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Contents: |
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 11:02:29 +0000
From: Kyrre Aalerud,
kyrrea@student.matnat.uio.no
Subject: Minilinux fails to load X11
I am out of ideas...
I am trying to get Mini-Linux to load the accompanied X11, but i get a
error about some directory or file that dows not exist, and a
"Unexpected signal 13" error...
What am I forgetting... Is there anything special I have to load to
get the D.. thing to work ?
PS: I cant find any CDrom-devices either.... (I have looked in etc and averywhere else but...)
h.e.l.p.....
Kyrre
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 1998 23:29:09 -0400
From: Nathaniel Smith,
slow@negia.net
Subject: Lost newbe
I find it hard to believe that every one thinks that all people know how to operate linux perfectly, and that all are born with this information. This must be the case for I cannot find a site on the web that teaches you how to operate Linux (and I am desperate to find one), I have run into people using windows 95&98 (12 people) that would like to try Linux but cant find out how to operate it (there is a real good deal at best buy on Red Hat Linux) so I bought it and a new Western Digital hard drive to put it on, though my trying to find somewhere that teaches Linux, I came upon an article that says you can have Linux and windows on the same computer while learning Linux, and after learning you can delete windows. Sooooooo how about giving us articles on how to utilize this great OS, and help hundreds us poor lost souls that are desperate. thank you Nathaniel alias poor lost desperate newbe
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 15:04:43 -0600
From: Hugh Shane,
hughs@tetonvalley.net
Subject: Booting from LS120 disk drives
I know this information is out there somewhere, but I'd like to hear from anyone who has successfully gotten an x86 Linux machine to boot from an LS120 disk drive.
Hugh
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 23:01:25 +0800
From: Lye On Siong,
oslye@pacific.net.sg
Subject: some qn
Just like to ask a few questions.
My CD-ROM is on /dev/hdd. When I want to mount it, it tells me that it's not a block device. (previously, it was running fine.. dunno what happen)
How can my Linux kernel support PPP? How do I recompile my kernel to make it work?
Johnny
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 02:03:46 +0530 (IST)
From: M Anand,
manand@bhaskara.ee.iisc.ernet.in
Subject: proxy
How do I set the proxy server for lynx and irc in Red-Hat Linux 5.1/SuSE Linux 5.1?
Anand
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 01:25:44 PDT
From: parmentier remy,
parmentier_remy@hotmail.com
Subject: Help : Modem + HP
I am close to commiting suicide!
I have already spent hours trying to fix my Supra336 PnP internal modem
and my HP DeskJet 720C under Linux!
The result is always the same, no communication with teh modem and no
page printed on the HP printer!
Could someone help me, I am close to abandon!
Thank you for answering.
( I use the RedHat 5.1 distribution )
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 13:35:01 -0400
From: Taylor Sutherland,
taylors@boone.net
Subject: Canon BJC-250 question
I have a Canon BJC-250 color printer. I have heard many people say that the BJC-600 printer driver will let me print in color. But I have not heard anyone say where I can get such a driver. I have looked everywhere but where it is. Can you help me?
Thank you.
Taylor Sutherland
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 18:39:03 -0600 (CST)
From: Dion Rowney,
rowney@enterprise.usask.ca
Subject: Article Suggestion
I just had a nasty problem this morning. I had recompiled my kernel the night before and forgot to tell lilo where it was. In the morning I found it sitting at the "loading linux ..." prompt hung. My idea would be help on getting around this problem, maybe a little about how lilo knows where the boot kernel is, recovering easily from this mistake (a good idea since as usual I chose the difficult way).
Just am idea because I felt like a tool because I had no idea how it could be fixed, aside from reinstalling or upgrading using the boot install disks.
Thanks,
Dion Rowney
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 11:51:10 +0200
From: Jan Jansta, ftx@rainside.sk
Subject: Problem mounting vfat filesystem ...
I have permanent problem with mounting any vfat/dos filesystem with write permisions for all users on my Linux machine. I'm using RedHat 5.1, kernel version 2.0.34
I've already tried -
mount -t vfat -o mode=0777 /dev/hdb1 /dosI've also tried to change permisions for /dos via
chmod 777 /dosIt didn't work as well.
Does someone know what's not working properly ?
Last month I printed a letter from Hugo van der Kooij in which he asked me to quit using the word "Damn" in the Table of Contents of Linux Gazette. I said I would put it to a vote. Well, I received quite a bit of mail on this issue, and the vote was essentially 6 to 1 in favor of keeping this word.
That said, I intend to renege on my statement that I would abide by the vote. Much of the mail I received is not printable, and some of it is quite entertaining. The best, most well-thought out answer I received is printed directly below, and this letter alone convinced me that I should accede to Hugo's request. From now on I intend to call that section containing the entire issue TWDT -- this is the best compromise I could think of. We all know what TWDT stands for, it will just not be printed there. Newcomers may be a bit confused but they'll survive.
Enough said. This is my final decision, so please don't write asking me to change my mind. As many reminded me, we have more important things to spend our time considering, such as helping others to learn and love Linux as we do.
Marjorie Richardson, Overseer, Editor and now Ruler of Linux
Gazette :-)
gazette@ssc.com
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 15:12:55 +0800
From: Mark Harrison,
markh@usai.asiainfo.com
Subject: Drop the "Damn"
Given his e-mail address, there is a reasonable chance that Hugo van der Kooij may be a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, probably one of the most strict Protestant denominations.
They are generally quite excellent people (most of the Dutch nationals imprisoned by the Nazis for sheltering Jews were in this denomination, following their [correct] interpretation of the Bible.). They are also very strict in observing proper behavior, such as no swearing.
I don't advocate a wholesale removal of the various naughty words from the culture (The title of Audie Murphy's famous book summed up his experiences perfectly), but for this case, I see no harm in dropping the offending word.
Mark Harrison, Beijing, China
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 14:03:04 +0200
From: Sean Mota, smota@polar.es
Subject: links between identical sections
Now and then I've found myself reading an article in an issue of the gazette and thinking of a past article that I read in a previous issue, both belonging to the same section (normally the Graphics Muse). Since I would like to read again that past article and I never remember in which issue it was published, I have to go to the main page, select an issue an view the table of contents, and finally click on the section I'm interested in. It would be much quicker if "last"/"next" buttons between articles of different issues but belonging to the same section were available. That way, if I were reading the Graphics Muse's article of this month and he mentions something about OpenGL, I might remember there was an article on this subject (OpenGL) a couple of past issues; then, with the aid of the "last" button, I would start reviewing past articles of the Graphics Muse until I found the one I was interested in.
Maybe this is a bit complicated to implement, but I think it would certainly be a great improvement. Another application would be: a quicker way to find an article belonging to a certain section whose subject is not listed in the table of contents. The search engine of the gazette is only available online.
Thanks for the marvelous job your doing with the gazette:
Sean Mota
(This is a good suggestion and one I have gotten before. It is actually on my list of things to do. I'll try to find time for it sooner rather than later. --Editor)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 23:43:49 -0400
From: "Michael Longval",
mlongval@interlinx.qc.ca
Subject: Linux installation not easy.
As a computer user and technology observer for the past 20 years I fear the domination of the tech sector by one very large corporation aka Microsoft. We are alas left at the mercy of a company not known for the quality of it's products, but rather for the intensity of it's marketing of it's products.
Windows 98 works ok for me, but I'm frustrated by it's instability.
I have installed Red Hat 5.0 on my IBM ThinkPad 380, but can't get the X windows part up and running. I'm left with the shell only prompt.
I have looked at the manuals and checked the newsgroups, the web sites but still can't get the X windows parts up and running. I'm not a tech dummy. I've played with complicated systems before. Understand C, Rexx, Pascal, Delphi, and others.
However I'm still stranded. So I still use Windows 98...
The day I can easily boot up Linux to a STANDARD GUI DESKTOP is the day I'll start thinking about switching. Unfortunately for me that day has not arrived yet.
Michael J. Longval M.D.
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 23:33:36 -0400
From: "Chris Bruner",
cbruner@ionline.net
Subject: support problems
I purchased the Red Hat brand of Linux chiefly because of the 90 day installation support. In a nutshell, at first I'm told some very basic things which I had already tried, then when I ask if an alternative was a viable solution (recompiling the kernel with PnP built in) I was told that my problem was no longer covered under the installation support. I still don't have sound and as for my other open tickets, only one other was responded to (after weeks) and I haven't heard back on the rest. So I'm not on the Internet yet, I have no sound yet, and I'll never recommend Red Hat to anyone because of their support.
Chris Bruner
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 21:08:59 +0000
From: Trey,
abelew@wesleyan.edu
Subject: Linux Desktop
I was flipping through the recent Linux Gazette and noted the article about Linux on the desktop. I thought perhaps I should chime in as I have had a purely Linux system sitting upon my desk now for well over a year and would not have it any other way.
Ashton Trey Belew
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 16:01:11 +0100
From: Peter Houppermans,
envelope@pobox.com
Subject: Linux acceptance
I've seen quite a number of letters stating that to improve Linux acceptance it should have an easier to use GUI et all.
I'm not sure I'd agree entirely with this. The point where Linux is making inroads is not in the desktop arena. I'll most likely attract lots of flames for this, but Microsoft has done a reasonable job in making their desktop products useful, and easy to use. How many people need the manual with Word or Excel ?
