Linux Gram articles from July 2002

Linux Gram archives from July 2002

Is IBM Behind United Linux?
July 15, 2002... Red Hat believes that IBM is the gray eminence behind its newest nemesis, the so-called United Linux initiative that's got Red Hat's nearest rivals, Caldera, Turbolinux, SuSE and Connectiva, bandied together to create a clone of Red Hat's...

VA CEO Steps Down.
July 15, 2002... Larry Augustin, the founder of VA Software, has finally stepped down as CEO. He remains chairman of the shrunken company, which hit the wall running when it was a Linux hardware supplier with ambitions to become another Dell or Compaq. VA...

Web Services Patent Sticks.
July 15, 2002... Back last fall, we broke a story about this guy in New Jersey by the name of Charlie Northrup who claimed to hold the patent on web services (CSN No 419). Heady stuff considering how important web services are to Microsoft and Sun and IBM and...

The Itanium Revolution - Try, Try Again; Intel Says This Time Through It Really Means It.
July 15, 2002... God, we'd love to find out what Intel and its little friend Hewlett- Packard have spent on the Itanium so far. Everyone knows it's at least a billion. Sun, whose Sparc platform Itanium is bent on grinding into dust, thinks the real number is...

HP Unveils Itanium 2 Workstations & Servers.(Product Announcement)
July 15, 2002... Hewlett-Packard, Itanium's co-developer, has rolled out new Itanium 2-based workstations, servers and services seeking to put its stamp on the marketplace. The boxes, which ship in August, use HP's proprietary new Itanium zx1 chipset, the...

IBM To Launch 16-way Itanium 2 Server.
July 15, 2002... Among the first wave of hardware vendors jumping on the Itanium 2 bandwagon, IBM said Monday that it will introduce Itanium 2 systems in its xSeries line later this year. IBM said its Itanium 2 server, which may be the widgetry code named...

Bull Itanium 2 Servers To Debut by Year's End.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Bull plans to introduce a complete line of SMP servers based on Intel's Itanium 2 processor and Intel's E8870 chipset before the end of the year. Bull said it picked the Itanium 2 and the Intel chipset as core components of the future...

United Linux To Support Itanium 2.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Linux vendors Caldera, SuSE, Conectiva and Turbolinux said the upcoming release of their United Linux distribution would support the Itanium 2. United Linux is scheduled to launch by the end of the year.

Microsoft Promises Support for Itanium 2 Soon.(Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Microsoft said it would ship a 1.2 rev of Windows Advanced Server Limited Edition for the Itanium 2 to server OEMs later this month. Based on the same 64-bit code base that's in the Windows.NET Server that will debut next year, the 1.2...

Emulex Adds Itanium 2 Support.(LightPulse host bus adapters)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Emulex said its LightPulse family of host bus adapters would support the Itanium 2 through firmware upgrades.

Oracle9i To Beta on Itanium 2.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Oracle has announced a beta program of its Oracle9i Database Release 2 on Itanium 2 running Windows.NET Server, which is scheduled to launch later this year.

QLogic Supports Itanium 2.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Storage networking products vendor QLogic says it's supporting the Itanium 2 in Windows and Linux environments. The company is offering drivers for its Fibre Channel and SCSI controller chips and host bus adapters.

Zeus Adds Itanium 2 Support for Web Server.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 15, 2002... Web server specialist Zeus Technology has launched a 64-bit version of its flagship Zeus Web Server optimized for Itanium 2, HP-UX 11i and Linux. The web server is designed for optimized deployment on HP's new rx2600 and rx5670 Itanium servers....

Scarred SGI Play with Fire Again.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... SGI, which got taken to the cleaners when it bet that Merced, the first Itanium would be a moneymaker rather than a science project, has lend its public support to the Itanium 2 push, but ain't saying how or when. SGI created a proprietary...

Dell Ups Revenues, Profit Outlook.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Dell raised revenue and profit guidance Thursday for its fiscal second quarter ending August 2. Dell said revenues would reach $8.3 billion, $100 million more than the guidance it gave on May 16. The company also upped its EPS estimate by...

