[00:00.920 --> 00:02.040]  All right.
[00:04.300 --> 00:05.200]  Good afternoon.
[00:05.600 --> 00:06.620]  Can everybody hear me?
[00:07.680 --> 00:08.240]  Okay.
[00:08.620 --> 00:19.160]  My name is Mike Johnston, and I'm the owner of Morse Telecommunication, the publisher of the Slackware Professional Linux product and the Linux Quarterly CD-ROM.
[00:19.700 --> 00:27.840]  And the organizers invited me here today to speak just a little bit about Linux and what it is, what it does, and what my company does.
[00:29.200 --> 00:32.520]  Mostly, I think, because everyone else of note is either in California or Finland.
[00:34.900 --> 00:40.700]  I first discovered Linux about a year and a half ago on the Internet.
[00:41.780 --> 00:52.680]  And I was initially fairly skeptical about its usability because there are an awful lot of things out there that have a lot of promise but usually don't pan out to be what they're touted to be.
[00:53.220 --> 00:56.380]  Well, I've got a pretty good background in system administration.
[00:56.840 --> 01:01.240]  I worked with Xenix, System 5, BSD, SCO, and so forth.
[01:01.340 --> 01:05.400]  So I pretty much knew what was involved in putting one of those systems together.
[01:06.340 --> 01:08.980]  And that, I suppose, was the basis of my skepticism.
[01:08.980 --> 01:15.100]  But nevertheless, I downloaded a copy of the original soft landing system version off the Internet.
[01:15.340 --> 01:17.360]  And I was fairly surprised.
[01:18.120 --> 01:20.860]  It was a very complete system.
[01:21.140 --> 01:27.060]  It essentially had all the features that I was used to in standard versions of UNIX.
[01:27.680 --> 01:38.360]  The compilers were there, Xwindows, development libraries, and most of the other Internet tools which had been around for years were already compiled and running under Linux.
[01:38.620 --> 01:42.060]  So essentially, it was a very complete version of the operating system.
[01:42.460 --> 01:45.760]  And I was surprised, to say the least.
[01:46.220 --> 01:53.900]  So I started by putting it on floppy disks, because at the time, I think it was about 30 disks worth or so.
[01:54.120 --> 02:00.420]  Which was, even then, still quite a handful, especially if you only have a 9600-baud connection to the Internet to download.
[02:01.540 --> 02:06.240]  So little did I know what I was getting myself into, because my phone started ringing.
[02:06.380 --> 02:09.800]  And the next thing I knew, I was copying thousands of floppy disks by hand.
[02:10.420 --> 02:13.980]  I didn't have any duplicating equipment or anything.
[02:14.140 --> 02:16.580]  And I wore out quite a number of floppy drives in the process.
[02:18.040 --> 02:21.280]  A little later on, I decided to start putting it on CD-ROM.
[02:21.700 --> 02:28.580]  And not having ever put anything on CD-ROM and not knowing how to do it didn't really stop me.
[02:30.260 --> 02:38.300]  Let me just say that you really haven't lived until you've put something on a non-erasable media and spent your last $2,000 doing it.
[02:41.020 --> 02:42.120]  Nevertheless, it worked.
[02:42.240 --> 02:44.080]  And I learned pretty quickly how to do that.
[02:44.240 --> 02:46.740]  So we haven't had any problems with our CDs so far.
[02:47.100 --> 02:52.380]  And that's essentially how my company, Morse Telecommunication, got into the Linux publishing business.
[02:53.600 --> 02:59.420]  A little later on, I decided that I felt the operating system was pretty much ready for prime time.
[02:59.420 --> 03:09.500]  It needed better documentation or at least a more coherent package to be made available to the general user rather than just the internet connected techie.
[03:09.920 --> 03:20.640]  So what we did was we contacted Patrick Volkerding, the author of Slackware Linux, which is currently the most popular version of Linux available on the internet.
[03:20.640 --> 03:43.920]  And we proposed to him that what we would do would be to basically create an official distribution of Slackware and put it on CD-ROM, provide it with documentation, add technical support, which is something I think most people generally expect when they spend $50 or $75 or whatever for a pre-created distribution,
[03:44.120 --> 03:45.200]  which is what we did.
[03:45.200 --> 03:49.360]  So taking it from there, he jumped at the idea.