Sure, it crashes frequently for some people, but for a large number of users it doesn't matter because they shut down the machine at the end of the day, conveniently saving slow memory leaks from exposure. And I have a W95 system that tends to get rebooted every two weeks, just to clear it up. No need to do it more often. So that community has zero interest in an alternative, other than for cost saving reasons. To convince those people you'll have to give them something that is nearly as easy to use, at a lower cost -and that includes staff costs for setting it up. What is needed here is a way of actually restricting the richness of the XWindows interface so users don't get the chance to shoot themselves in both feet and reduce support needs. I'm sure it is possible, but there has been no concise effort towards this idea. KDA, Gnome and Enlightenment are extremely impressive efforts, but they enrich the setup, not lock it down for Johnny EndUser who just wants to run his word processor. Give them a command line and they'll panic ;-(...
Where Linux *IS* making a difference is in the server arena. If a desktop crashes it affects one (1) user, if a server crashes it takes everyone down who's connected. Instantly, the impact on productivity is amplified. What creates reluctance to accept Linux as an alternative is the lack of people to shout at if it goes wrong. Also, there are only now a few companies that offer a Service Level Agreement on support for Linux, and lack of support is a very nervous thing if you run mission critical applications. Yes, I agree with many that the main issue is not support, but not having a need for it, but one has to deal with disaster recovery as well, and overall system management. Only now CA has brought out some management modules for Linux (to make Linux systems visible in Unicenter TNG). And I'm not aware of any HP OpenView MIBs for Linux (if there are I'd be very happy to hear of them and I'd like to see both of these packages themselves run on Linux).
Any company that wants to use Linux wholesale will want to manage it, and until hard commercial tools are there this won't happen unless through the back door.
I would be very happy to see an alternative to NT, if only just for keeping MS on their toes. Linux is very hard on its way to become that alternative, but I'm not sure it is entirely there yet. Support from SUN, Oracle, CA and Netscape makes a difference, but it takes more than that to change a corporate strategy. Case studies where Linux is shown to be a viable Enterprise OS with the associated cost savings, improved reliability, manageability and all that goes with being a grown up OS will do more to convince the board than any other well-meant effort.
Just an observation....
For the record:
I myself use Red Hat Linux 5.1 on most of my home systems (except the one W95 box) and on my Toshiba 480CDT (HOWTO web page appearing shortly), and I've used virtually every version of Windows and DOS since DoubleDOS appeared, and all versions of OS/2 since v2. I've been a Linux user for about 6 years, having had no previous exposure to Real Operating Systems <g>. So I'm not an expert, but I'm not entirely clueless either ;-).
Regards, Peter
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:31:40 +0200
From: Ian Carr-de Avelon, ian@emit.pl
Subject: GUI and novices
This is my response to the letters by James Mitchell (Sep 98) and Antony Chesser (Aug 98). Well designed GUI's speed up the learning process because the user can see that there is a possibility. The user may have no idea what the icon of scissors will do, or even recognize that they are scissors, but if there is a button you learn very quickly you can click on it with the mouse and so lets give it a try. That simple peace of knowledge, that buttons can be pressed, will get you quite a way in a GUI. Knowing that you could use "<esc>d5" in vi will not take you nearly as far. Not only novices benefit, also it is a major help to users who work with a program only occasionally. Finding the button which does "that" is easier than remembering a sequence of keys. Microsoft have added standardization. You click on the little x button and the program stops. A command line program could require you to type: end, quit, exit, bye... etc. Even with a foreign language version of Windows you can normally manage a few things, just because the layout is standard. I run a local ISP so I have used Linux daily for over 2 years, almost exclusively in command line mode. I understand its strengths but I can still recognize the problems which other users would have. Possibly that is because I visit clients to help them with their problems, or maybe it is because I worked as a teacher and later as a designer of educational material. At any rate I can see that Linux is not yet a real option for most users and anyone who cannot should offer a few hours of their time to support new users, the revelation would come quite soon.
This is a truth which I find quite painful to take, because there is nothing about the Linux OS which makes it so. The installation does not have to end with # prompt and Linux has not just one but several GUIs available any of which could be used in a consistent way by well designed programs. Although Microsoft have done more work in that respect, they are as far from being the best that their could ever be as their OS is in other ways. Many people who really want to see Linux being more widely adopted feel that this does not matter. Linux is being adopted for server applications and they hope that that will be enough to get people to make the effort to learn how to use it. My feeling is that most users choose NT because it looks like 95 which they have on their work station. Linux needs to selectable for basic office tasks before it will be widely accepted. Maybe Linux Gazette should run a competition for a best GPL suit for novice users:
A small novice package which could be included in most distributions and start up at boot time or alternatively with a standard command like "desktop". Would make it much easier to say to clients who's win95 has died again "Why don't you let me install Linux for you?" Yours Ian
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 14:24:23 +0200
From: Stefan Zandburg,
szandb@cis.HZeeland.nl
Subject: text browsers
Ijust have read some of the Linux Gazette. It contains quite a bunch of useful information. On many pages some of that information is for me difficult or impossible to read.
The reason is that <B> bold text </B> is hardly visible in the browser i use. (lynx 2.7.2 beta, alternative, an even older version) The machine that acts as a terminal to the Novell Server only has a monochrome screen. As you may have concluded from stating the Server, it is beyond my abilities as user to install a graphical browser. I wish to read the Linux Gazette though and cannot do that on my home computer because i do not have an internet connection there.
If you'd use other tags like the Italic tags <I>.. </I> or the Font tags <Font size+1>...</Font size> people like me would be able to read your Gazette. The browser ignores unknown tags but it does support the bold tags and displays it awkward.
Here at our institute nearly 5000 students use the same browser to regularly visit the web. Although we all wouldd prefer using a graphical browser that is not likely to happen within reasonable time. Using the other tags in the future however would be only a small effort for you.
Stefan Zandburg
I sympathize with you, but bold and italic are used for two different purposes. If I always used italics, the difference in emphasis would not be apparent. There is also the problem that most articles come to me already tagged and I don't have the time to change them. I will think about this though and see what I can come up with. I mainly use bold for the subject lines of letters. That I can change easily. Consider it done. --Editor
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 14:34:18 EDT
From: Bobnhlinux@aol.com
Subject: Linux is the #1 OS on the Internet
Many of you may have seen these results, but I hadn't seen anything on any of these lists, so here it is:
Based on surveys of 810,000 European Internet servers, the Linux Operating System is the most used OS on the Internet. Three different categories were polled, web servers, FTP servers, and news servers. Not only was Linux number one in each category, but there wasn't even a consistent number two. Linux's market share went from 25.7% for news servers, to 26.9% for web servers, to 33.7% for FTP servers. In order to get a number two position in web servers and FTP servers, Windows 95/98 was lumped together with Windows NT. They aren't the same system. For news servers, Solaris came in second.
To get to the survey details, go to:
http://www.hzo.cubenet.de/ioscount/
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 08:48:10 -0500 (CDT)
From:
eanna@kc.net
Subject: WilberWorks
I ordered the GIMP CD from WilberWorks quitre some time ago and have heard nothing. E-mails have been ignored; I am getting ready to actually call them I wonder if others have had trouble with them? At their web site their FAQ includes several questions from people wondering where their CDs are--but those are fairly old, so either people wised up (except me) or they improved.
Thanks--
Jim Clark
eanna@kc.net
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 22:06:58 -0700
From: Ken Linder, KLinder2@nos.com
Subject: YMGP (Yet More Good Press)
More mainstream press! And in a rather high-brow weekly CEO/CIO type periodical. The September 21st, 1998 issue of Computer World has it on page 34 in their "Computer World Quick Study" column. Very well done, IMPO. Also references Red Hat and Linux Journal.
With it in this paper, hopefully, the CIOs and CEOs will start talking with their technical people, trying to find out more about this OS. Normaly when I see the CEO heading twards me, I try to find somewhere to hide, but if he wants to ask about Linux, hey... I can talk to him as long as he likes!
Later...
Ken
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 13:31:01 -0400
From: David Nelson, nelson@er.doe.gov
Subject: In Praise of Wabi
With Wabi selling for $45 or less, I wanted to share my satisfaction with this product in case anyone else is interested. I have been running WIN 3.1 and Wabi on top of Linux for about five months with very good results. It lets me use several Win 3.1 (16 bit) applications, primarily Quicken 4 and MS Office 4.2, that previously forced rebooting into DOS. I am running a 200 MHz Pentium with 32M of memory. No problems with memory (about 13MB to run Quicken, WIN 3.1, and Wabi) and only a small speed hit (20-30%) on calculation intensive operations. I use the printer, floppy, and modem under Wabi, but no sound, as advertised. Wabi has limited printer drivers, but if your Linux is set up to print Postscript, using Ghostscript drivers for your printer, it will work fine. My Powerpoint viewgraphs, including art, look identical under Wabi, printing to Postscript and under Win95, printing directly to PCL. The Windows clipboard works as expected, and in addition I can cut and paste between Windows and X Window applications.
Wabi accesses my application and data files in the DOS/Win95 partition, so I could convert transparently from DOS over to Wabi -- a nice trick for Wabi to look through Linux back to the DOS file system. Though I haven't tried it, I expect I could see files on my other networked computers using SAMBA. My total extra disk space is 12MB for Wabi, and 24MB for WIN 3.1 files. You need a copy of WIN 3.1, WIN 3.11, or WIN for Workgroups in addition to Wabi. WIN95 won't work. As a bonus, you can run Windows applications remotely using an X-terminal, such as another Linux box. This is like Citrix Winframe, but a heck of a lot cheaper.
