LinuxNovice is going to reopen itself in an attempt to help new linux users get the most out of their operating system.

Most network cards now-a-days autonegotiate their speend based on what the other end of your network cable will do. To see the speed of your card, as root, run mii-tool (part of the net-tools rpm).


root@host]# /sbin/mii-tool
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok


You can get better performace by hard coding the speed and duplex. Since most NICs are jumperless, you need a tool to do this. Again mii-tool comes to the rescue.


root@host]# /sbin/mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD
root@host]# /sbin/mii-tool
eth0: 100 Mbit, full duplex, link ok
root@host]#


So there you have it, your NIC is now hard coded to full duplex, 100 Mbit. Why would you want to do this? Well by hard coding this value you prevent your NIC from renegotiating its speed which it might do and come in at a lower speed.

Gaim: an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) client for Linux

There was a time, believe it or not, when anybody who dared to run Linux on
their desktop PC had to struggle in order to find the tools that were common
in the Windows environment. Applications such as Quicken, Word Perfect or
MS Word, Excel, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger did not have any equivalent
in the Linux world. Of course, the UNIX world itself was also affected by
the same problem. It appeared as if this was a world where only developers,
system administrators and scientists had a place and UNIX and Linux
workstations were used to… well, work.

But these days all this situation has changed quite a bit. Linux has moved
to the center stage, and many people even view it as an alternative to
Windows and the MacOS. More and more people are using it not only at work
but also at home. Linux developers have managed to either port the
applications we just talked about, or cloned them in some cases. Then,
there are also some other instances where they managed to create something
that was even better than the original Windows application. The world
of instant messaging could be an example of the latter. Not only did
Linux developers manage to port these applications to Linux (e.g. the
Java version of AIM
released by AOL itself), but in some other cases they managed to come up
with pretty good clones (e.g. the
Gaim client that we review here, or
licq), and even innovate with a whole new approach to the subject
matter such as Jabber. Whoever said
that open source cannot be creative!

In any case, we\’ll limit ourselves to the Gaim client in this review. The
installation of the app itself is pretty easy, and the fact that there are
several packages available makes it even easier. You can choose to
download the source code in a tarball and compile it youself, or perhaps
obtain a binary RPM (for either the i386 or the PPC architecture) or a source
RPM that you can compile. I couldn\’t see any other packages available on
the
main site but there are also at least .deb packages available elsewhere.
But before you even try to download and install the program, check out and
make sure it is not already installed on your system. Many distributions
already install it by default these days.

Once installed, you can run Gaim either from the menu (it should be in
the Internet menu within Gnome) or from the command prompt by entering the
command \’gaim &\’ (don\’t forget that ampersand to put it in the background!).
You will first see the login screen, which should look pretty familiar to
you if you ever ran the old Windows AIM client.

If you find the bell sound in the shell very annoying, simply enter the following line in your ~/.inputrc file:

set bell-style none

If you have installed RedHat 7.x reciently, you might have noticed a problem with the way the \”ls\” command sorts files and directories. In versions before 7.x, \”ls\” sorted dot files first then directories (uppercase then lower case)
next. However, in 7.x (I noticed it in 7.1, but in usenet postings/mailing list messages others noticed it in 7.0), \”ls\” sorts alphabetically only; mixing dotfiles (upper and lower case) with directories (upper and lower case). Ick!

Here\’s the fix. Add this to your .bash_profile or .profile:

export LC_COLLATE=C

That\’s it! After this change, \”ls\” sorts the way the Unix Gods intened.

Introduction

In my last article I explained a (very) basic .muttrc file. From
Part One you wouldn\’t think much of Mutt or all the wonderful
functions that I waxed so eloquently about. This was intentional. Mutt
can be a beast to configure (as some of my readers pointed out). But
my philosophy on climbing the steep learning curve is always to start
slow and work your way toward complexity. This is a difficult thing for
some like me who wants to learn it all NOW. With Mutt this will certainly
*not* happen.

But our basic .muttrc file is really only in an embryonic stage. We need
to fill it out to give you a taste of how (excuse my excitement) \”Really
Cool\” Mutt can be. So in this article I will expand our
.muttrc file to add some much needed functionality.
Then I will get to what I think are Mutt\’s most useful features:
folder-hooks, send-hooks, save-hooks and and key bindings/macros.