[03:49.600 --> 03:54.820]  And that was how Slackware Professional, the Slackware Professional product was born.
[03:55.600 --> 04:03.300]  Slackware Professional is essentially the same version of Linux that you can get on the internet.
[04:03.740 --> 04:18.360]  The key differences with that package are that you can run it directly from the CD-ROM and run it cleanly, using as little as 8 megabytes of a native Linux partition or 11 megabytes of an uncompressed MS-DOS partition.
[04:19.700 --> 04:25.300]  The bulk of the rest of the operating system, Xwindows, the internet stuff, the compilers and all, will run from CD.
[04:25.480 --> 04:28.860]  Of course, the faster the CD-ROM drive you have, the better.
[04:28.940 --> 04:32.780]  You don't want to start compiling kernels with a single-speed CD-ROM drive.
[04:34.880 --> 04:36.560]  So that's what we did.
[04:36.660 --> 04:54.600]  We put that together with the manuals which had been written by the Linux documentation project, had them professionally printed and typeset, decided to beef up our tech support a little bit, added some extra lines, and basically went out and pressed 5,000
[04:54.600 --> 04:55.240]  of them to start.
[04:56.460 --> 05:02.260]  As of right now, the thing is moving out faster than we can even imagine.
[05:02.260 --> 05:13.220]  I can't even begin to guess the number of users that are currently using Linux actively, whether that's 50,000, 100,000.
[05:13.420 --> 05:14.540]  It's all over the place.
[05:14.720 --> 05:22.940]  And since there's no unified source of getting it, you can get it anywhere you want, and you don't have to register it when you get it.
[05:24.180 --> 05:24.800]  Who knows?
[05:24.920 --> 05:26.020]  There could be a quarter of a million.
[05:26.020 --> 05:29.740]  Estimates range from 100,000 to 100,000 at Barris.
[05:30.040 --> 05:31.880]  But it's all over the place.
[05:32.020 --> 05:34.940]  And you'll find it all over the place.
[05:36.060 --> 05:37.540]  So it's out there.
[05:37.920 --> 05:42.160]  And that's what we do, basically, is we provide it on CD-ROM.
[05:42.260 --> 05:43.400]  We update it frequently.
[05:43.400 --> 05:59.480]  We try and track the bugs that we discover through the customers that call us for assistance, report those back to the developers, try and get the documentation enhanced, the aspects of the installation that have problems.
[05:59.480 --> 06:11.060]  We attempt to resolve those difficulties by first determining whether or not it was the user that maybe did something wrong, or if it was the installation process itself.
[06:12.120 --> 06:23.740]  And from there, we communicate that back to the developers and essentially act as a buffer between the developers and the end users so that they don't have to be answering thousands of questions.
[06:23.740 --> 06:34.960]  Because as the installed base of Linux users grows, we're finding that the developers and ourselves as well are getting literally hundreds of e-mail messages a day.
[06:35.100 --> 06:37.220]  And that's going to continue to grow.
[06:38.340 --> 06:48.440]  So now that we've at least partially removed the burden of support from Pat Volkerding,, the author of Slack, where he's pretty much off chasing the Grateful Dead around Chicago these days.
[06:50.360 --> 07:05.580]  For those who are interested, Bob Young here, the publisher of New York UNIX and owner of the ACC bookstore, has a table set up out in the area over there where you can take a look at the Slackware Pro product as well as some of the other Linux-related products that he's got,
[07:05.680 --> 07:08.340]  the InfoMagic, the Linux Quarterly books, and so forth.
[07:09.680 --> 07:18.220]  Since I seem to spend most of my time these days answering questions on a telephone, I really haven't had a chance to prepare anything long-winded to bore you with today.
[07:19.120 --> 07:21.240]  So at this time, you know, I'll open the floor.
[07:21.440 --> 07:24.360]  We'll take questions about Linux, what it is that my firm does.
[07:24.360 --> 07:28.140]  Maybe you have some technical Linux questions, or what have you.
[07:28.340 --> 07:29.700]  And it's up to you.
[07:30.460 --> 07:30.980]  You, sir.
[07:31.700 --> 07:34.720]  Do you have a package like Mosaic?
[07:38.040 --> 07:41.120]  Mosaic, unfortunately, is not free software.