Is it a perfect fit? Not quite. I have a formatting problem printing checks from Quicken on my ancient FX80 dot matrix printer, and there are a few quirks such as a disappearing cursor and "bleed through" from background windows in Quicken. But I consider these minor nuisances that don't reduce utility. Sure, I can't use 32 bit Win apps, and some might say that Quicken 4 and MS Office 4.2 are ancient. But I have Quicken 96, 97, and 98 as well as Office 97 sitting on my shelf. I tried them and for my needs there was no more useful functionality, just more bloat and glitz. You make your own decision; I found $45 a good deal.
David B. Nelson
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CONTENTS ]](../gx/indexnew.gif)
![[ FRONT
PAGE ]](../gx/homenew.gif)
More 2¢ Tips!
Newbie Help Redux (1)
Quick answers to get you started:
1. I have grown fat and lazy with Win 98 and find myself looking for "Display Properties" and such. I'm very familiar with C and such and am not afraid of hacking scripts or the like, but my problem is thus: Where is a (succinct) list of what gets run when, from where, and why. I'd love to tweak everything if only I could find it.
A. Take a look at /etc/rc or possibly /etc/rcX.d, where X is 1,2,3, etc. I don't have RH5.1 but I think it uses the System V init system, so these directories should exist. If so, this is where you find the scripts that get run at boot time. For more details, you should look into the "init" tool. I suspsect this is covered in depth in some of the newer Linux system management texts. It's not hard to understand, really. There are different run levels, and scripts for specific run levels get run at start up to get things going and again at shutdown to bring them down again.
2. I have something called an "Ensoniq Audio PCI" sound card with "legacy emulation" I don't even know how to begin to get this thing working. What are the first steps in enabling hardware?
A. Commercial solution: http://www.4front-tech.com. This is a commercial sound driver but don't fret - it's only $20 and works like a champ right out of the box. I have it and have had zero problems. I've suggested it to a few other folks and they all seemed to like it too. There is a non-commercial version of this same set of drivers available for Linux too. But I punted on it when I heard about the commercial driver.
3. Where do I get information on mounting drives?
A. mount -t fat32 /mount_pt_dir or possibly mount -t vfat /mount_pt_dir. I don't use MS on my box so can't remember which one of these works with FAT32 partitiions but I'm fairly sure one of them does. In any case, other folks are likely to respond with more detailed answers on this one.
4. I think my printer works (at least text does), but how do I print things (man pages)?
A. xman will print the pages as postscript but you need to set up a print spooler using Ghostscript. A print spooler is just a locical printer name that accepts print requests, processes them with some filters and then feeds them to the printer of choice. Ghostscript will translate Postscript input into the printer command language for your printer. I keep forgetting where the Ghostscript FAQ (including download info) is at, but you can find it by searching on Yahoo. That's what I always do.
The hard way to set up printers is to learn about configuring /etc/printcap. However, my RH4.2 system has a fairly decent printer configuration utility so I suspect 5.1 has an even better one. The bad news is I can't remember the program's name (it's in my fvwm2rc at home and I never type it by hand). Check the documentation that came with the CD. I know it's mentioned in there.
Best of luck.
Michael J. Hammel
Re: Help Wanted : newbie (2)
From: Dennis Lambert, opk@worldnet.att.net
I have grown fat and lazy with Win 98 and find myself looking for
"Display Properties" and such.
KDE (http://www.kde.org/) is supposed to be a more integrated desktop
environment, and Gnome (http://www.gnome.org/) is coming along.
I'm very familiar with C and such and am
not afraid of hacking scripts or the like, but my problem is thus: Where
is a (succinct) list of what gets run when, from where, and why. I'd
love to tweak everything if only I could find it.
Linux is a complex OS, so the list isn't succint. There's a description of the boot process in the System Administrator's Guide. If you're new to Linux, I'd recommend you give the SAG a good browse. There's *lots* of useful information there. You should have an HTML copy installed in /usr/doc/LDP/sag.
The Network Administrator's Guide (/usr/doc/LDP/nag) is also good to have, but the HOWTO's are better if you just need "cookbook" style docs. The HOWTO's are in /usr/doc/HOWTO. You should fire up Midnight Commander (mc) from the command line and take a look around /usr/doc.
I have something called an "Ensoniq Audio PCI" sound card with "legacy emulation" I don't even know how to begin to get this thing working. What are the first steps in enabling hardware?
There is a PCI-HOWTO and a Sound-HOWTO.
Where do I get information on mounting drives (FAT 32 especially)
In the Config-HOWTO or the archives of the Red Hat mailing lists.
I think my printer works (at least text does), but how do I print things (man pages)
Text and postscript are easy. Fortunately most things are convertable to postscript. In this case use:
man -t CommandOrSubject | lprThis is covered in the man page.
If you haven't joined any of the Red Hat mailing lists, you might consider doing so. Be warned though; they tend to be busy lists (http://www.redhat.com/support/).
Welcome to Linux...
Tony
Clearing the Screen (1)
I have seen a lot of hints for restoring a trashed screen or window, but none of them mention the reset and clear commands. Are these commands deprecated, do they have unwanted side effects, or are they ineffective in certain situations?
When I have cat'ed an executable, I usually just type: reset <ENTER> and let the garbage scroll off the screen.
If, for some reason, I find the garbage characters annoying, I follow this command by typing: clear <ENTER>
Anthony Christopher
Re: simultaneous versions of kernels
Just my 0.02 Euro:
Most of the installation problems are caused by interaction with the linux distribution's default installation method. You can easily work around this by simply not installing your compiled kernel. Lilo and insmod support loading directly from the compilation directory.
Just unpack your kernel in an arbitrary directory, say /home/kernel/linux-test, apply any patches and compile: make [x|menu|old]config; make dep; make zImage modules. But do neither make install nor make modules_install.
Then add something like this to your /etc/lilo.conf:
# Linux bootable partition config begins # test new (not installed) kernel just compiled in directory # /home/kernel/linux-test. image = /home/kernel/linux-test/arch/i386/boot/zImage root = /dev/hda3 label = test append= " MODPATH=/home/kernel/linux-test/modules/ " # Linux bootable partition config ends #and run lilo whenever you have recompiled your kernel image.
When booting, choose "test" from the lilo prompt. The kernel will pass MODPATH to the environment of init and any startup routines that insmod's kernel modules will fetch them automatically from the kernel compilation tree.
(If you additionally want to insmod some modules by hand from a root shell, MODPATH might be unset. But scripts can still extract that information from /proc/cmdline).
Henner
Question about your Linux Gazette post
In a previous message, mjsendzi@engmail.uwaterloo.ca says: is there an url for this program?
No, not that I know of. A couple of people have asked this. It's part of the core set of files in my Red Hat 4.2 distribution. Units has been around so long, and is available on so many different Unix platforms, that I suspect most distributions have a copy of it somewhere. On my RH4.2 it's under /usr/bin.
The Mailbag!
mjhammel(ttyp2)$ type units
units is /usr/bin/units
mjhammel(ttyp0)$ units
501 units, 41 prefixes
You have: 3 miles
You want: kilometers
* 4.828032
/ 0.20712373
Michael J. Hammel
COBOL Compilers for Linux
Concerning the following, recently posted in Linux Gazette:
I have a friend who is doing a refresher course in Cobol in a Unix environment. I have suggested that she run Linux, and pick up a cheap / shareware copy of a Cobol compiler for Linux from somewhere. Knowing absolutely nothing about either Linux or Cobol, am I dreaming, or is there a realistic alternative to the compilers I have seen retailing for ~$1,500 US? I'd really appreciate any help/advice anyone can offer.
There are several possible COBOL options in the Linux realm; for details
see:
http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/languages07.html
There's not anything yet that could be considered 100% viable outside of (rather expensive) commercial options; obviously these sorts of things don't happen without there being a population of people who are interested enough to be willing to invest the time necessary to implement something.
cbbrowne@hex.net
Resetting the term (2)
You posted a program to reset your console should the text become garbled. I thought I would mention that most distributions, Slackware notably, come with such a program that does this and more.
reset will clear your tty, restore sane tty settings, and perform general tty cleanups. You should find this little utility just about anywhere :)
David
Re: Help Wanted : newbie (3)
In anwser to your questions in the September issue of the Linux
Gazette:
I recently purchased Red Hat 5.1 and got it running. Evidently I was lucky in that I have a fairly full FAT 32
Win 98 drive and kind of stumbled through the defrag / fips / boot to CD / repartition / full install with LILO
process. Everything worked, but I'm a little nonplussed. A few topics I'd absolutely love to get feedback
on...
Turns out I have a lousy WinModem. I can see the feedback now, (Run it over with your car)
Yep. Buy a *real* modem.
I have grown fat and lazy with Win 98 and find myself looking for "Display Properties" and such. I'm very familiar with C and such and am not afraid of hacking scripts or the like, but my problem is thus: Where is a (succinct) list of what gets run when, from where, and why. I'd love to tweak everything if only I could find it.
Daemons, boot time initialization: see the man page for `init'. There'll be an assortiment of scripts in /etc/rc.d or /etc/init.d and /etc/rcX.d (where X = 0 to 6) that do your system's boot-time setup.
