calendaring and scheduling software for workgroups. It has been designed to leverage an organization's existing web resources:

• running on Apache's web server
• with end user access from any desktop browser.

More information about CrossWind Technologies and a live on-line demo of CyberScheduler is available on the Web site at http://www.crosswind.com

This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette,
Copyright © 1998 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.