Media interest

[imagelab at ziplink.net (Karl Hergenrother)]

I cut this out of this weeks Langalist.  I hope he has better luck than
Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe had when he tried Linux 6 months ago.

Karl

Karl Hergenrother
Image Laboratories
imagelab at usa.net

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THE LANGALIST
4-Oct-98
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A Punishment Glutton Asks For More

Maybe I just don't know when to quit. Or maybe I'm just a masochist. Or
maybe I'm just a punishment glutton whose motto is simply: "Oink."

Whatever the reason, I'm trying a new operating system this week. Here's
the scoop:

You've probably heard about Linux, a UNIX clone/workalike that's maintained
by a hardy band of volunteer coders. The source code for the software is
available to anyone, and it's completely free.

It began as a labor-of-love project by one guy---Linus Torvalds, a student
(!) at the Swedo-Finnish University of Helsinki. Over the years, although
Torvalds is still in charge, hundreds or thousands of skilled coders have
helped refine the operating system. At first, all the users were
programmers, so whenever a bug was found, someone would write a fix and put
the fix into circulation. Once the fix was shown to be stable and working,
Torvalds would incorporate it into the next "official" release of his
collaboratively-written OS.

It's sort of like a beta program where all the testers have the knowledge
and skill not just to find bugs, but to fix them. Linux evolved fast and is
now seriously being discussed in some circles as a viable alternative to
Windows NT!

Linux is still officially free if you want to download it on your own. But
then you have to hunt down drivers, documentation, and all the rest on your
own as well. Some companies are selling a low-cost commercialized version
that comes with all the pieces on a CD: Red Hat software from North
Carolina (http://www.redhat.com) is probably the best known.

Linux already has attracted significant development work from the likes of
Computer Associates, IBM, Informix, Oracle, Sybase and Corel. And last
week, Intel and Netscape announced they were investing in Red Hat. (See
story at http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980929S0013) Red Hat will
use the new funds to help launch an "Enterprise Computing Division;" and if
you read between the lines, you can see the beginnings of a formal assault
on the same space Microsoft is targeting with NT5. In fact, Red Hat CEO
Robert Young likes to point out that Linux runs on more hardware than NT
does; almost as much hardware as Windows95, in fact.
(see http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980930S0019)

So last week I dug out my credit card and placed an order with Red Hat for
their latest Linux bundle. It should arrive right about the time you're
reading this.

This week, I'll tell you my Linux experiences in my CMPnet column
(http://www.cmpnet.com/voices/langa.html) starting Wednesday Oct 7th and
running for a full week. It should be an interesting discussion. Join in!

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Fred

(fred at langa.com)


An easier-to read formatted HTML version is available in the "what's
new" section of http://www.langa.com. All past LangaList issues are also
available via the same link.

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