News Bytes #25

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

| ### Contents: News in General Software Announcements

### News in General

### March Linux Journal

The March issue of Linux Journal will be hitting the newsstands this week. The focus of this issue is Graphical User Interfaces with articles on XView, GTK+, X-Designer and CDE. Check out the Table of Contents.

### Netscape Announces Plans To Make Source Code Free

January 22, 1998

Netscape Communications Corporation today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet. The company plans to post the source code beginning with the first Netscape Communicator 5.0 developer release, expected by the end of the first quarter of 1998.

Netscape is releasing its currently available Netscape Navigator and Communicator Standard Edition 4.0 software products immediately free for all users.

In addition, the company separately announced the launch of an aggressive new software distribution program called "Unlimited Distribution" to broadly distribute its market-leading Internet client software for free. Unlimited Distribution enables Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecommunications companies, Web content providers, publishers and software developers to download and redistribute Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator easily with "no strings attached."

To read and post reactions about this latest announcement, Linux Journal has added a discussion group to our pages.

### Linux in the News

Eric Raymond's article "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" evidently made the rounds at Netscape and helped convince them that giving away Navigator source code was a good idea. If you've never read it, now is a good time.

Check out the article by Barton Crockett on msnbc: A Titanic Challenge to Microsoft

The February issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal has an interview with Larry Wall, the creator of Perl.

### The SEUL Project

The SEUL (Simple End-User Linux) Project is an organization dedicated to developing a free Linux distribution that presents a viable alternative to commercial PC operating systems. Currently based on Red Hat Linux, the SEUL distribution will cover many different aspects of Linux.

For more information:
Roger Dingledine, seul@seul.org
http://www.seul.org/

### The Linux Clothing Project

Check out http://genocide.adept.co.za/lcp/ to have your questions answered.

We're planning another t-shirt, with ordering opening on the 1st of February, 1998. All the info is on the page.

For more information:
Albert Strasheim, UUNET Internet Africa, fullung@ilink.nis.za

### Stampede Linux Logo Contest!

Along with the highly anticipated release of Stampede Linux 0.55 (heber), the developers felt it time to have an official logo. The developers also felt that they should look elsewhere for development of said logo. This contest is a result of the looking elsewhere bit. (Yes, prizes are part of this contest =]).

For more Information:
Matt Wood, Stampede Linux Head Developer, skibum@beer.stampede.org
http://www.stampede.org/

### 12th SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION CONFERENCE (LISA '98)

December 6-11, 1998
Boston, Massachusetts

The LISA '98 program is put together by a volunteer committee of experienced systems administrators. The Program Committee welcomes your submission. The Call for Participation is now available at http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa98/

Sponsored by USENIX, The Advanced Computing Systems Association Co-Sponsored by SAGE, the System Administrators Guild

### Japanese Word Processor

Perhaps you'd like to work on another exciting project? There is a Windows application, called JWP -- a Japanese Word Processor. This package was written by Stephen Chung, and as a GNU product it is freely distributable. I've used it extensively over the past few years, and it is a *great* package.

Unfortunately, JWP is only available for Windows right now, which is locking out a lot of people under other platforms who might benefit from it. As Stephen is quite busy with full-time work and maintaining the Windows versions (he's developing version 2.00 now), Steve Frampton has decided to go ahead with a port to X-Windows.

The JWP-Port Project home page contains more information on the JWP package as well as the JWP-Port project itself. If you are interested, please visit the page at http://qlink.queensu.ca/~3srf/jwp-port/.

For more information:
Steve Frampton, 3srf@qlink.queensu.ca

### A 3D CAD Application for Linux Project

FreeDesigner is intended to be a fully extendable Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CAD) application for Linux and other Unix type operating systems. Initially K Desktop Environment and GNOME/GTK frontends will be investigated, although it will be written as "toolkit inspecific" as is possible, by utilizing a GUI abstraction layer in FreeDesigner Core.