For X, especially XFree86, you can fiddle with the XF86Config file, which should reside somewhere in /etc. Or if you have an X server running you can use `xvidtune'. The programs and window-manager started by the X server are usually in a file called xinitrc or xsession.
I have something called an "Ensoniq Audio PCI" sound card with "legacy emulation" I don't even know how to begin to get this thing working. What are the first steps in enabling hardware?
You'll probably need to compile a new kernel. The sound driver that comes with the kernel supports this card. install your distribution's kernel source package, cd to /usr/src/linux and read the README.
Where do I get information on mounting drives (FAT 32 especially)
Read the manual for `mount' and `umount'. Make sure you have a kernel with (V)FAT support compiled in.
I think my printer works (at least text does), but how do I print things (man pages)
Use the lpr program. It is a print spooler. You might want to fiddle with /etc/printcap to enable your printer to print PostScript (via GhostScript).
I'm not an idiot, not even a "dummy", but what is a good book to answer the basic questions? I have "Linux in a Nutshell" and it has a very good command reference and a few other things, but doesn't help in tweaking things.
I haven't read many books on Linux, just *lots* of manpages and HOWTO's (in /usr/doc/HOWTO). Ask around in linux newsgroups.
I don't really expect anyone to answer all of these concerns, but any little help would be greatly appreciated.
Hope this helps... :-)
Roland
2c tip -- more fun with pipes
After reading the "Un-tar as you download" 2-cent tip from scgmille@indiana.edu in issue 32, I thought you might like this, too.
Say you have a program with a large initial startup time. After that, the program reads a line from a file, processes it, reads the next line, processes it, etc, until EOF. You would like to process a single line of data without suffering through the initial startup each time. Try this:
mkfifo input_fifo
rm input_file
touch input_file
tail -f input_file >> input_fifo &
long_program input_fifo &
When you want to feed it some data, say
echo data1 data2 data3 >> input_file
The tail will wake up, read the line, output it to the fifo (aka
"named pipe"), the program will wake up, read the data from the
pipe, process it, and go back to sleep.
(You only have to do the mkfifo once; after that, it sticks around. On some systems (e.g. my Sun at work, where I came up with this), instead of mkfifo filename, use mknod filename p".)
To shut things down, kill the tail. The program will get an EOF condition, and shut down normally.
Of course, a better solution might be to rewrite the program to read from stdin, and then say
tail -f input_file | long_program -
but you can't always do that. Also, neither of these ideas will
work if the program reads the whole file, and then processes each
line from an internal list.
-- Larry Clapp
2 cents tip: Un-tar as you download
lynx -source http://www.url.dum/file.tar.gz | tee file.tar.gz | tar zxm lynx -source ftp://ftp.url.dum/file.tar.bz2 | tee file.tar.bz2 | bunzip2 - | tar xm
Ben
Re: Help Wanted: Looking for an Xwin Server software that runs under win95/nt
From: Mark Inder, mark@tts.co.nz
We use a Red Hat 4.2 machine in our office as a communications server. This is
running well with the facility oftelnet connections for maintenance, diald for
PPP dial up - internet and email, and uucp for incoming mail.
I would like to run an X server on my windows PC to be able to use X client
software on the Linux PC over the local Ethernet. Does anyone know of a
shareware for freeware version which is available.
Try the list at http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites.html#XMicrosoft
this one is free for example http://www.microimages.com/www/html/freestuf/mix/
Caolan
Re: Help wanted for a (Cheap) COBOL combiler for Linux
From: Andrew Gates, andrewga@fcf.co.nz
I have a friend who is doing a refresher course in Cobol in a Unix environment.
I have suggested that she run Linux, and pick up a cheap / shareware copy of
a Cobol compiler for Linux from somewhere. Knowing absolutely nothing
about either Linux or Cobol, am I dreaming, or is there a realistic alternative
to the compilers I have seen retailing for
$1,500 US? I'd really appreciate any help/advice anyone can offer.
I haven't ever used Cobol, but at http://www.deskware.com/cobol/cobol.htm, there's a Cobol for Linux under development for download (for free I believe). Might be good to check it out, and to find out if it's of any use yet.
Caolan
Re: Clearing the Screen (3)
In the September issue you described some C code that can clear the screen when it gets screwed up from binary dumps to the terminal. There is a much easier way and it all it requires is the keyboard ;) Simply type "echo control-v escape-c" where and hit enter. The "control-v" allows you to type in the "escape-c" literally.
This has worked much better for me then some other methods such as "reset" which comes with your favorite Linux distribution but like a compiler it isn't always there. This key sequence is *always* available on an ANSI terminal.
Mark Ramos
Unix Tip
As an addendum to Allan Peda's Tip in Linux Gazette issue 32, here is a quick tip that applies to most DEC emulators (vtXXX):
echo ^V^OThat's echo, control-V, control-O. The control-V portion escapes the control-O (terminal reset) from your shell. The echo just puts the control-O right back to your terminal emulator/dumb terminal (works great on true DEC terms too! :)
This works for most Unix flavors. No code. Easy to remember.
Ian Blenke
rc.local Tip
I've been reading the Linux Gazette for a couple of months now and I think it's great, especially the tips.
Here's one for you to consider that was inspired by Dennis Lambert's "Help Wanted" letter in issue #32. I hope it doesn't duplicate something you've already published.
To those of us used to the warm, fuzzy DOS world of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, the complexities of the /etc/rc.d startup heirarchy can be nothing short of intimidating. Well, I decided to make it a little less so. I started by putting these lines at the top of /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
echo "===============================================" echo " " echo "Now running rc.local" echo " " echo "==============================================="Now, when I start up Linux I can tell just when my local configuration starts to run, and if I'm having problems I can see whether they happen before or after rc.local starts. You can learn other things, too -- I learned that rc.sysinit gets run on startup and shutdown!
Unfortunately, especially if you have a fast system, you can miss error messages as they scroll by and dmesg doesn't always echo the information you need to solve a problem. I was seeing error messages in rc.local, but I couldn't tell what they were because they went by too fast. So, I wrote a Perl one-liner:
perl -e "print 'Press ENTER to continue: '; $x = <:STDIN>;"This prints a prompt, then waits for you to press ENTER before it continues. (Yes, there's probably an easier way to do this with bash or some utility, but I already know Perl and I'm still learning bash. [grin]) By putting this at the bottom of rc.sysinit I made the boot-up sequence stop so I could see the error message, and of course once I saw it I knew exactly how to fix it. I comment out the line unless I need it, of course -- if everything is working right I want Linux to take me straight to the login prompt!
Here's hoping this helps someone.
Creede Lambard
Yet another method of resetting scrambled terminal after dumping binary data.
Perhaps this is the simplist solution:
echo '\017'that's it.
Sang Woo Kang
Rick's quick and dirty screen-saver
Here's a shell script which cycles through jpgs:
#!/bin/sh
# showjpg Rick's quick and dirty screen saver.
# Run from an xterm. Controll 'C' should get you out. Or run in
# background with '&' and use kill.
# forever
while [ 1 ]; do
# The path to your jpgs
for file in /usr/local/images/jpg/*.jpg
do
xsetbg $file
sleep 20
done
done
xsetbg is from the xloadimage package. It's the same as:
xloadimage -onroot -quietSleep is in seconds. Use convert from the ImageMagick package to convert .gif or .bmp to .jpg.
Rick
MS Word & Netscape
I wish to contribute 2 cents story.
One-click view of MSWord files in Netscape.
There is a sad fact, that some people use MSWord to exchange documents. When one one gets such file in a mail on Linux (s)he can use MSWordView, but this requires:
Save file Convert from .doc to .html Start Netscape to view itThis 2 cents tip is about how to reconfigure netscape in order to view MSWord documents in one click.
To do this:
application/msword; ns="%s"\; nf="${ns}".html\; mswordview "${ns}" >"${nf}"\;
netscape -remote 'openURL(file:'"${nf}"')' \; sleep 2 \; rm "${nf}"
Pulling Files from NT
Nothing groundbreaking here but, being a newbie to Linux and Samba I was having a difficult time getting Samba set up and needed to get some large files from an NT server to a Linux machine. I do not have any NFS programs for NT but do have a Web/FTP server running on NT so my temporary but quick solution was to put the files I needed into my NT server's FTP directory and download them from there.
Michael Burns
Re: The wisdom of US West...
Michael J. Hammel wrote: I haven't checked, but doesn't IPv6 have 6 dot-values? And are they larger than 8 bit values? Just curious. I haven't heard much about IPv6 in awhile and wondered how we haven't run out of IP space yet without it.
From: Jay Kominek,
jay.kominek@colorado.edu
IPv6 addresses take the form of 'FEDC:BA98:7654:3210:FEDC:BA98:7654:3210'
8 16-bit hexadecimal chunks. All kinds of fun. Luckily, if you have a string
of zeros in your address, you can do something like 1080::8:800:200C:417A
To save yourself some typing.
I hope I'm not running some place's DNS when IPv6 becomes popularized.
Relevent RFCs:
RE: Clearing the Screen (4)
From: Allan Peda, allan@interport.net
A few days ago a classmate "accidentally" cat'ed a file to the screen.