Errata

Before we get to Part Two, lets get the Part One errata out of the
way. I missed some important information that I should have caught.
First, the \”pop\” variables all should have \”set\” in front of them.
D\’oh! Second, Mutt will create the default mail directory \”Mail\” in
your home directory. However, it will not create your spoolfile. This
is because Mutt assumes your spoolfile (the place your MDA is saving
new incoming messages) is already created. I thought I explained it
adequately but, upon further review, I didn\’t. So let me try again.

Mutt is configured to read the mail in your spoolfile. After
reading said mail, you can either delete the mail or save it to your \”~/Mail\”
directory for archiving. However, the mailboxes will need to be created to
save this mail. Normally Mutt will use the senders username from
their email address to name the mailbox and prompt you if it is not
already created. In my case I have Procmail move my mail directly in ~/Mail/Inbox
(among other places). This, then becomes my default spoolfile.
I failed to mention, however, that I had to create the \”Inbox\”, \”Unsent\”,
and \”Sent\” mailboxes with the command touch [mailboxname].Some
readers tried to use the example .muttrc from the article and found that it
didn\’t work. This was an oversight on my part for not being more clear.
Mea Culpa.

To set or not to set…

Now with that out of the way lets get down to bidness, shall we?
First lets get the \”unset\” type options out of the way. As I mentioned
in Part One, I organize my options in \”set\” and \”unset\” sections for
clarity. This is a personal preference and a quick search of the
.muttrc files of other Mutt users (check the link at bottom) will
show you this is true.

Unset Options

Here are some of the options I \”unset\”:

unset confirmappend     # Don\'t ask me if I want to save a message
unset mark_old          # Don\'t mark unread messages \"old\"
unset collapse_unread   # If a thread has an unread msg, don\'t collapse
unset markers           # Don\'t use \"+\" to show wrapped lines
unset metoo             # Remove my address when replying
unset suspend           # Don\'t stop on Ctrl-Z
unset wait_key          # Used for \"autoview\" see below
unset pager_stop        # Go to next msg at the end of current msg.

Of these options, by far the most annoying for me was the \"markers\"
option. So this had to go. The \"metoo\" option is
nice to have unset; it saves you from getting many duplicate email
messages. Again, most options can be \"unset\" so this is just a
sample. Check the .muttrc files of other Mutt\'ers and you will see all
sorts of different options.

Set Options

Now for the options I have \"set\":

set use_domain
set resolve
set postpone = ask-yes
set print = ask-yes
set delete = ask-yes
set editor = \"vim -T rxvt\"
set copy = yes
set nobeep
set tmpdir = /tmp
set history = 20
set nomarkers
set menu_scroll
set quit = yes
set auto_tag
set beep_new
set status_on_top
set mail_check = 5
set delete = ask-yes
set smart_wrap
set tilde
set pager_context = 3
set pager = builtin
set visual = vim
set askcc
set hidden_host
set shell=/bin/bash
set include = yes
set abort_nosubject = no
set mailcap_path = \"/home/poppy17/smanuel/.mailcap\"
set help = yes
set folder_format = \"%2C %3N %2l %-8.8u %-8.8g %8s %d %f\"
set print_command = \"lpr -Pbw\"

Wow. Lots of options aren\'t there!? Most of them are self
explanatory but I will go over the more esoteric ones.
use_domain is useful if you send a lot of mail to
your own domain name; just type in the recipients username and mutt
will tack on the domain name you set with the
hostname option. I have askcc
set for convenience sake; I never know when I will need to CC an
email and this always reminds me. I should explain what the
ask-yes and ask-no values
mean. Any option of type quadoption can be
\"ask-yes\", \"ask-no\", \"yes\" or \"no\". The \"ask-yes/no\" means to ask you
but with a default answer of either yes or no. So, for the set
postpone option I set this to ask-yes
because I sometimes hit the \"q\" key by mistake. Moreover, if I
do want to postpone an message I can press \"q-enter\" quite
quickly. set auto_tag will allow you to apply a
function in the index menu against all tagged messages. e.g. tag 5
messages from jdoe@foo.com and press the \"s\" key and voila!, all
tagged messages are saved to the same place.

