2. Linux Information Sources
2.1. Linux News and Timely Information
There are a variety of places on the web that monitor things that are going on, making it easy to determine the "latest and greatest" things happening with Linux.
This site holds daily discussions of timely issues relating to Linux, and reduces traffic on Usenet newsgroups related to Linux.
Unfortunately, Slashdot uses a web-based interface which is not, generally speaking, nearly as flexible as NNTP as a news transport mechanism.
The web interface can't be automated or used offline, which is extremely suboptimal.
The free software developer's advocate. The goal of the site is to serve as a community resource for free software developers around the world, as well as a research testbed for work on group trust metrics.
See the cbbrowne page...
This "newsletter," released every week on Thursday, provides a weekly synopsis of major happenings for the week, including new releases of software that runs on Linux, notable commercial references to Linux, and summaries of the activities of the many software development projects associated with Linux.
Monthly column on FSF affairs, replacing the GNUS Bulletin.
This site collects together links to many Linux "news" sites.
Linux Gazette is an "online journal" that is released on roughly a monthly basis, containing a variety of articles, columns, as well as questions and answers.
rpmfind.net - recent RPMs indexed by creation date
This appears to be a lot more up to date than rpmfind.net...
This site monitors a wide variety of Linux-related web sites, and indicates when they were last updated.
KernelTraffic (Linux kernel newsletter)
The GNOME Project seeks to build a powerful and friendlier"GUI" face atop Linux and other operating system kernels using the GTk GUI toolkit, as well as CORBA tools and scripting tools like Guile.
If you want to know exactly what code is being written for GNOME, this web site is the place to go.
It provides summary reports for the CVS archives for many of the GNOME subsystems, thus allowing you to examine all the latest changes and who was responsible for them.
The K Desktop Environment (KDE)
KDE is a similar project to GNOME , seeking to provide a "user-friendly" set of tools for use with the X Window System.
KDE uses the Qt GUI toolkit, which, due to the way it is licensed, has stirred considerable controversy.
This site monitors important Linux FTP sites, indicating when new files are released for the kernel and for applications tuned for use with Linux.
Red Hat Advanced Development Laboratories
Red Hat Software founded their"labs" in order to particularly help sponsor efforts in making Linux more "user friendly" from a graphical standpoint. RHAD Labs are helping to host GNOME Project efforts, and some Red Hat staff are actively working to both build and integrate a variety of GNOME system components.
rpm2html An extensive indexed database of RPM packages
C'T is a rather technically-oriented German computer magazine that often has significant articles on Linux.
The Linux Software Map (LSM) - A "Map" of software that runs on Linux.
Source for "alpha" versions of FSF software...
Web site for the New Riders book by the title [Advanced Linux Programming].
2.2. Linux Overview Sites
Some of the more notable starting points to find information about Linux include:
Linux Documentation Project - LDP
Some of the Linux HOWTOs available at this site are also available in Pilot/DOC Format so that one can read them on a 3Com Pilot
Linux 2.0 Kernel System/patch "Headquarters"
Includes all official patches, as well as being a repository for unofficial patches.
Linux User Groups (LUGS)
Database and software to generate a website with 3000+ subject-classified and searchable Linux links for all levels of Linux users.
Links to various development projects and their statuses
Find folks near you that use Linux. The nearest for me is the members of NTLUG, the North Texas Linux Users Group. You can find notes for a talk I did last year for the group on Internet Data Filtering.
CreativeLinux.com - A site on 3D and Animation on Linux
2.3. Integration of Linux Information
The extensive list of Linux-related web sites suggests that there is some degree of fragmentation and duplication in the documentation of Linux. Some proposals have been starting to come out to try and integrate Linux information together, including:
Direct data sharing
Linux Weekly News, Slashdot.org actively communicate updates to one another, thus avoiding gratuitous duplication of one anothers' specialties.
This utility collects together information about software packages that exist in RPM form, a package format commonly used with Linux. The author of the utility is also seeking to build databases of information about software packages in XML form via a Linux Packages Metadata Mirroring Proposal, using the W3C Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model.
A project to provide a more maintainable way of managing public software archives.