He asked asked me what he could do to reset his confused vt100, as
clear wasn't sufficient.
reset works very well for this. The command reset will effectively reset the screen by sending it the proper escape sequence. since reset looks up the escape sequence from the terminfo library so it works on just about any terminal. If this fails, sometimes a
$ stty sanewill do the trick.
Re: Keeping track of your config files
Your idea for keeping track of those files by linking them to a central directory is good.
Another idea I am using frequently is keeping track of the modifications by either employing SCCS or RCS (or whatever derived utility available).
Combining both ideas means for SCCS based systems: Use e.g.
$ cd /
$ sccs -d/root/SCCS create etc/inittab
if you share a lot of these files across several systems, but there
are some files that may differ you probably like to type
$ sccs -d/root/SCCS -p`hostname` create etc/lilo.conf
Which results in the following tree:
/root
|-/SCCS
| |-etc
| | |-s.inittab
| | |-apollon
| | | |-s.lilo.conf
| | |-jupiter
| | | |-s.lilo.conf
...
For daily use I recommend to keep all the files 'checked-out',
i.e. 'sccs edit' always after 'sccs create' and otherwise 'sccs
deledit'.
The above commands should also be abbreviated by aliases.
For the RCS used admins I recommend 'cvs', but this means a bit more work ....
Andreas
|
Contents: |
November Linux Journal
The November issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands October 11. The focus of this issue is Web Programming and we have articles on FastCGI, HTMLgen, XML, SGML and Python, as well as an interview with Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python. Check out the Table of Contents at http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue55/index.html. To subscribe to Linux Journal, go to http://www.linuxjournal.com/ljsubsorder.html.
Links2Go Key Resource Award
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 18:38:48 -0400
Congratulations! Your page:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/
has been selected to receive a Links2Go Key Resource award in the
Linux topic.
The Links2Go Key Resource award is both exclusive and objective. Fewer than one page in one thousand will ever be selected for inclusion. Further, unlike most awards that rely on the subjective opinion of "experts," many of whom have only looked at tens or hundreds of thousands of pages in bestowing their awards, the Links2Go Key Resource award is completely objective and is based on an analysis of millions of web pages. During the course of our analysis, we identify which links are most representative of each of the thousands of topics in Links2Go, based on how actual page authors, like yourself, index and organize links on their pages.
For more information:
Links2Go Awards, awards@links2go.com
X11.ORG goes public
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 00:31:27 -0400 (EDT)
One of the main purposes of X11.ORG is to provide the X community with
up-to-date information regarding "anything and everything X". By making
this information easily available, you don't have to work quite as hard to
keep up with the fast-moving pace of X developments. As it was imagined in
the development process, we will attempt to be a slashdot.org of sorts,
for the X community, focusing on those topics directly or closely related
to X. X11.org plans to cover the setup and configuration information for
the majority of WindowManagers, Desktop Environments (eg. CDE, GNOME,
KDE), and X Servers.
For more information:
Voltaire, voltaire@shell.flinet.com
7th Python Conference
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 17:18:14 -0400 (EDT)
Call for Participation and Advance Program,
7th International Python Conference:
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/
South Shore Harbour Resort
Houston, Texas
November 10-13, 1998
Sponsored by CNRI and the PSA
The Python Conference brings together a broad range of users, vendors, researchers, and developers from the Python community. The conference is the premier opportunity to meet other Python programmers, share information, and learn about the latest happenings -- including an update on the future of Python from its creator, Guido van Rossum.
The program also includes a day of tutorials, two days of papers and invited talks, and Developers' Day. The conference program has been expanded this year to include a session for demos and posters to highlight work that is more interesting to see and interact with.
For registration information, visit:
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/registration.html
INVITED SPEAKERS
Eric Raymond, "Homesteading the Noosphere." Custom, ego, and property in the open source community.
David Beazley, "Commodity Supercomputing with Python." Python on supercomputing systems, and its role in the 1998 Gordon Bell Prize Competition, where a Python-driven application achieved 10 Gflops sustained performance on a Linux cluster.
Jim Hugunin, "JPython." Recent and coming events in the happy integration of Python and Java.
Guido van Rossum, "Python -- the next seven years." Recent and coming events in the development of the Python langauge.
For more information:
Jeremy Hylton,
jeremy@cnri.reston.va.us
LISA '98, Systems Administration Conference
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 16:04:13 -0800
The Immediately Practical is the Emphasis at
Largest Conference Exclusively for System Administrators
LISA '98, the 12th Systems Administration Conference, is co-sponsored by SAGE, the premier professional society for system administrators, and the USENIX Association. It will take place in Boston at the Marriott Copley Place Hotel, December 6-11, 1998. The largest conference exclusively for system administrators, LISA is expected to attract over 2000 attendees.
Full Technical Program: http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa98/
For more information:
http://www.usenix.org/
Dona Ternai, dona@usenix.org
Linux Links
The Linux Software Encyclopedia: http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/linuxlist/linuxlist/linuxlist.html
COBOL Center: http://www.infogoal.com/cbd/cbdhome.htm
Deskware COBOL: http://www.deskware.com/cobol/cobol.htm
Collection of Free Resources: http://members.tripod.com/~net_tools/index.html
Linux Preview (Spanish): http://linux.ncc.org.ve
Crystal Space 3D Engine: http://crystal.linuxgames.com
GNOME FAQ: http://www.mindspring.com./~tlewis/gnome/faq/v1.0/FAQ.html
Linux Links: http://www.linuxlinks.com/
DOSEMU.ORG: http://www.dosemu.org/
Spanish Linux Index: http://www.croftj.net/~barreiro/public/indice.html
Linux soundapps Webpage: http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linux_soundapps.html
SciTech Display Doctor for Linux: http://www.scitechsoft.com/sdd_linux.html
K-12 and Linux
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:10:42 GMT
A mailing list has been formed where people with Linux expertise
can support K-12 people who are trying to use Linux in schools.
To join, send e-mail to
majordomo@lrw.net and in the body of
the letter, enter:
subscribe lxk12
For more information: Randy Wright, rw26@nospam.lrw.net
Red Hat Hands Applixware back to Applix, Inc.
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 12:03:00 GMT
September 14, 1998--In order to focus exclusively on developing and
marketing the Open Source Red Hat Linux operating system, Red Hat
Software, Inc. and Applix Inc. today announced that Applix Inc will
have all future responsibility for the Applixware Office Suite,
including Sales, Marketing, Product Support, and Quality Assurance.
Applixware products previously purchased directly from Red Hat Software will still receive the full technical assistance and support of Red Hat Software.
The announcement of the new relationship coincides with the release of Applixware 4.4.1 for Linux. This update of Applixware features all the standard components of the Applixware Office Suite, as well as Applix Data, a new module offering point and click access to information stored in relational databases, and Applix Builder, Applix's object-oriented, visual, rapid application development tool.
The Applixware 4.4.1 Office Suite is available directly from Applix, Inc. for $99. For those wishing to upgrade to Applixware 4.4.1, Applix is offering a $79 upgrade. For more information, please see
For more information: http://www.applix.com/
Intel, Netscape invest in Linux
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 11:43:45 -0700
Red Hat Software has announced that Intel, Netscape and two VC firms are
taking equity positions in the company which will enable it to create the
Enterprise Computing Division. This division will ready Linux for
enterprise-wide applications, enabling Linux, the most open, robust and
carefully scrutinized operating system in the world, to tackle the likes
of Windows NT.
For more information:
Full Press Release
Red Hat News Flash
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 09:30:03 -0700 (PDT)
It has recently come to the attention of Red Hat Software that there
are significant security holes in CDE. All users are affected, both those
who purchased CDE Client and those who purchased CDE Developer that runs on
Red Hat Linux 4.0 up to 5.1.
For more information:
Full Press Release
Canadian National Installfest a Success
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 19:58:06 PDT
The Installfest referred to in last months News Bytes has come off an
outstanding success! Details at
http://www.linux.ca/installfest.html
A world-wide installfest in the offing?
For more information:
Dave Stevens,
davestevens@hotmail.com
Linux/Personal Productivity Tools
LOS ALTOS HILLS, CA (Sept. 8, 1998) -- Personal Productivity Tools, Inc. (PPT) today announced that version 3.0 of its EtherPage (tm) client/server-to-pager messaging system is now running under Linux, the UNIX clone operating system.
EtherPage delivers messages rapidly and efficiently from computer networks to wireless devices, including alphanumeric and 2-way pagers and digital cellular phones. In addition to Linux, EtherPage now runs under a broad range of operating systems including Windows NT and UNIX.
For more information:
Personal Productivity Tools, Inc.,
http://www.ppt.com/
LinkScan 5.0 - Breakthroughs in Performance, Scalability & Workflow
San Jose, CA, Sept. 10, 1998. Electronic Software Publishing Corporation (Elsop) released LinkScan 5.0 today. Major improvements have been made to LinkScan 5.0 to make it serve the needs of workgroups throughout the enterprise and facilitate the workflow between content managers, developers and systems administrators. These improvements are the result of radical design changes that make version 5.0 essentially a new product compared to earlier versions. This effort was energized by the needs of organizations with very large intranet websites and public websites.
