News Bytes #10

#### "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

#

### Contents:

- News in General
- Software Announcements

### News in General

### Linux Trademark: Let's fix it.

From: Paul Bingman paul@edgewood.portland.or.us

As you are no doubt aware, some (insert your favorite deragatory epithet) has trademarked the name "Linux" is now out trying to collect from everyone they can.

An intellectual property attorney friend of mine, G. Gervaise Davis III, is offering to get this trademark killed pro bono, if we can cover the expenses. His opinion, not having seen the original papers filed for the trademark, is that the original has absolutely no legal standing, and will probably be killed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as soon as we make the proper legal moves.

Please forward this email to anyone/everyone. I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who has received a collection letter, and also from Linus or someone else who can direct us to where the trademark should rightfully go. Also, this effort should be coordinated nationally or globally.

### Message from WorkGroup Solutions

September 19, 1996
Mark Bolzern, President WGS
Member Board of Directors, Linux International

With regard to the attack made on WGS, as well as the Greater Linux Community by William R. Della Croche claiming that he owns the Linux Trademark... There is no way this is true. We have retained an attorney and will be making a public announcement soon that benefits the entire Linux community. Thousands are aware of this situation, and have offered to help. The best help you could give us, is to see if there is something we offer in our Linux Shopping mall that you would like to own, and if so buy it. We add new products almost daily. If you don't see what you want, ask, or refer a friend to us. Thank you!

News & Information Account: wgsnews@wgs.com WorkGroup Solutions, Inc.
mailto:info@wgs.com, http://www.wgs.com/, ftp://ftp.wgs.com/
Telephone: 303-699-7470 Fax: 303-699-2793

### Linux HOWTO Project: Consultants HOWTO

The first public release of the Linux Consultants HOWTO has been published. The Linux Consultants HOWTO is a listing of companies providing commercial Linux related support.

The Consultants HOWTO can be obtained from the following places:

- http://www.sypher.com/tbm/Consultants-HOWTO
- ftp://ftp.sypher.com/tbm/HOWTO

The following files are available:

- Consultants-HOWTO.txt
- Consultants-HOWTO.sgml
- Consultants-HOWTO.html

Additional Information: Martin Michlmayr, tbm@sypher.com
http://www.sypher.com/tbm

### Linux Articles

Here's some articles of Linux interest that can be found on the web:

- "Linux Matters" Byte (Feb 96): An overview (5 pgs) of what linux is, how to get it, what to do with it. http://www.byte.com/art/9602/sec11/art7.htm
- "The Linux Phenomenon" Byte (Nov 95): Short (1/2 pg) overview. http://www.byte.com/art/9511/sec6/art3.htm
- "Implementing Loadable Kernel Modules for Linux" by Matt Welsh Dr. Dobbs: (5 pgs). http://www.ddj.com/ddj/1995/1995.05/welsh.htm

### Linux User Support Team (L.U.S.T.)

Purpose: To fill in an existing gap in the Linux world and provide users with various services/data that are not otherwise available online. To provide a clearing house for these same services.

Discussion: The L.U.S.T. (surprised nobody thought of the name earlier!) is not intended to be involved with programming, patching, updating, or such. It's to support the everyday, run-of-the-mill user with various support not offered elsewhere in the Linux world with data or services such as the Workman Database Project described below.

To join/get involved in/comment on L.U.S.T., send email to: joat1@concentric.net

### WWW: Enterprise Computing Linux

I have started collecting information on Linux as an Enterprise Computing Platform. By "Enterprise Computing" I mean what the big companies mean: large systems, high availability, high performance and "industrial strength" in general. Currently, topics include:

- Databases
- Clusters/SMP
- Configuration Mangemet
- WAN Internetworking, incl Frame Relay and X.25
- Network Mangement and Administration
- Disk Mirroring and RAID
- Fault Tolerance

The pages can be viewed from

http://204.157.166.19/linux/index.html

Additional information: Linas Vepstas, Lamebrain Enterprises linas@fc.net

### Linus News

Pablo Kiryluk of GM Communications, InterSoft's RRPP, writes:

Linus Torvalds, the Finish guru creator of the operating system "Linux" landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to the expectation of many. Invited by InterSoft, the multinational software producer, Mr. Torvalds lectured to a wide range of public about the "Software Free" concept, its relation with Internet and Linux' characteristics.