Hooks, Hooks and More Hooks

Now to Send Hooks, Folder Hooks and Save Hooks...

# Send Hooks
send-hook . \'my_hdr From: Steve Manuel \'
send-hook @linuxnovice.org \'set signature = ~/.signature\'

# Folder Hooks
folder-hook . \'set index_format=\"%4C %Z %{%b %d} %-15.15F (%4l) %s\"\'
folder-hook . set sort = threads
folder-hook . set sort_aux = reverse-date-received
folder-hook =Sent set sort_aux = reverse-date-sent
folder-hook =received set sort = from

# Save Hooks
save-hook markml        =People/Markml
save-hook dmb           =People/dmb
save-hook mbar          =People/mbar

Now, how do these hook things work? First the Send hooks: Send hook
actions are based on the recipients address. The first
send hooks says that all outgoing msg should have a \"From\" header
added (dot before the pattern means apply this rule to all messages).
The second send hook tells mutt to use a certain signature file for
any recipient in the linuxnovice.org domain. Image all the fun you
can have with this type of send-hook!

Folder hook actions are based on which mailbox you
are reading. In my example the first three folder hooks are global; I
set the format for all message entries in the index, sort by threads
as well as reverse-date-received. I should explain what the
index_format really means. This is option uses the
\"C\" printf() style syntax. It really is Greek to me but I was able to
use examples from other .muttrc files to get something that I liked.
The important part here is the \"%-15.15F\" section. The capital \"F\" is
defined to be the authors name or recipients name if sent from you.
This is more helpful to me than the default. If you have experience
with the printf function in \"C\" you shouldn\'t have any problem
understanding this. If you don\'t have any experience don\'t get
discouraged; I don\'t either.

The next two affect different folders. In my sent folder I want to
see messages based on when I sent them and in my received folder from
whom I received the message. Folder hooks are one of the best features
about Mutt. As you can see, I view most of my folders the same way,
but with folder hooks I can do \"one-off\" tweaking where necessary.
Very nice!

Save hooks act on the \"From:\" header of a messages or the \"To:\"
header if you are the author. I use this option when I don\'t have a Procmail
recipe filtering mail from a certain sender. This way I see these
messages in my Inbox and when I get done reading them, pressing \"s\"
will have Mutt save message in the mailbox specified by the save hook.
Oh, baby oh!

Hmmm.... Macros... Key Bindings...

And finally Macros and Key bindings...

# Key bindings
bind    pager   k   previous-line
bind    pager   j   next-line
bind    index   H   display-toggle-weed
bind    pager   H   display-toggle-weed

# Show documentation when typing \"help\"
macro generic help \"!lynx ~/doc/mutt/html/manual.html\\n\" \"Show Mutt documentation\"
macro index   help \"!lynx ~/doc/mutt/html/manual.html\\n\" \"Show Mutt documentation\"
macro pager   help \"!lynx ~/doc/mutt/html/manual.html\\n\" \"Show Mutt documentation\"
macro pager   A     |\'~/LINUX/share/mutt/mail2muttalias.py\'\\n \"Get all aliases from e-mail\"

# Macros to invoke a profile
macro   generic D   \":source ~/.muttrc\\n\" \"Load default profile\"
macro   index   D   \":source ~/.muttrc\\n\" \"Load default profile\"
macro   pager   D   \":source ~/.muttrc\\n\" \"Load default profile\"
macro   generic C   \":source ~/.muttrc.alternate\\n\" \"Load alternate profile\"
macro   index   C   \":source ~/.muttrc.alternate\\n\" \"Load alternate profile\"
macro   pager   C   \":source ~/.muttrc.alternate\\n\" \"Load alternate profile\"

Key bindings allow you to assign a key to a particular function.
These functions are available for you perusal in the last section of
the Mutt manual. In my example, I have replaced the arrow keys with
the \'j\' and \'k\' keys for up/down line movement. This way I can use
the finger memory I have learned from Vi. I also bound the \'H\' key to
toggle the header weeding (for some reason it wasn\'t bound). For the
most part, Mutt comes with a complete set of key bindings. You
generally don\'t need to add any extras.