For more information:
Fleming, Petersen & Associates, http://www.fpa-engineers.com/OD/

### Artificial Intelligence

Interested in Artificial Intelligence, Eveolutionary Computing, Connectionism, Artificial Life, and/or Software Agents? Want to find out what software is available for Linux in these areas? Or are you just curious?

If so, check out my Linux AI/Alife mini-HOWTO at: http://www.ai.uga.edu/~jae/ai.html

For more information:
John A. Eikenberry, jae@bob.coe.uga.edu

### Digital Domain and Red Hat Linux

Digital Domain used Red Hat Linux not only for special effects in the movie Titanic but also in commercials that debuted during this Superbowl. Here's Red Hat's press release.

### Software Announcements

### eVote 2.2

Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998

eVote image
eVote is a freely available add-on to email list-servers that gives the members of the list the ability to poll each other. After installation of the software, the administrator is not involved. All participants have the power to open polls, vote, change their votes and view each other's votes if the particular poll was so configured. The underlying specialized data-server, The Clerk, is also freely available for Linux systems only. eVote 2.2 is available in both English and French.

For more information:
Marilyn Davis, mdavis@deliberate.com, http://www.Deliberate.com/

### FunktrackerGOLD 1.1

FunktrackerGOLD 1.1 has been released. FunktrackerGOLD is a module editor for Linux that allows you to compose digital music (similar to Fasttracker, Impulsetracker etc for those who are familar with them).

For more information:
Jason Nunn, jsno@dayworld.net.au
http://www.downunder.net.au/~jsno/proj/unix_projects/

### Quikscript

Quikscript is a PostScript text formatting and typesetting program. It enables documents to be prepared on any type of hardware, using visible layout marks to control the appearance of the output, and produce output on a PostScript printer by despatching Qs and the document file to the device. No processing is performed by the host hardware; all processing is done within the printer.

The advantage that Quikscript provides, other than portability, is precision of control over output. Because it is written in PostScript, it is interpreted at run-time within the printer. It is possible to create documents that modify the Quikscript program during execution. It is very easy to include other PostScript programs or fragments with Quikscript. It is possible to use special PostScript fonts, such as hand-generated ones. Graphics generated from a variety of sources can be easily included, as can text output from computer programs. It is possible to embed Quikscript within a document, such as an advertisement or a telephone bill.

The Quikscript distribution is available by anonymous ftp from "ftp.adfa.oz.au" in the directory "pub/postscript". It may also be accessed through the World Wide Web at URL http://www.cs.adfa.oz.au/~gfreeman/

For more information:
Graham Freeman, g-freeman@adfa.oz.au

### YP-Tools & YP-Server

Version 1.4 of the YP (NIS version 2) tools for Linux has been released. This package contains ypcat, ypmatch, ypset, ypwhich and yppasswd. You need this package for GNU C Library 2.x and Linux libc 5.4.21, but you should use libc 5.4.36 or later due some NIS bugs in libc. It replaces the old yp-clients 2.2 on this systems.

You could get the latest version from: http://www-vt.uni-paderborn.de/~kukuk/linux/nis.html

------------------------

Version 1.2.7 of an YP (NIS version 2) Server for Linux has been released. It also runs under SunOS 4.1.x, Solaris 2.4 - 2.6, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Ultrix and OSF1 (alpha).

The programs are needed to turn your workstation in a NIS server. It contains ypserv, ypxfr, rpc.ypxfrd, rpc.yppasswdd, yppush, ypinit, revnetgroup, makedbm and /var/yp/Makefile. This is NOT an NIS+ (NIS version 3) Server ! ypserv 1.2.7 is available under the GNU General Public License.

You could get the latest version from: http://www-vt.uni-paderborn.de/~kukuk/linux/nis.html

For more information:
Thorsten Kukuk, kukuk@vt.uni-paderborn.de

### Motif 2.1 for Linux

The latest and best release of Motif (version 2.1) is now available for the best operating system! Linked against both glibc (yes, it DOES work with RedHat 5) and libc (ie it works with Debian, Caldera, RedHat 4.0).