LinkScan operates on all Unix Servers (including AIX, BSD, Digital Unix, HP/UX, IRIX, Linux, and SunOS/Solaris flavors) and Windows NT 5.0 servers with Perl 5. Free fully functional evaluation copies of LinkScan 5.0 may be downloaded (less than 300 Kbytes) from the company's website at: http://www.elsop.com/
For more information:
Kenneth R. Churilla, ken@elsop.com
Electronic Software Publishing Corporation
NetBeans Releases Last Beta Version of Java IDE, Free Download Continues
Prague, Czech Republic, September 14, 1998 - NetBeans, Inc. today announced the release of the Beta 3 version of NetBeans Developer 2.0. It is the last beta prior to the full release, which is due near the beginning of Q4. Beta 3 is available for free download from the NetBeans web site, http://www.netbeans.com.
NetBeans IDE is a full-featured Java IDE based completely on Swing/JFC. NetBeans is both written in Java and it generates Java code. It is an object oriented, visual programming environment based on JavaBeans components without relying on any third-party components. The IDE is easily extensible, and it runs on any platform that supports JDK 1.1.x, including Win95/98/NT, Apple Mac, Linux, OS/2, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, and others. Since the June release of Beta 1, over 18,000 new registered users have downloaded the tool.
For more information:
NetBeans, Inc., http://www.netbeans.com,
info@netbeans.com
Product Overview,
http://www.netbeans.com/overview.html
NetBeans Bundles Cloudscape with Leading Programming Environment
Oakland, CA and Prague, Czech Republic, September 21, 1998-NetBeans, Inc. and Cloudscape(TM) Inc. announced today that NetBeans, Inc. will bundle Cloudscape's embeddable Java-based object relational database with upcoming releases of the NetBeans IDE. Founded on the principle of Java innovation, NetBeans is the first company to offer an all-Java IDE based on Swing/JFC. Cloudscape offers the industry's first embeddable Java database, designed to be invisibly embedded within applications as a local data manager.
The Cloudscape database will be bundled with NetBeans Developer 2.0, allowing users of NetBeans Developer 2.0 to create Java applications that integrate a fully functional, yet lightweight object-relational database manager. The integrated product is expected to be available in November 1998. Cloudscape ships the only 100% Pure Java(TM) SQL database manager designed to be invisibly embedded within applications as a local data manager.
For more information:
NetBeans, Inc., http://www.netbeans.com,
info@netbeans.com
http://www.netbeans.com, write to info@netbeans.com, or call 011 4202 8300 7322.
Cloudscape, Inc.
http://www.cloudscape.com/,
info@cloudscape.com
Prolifics to be launched for Linux!
Mon, 21 Sep 1998 00:34:30 +0200
Based upon market interest and customer feedback, Prolifics has decided
to offer a version of Prolifics on Linux. Linux offers the development
community a strong platform choice at very modest prices. We feel that
Prolifics, based on industry standards such as COM and Java, can offer
this community a unique, powerful and flexible tool for building
cross-platform
database applications. Application Servers for the Web will be provided
to process business logic on the Linux servers and deploy the presentation
layer on a thin client Web Browser. These applications can be deployed
for character-based, GUI and Web environments.
The Linux platform will first be made available with Prolifics 4 Standard. Prolifics 4 Standard is our upcoming 2-tier product release due out 4Q 1998. Look for a customer letter telling you all about it and more this week or next.
For more information:
Prolifics, Devi Gupta,
devi@prolifics.com
IGEL
Palmer, PA - September 7, 1998 - IGEL LLC today announced the availability of Etherminal J, a Thin Client desktop device. The first variant has been exhibited at Thinergy '98, the first global conference on thin-client/server computing held in Orlando, Sept. 1-3, 1998.
Etherminal J, based on IGEL's Flash Linux Technology, is the only thin client device incorporating Netscape Communicator Version 4.05, and a complete set of UNIX connectivity tools, locally in its own Flash Memory. Storing and running these software modules locally keeps network bandwidth requirements at a minimum. IGEL's Flash Linux is a compressed UNIX-compatible, flash memory accessible operating system. It is a POSIX-conform, multi-threading multi user operating system. Based on the popular Linux kernel, it offers the largest number of available device drivers and applications. It supports Internet and Java. IGEL tailored this OS to support a defined Thin Client hardware, and developed a flash memory driver technology to compress this OS, and all accompanying Emulators, X11R6 X-Server, and Thin Clients for multi-user Windows NT, and the Netscape Communicator in 12MB of "Disk-on-Chip" Flash Memory. IGEL's BIOS extensions allow to directly boot this compressed Flash Linux. At run-time needed OS parts, Emulators, Thin Clients, and the Netscape Communicator are decompressed on demand.
For more information:
IGEL*USA, http://www.igelusa.com/
H. Knobloch, hans@igelusa.com
Linux Office Suite 99 from SuSE
OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 24, 1998--S.u.S.E., Inc. today announced the release of Linux Office Suite 99 -- a comprehensive software package that combines the latest in Linux technology with some of the most powerful, user-friendly applications on the market.
S.u.S.E.'s Linux Office Suite 99 includes a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation graphics, database, fax program, and many other critical business applications.
Linux Office Suite 99 comes with the latest version of Applixware 4.4.1, which includes Applix Words, Spreadsheets, Graphics, Presents, and HTML Author, as well as Applix Data and Applix Builder. Applixware's latest release delivers a new filtering framework that has been optimized for document interchange with Microsoft Office 97.
In addition, Linux Office Suite 99 integrates Applixware with the powerful ADABAS D 10.0 database system, enabling users to import data from the ADABAS D database into Applix Spreadsheets. Linux Office Suite 99 also contains the KDE and GNOME graphical desktops, S.u.S.E. fax, the personal edition of the backup utility ARKEIA 4.0, the popular GIMP graphics program, and many other features.
Linux Office Suite is compatible with S.u.S.E., Red Hat, Caldera, and other popular versions of Linux. Users who need to install Linux for the first time can do so quickly and easily with the base system of S.u.S.E. Linux 5.3 that is included with the Office Suite.
For more information:
S.u.S.E., http://www.suse.com/
Xtoolwait 1.2
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 07:54:58 GMT
One and a half year have gone by without a single bug report, so it's time
to release a new version of Xtoolwait.
This utility notably decreases the startup time of your X sessions, provided that you start a number of X clients automatically during the X session startup. Most people, for instance, start X clients like xterm, xclock, xconsole and xosview from their .xinitrc, .openwin-init, .xtoolplaces or .xsession file.
These X clients are started simultaneously (in the background) which puts a high load on the X server and the OS
Xtoolwait solves this problem by starting one X client in the background, waiting until it has mapped a window and then exiting.
Download Xtoolwait from this page
http://www.hacom.nl/~richard/software/xtoolwait.html
For more information:
Richard Huveneers, richard@hekkihek.hacom.nl
Fileman V1.1 - X-window based File Manager
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:32:09 GMT
FileMan, a X-window based File Manager offering a large number
of features along with great configurability and flexibility
is now available as version 1.1.
Version 1.1 offers improved performance and many bug fixes over earlier releases.
Some features are still not fully complete, but it is still very useable and contains enough features to manage a Linux environment.
For more information:
http://www.bongo.demon.co.uk/page6.html
Simon Edwards, FileMan Developer,
filem@bongo.demon.co.uk
ppdd - encrypted filesystem - kernel patch and support progs.
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:38:12 GMT
ppdd is an advanced encrypted file system for i386 Linux only.
ppdd is used in a similar way to the loop device and offers simplicity and speed plus full strength encryption (128 bit). The design takes into consideration the fact that data on disc has a long lifetime and that an attacker may have the matching plaintext to much of the cyphertext. A combination of master/working pass phrases offers enhanced security for backup copies. Current status is BETA and comments on the implemenation and underlying crypography are most welcome.
It consists of a kernel patch plus support programs and is intended for users with enough knowledge to compile the kernel, setup LILO, partition disks etc. It is not for absolute beginners or "non technical" users yet.
Available from: http://pweb.de.uu.net/flexsys.mtk
Package is ppdd-0.4.tgz, PGP signature is also available from same URL.
For more information:
Allan Latham,
alatham@flexsys-group.com
bzip2-0.9.0, program and library for data compression
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:47:31 GMT
bzip2-0.9.0 is a high-quality, portable, open-source, lossless
data compressor, based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform.
Source code, binaries and further details, are available from
http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk
and also from the mirror site
http://www.digistar.com/bzip2/index.html
bzip2-0.9.0 is fully compatible with the previous version, bzip2-0.1pl2. In particular, the .bz2 file format is unchanged.
For more information:
Julian Seward,
Julian_Seward@muraroa.demon.co.uk
Xterminal 0.4 - Object Oriented User Interface
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:45:51 GMT
Xterminal is an Object Oriented User Interface with a client-server
architecture. The main purpose is a friendly interface for the UNIX operating
systems. It is designed to be used to build text-based applications in C++.
It consists in a complete object oriented library including multiple, resizeable, overlapping windows, pull-down menus, dialog boxes, buttons, scroll bars, input lines, check boxes, radio buttons, etc. Mouse support, advanced object management, events handling, communications between objects are provided, too, together with a complete programmer's manual.
Xterminal is available for download from:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/libs/ui/Xterminal-0.4.tar.gz
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/Xterminal/download.html
For more infomation:
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/Xterminal
Dragos Acostachioaie, dragos@iname.com
connect v1.0alpha - tool to ease the sharing of a PPP link
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:50:39 GMT
Here is the first ALPHA release of connect package (v1.0a)
connect package is a client-server program designed to ease the sharing of a PPP link to the internet over a small network.
connect is a solution. By running a tiny daemon (connectd) that will take care to launch the PPP when asked to and keep it up as long as needed, you can control your link.