AMD Determined To Take On Itanium.(with Opteron chip)
July 15, 2002... AMD insists that it's gonna position its upcoming Opteron chip against the Itanium although wiser heads, perhaps, think AMD might be better off targeting the Xeon and not waste cycles on the Itanium at all. But AMD's too chip-proud to be...

IBM Releases New Linux Directory Software.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 15, 2002... IBM released IBM Directory Server 4.1 for Linux this week. The software provides enterprises with a software infrastructure for identifying enterprise resources and controlling access to networked systems. It is based on the LDAP directory...

Aladdin Trots Out New Linux License Manager.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 15, 2002... Aladdin Knowledge Systems, a commerce and Internet security software developer, has released a new Linux license manager for its software security system. Aladdin security system controls access to protected software in a network. The new Linux...

Microsoft Validates Linux.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Microsoft is going to take a booth at LinuxWorld in San Fancisco next month rather than merely send its Unix squad in to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt and keep an eye on what's going on. A notion of a Microsoft booth practically validates...

MandrakeSoft Dises United Linux.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... In a stinging attack, French Linux house MandrakeSoft said that joining the United Linux initiative of Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux and Conectiva would damage its reputation and that it had nothing to gain. Of course it's unclear whether it was...

Gnutella Creator Commits Suicide.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
July 15, 2002... Gene Kan, the inventor of the Gnutella P2P service, killed himself on Saturday, June 29. Kan was reportedly struggling with depression and anti-depressants had been prescribed. Gnutella offers Internet users a way to search for and transfer...

Turbolinux 'Restructures' US Operation.
July 22, 2002... The US operation of Turbolinux, one of the four main Linux commercializers, says it instituted another "reduction in force" Monday after one of its investors pulled out of advanced negotiations that were supposed to lead to a fourth round of...

HP Kills Compaq's Three McKinley Boxes.(Tornado, Typhoon and Cyclone)
July 22, 2002... Hewlett-Packard figures it knows best how to build 64-bit Itanium boxes, better than Compaq at any rate, and now that it owns Compaq HP has pulled the plug on the three prospective McKinley servers, and their follow-ons, that Compaq had on the...

Wal-Mart Expands its Linux Offerings.
July 22, 2002... Retail giant Wal-Mart expanded the line of Linux PCs it's been selling on its web site lately by adding a bunch of desktops running Mandrake Linux. Walmart.com has introduced nine Mandrake Linux-based PCs from Microtel Computer Systems....

TI-Backed Embedded Linux Start-up Folds.(RidgeRun)
July 22, 2002... Embedded Linux start-up RidgeRun has gone belly up, we have learned. Backed by Texas Instruments, the two-year-old Boise, Idaho firm provided a Linux-based software platform called Escali for Internet- enabled mobile smart phones. ...

Mellanox Revs Infiniband Blade Server Reference Platform.(Mellanox Technologies Nitro ll)(Product Announcement)
July 22, 2002... Mellanox Technologies Inc, which desperately needs for the Infiniband market to take off so it can sell its silicon - the start-up is after all focusing exclusively on the new interconnect fabric - has come up with Nitro II, a second version of...

Liberty Alliance Debuts Spec; Microsoft Remains Aloof.
July 22, 2002... The 10-month-old Sun-created Liberty Alliance released an initial specification covering single sign-on to multiple web sites Monday after acknowledging that it had failed to make headway in getting Microsoft, with its rival Passport scheme, to...

Sun Touts its Liberty-Compliant Widgetry.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... Sun claimed Tuesday to have the first Liberty 1.0-compliant widgetry in early access, a pre-integrated combination of an updated Liberty- enabled Sun ONE Identity Server 6 that's supposed to bridge disparate authentication systems with single...

Novell's Saturn Based on Liberty 1.0.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... Novell plans to offer an identity management product based on the just-released Liberty Alliance 1.0 spec. Code named Saturn, Novell's new widgetry is supposed to enable identity information to be exchanged between companies and give users...