Macros, on the other hand, come in handy. A macro is a key or
key sequence that performs a set of actions. Quite a few \"third party\"
add-on scripts are invoked using macros. To learn how macros work, I
played around with binding the word \"help\" with the action of
launching the Mutt manual in Lynx. Also, I use, among others, the
mail2muttalias program to extract all email addresses in a message and
save them to the alias file. It is invoked using the \"A\" which runs
the Python script mail2muttalias.py.

So there you have it. A quick run-down of some of the more important
features of Mutt. It goes without saying that this is not a full
description of everything Mutt can do. I do have a family you know.
But this should get you started on fleshing out your own
.muttrc. In Part three I will try to tackle PGP and any
other bits I left out. If you have experience with Mutt and PGP drop me a
note with explanations. *Simple* explanations please, I\'m sorta slow.
Until next time. Happy Mutt\'ing!

Links

Links I mentioned in the article:
Mutt config samples

If you\’re looking for a \”SuSE rules\” or \”SuSE sucks\” type of review here,
I will not make you waste your time. Go ahead and point your browser somewhere
else. The same applies if you came here looking for a star rating system
that will help you compare SuSE and other Linux distributions. First of
all, I have never believed in that kind of product reviews. I would rather
describe the product (SuSE Linux 7.1 Professional, in this case), talk
about its pros and cons, where it could be used productively, where it may
make no sense to use it, and then step out and leave it to you to make a
decision. But, second, I think I still have to install and run a Linux
distribution that \”sucks\”. What I mean is that, after all, it is Linux
that we are talking about here, the kernel does not change much, and all
distributions have their strengths and their weaknesses. I would actually
go as far as to state that it is not possible to \”rate\” distributions like
so many people do, especially because everything depends on what the user
intends to do with the Linux system. Are you trying to install a Linux
distribution on a development workstation, a multimedia home desktop, a
database server, an intranet departmental server? Everything depends on
that, and your personal preferences.

The package

If you were looking for a Linux distribution that included it all, SuSE may
be the one you should place your bets on. The SuSE 7.1
Professional box packs 4 manuals, 7 CDs and even a DVD. The guys at SuSE
may very well be setting the trend in this sense, since there is a good
chance that very soon vendors will distribute large collections of software
in DVD format. In total, the box contains over 2000 programs.

In spite of the embarrassment of riches that this collection of software
may inspire on any new user approaching the Linux world, there is no doubt
in my mind that the most impressive feature of SuSE 7.1 is the documentation.
Other major vendors, especially Red Hat and Caldera, would better learn
from these guys and include some decent documentation with their next
releases. SuSE 7.1 Professional includes a Quick Install Manual
that truly lives up to its name, offering the user some clear instructions
on how to install the distribution, together with plenty of screenshots
so new users do not get lost. The Applications manual contains
basic directions on how to use Star Office 5.2, Adobe Acrobat, Midnight
Commander, joe, Netscape, the GIMP, kscd (the KDE CD player), xmms, and
even Xsane (a scanning utility). The Configuration manual holds
the user\’s hand in a tour that explains how to configure a SuSE Linux
system, but also how to use applications such as Konqueror or KOffice.
More important though, it also explains how to configure a printer, how
to write CDs, configure Wine, work on the shell, and even how to install
a TV card. Finally, the actual Handbook or Technical guide for
SuSE Linux 7.1 (definitely the largest at 615 pages) covers installation,
configuration via YaST, network configuration, the X Window System, kernel
compilation, and even some security basics. The only criticism that could
be levelled at SuSE regarding their documentation is that it is a little bit
too KDE-centric. If you prefer Gnome, you won\’t find a lof of information
in their manuals. But then, on the other hand, SuSE made the decision a
long time ago to make KDE their default desktop manager, so this should
not surprise us at all.

Altogether, the packaging is attractive and extremely professional. A
definite must for first time users who may need some help with the
installation, setup and configuration of their Linux systems. As a final
little detail that gives you an idea of how important documentation seems
to be for the SuSE guys, the little booklet containing the installation
media also has a printed FAQ with questions such as Where can I see
system messages?, How can I see the free disk space in Linux or
Why Linux seems to consume my entire RAM?\”. Exquisite.