As you can talk to the daemon with a command-line or a Java applet, access is easy from a unix host or a browser running on a Win95/NT workstation.
connect can be freely downloaded from its home page, see
http://www.caesium.fr/freeware/connect/index.html
For more information:
Nicolas Chauvat, nico@caesium.fr
PalmPython 0.5.2 - PalmPilot sync/database library for Python
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 10:22:50 GMT
I am pleased to announce version 0.5.2 of PalmPython, a conduit
programming kit which enables desktop applications to access
PalmPilots and their data. PalmPython is available at the following
URL:
http://www.io.com/~rob/cq/palmpython/
PalmPython requires the pilot-link library, which can be found at
ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS/
For more information: Rob Tillotson, robt@debian.org
C++ library wxWindows/Gtk 1.93 and GUI builder
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 09:49:21 GMT a new version of the GTK+ port of the cross platform library wxWindows has been released.
To our knowledge, wxWindows is the only cross platform library available for creating native Windows and Unix/GTK+ applications. Although it is not its primary goal, wxWindows should help make the transition from Windows to Linux much smoother, not the least for small companies.
Apart from being platform independent, wxWindows is arguably the most complete free class library around offering features from database connectivity to configuration management to internationalization to a multiple document interface and support for printing using Postscript on Unix. We also provide detailed documentation and a set of sample apps.
http://wesley.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~wxxt/
The main wxWindows site:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart/wxwin/
wxWindows is free and has been an open source project since long before that term has been trademarked.
For more information:
Robert Roebling,
roebling@sun2.ruf.uni-freiburg.de
hm-3.0 - multiplatform curses-based filemanager
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:50:49 GMT
hm 3.0 is a multiplatform cursesbased filemanager.
Developed, adjusted and matured for 3
years by and for unix system managers.
Versatile look from ls-like to ls -ail.
All the basics with one keystroke: cd, cat,
chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, diff, file, ln, man,
mkdir, mv, od, rm, sh, sum, tail -f, vi, wc.
Help-facility built in (no man page needed).
http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/utils/file/managers/hm-3.0.tar.gz
For more information:
Hans de Hartog,
dehartog@csi.com
mswordview 0.4.0 released
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 12:43:27 GMT
yes the best thing since sliced bread, the ongoing office98 word
format to html conversion project has notched up another few victories.
changes since last announced version are basically:
many many many bug fixes.
improved lists.
vastly improved header and footer support.
section support.
page numbering styles support.
improved handling of hyperlink fields.
and....
prelinary support for graphics !, yep given a gif/jpg/png inserted
via the insert->picture->from file mechanism, mswordview can to date
successfully find its way to outputting a graphic, though this feature
is very alpha and based upon more that a little bit of guesswork.
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
http://www.gnu.org/~caolan/docs/MSWordView.html
For more information: Caolan McNamara, Caolan.McNamara@ul.ie
acua 2.11 - modem pool administration utility
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 14:28:51 GMT
ACUA is designed to facilitate the administration of Linux
systems hosting modem pools. ACUA's high-level goals are:
For more information:
Adam McKee, amckee@iname.com
InfoPrism v0.0.3 - A General Document Processing System
InfoPrism is a general document processing system that translates SGML source files to different output formats like HTML, Texinfo, LaTeX and plain text.
In addition to plain old SGML documents InfoPrism handles so-called SGML scripts as well. These are Tcl scripts using additional commands for document creation. The commands are * counterparts of SGML elements (e.g. `ul', `pre'). * shortcuts for multiple SGML elements (e.g. `liwul'). * simulate SGML facilities (e.g. `include').
Examples can be found in the `sgml' subdirectory of the distribution.
http://www.han.de/~racke/InfoPrism/
For more information:
Stefan Hornburg, racke@gundel.han.de
Fixkeys 0.1 - Mini-HOWTO on home/end/del/backspace keys
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 14:35:58 GMT
Fixkeys is a mini howto on howto get home/end/del/backspace behaving the
way you want under linux.
This howto comes with prepared config files and doesn't only describe
what to do to get your keys to work but also why.
http://electron.et.tudelft.nl/~jdegoede/fixkeys.html
For more information:
Hans de Goede,
j.w.r.degoede@et.tudelft.nl
Linux PC-Emulator DOSEMU, new stable release: dosemu-0.98.1
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 14:51:27 GMT
The DOSEMU team is proud to announce DOSEMU 0.98.1, the PC Emulator for
x86 based *nix. Please remember to consider this as ALPHA software.
DOSEMU is a PC Emulator application that allows Linux to run a DOS operating system in a virtual x86 machine. This allows you to run many DOS applications.
The DOSEMU PC Emulator can be downloaded from the following FTP sites:
ftp://ftp.dosemu.org/dosemu/
ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/ALPHA/dosemu/
The binary distribution is statically linked against libc-5.4.46 and libX* from XFree-3.3.2.3. It should run on all current Linux distributions.
For more information:
The DOSEMU-Delopment-team,
linux-msdos@vger.rutgers.edu
http://www.dosemu.org/
ROADS 2.00 - a free Perl based Yahoo-like system
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 10:31:31 GMT
ROADS version 2.00 is
a free Yahoo-style system written in Perl.
It is a collection of tools which can be used in
building on-line catalogues.
ftp://ftp.roads.lut.ac.uk/pub/ROADS/roads-v2.00.tar.Z
For more information:
Martin Hamilton,
martin@net.lut.ac.uk
Loadmeter 1.20 - Linux/Solaris system stats utility
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 10:33:20 GMT
Loadmeter is a useful little system monitoring utility I've hacked up to keep
track of various system stats. It monitors:
Load average, Uptime, Disk usageb,and Memory usage.
http://www.zip.com.au/~bb/linux/
For more information:
Ben Buxton, bb@zip.com.au
Gtk-- 0.9.15 - C++ wrapper for gtk
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 11:08:08 GMT
Version 0.9.15 of Gtk-- is now available.
Gtk-- is a C++ wrapper for GTK, the Gimp ToolKit. GTK is a library for creating graphical user interfaces. Gtk-- is distributed under GNU LGPL.
Gtk-- provides C++ abstraction of gtk library. The C++ interface is kept very similar to the interface gtk has. Thus documentation and knowledge of gtk can be utilized for creating GUI applications using Gtk-- while still enjoying advantages C++ language can offer.
Gtk's homepage: http://www.gtk.org/ Gnome homepage: http://www.gnome.org/
(*) gnome and gtk1.1 widget support require newest versions from gnome cvs server.
For more information:
Tero Pulkkinen,
terop@assari.cc.tut.fi
klp-0.2 - a print queue manager for KDE
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 11:22:12 GMT
It's here -- klp - a line printer queue manager for KDE --
Second (alpha) release 0.2.
klp is a GUI based replacement/wrapper for lpr/lpq/lprm (or similar in case of other types of print servers). It manages the print queue of printers. klp is intended for use with the K Desktop Environment http://www.kde.org/.
You can print by drag&drop documents from KDE's filemanager on it. You can view the queue and remove items from it.
klp can dock itself in the panel, still showing the printer status. The docked icon also allows printing by drag&drop.
http://rulhmpc49.LeidenUniv.nl/~klp
For more information:
Frans van Dorsselaer,
dorssel@MolPhys.LeidenUniv.nl
TkDesk 1.1 released
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 12:27:48 GMT
TkDesk is a graphical desktop and file manager for several types
of UNIX (such as Linux) and the X Window System. It offers a very
rich set of file operations and services, and gives the user the
ability to configure most aspects of TkDesk in a powerful way. The
reason for this is the use of Tcl/Tk as the configuration and (for
the biggest part of TkDesk) implementation language.
http://people.mainz.netsurf.de/~bolik/tkdesk/
For more information:
Christian Bolik,
Christian.Bolik@mainz.netsurf.de
XFCE 2.1.0 - Window/Backdrop Manager and Toolbar for X released
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 12:37:49 GMT
XFce is now a set of applications including a powerfull Window Manager
compatible with MWM(tm), OpenLook(tm), GNOME and KDE hints, a toolbar a
backdrop manager and a system sound manager (NEW!) for X11.
Unlike so many other X applications, XFce is very easy to use and to
configure, thanks to menus, all mouse driven !
Features pulldown menus with color icons, 3D widgets, etc.
HTTP://xfce.penguincomputing.com/
HTTP://www.linux-kheops.com/pub/xfce/
HTTP://tsikora.tiac.net/xfce
Anonymous ftp sites :
ftp://antarctica.penguincomputing.com/pub/xfce
ftp://ftp.linux-kheops.com/pub/xfce-2.0.4
ftp://tsikora.tiac.net
XFce is a toolbar and a kind of desktop environment (XFce standing for XForms Cool Environment) With XFce, no need to learn any definition language, or type any configuration file. XFce does it itself! Just use the mouse to define your preferences. XFce provides an elegant and easy way to start all your X-Window applications, using nice color icons, popup menus, etc.
For more information:
Olivier Fourdan, fourdan@csi.com
Subject: COMMERCIAL: Better Counter for Linux
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 10:31:00 GMT
Better Counter - one of the leading CGI script for counting web pages -
is now also available for Linux (on Intel hardware).