Norway Outs Microsoft.(cancels software licensing agreement)(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... Norway has cancelled the exclusive software license that gave Microsoft a stranglehold on supplying software for office computers in the country's public sector, according to the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. Evidently Norway objects to...

HP Dumps App Server; Another Acquisition Ends in Failure.
July 22, 2002... For the second time in recent memory, Hewlett-Packard has made a mess of an acquisition it paid a pretty penny for. In this case, it's mucked up Bluestone Software, which it bought 18 months ago for close to a half-billion dollars in stock to...

Itanium 2 ETAs.
July 22, 2002... OEM ETAs Product Taking Announced +/- Orders Ship Date HP Servers Yes August HP Workstation Yes August HP Itanium Superdome No...

Dear, Dear, What To Do about AIX.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... The powers-that-be at IBM are reportedly wrestling with the issue of what to do about AIX, the company's expensive-to-maintain proprietary Unix operating system, something they've wanted to kill off for years. Observers close to Blue say the...

Sun Linux & Solaris Go Cheek-to-Cheek.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... Sun's potentially mighty new Software organization under rising star Jonathan Swartz has quietly picked up Linux development - including the so-called Sun Linux - from the company's Cobalt team and has moved it into an equally quiet new...

Intel To Lose 4,000 to Attrition.
July 22, 2002... Well, what with the PC industry in the tank and no sign of economic recovery in sight, it's probably a bloody miracle that Intel did as well as it did in its second quarter. Basically, it met its reduced guidance and posted revenues of $6.3...

E*Trade Saves Big on Linux.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... E*Trade says it completed its migration to Linux in Q2 and is confident the move will save it $12 million a year in maintenance.

HPQ: Together At Last.(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... HP expects local Compaq operations in those pesky geos - most of Europe and certain spots in Asia-Pacific - where it's had to deal with merger-slowing, employee-protecting regulations to be integrated with local HP operations next month....

On to Certification: FSG.(Free Standards Group)(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... The Free Standards Group, keepers of the Linux Standard Base, is going to start pushing certification. It's hired the Open Group to actually run the certification program. Apparently there are apps and platforms in the certification pipeline.

OSDL Nets Draft Spec.(Open Source Development Lab)(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... The Ottawa meeting of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) late last month reportedly resulted in a draft spec defining a carrier- grade Linux.

No Tittering, Please. Caldera Pits Itself against Microsoft's Back Office.
July 29, 2002... Struggling little Caldera International is readying the launch of a Linux suite called Volution Office Server that it's gonna position against Microsoft BackOffice Server. It's supposed to include Caldera's existing Volution Messaging Server, a...

Xandros Linux Delayed, Employees Laid Off.
July 29, 2002... Xandros Corporation, the Canadian outfit that picked up Corel's Debian-based desktop Linux distribution last year and brashly boasted that it would provide a viable alternative to Micro-soft, appears to have hit a bad patch - its desktop and...

SGI Sticks its Head in the Lion's Mouth - Again.
July 29, 2002... SGI says the industry's first go-round with Intel's Itanium chip, the poorly received Merced generation, convinced it that the only way to play the Intel 64-bit hand is to differentiate. "It's the only way to hold the price and the...

Intel Invests in Scali.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Intel Capital has made an investment in Norwegian Linux cluster specialist Scali AS' Series B round. The total amount of money Scali got was not disclosed. Other backers include lead investor Four Seasons Venture III, Kongsberg Gruppen and...

Debian Debuts Woody; Embarks on Sarge.(3.0)
July 29, 2002... The folks working on the widely respected Debian project have finally released rev 3.0 of the distribution, the stuff code named Woody. Two-and-a-half years in the making, the upgrade includes KDE 2.2, a new version of Gnome (rev 1.4),...

Microsoft Drops Infiniband Support.
July 29, 2002... Microsoft has told vendors on the steering committee of the Infiniband Trade Association - reportedly under non-disclosure - that it's dropping its promised support for Infiniband from .NET. Sources said Microsoft told them it would say as...