Installation

As for the installation itself, SuSE 7.1 Professional once again lived
up to its official label of being a professional distribution. It may
be the German passion for good engineering or the European love for civil
respect, but one has to love things like the hardware detection routine
\”looking for a braille display\”. After that, the graphical installer
YaST2 came up on the screen, checked the system, and displayed a polished
look to let me choose the default language that would be used during the
installation process. I must say that I really liked the GUI installer,
especially the detail of always displaying some concise but always informative
help on a left panel regarding the choices that I was faced with. For
example, during the stage where I had to choose between the different
types of installation it showed me the disk space they would use.

By the way, not only does the installer always lets the user go to the
previous step in the installation but it also lets you abort it at any
given phase. I know this is simple, but it\’s something not all distributions
can be proud of. Also, at all times a cute graphic at the top of the
GUI gave me an idea how long into the installation process I was.

Aside from a general feeling of professionalism, perhaps the most impressive
feature of the YaST2 installer is the simplicity used to deal with the
hard drive partitioning. Sure, I\’ve already partitioned lots of disks and
don\’t feel intimidated by the process anymore, but YaST2 made it really
easy even to the beginner. As for the installation choices, you get the
following: all packages, minimal, default, and default with StarOffice (the
one I chose). It also lets you choose to install both the 2.2.18 and 2.4.0
kernels, or simply one of them.

Finally, before going ahead and partitioning the hard drive, YaST2 gives
you a final warning and ahead it goes with the installation, always keeping
you informed about the status of the installation. At all times there is
still an \”Abort Installation\” button readily available in case you have
second thoughts or suddenly realize that you won\’t have enough time to wait
for the installation after all and decide to postpone it until later. As
a last detail, the installation wizard lets you know that you can run the
lilo -u /dev/hda if you want to restore the old MBR.

Since the SuSE distribution comes split in so many CDs, I always wondered
if it dealt with this fact in a graceful way. Well, as you might expect,
it did. After installing the packages, it rebooted again into YaST2 and
requested me to insert the second CD, offering me a Eject button
so I could still control when to perform the action (I really dislike it
when other installers simply pop up the CD without even telling me).

As for the configuration of XFree86, SuSE has always had a good reputation
in this sense. Although I didn\’t like the fact that it forced me to test
the video settings to proceed with the rest of the configuration, the
\”Xfine tuning\” section of the installation process is definitely
a wonderful touch. It basically allows the user to set an optimal screen
dimension. How often did you share a monitor between Linux and Windows
and had to constantly resize the screen dimensions when switching from one
to the other? Well, SuSE takes care of that for you.

The final steps of the YaST2 installation allowed me to configure sound
(the sound card, a standard Sound Blaster card, was detected without any
problem and this other feature allowed me to define the default volume),
the network interfaces (it even allowed me to configure the PPP setup,
which is definitely a plus for novice users), etc. Once I was done with
that, the system dropped me into the graphical login on runlevel 5, but
not without previously restarting a few daemons (SSH among others) and
generating the SSH keys.

In case you are wondering what to do in order to format the hard drive as
a reiserfs filesystem, simply choose the customized option to partition the
drive and select \”reiserfs\” as the filesystem type. Keep in mind that no
single partition can be smaller than 30 MB, since that\’s precisely the
size of the log for reiserfs filesystems. So, for those who like to create
small /boot partitions, keep that in mind. But then, why would you care
about creating a reiserfs filesystem for a /boot partition? The installer
also lets you install the 2.2.18 kernel, the 2.4.0 kernel or both, thus making
SuSE 7.1 Professional the first Linux distribution out there that comes
preconfigured for the newer 2.4 kernel.

Overall, a very well designed, professional and polished installation
routine. There is not doubt in my mind is perhaps the best one I\’ve seen
so far.

Usage

So, let\’s go for a driving tour but keeping in mind that my test drive was
somehow limited in time. Overall, the KDE2 desktop looks impressive and
stable although somehow more \”kewl\” than the previous version of KDE,
and I\’m not sure I like that. The default theme has something to it that
makes it look not as clear as the default theme in KDE1. Call me old
fashioned if you may, but I sort of liked that clean, business-like look
of KDE1 that KDE2 pretty much throws away in order to compete with Gnome
in \”coolness\”. By the way, some people seem to be really impressed by the
new KDE feature that allows you to open multiple X terminals within one
single window, but I find it rather annoying as a matter of fact. I\’d rather
see all the windows opened in my workspace so I can take a peek and get
information from them. Oh, well, it must be a matter of personal preference.