For more information:
LSL, http://www.lsl.com/, motif@lsl.com
NC Laboratories, http://www.nc-labs.com, sales@nc-labs.com

### NetTracker

NetTracker is one of the most powerful, yet easy to use Internet and Intranet usage tracking programs on the market today. NetTracker allows marketing professionals, webmasters and ISPs to get the essential information they need to make informed decisions regarding their web sites.

A demonstration of NetTracker can be seen at [http://www.sane.com/demo/], and a free 30 day evaluation copy can be downloaded from [http://www.sane.com/eval/].

For more information:
Sane Solutions, info@sane.com

### SCEPTRE-90

SCEPTRE-90 a program for the analysis and simulation of electrical nonlinear networks and dynamic systems is now available for Linux users (free of charge). The ftp site, where the program can be found is: novilux.fh-friedberg.de/pub/sceptre_linux.

Detailed documentation in english and german as well as many samples are included in the archive file.

For more information:
Prof. Dr. Wolf-Rainer Novender, novender@novilux.fh-friedberg.de

### BANAL 0.04 (free bookkeeping software)

BANAL is a bookkeeping system that allows you to track invoices, clients, projects, TODOs, bank accounts and expenses. BANAL is a client/server application so you can keep one set of books on your system while allowing everyone access.

For this release, BANAL can store your information, list (and allow searching of) information and generate invoices, income and expense statements. You can also make and use recurring and memorized transactions to ease the burden of creating them manually. Check the TODO file, that is included with the distribution, for an idea of what is coming in the next release.

If you want to obtain BANAL and try it out, ftp to: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/financial/accounting.

For more information:
Matthew Rice, Matthew.Rice@ftlsol.com

### Aegis 3.1 - Software Configuration Management System

Aegis is a transaction-based software configuration management system. It provides a framework within which a team of developers may work on many changes to a program independently, and Aegis coordinates integrating these changes back into the master source of the program, with as little disruption as possible.

http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/aegis.html

For more information:
Peter Miller, millerp@canb.auug.org.au

### Free CORBA 2 ORB - omniORB 2.4.0

The Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory has made available the second public release of omniORB (version 2.4.0). We also refer to this version as omniORB2. omniORB2 is copyright Olivetti & Oracle Research Laboratory. It is free software. The programs in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU General Public Licence as published by the Free Software Foundation. The libraries in omniORB2 are distributed under the GNU Library General Public Licence.

Source code and binary distributions are available from our Web pages: http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/omniORB.html

For more information:
Dr. Sai-Lai Lo, S.Lo@orl.co.uk
http://www.orl.co.uk/omniORB/omniORB_240/

### New Linux STREAMS Release

Linux STREAMS (LiS) version 1.12 is now available. This version supports kernels 2.0.24 through 2.0.33. By mutual consent of the authors, the licensing terms have been changed to the GNU Public Library License. This allows linking of proprietary STREAMS drivers with the LiS code. This version contains an install script which automates the installation.

It can be downloaded from ftp.gcom.com from the directory /pub/linux/src/streams-1-15-98.

For more information:
Mikel L. Matthews, mikel@gcom.com

### Speech Enhancement by Kalman Filtering Package

If you are interested in speech enhancement, signal processing in general, or applications of Kalman filtering, read on. Mr. Kybic has just finished his diploma work, entitled "Kalman Filtering and Speech Enhancement" which includes, among other things, an implementation of a Kalman smoothing based speech enhancement algorithm, working on speech signal corrupted by slowly changing coloured additive noise. Tested on Linux and HP-UX. Parallel version using PVM. It is not perfect but might be inspiring anyway. Free for non-commercial use.

http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~kybic/dipl

For more information:
Jan Kybic, xkybic@sun.felk.cvut.cz

Published in Linux Gazette Issue 25, February 1998

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