The initiator of this project is Eric S. Raymond, who has been one of the major managers of files on Ibiblio, which is probably the best known archive of software for Linux.
We need a fundamentally new approach, and we need it before these vital pieces of community infrastructure collapse under their own weight. I consider a solution to this problem critical enough that Trove is now my top priority after continuing the public push for the open-source development mode.
-- Eric S. Raymond There are a lot of distributions out there, in three major "families:"
Those based on Slackware, generally using "tarballs" as the "packaging tool."
This includes Slackware, Stampede, SEUL (I think), and Pragma.
Those based on Red Hat's RPM tool.
This includes Red Hat Linux, Caldera, S.u.S.E., TurboLinux, Project Independence.
Debian Linux uses its own packaging tool, dpkg.
It appears, based on reports from the Apple Stepwise conference, that Apple's "Darwin" release will be using Debian's packaging tools.
That oversimplifies things somewhat, as there is the significant alternative view of looking at distributions by "purpose:"
"General Purpose" - Red Hat, Slackware, Debian, Caldera, S.u.S.E., TurboLinux
Intended for unsophisticated users: SEUL, Project Independence
Tuned for IA-32 performance: Stampede
Seeking Platform Independence: Red Hat, TurboLinux ,Debian, FreeLinux
Designed for building "embedded systems:" Pragma
It would be highly desirable for there to be some degree of "integration" of distributions so that components could be "mixed and matched" more readily. It is usually possible to use RPM packages designed with one distribution in mind on other RPM-based systems; higher degrees of interoperability between distributions would be attractive.
To that end, as well as with the idea of improving interoperability between disparate distributions, Yggdrasil has been working on meta-package-tools such as modifyrpmdb.
At one time, it appeared that it would be highly worthwhile to have the Debian tools as an RPM alternative; there was some paranoia that Red Hat might make future versions of RPM non-GPLed. The simple existenceof Debian as an active development project acts as a strong disincentive to any such attempt.
The Debian dpkg tool strongly parallels Red Hat's RPM ; both represent command-line-oriented utilities mainly intended to install "a package."
The Linux Base Standard committee was founded by Bruce Perens ,formerly "head" of the Debian Project, and has been bringing together support from many of the organizations that produce Linux distributions to come up with a "base standard" that will promote interoperability of Linux software across different distribution systems.
Installation of commercial (e.g."distributed only in binary form") software often must be"tweaked" if the software is to be installed on other than the particular distribution for which it was originally targeted.
The Linux Base Standard would seek to standardize the use of:
File System Hierarchy, so that system files can be found in standard places, and
Common libraries.
I expect that it would also cover things like package management tools and system initialization.
Configuration management systems such as Linuxconf will be much easier to write if one can expect system configuration information to reside in somewhat standardized locations, rather than varying dramatically from distribution to distribution. Linuxconfhas commonly only been able to function under one distribution at a time; changing distributions significantly affects how it has to function.
Debian and Red Hat are collaborating on a written specification of the "Linux Compatibility Standard" (LCS). The LCS will clearly outline the specifications necessary to be LCS compliant. This LCS document will be used as a guideline on how to build a "proper" system by those building Linux distributions, and it will be used by developers needing information on the basic system configuration to develop application programs. They expect this LCS effort to complement the sample LSB implementation.
Erik Troan (Red Hat) and Dale Scheetz (Debian) will jointly manage the LCS working group, which will be working on the written standard using the
<lcs-eng@lists.debian.org>mailing list for the discussion.To subscribe to the lcs-eng mailing list send an e-mail to
<lcs-eng-REQUEST@lists.debian.org>with the single word subscribe in the subject line. You will shortly receive a confirmation request. Follow the instructions and you will become subscribed to the list.Initial set of tests for LSB - Linux Standard Base - FTP Directory:ftp://ftp.xopen.org/pub/lsb/test/
Home of The Free Standards Group, a non-profit corporation organized to accelerate the use and acceptance of open source technologies through the application, development and promotion of interoperability standards.
The following are projects of The Free Standards Group:
Linux Development Platform Specification
Related to the LSB (Linux Standard Base) project, this specification is designed so that programs developed on a conforming platform are expected to be portable to all generally available Linux distribution.