All those users who never liked the traditional SuSE initialization scripts
will be glad to hear that SuSE adheres to the Linux Standard Base now, and
you can find them in the more standard location (/etc/rc.d). By the way,
in keeping up with the professionalism that characterizes SuSE, they went
ahead and left a init.d.README file in /sbin explaining the new initialization
system. Now, when is the last time you saw a little detail like this from
Red Hat, for example?

Then, even with the default installation plus StarOffice that I chose,
the amount of applications is so huge that one feels sort of overwhelmed.
I got the feeling I\’d need around a couple of hours or so just to check all
the apps that were installed. A little annoyance I found is that the GIMP
couldn\’t be found under the Graphics menu off the main KDE button.
After some poking around, I found it buried in the SuSE menu, but
I then had to open the Multimedia/Graphics and then the Graphics
menus to access it. Sort of annoying.

A couple of interesting applications I found while checking the menus are
worth any little annoyance though. First of all, the FTPD Editor (kwuftpd)
allows the user to configure the FTP server simply using a clear point and
click interface. This tool alone should save the SuSE tech support people
quite a few calls, and it\’s worth its weight in gold. I also liked the
Font Installer utility included under the System menu.

From there I moved onto Konqueror. I had heard a lot about this browser
as a possible alternative to Netscape, so I knew I had to give it a try.
Well, it does have a few nice details. For example, the default screen
lets you add FTP servers and web sites that you can reach from the left
panel, just the same way you can also access Windows shares and local files.
In this sense, Konqueror blurs the line between the local system and the
network. As for its functionality as a browser, I found it pretty fast
and couldn\’t recognize any major bug or problem while displaying pages.
It\’s a nice piece of software, and a strong competitor for Netscape and
Mozilla.

Perhaps the only issue I\’d have is that many applications seem to lag a
little bit in order to appear on the screen when launching. Mind you,
I\’m not referring to big applications like StarOffice where we all learnt
to expect these delays, but even smaller applications such as Konqueror
itself. The same application is also available in a menu off the main
start bar at the bottom of the screen, but the fact is that it takes a
while to realize that. It\’s also sort of confusing the way SuSE arranges
the menus in several different ways, and quite a few of them are displaying
the very same applications. It sort of gives the overwhelming feeling of
a labyrinthical collection of menus.

A final touch of the elegant design behind SuSE 7.1 Professional
came when I selected the YaST2 menu and it displayed individual choices
for all the major subsystems (DNS, NIS, modem, sound, inetd.conf, boot,
Sendmail, etc.). This is a nice detail, especially taking into account
that in the case of other Linux distributions one needs to open the whole
humongous system configuration tool in order to change even the simplest
thing. The same menu also offers the choice to tune the system by running
the hdparm utility, and to start an online upgrade of the system.

Conclusions

I must say that, overall, SuSE 7.1 Professional offers an impressive
piece of software engineering that is worth much more than the US $69.95
price tag that carries. It offers a comprehensive array of applications,
an excelent collection of printed manuals that should be the envy of any
other Linux vendor, a stable and professional looking installation tool,
and a default desktop that is very well put together to provide a nice
working environment perhaps with the exception of the overwhelming amount
of menus appearing all over the place to provide access to the very same
applications over and over again. By the way, my Default plus StarOffice
installation included KDE, fvwm2, mwm, twm and WindowMaker but no
Gnome. I suppose if you like Gnome you will need to perform a customized
type of installation.

I\’d recommend this distribution to any newbie who is just trying to get
his or her feet wet in the Linux world, more experienced users who are using
Linux for a home desktop, and even advanced users and developers. Nevertheless,I\’d say SuSE 7.1 Professional shines when it\’s installed in a home environment
or perhaps for first timers. If you\’re trying to set up a Linux server of
any type (FTP, Web, database), you can certainly make it work with this,
but SuSE has other packages for the server market.