The range of ideas spread by Linus Torvalds in Argentina where laid out in terms of "knowledge sharing" and "composing from different creators". "Company's tendencies will integrate parts of free software forming a system to curb the commercial industry of software" --substantiated Mr. Torvalds. Also, the concept of "the idea that technology were humanity' patrimony, based on the free distribution of software and its source codes" was expressed in several occasions.

Also, Torvalds decided also to introduce "Scriptum", the first adaptable editor to different Linux' environments, created by InterSoft. Scriptum was created in Argentina and developed as a powerful tool capable to run of different platforms and offer several features. With Scriptum, almost the entire working environment can be configured, totally integrated to RCS/SCCS tools and UNIX (grepp, diff, etc.) and powerful navigation commands to find sources, data and documents.

### More Linus News

The San Jose Mercury News published an interview with Linus Torvalds on September 8, 1996 in which Linus is quoted as saying

> Microsoft operating systems are bad, and their morals are even worse. But they make some good applications.

Check it out in Section E of that newspaper, or web site: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/finland/torvalds.htm

### Software Announcements

### Soft Braille for Linux: BRLTTY 1.0.1

The official release of BRLTTY, a software system to allow access to the console of a Unix system for users of soft Braille displays, has been announced.

BRLTTY currently runs under Linux (kernel version 1.1.92 or later) on a PC or DEC Alpha.

The package has been uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu in the directory /pub/Linux/Incoming. It is expected to move to /pub/Linux/system/Access at some later date (please note the move from /pub/Linux/utils/console).

FEATURES

- Full implementation of the standard screen review facilities.
- A wide range of additional optional features, including blinking cursor and capital letters, screen freezing for leisurely review, attribute display to locate highlighted text, hypertext links, etc.
- `Intelligent' cursor routing. This allows easy movement of the cursor in text editors etc. without moving the hands from the Braille display.
- A cut & paste function. This is particularly useful for copying long filenames, complicated commands etc.
- An on-line help facility.
- Support for multiple Braille codes.
- Modular design allows relatively easy addition of drivers for other Braille displays, or even (hopefully) porting to other Unix-like platforms.

Additional information: Nikhil Nair: founder of the BRLTTY project and author of the Tieman B.V. CombiBraille driver. mailto:nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk

Nicolas Pitre: Author of the driver for the Alva series. nico@cam.org

Stephane Doyon: Author of the driver for the TSI displays (Navigator and PowerBraille 40), doyons@jsp.umontreal.ca

### FidoTools

Nickolay Grygoryev of SPb State University announced another FIDONET-related package called FidoTools. In general, it's file-echo tosser. Now it may be used on any node as file-echo manager (but version 0.9 does not have a mail interface for subscribing and unsubscribing - this will be done in version 1.0). All documentation is included into archive.

    Primary-site:	ns.aanet.ru /vol1/nick/Linux/system/Fido
    		FidoTools-0.9.tar.gz
    Alternate-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/Fido
    		FidoTools-0.9.tar.gz
    Platforms:	C compiler, FidoNet mailer (Bink-style)
    Copying-policy:	GPL

Additional information:
Nickolay G. Grygoryev shadow@nickhome.stud.pu.ru
St.Petersburg, Russia

### GNU Hurd release 1.0

Version 0.1 of the GNU Hurd, is now available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.159.0.42] in the file /pub/gnu/hurd-0.1.tar.gz (about 1.2 MB compressed). There is also a patch file of diffs from the 0.0 release in /pub/gnu/hurd-0.0-0.1-diff.gz (about 75 KB compressed).

The GNU Hurd, plus Mach, is a kernel, not an operating system. The GNU operating system, like the Unix operating system, consists of many components, including kernel, libraries, compilers, assembler, shell, parser generators, utilities, window system, editors, text formatters, and so on.

Most GNU software is packed using the GNU `gzip' compression program. Source code is available on most sites distributing GNU software.

For information on how to order GNU software on tape or cd-rom, and printed GNU manuals, check the file etc/ORDERS in the GNU Emacs distribution, ftp the file /pub/gnu/GNUinfo/ORDERS on prep, or e-mail a request to: gnu@prep.ai.mit.edux

### ImageMagick Release 3.7.6

ImageMagick (TM), version 3.7.6, is a package for display and interactive manipulation of images for the X Window System. Although the software is copyrighted, it is available for free and can be redistributed without fee.