Sun Stock at Head-Shaking $3.70.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... "We have had concerns about Sun's long-term positioning due to their reliance on their proprietary Unix standard. We believe that the downturn in the economy and resulting pullback in IT spending has accelerated the pace of industry standard...

Real Baits Microsoft with Windows Media Clone & Open Source Scheme.(Helix Universal Server)
July 29, 2002... Microsoft rival, RealNetworks, is publicly and directly challenging Micro-soft with a thing called the Helix Universal Server that's supposed to simultaneously deliver content encoded in over 50 different formats from a single server. Those...

Linux Zine To Fold.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Another Linux publication - the four-year-old weekly e-zine LWN.net - is getting ready to shut its doors after failing to secure the funds to keep going. On its web site, LWN wrote, "Various approaches to bringing in money have been tried;...

Jabber Gets a Sales Chief.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Jabber Inc, the instant messaging applications house, has named John Houtsma its first VP of worldwide sales. Houtsma was previously VP of sales at collaborative CRM apps vendor TightLink. Jabber, whose investors include France Telecom and Webb...

Linux NetworX Lands Showcase Supercomputer Deal.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has selected cluster specialist Linux NetworX to build the largest and most powerful Linux supercomputer around. To be delivered by the fall, the Evolocity clustered supercomputer will harness 1,920...

Red Hat Picks Up Moto Deal.(Motorola )(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Red Hat has signed a deal with Motorola to develop a GNUPro toolchain and cross compiler for Moto's Book E PowerPC e500 core-based processors including the new MPC8560 PowerQUICC III. The GNUPro toolchain consists of a Solaris 2.7-on-Sparc...

UK Government Admits Open Source Exists.
July 29, 2002... Well, it looks like those indomitable British civil servants memorialized in "Yes, Minister" finally issued a carefully worded policy statement the other day on the use of open source software by the government. They judged open source software...

CA Buys Wyly Off Cheap.(Computer Associates)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Would-be CA reformer and irate stockholder Sam Wyly's righteous indignation over how Computer Associates is run turned out to be worth a mere $10 million. That's how much CA bought him for and it would have been cheap at twice the price. Wyly,...

Covalent Offers Apache Support for .NET.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Apache specialist Covalent Technologies has extended the Apache 2.0 web server in its flagship Enterprise Ready Server to support Microsoft's ASP.NET. Covalent touted the support as significant to enterprise customers looking to work with...

Whither BSD/OS 5.0?(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Wind River Systems is still trying to get BSD/OS 5.0, which its former owner BSDI would have called BSDI 5.0 and which was due in the first half, out the door. Maybe its problem is a lack of interest. The company's new flack said there's much...

Turbo IP Reportedly Looks for Home.(Turbolinux)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Sources claim that Turbolinux, whose latest contortions have pretty much shut it down in the US, is trying to find a home for its TurboLabs IP. The New Mexico-based R&D operation was supposed to be fooling with storage, high availability and...

Sun on the Desktop?(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... There's absolutely no confirmation on this, it's straight off the rumor mill. We're only surprised how many people have heard it. They're saying that Sun may be working on a - check this out - a desktop Linux of all things. The gossips seem to...

Veritas Goes Linux.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Veritas will be in New York Monday and it's apparently going to say its stuff is on Linux.

DB2 Hammered.(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... IBM is reportedly going to show DB2 running on SuSE Linux on one of AMD's newfangled prototype 32-cum-64-bit SledgeHammer machines at the upcoming LinuxWorld show. There are already some benchmarks floating around Europe of the database on a...

Merrill Puts Claw at 2.6GHz.(AMD ClawHammer processor)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Merrill Lynch says it expects AMD's so-called ClawHammer chip, the first of its mixed 32-bit/64-bit offerings, to make it out before the end of Q4 as the Athlon XP 3400+ running at 2.6GHz. Early silicon was nowhere near that level according to...