• What is raid (definition, raid levels, why use it)
• Software based Raid (vs hardware)
• Explain what you do (us9ing RH, do this this this….)
• Links to other stuff

In case you didn\’t hear about this whole dispute, let me briefly explain
it for you. It turned out that two members of the KDE team (Kurt Granroth
and Andreas Pour) found out that Ximian was paying for some \”sponsored links\”
on the Google search engine that would only show up when a user would do
a search for anything related to the KDE project (say, \”KDE\”, \”kword\” or
\”kspread\”, for example). They sat down and wrote Business Ethics\” in the Open Source Community? to
protest against that move. The article started a debate in LinuxToday (see
the discussions at the bottom of the page). Then, the Ximian CEO and
developer (Nat Friedman) was requested to express his views by one of
LinuxToday\’s contributors, which in turn reignited the discussion. In
the end, Ximian published an
announcement on their web site explaining that they would discontinue
the campaign, even though the company had \”designed its advertising strategy
in good faith and had no intention to offend or deceive anyone\”. Granroth
and Pour updated their original article with a note acknowledging this
change in Ximian\’s policy and basically considering the case closed. They
all agreed to make peace and went to the closest pub to share a few beers…
right? Well, not quite.

First of all, the current fight cannot be understood without resorting to the
historical competition between the KDE and Gnome/Ximian teams. Some deep
disagreements and even personal animosity have to exist there in order for this to happen. I mean, things got really out of hand in just a
matter of hours. It may have started with the old dispute about the QT
license and whether it truly was free software or not, but then both sides
definitely escalated the tension (at least in the business sense) with the
creation of a couple of foundations and the public announcement of several
partnerships with major companies to further their cause. In other words,
the dispute had been moving away from a purely programming issue that could
be discussed on technical grounds to a political and business issue that
was deemed to cause some friction.

So, lesson #1: mounting tensions between two different open source teams
does not necessarily lead to \”healthy competition\”, but in some ocassions
to the equivalent of a Cold War that erupts every now and then leaving behind
a history of resentment, bad memories, and in general bad publicity for
the community as a whole. Hackers tend to be passionate about technical
issues, but when it comes to these other issues there is an additional
element (social and political, as well as business like) that should be
taken into account, and a cold headed attitude is what the doctor prescribed
for those situations.

The second interesting thing to notice (and directly associated to the
previous point) is that Linux, as well as open source in general, is becoming
a business. Come on, folks! We knew it was going to happen sooner or
later. This is the sort of thing that happens when a product becomes popular
and moves to the mainstream. All of a sudden, there is money, interests,
market share, investors… In this sense, Ximian\’s campaign was certainly
naive and even amateurish but far from being the type of hardball tactic
they\’ve been accused of. After all, like someone pointed out in one of
the online discussions, I visit LinuxToday everyday and see a banner at the
very top announcing… FreeBSD! Is that unethical? Is that unacceptable?
Hardly so, I\’d guess. Like it or not, Linux is moving to the center stage,
which means that we\’ll have to learn how to live with things like this.
You say you don\’t like it? Well, I suppose there\’s always FreeBSD…
although of course there is no guarantee that BSDi will never resort to
these tactics either. So, unless you want to build your own kernel and
start all over again perhaps there is not much you can do.

Therefore, lesson #2: becoming mainstream also brings mainstream problems
and attitudes with it. These Linux companies, that to a great extent are
precisely the ones that brought us to the center stage, need to make some
money, pay their employees and even return money to their investors. So,
get ready to see the regular array of attitudes and tactics used in the
business world. Virginity has been lost.

Third, as we move into this business environment, I think it\’s rather
interesting that the very same side that launched a free software crusade
against the KDE guys just a couple of years ago for using the QT license
is now using these methods to compete in the market. In other words,
the idealists who launched that crusade are scrambling now to justify their
actions by using the old tired cliches of the business class (you know,
\”friendly competition\” for market share, \”healthy\” information for
potential users that this way are exposed to a wide arrange of options,
and the rest of the managerial speak). I may be the only one to find
this so ironic, but we may end up with the guys who started playing the
role of the bad guys moving all the way to the other end. Makes for an
exciting plot, doesn\’t it? Perhaps the open source community shouldn\’t
be so dogmatic in the future in judging those who release source code
to the public. Maybe Linus\’ own attitude is the one we all should adopt
in this regard: \”he who writes the code gets to choose his license, and
nobody else gets to complain\”.