Better Counter is the world's first counter that combines the following
features:
- - Counts all pages of your site (depending on your service level)
- - Counts the click-through of your external links
- - Usability and clarity of the data presentation by using a Java Applet
- - Complete hits analysis within a freely customizable page structure
Better Counter is also available as FREE service.
http://www.better-counter.com/
For more information:
Stefan Ruettinger,
Stefan_Ruettinger@rocketmail.com
http://www.better-homepage.com/
The Answer Guy
AutoCAD for Linux? Not Yet. Sorry.
fd0
--or--
SCSI drive installation
--or--
Supressing cc: lines in Emacs' Mail replies
chroot, twist, and other rescue-boot fun
--or--
Linux/Samba as a Primary Domain Controller
ip masquerading
--or--
tty help
--or--
connect script failed
--or--
[linuxprog] more shuffling experiments
--or--
Conditional Execution Based on Host Availability
Desqview
--or--
Thanks for the pointer to uuencode sources.
Download a Catch 22?
--or--
Important typo in Anti-Windows emulator rant
--or--
Greetings From Jim DennisWell, it's been another great month for Linux. We hear that Intel and Netscape are investing in Red Hat Inc. and Intel is joining Linux International.
So, everything is looking rosy for our favorite platform.
What could be better?
Well, I read an interesting editorial in ``;login'' the USENIX (http://www.usenix.org/) Association's monthly magazine. This is by Jordan Hubbard, one of the founders of the FreeBSD project --- and an employee at Walnut Creek.
He talks about the tendency of the freenix "clans" to fragment and duplicate development effort over relatively petty differences in licensing and --- more often as a result of the slithings and bites of "the snakes of Unrestrained Ego and Not Invented Here."
This fragmentation has been crippling the overall Unix marketplace for twenty years. The odd thing is that there is both a Unix "community" and a "marketplace." The members of the community tend to form "clans" which may bicker but mostly feel that they have mostly common goals. We'll argue incessantly over the advantages of a BSD'ish vs. a GPL license, or the superiority of 'vi' over 'emacs' or vice versa (I'm a heretic on that battle --- I use xemacs in "viper" -- vi emulation mode).
The Unix community has a long history of producing free software --- one that predates Linux, FreeBSD, X Windows, and even the Free Software Foundation itself. The FSF's GNU project was the first organized and formal effort to produce a fully usable system of tools that was unencumbered by corporate copyright (some argue that the "encumberances" of the GPL are even too much --- but that's back to the perennial clan feud; so let's skip it).
We may believe that Linux is the culmination of that effort. I hope it's not.
Jordan goes on to explain the FreeBSD attitude to software vendors that are expressing a renewed interest in the UNIX market and why he (and his associates) tell them "to port to Linux first (or at all)"
The FreeBSD support for running Linux binaries is apparently pretty solid (my use of FreeBSD has only required native binaries). It's possible that FreeBSD could be "fully Linux compatible" right down to compliance with the "Linux Standards Base." (It's likely to be easier for FreeBSD to achieve compliance than it will be for the various non-x86 Linux ports).
Jordan also goes on to speculate:
`` Say, for example, that someone fairly prominent in the Linux community popped up and told various users that they might want to give FreeBSD a whirl, just to check out what it has to offer lately. ''
Well, I'm probably not "fairly prominent" enough to fullfill Jordan's wish here. However, I've been saying that for years, here and in other fora. I think some of the SVLUG members are sick of hearing me suggest it.
My co-author (on the Linux book that we're writing) is a FreeBSD user. Some of my best friends favor NetBSD. My wife has been recently working for an outfit that uses FreeBSD for most of their desktop systems (only occasional spots of Linux) and Solaris for their servers. (The FreeBSD support for Japanese is apparently very good --- and it seems to be *much* more popular than Linux in Japan)
I've used FreeBSD and still recommend as an FTP server. I tend to stick with Linux for two reasons. The first is laziness, I've gotten much more used to Linux' quirks than FreeBSD's, and it's easy to pick up new CD's for Linux --- they're everywhere; I have to hunt around a bit for FreeBSD CD's.
However, I'm going to be trying a copy of 3.0 when it ships (I guess that will be near the end of this month). I'd suggest that all serious Linux students and enthusiasts try one of the BSD's --- FreeBSD for x86's; NetBSD for just about anything else; OpenBSD if your putting up an "exposed" system and allowing shell access to it.
Meanwhile I'll also suggest that you look at other operating systems entirely. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris .... they're all Unix. When you get beyond DOS/Windows/NT and MacOS all you see is UNIX.
However there's quite a bit more out there. You just have to dig for them. Here's one place where you can start:
http://www.starshine.org/OS/I wrote that page a long time ago --- but most of the links still seem to be alive (O.K. Sven moved --- so I had to fix one link).
Two notes of interest:
Amoeba is now "free"
Amoeba is a distributed OS (think Beowulf clusters with lots of OS level support for clusering, process migration etc). It was written as a research project by Andrew S. Tanenbaum of Vrije University (the author of Minix, and the text book from which Linus learned some of what he know about OS design). There was a legendary "flamewar" (actually just a public debate) on the alt.os.minix newsgroup about the merits of monolithic kernels (Linux and the traditional Unix implementations) vs. "microkernels" (Minix, MACH, the GNU HURD, NeXTStep, and many others).
To learn more about Amoeba:
http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/
The EROS project (Extremely Reliable OS) has apparently finally been completed (for its initial release). I've mentioned this project in my earlier columns --- it is a microkernel OS which implements a "pure capabilities" security and authority model. This is so unlike the identity and access control lists models we see in Unix, NT, Netware, VMS and other multi-user OS that it took me about a year to "unlearn" enough to get some idea of what they were talking about.
EROS is not a free system. However, there are provisions for free personal use and research.
You can read more about EROS at:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~eros/
(The FAQ's explanation of capabilities and its comparison to ACL's and identity based authority models is *much* better than anything that I found back when I first looked at this project a couple of years ago).
So, before you sing the praises of Linux to another potential convert --- consider your basis for comparison. If you've only only used DOS/Windows/NT and Linux --- you'll want to go back to school.
AutoCAD for Linux? Not Yet. Sorry.From david stankus on 24 Sep 1998
Hi, I was talking with Terry and he told me you may know of a way to use an AutoCAD14 compatible on the Linux OS platform? I'm an AutoCAD driver for pay and am about to build a machine and I'll need an OS for said machine. Do you think Linux is a good way to go? Thanks Dave
Last I heard there was no support for Linux from Autodesk. Although they originally developed on Unix, Autodesk has shifted almost completely to Windows in recent years --- and they've been cutting their margins and trying to make it on volume. The prices for their Unix versions were always much higher than the Windows versions --- so their perception of the market interest levels is probably a matter of "self-fulfilling" prophecy. (Naturally the market will appear to have greater demand for the version that costs one quarter the price).
So you probably won't get AutoCAD running directly. I also wouldn't try to run it under one of the Windows emulators that's available for Linux --- those are generally too slow and unstable for productive use on major applications. They are most suited to the occasional case where you need to get into Word or Excel to extract some data from a proprietary document.
Of course I could be wrong --- you should definitely call Autodesk and ask them. We've recently had Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Corel, IBM and other major companies announce product plans (and actually release products) for Linux. So, Autodesk might be jumping on this bandwagon to blow their own horn any time. Calls by real users, who are really interested in making an immediate purchase are bound to help. I've copied their webmaster on this message so that he or she (or they) can forward this along to the the appropriate parties. (I did search their web site at http://www.autodesk.com for Unix and Linux --- and there didn't seem to be any support for any PC based Unix -- though there was mention of AIX, HP-UX, and Sun [sic] --- that would presumably be Solaris/SPARC).
If that doesn't work you could try some of the native Linux CAD packages. There are a couple of these out there --- one is called "Microstation" from Bentley systems. It is available only in a "student version" and they won't sell a "fully support" edition for commercial/professional use at this time. There also one called VariCAD and another called Varkon. Actually there's a whole list of related products at:
http://www.linuxapps.com/cgi-bin/group.cgi?cad3d
... LinuxApps.com is an extensive site that lists a good cross section of the available Linux software (mostly commercial software in this case).
Two other favorite sites for Linux applications are:
- Christopher B. Browne's home pages:
- http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne
Christopher is very active on the comp.os.linux.* newsgroups --- where he is often a voice of cool reason amidst the flames. His Linux pages covers DBMS (databases) more extensively than any others I've found.
... and:
- Linas Vepstas
- http://www.linas.org
Linas Vepstas should not be confused with Linus Torvalds. However, Linas does maintain a nice trim set of web pages devoted to "Linux Enterprise Computing." I particularly like Linas' commentary and annotations, including the occasional wisecrack. This is not "just another bookmarks" page.
These might not work like AutoCAD at all and I don't think they support the same document formats nor the "AutoLISP" programming/macro'ing language. However they might suit you.
Ultimately if your most important requirement is AutoCAD --- then you're probably stuck with Windows until Autodesk figures it out. Until then you could toss Linux up on a cheap little PC in the closet --- run an ethernet cable to it and access all your Linux applications remotely (via telnet and/or VNC or X Windows). If you use 'screen' and VNC it's possible to leave jobs running on the Linux box "detached" from your Windows box, so that the frequent reboots required by Windows won't disturb your other work. (My boxes at the house usually stay up for months at a time. I only occasionally reboot any of them --- usually to add hardware or install