In addition to the image display program, ImageMagick also has command line programs that perform these functions:

- Describe the format and characteristics of an image
- Convert an image from one format to another
- Transform an image or sequence of images
- Read an image from an X server and output it as an image file
- Animate a sequence of images
- Combine one or more images to create new images
- Create a composite image by combining several separate images
- Segment an image based on the color histogram
- Retrieve, list, or print files from a remote network site

ImageMagick supports many of the more popular image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photo CD, etc.

    Primary-site:   ftp.wizards.dupont.com /pub/ImageMagick/binaries
                    841k ImageMagick-i486-linux-ELF.tar.gz

    Alternate-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/X11/xapps/graphics
                    841k ImageMagick-3.7.6-elf.tgz
                      1k ImageMagick-3.7.6-elf.lsm

    Platforms:      Linux 1.2/2.0, XFree 3.1.2

Additional Information:
Alexander.Zimmermann zimmermann@fmi.uni-passau.de
http://www.uni-passau.de/~zimmerma

### masqd/masq for Linux Firewall

A new release of masqd/masq software is available free at:

http://www.els.url.es/~si03786/masq.html

This is a software to manage remotely a Linux firewall with masquerade support. There are three main programs: A daemon (masqd), a network client to connect to the daemon (masq) and a local configuration utility (lmasq) which integer this masq kit.

Some characteristics of the kit are:

- Possibility of controling the three firewalls in a Linux System (input, forward and output).
- Supports of masquerade policy, to masquerade paquets if Linux kernel supports it.
- User authentification in each connection.
- CRC checking of network packets.
- Allows to control remotely masquerade entries.

Additional Information:
Jaume Miralles, si03786@els.url.es
Barcelona, SPAIN http://www.els.url.es/~si03786

### SpriteField - a sprite library for Qt/X11

The SpriteField Class Set is a collection of classes supporting multiple simultaneous flicker-free displays of efficiently redrawn continuous and non-continuous animated areas with the Qt GUI Toolkit. Animated areas are two-dimensional rectangular areas upon which two-dimensional masked raster images are in motion. Applications vary from computer games to simulations. Qt 0.99 is required. Full sources and an precompiled example program are included and can be found at:
http://student.uq.edu.au/~s002434/qt/SpriteField/doc/html/

Additional Information:
Warwick Allison warwick@cs.uq.oz.au
Computer Science Department
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia

### TeamRooms - Internet groupware environment for Linux

Mark Roseman, University of Calgary CPSC, announced the first public beta release of TeamRooms, an Internet groupware environment that lets you work together with colleagues in real-time or asynchronously, using Unix, Mac and Windows.

TeamRooms provides "shared spaces" on the Internet allowing groups to share information. These electronic team rooms provide places to meet in real-time, or a common locale to leave information for other collaborators. TeamRooms combines real-time groupware technologies such as shared whiteboards, chat rooms, and customizable groupware applets with a persistent work environment.

Information on downloading is available on our Web site:
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/projects/grouplab/teamrooms/

Additional Information:
Mark Roseman, Research Associate, roseman@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
University of Calgary, http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~roseman
Calgary, Alta CANADA T2N 1N4

### Turbo Linux 96

Pacific HiTech is proud to announce Turbo Linux 96 : Slackware Edition.

This product is based on the latest Slackware 3.1 Linux release. It incorporates the 2.0 kernel, the floppy-less install, the live filesystem, and everything else that you would expect. Best of all, we have it for sale for only $12.95 (plus $5 shipping inside the USA, $10 international).

Additional Information:
Scott M. Stone, sstone@pht.com
Pacific HiTech, Inc., http://www.pht.com/

### V Multi-Platform GUI

Version 1.13 of V for X was released on September 9, 1996. It is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cs.unm.edu/~wampler or via anonymous FTP at ftp://ftp.cs.unm.edu/pub/wampler.

V is an easy to program, cross-platform C++ GUI Framework. V was designed to make it the easiest way to write C++ graphical user interface applications available -- commercial, shareware, or freeware.

Most standard GUI objects are supported by V, including windows with menus, status bars, tool bars, and a drawing canvas; modal and modeless dialogs with the most common controls (buttons, lists, labels, text entry, check and radio buttons, etc.); and portable printing support.

Additional Information:
Bruce E. Wampler, Ph.D., wampler@cs.unm.edu
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~wampler

This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com