And here comes lesson #3: dogmatism and oversimplication need to be
avoided when facing these disputes. The open source world is not a battle
between the good guys and the bad guys, even though we all grew used to
this mindset by constantly portraying Microsoft as the Evil Empire. Well,
the fact is that the Redmond giant is not the devil either, and we\’d better
start maturing and adopting a richer, more complex, approach to the
world that surrounds us.

Finally, perhaps we should all reconsider if the means that have served
us so well to this point (total openness, online communication, quasi
anarchistic exchange of views in bulleting boards…) are the most appropriate
for the new situation Linux is at. For keep in mind that a lot of people
are carefully following the open source community these days, and any of
these childish disputes can certainly be taken out of context and easily
represented as \”anarchy\”, \”chaos\”, and overall inmaturity of a community
that will never be able to create an environment where businesses can
flourish. I mean, it\’s one thing to discuss technical issues in a heated
way as it happens quite often in the Linux kernel list, and it\’s a
completely different thing to air these internal infighting to the whole
world. Shouldn\’t the parties involved have met each other first and try
to work it out before making a fool of themselves and of the whole
community? As Lou Grinzo says in closing his article on this issue, I don\’t even
want to think what Bill Gates felt like while reading the news.

So, lesson #4: the fact that this is the open source world does not mean
that we should throw good old education and polite behavior over the board.
Before you start a fit and throw heavy words words in an email for the world
to see, please take the time to approach the other party and see if there
is a better way to solve the dispute. The fact that you shout louder doesn\’t
necessarily increases the rationality of your position.

A funny thing happened to my brother-in-law at CompUSA yesterday…he was looking for some blank CD-R
media and took a stroll past the Linux rack on the way to it. There they had SuSE 7.0 Professional
Marked at a penny, so he asks a sales person what the deal is and he scanned the item and sure enough
it was one penny. We are both playing with Linux as time permits us in our lives and generally share
a little knowledge between ourselves at family gathering and such so he buys two figuring I might want
one.

I have tried several distros since my Linux box is more of a toy to me at this point than a link to
the world so I have removed and installed many versions to see what they are made of. So last night I
popped open an Icehouse Beer and sat down to play. What a surprise, my previous experience with SuSE
has been less than impressive (6.1 was my last attempt). SuSE Professional comes with 6 CD’s (7.1 will
be released on Feb 12 with 7 CD’s) and all those CD’s are also on a single DVD. It installs via YaST 2
and, as usual, can boot from the CD-Rom if your system allows.

When I install any distro I always install everything the setup allows because I want all the toys
available to me, so this time was no different. The graphical install was good looking and very easy to
understand. I get to the point of selecting my install options so I, by force of habit, check them all
(except installing the source code which SUSE does allow). This install took about two hours and took 4
of the 6 CD’s, used up 83% of my 4 gig hard drive and put in games, office apps, servers, firewalls, and
loads of configuration utilities…I have never seen that in any other distro! It is a virtual bottomless
toybox for the aspiring Linux geek.

After copying all the files to my hard drive it then goes through and detects the monitor and video card
(which it does very well with the newerXFree86 4.0) and allows custom setting and testing of many color
depths and resolution settings. After that it goes to one screen that auto-detects the printers,
soundcards, network cards and modems. I have no printer or modem hooked up yet, but the soundcard and
both network cards were detected and configured easily.

When the system reboots after all the installation and configuration I log in as a common user and was
very shocked to see a very usefull launch bar at the bottom of the screen, not the typical Linux launch
bars like every other distro I have used, but it had the typical “K” button that open the normal list of
goodies, plus it had a application menu that listed just apps by category plus a menu for just all the
configuration utilities for the system, network, printers, sound and all that other good stuff. I
thought that was a great idea, as it makes SuSE very easy to get around in.

Since I just did this last night, after the install, reboot and 3 or 4 Icehouses later I had to go to
bed so I didn’t get a lot of time to check out the cool new features in detail. But in closing I can
say this:

Linux SuSE 7.0 was the easiest install and configuration I have seen to date after trying about a dozen
makes and versions. It has the most complete software package that installs upon the initial install,
and with anly an evenings experience, appears to be the distro I just may stick with.