Kernel release: 2.6.4-rc1, Feb 27, 2004

2.6.4-rc1 has been released today.
See changelog for full details.

Files added: 348
Files changed: 2758
Files removed: 196

There's no denying that "Linux distributions" have played a central role--arguably the central role--in the evolution of Linux from hobby project to mainstream technology. However, even as Slackware, Red Hat, and other distributions became "Linux" to millions of users, one inescapable fact remained: that unlike their proprietary OS cousins, which contain technologies developed (or licensed) by a single organization to fit into a single, integrated product, Linux distributions are merely convenient packaging around a loosely knit collection of thousands of independently developed technologies.

One of the best-known network security scanners will no longer be available with the SCO Group's products, with its developer saying he had terminated the company's rights to redistribute any version of the program with its products.

Fyodor, whose Nmap (network mapper) security scanner is extremely popular among geeks and even featured in the latest film of the Matrix series, said in a message posted to the Bugtraq mailing list, in which he announced the release of version 3.50, that SCO had refused to accept the General Public License "claiming that some preposterous theory of theirs makes it invalid (and even unconstitutional)!"

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., appears to take delight in the troubles that Munich is having as it switches 14,000 city computers from Windows to a rival Linux operating system.

The German city, roughly comparable in size to Toronto and just as strapped for cash, decided nine months ago to embrace the open-source software as a way to lower costs, improve competition in the marketplace and make the city less reliant on the world's largest software company.

Customers gravitated toward more-expensive and powerful Linux servers in the fourth quarter of 2003, new sales statistics show.

With the server market's heavy pricing pressure, revenue growth has typically been far less than unit shipment growth--when any revenue growth could be found in the last three difficult years. But in Linux servers, revenue growth outpaced unit shipments, according to fourth-quarter figures from market research firm IDC.

Linux server shipments grew 63 percent to $950 million from the fourth quarter of 2002 to the fourth quarter of 2003, IDC said. At the same time, unit shipments grew 53 percent to about 250,000.

The global spread of freely available Linux software is the biggest competitive threat to Microsoft Corp. and other developers that keep the inner workings of their programs under wraps, Red Hat Inc. Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said on Thursday.

Countries such as India and China will "clearly outpace consumption (of Linux) in the U.S. in the next five to 10 years," Szulik said at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecommunications Summit at Reuters U.S. headquarters in New York.

IBM has sent an open letter to Sun Microsystems, urging the company to make Java technology open source, CNET News.com learned late Wednesday.

In a letter sent by Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging technology, IBM offered to work with Sun to create a project that would shepherd development of Java through an open-source development model. If implemented, portions of Sun's most valuable software asset--Java--would be freely available, and contributors ranging from volunteer programmers to large corporations would submit changes to the Java software.

When Joseph L. Guallar-Esteve was laid off from IBM in the summer of 2001, he thought it would take months to find another job in technology. After all, he had seen some of his friends remain unemployed for nearly a year before finding work.

But Guallar-Esteve had an edge: He knew Linux . The free open-source software is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to Microsoft's Windows for running large computer networks and desktop PCs. That surging demand is good news for technology workers familiar with Linux.

I've just gone through the experience of trying to configure CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. It has proved a textbook lesson in why nontechnical people run screaming from Unix. This is all the more frustrating because the developers of CUPS have obviously tried hard to produce an accessible system — but the best intentions and effort have led to a system which despite its superficial pseudo-friendliness is so undiscoverable that it might as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit.

Real Software is adding the ability to migrate Windows applications to Linux in an upgrade of the company's Realbasic tool.

Available Wednesday, Version 5.5 of Realbasic includes a conversion utility that can migrate Visual Basic applications to Linux, the company said. The tool is for building cross-platform software and is similar to Visual Basic, the company said. In addition to migrating to Linux, developers can build Linux desktop and server applications in release 5.5. Windows and Macintosh application development already has been supported

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