[07:42.160 --> 07:47.880]  The NCSA doesn't want it redistributed on a CD-ROM without royalties being paid back to the NCSA.
[07:48.420 --> 07:52.460]  We're currently working on licensing that for the CD.
[07:52.660 --> 07:55.040]  But at this time, it's not on the CD because of that.
[07:55.360 --> 08:02.820]  There is a Gopher replacement called Lynx, which I actually think is quite better than the original Gopher program.
[08:03.100 --> 08:04.840]  That's on there, so you have Gopher services.
[08:06.140 --> 08:08.280]  And what about emulation?
[08:08.780 --> 08:09.400]  Emulation?
[08:09.760 --> 08:10.980]  Oh, for Windows.
[08:11.400 --> 08:12.100]  So DOS.
[08:12.660 --> 08:13.100]  Okay.
[08:13.240 --> 08:16.040]  There is DOS emulator on there called DOSEMU.
[08:16.360 --> 08:19.460]  Windows emulation is currently being worked on.
[08:19.620 --> 08:24.940]  The project is called Wine, and they have said that there will be no wine before its time.
[08:24.940 --> 08:27.600]  So that's not available yet either.
[08:27.720 --> 08:28.580]  It may be a few months.
[08:28.700 --> 08:32.700]  Apparently, it runs some limited MS-DOS applications.
[08:32.900 --> 08:39.050]  I'm very much looking forward to that because operating system sales tend to be driven by applications.
[08:39.840 --> 08:45.660]  In other words, people want to know, does it run Excel or does it run Word or does it run their favorite applications?
[08:45.800 --> 08:49.360]  And if it does, they really don't care what the underlying operating system is.
[08:49.400 --> 08:54.000]  But if it offers them more performance or greater advantages, they will choose that.
[08:54.000 --> 08:54.560]  So...
[08:54.560 --> 08:55.640]  Does that answer your question?
[08:56.220 --> 08:56.620]  Okay.
[08:57.980 --> 08:59.220]  That gentleman back right there.
[08:59.300 --> 09:00.240]  Can I have a question for you?
[09:00.340 --> 09:00.580]  Okay.
[09:00.680 --> 09:03.400]  How many of you knew where I could get the format for the profile system?
[09:04.040 --> 09:04.740]  The form...
[09:05.520 --> 09:07.300]  Colonel Packer's guy tried that.
[09:07.420 --> 09:07.900]  They don't have this.
[09:08.140 --> 09:09.260]  And that's 44.5.
[09:10.080 --> 09:10.480]  Okay.
[09:11.520 --> 09:12.780]  Otherwise, it's read the source.
[09:13.480 --> 09:13.880]  So...
[09:13.880 --> 09:14.540]  Yeah.
[09:14.740 --> 09:16.320]  I would probably say much the same myself.
[09:16.480 --> 09:17.580]  I've never been asked that question.
[09:17.740 --> 09:18.640]  Unfortunately, I...
[09:18.640 --> 09:23.700]  Most of the questions that I get asked generally fall into the how come it doesn't install in my system for writing.
[09:24.000 --> 09:29.120]  But we do get various compiler questions and questions in other areas.
[09:29.750 --> 09:36.380]  You might want to try sending Linus himself some email and get a response in six months about that.
[09:37.280 --> 09:39.860]  He's one of the people that get a few hundred messages a day.
[09:40.900 --> 09:41.080]  Sir?
[09:41.300 --> 09:44.560]  One comment just on what he said and then I've got a question.
[09:44.740 --> 09:49.080]  There's another worldwide web graphical interface out there called Chimera.
[09:49.480 --> 09:49.800]  Uh-huh.
[09:50.260 --> 09:51.840]  Which works well.
[09:52.400 --> 09:53.580]  It doesn't use...
[09:53.580 --> 09:55.200]  It also doesn't use the motif library.
[09:55.500 --> 09:57.080]  And it's free on the net.
[09:57.260 --> 09:57.900]  So that may be...
[09:57.900 --> 09:59.380]  Is that a new development?
[09:59.520 --> 10:00.140]  I haven't seen that.
[10:00.360 --> 10:01.280]  It's been out there for a while.
[10:01.280 --> 10:01.620]  Yeah.
[10:01.620 --> 10:02.640]  Well, you can get Mosaic.
[10:02.900 --> 10:04.600]  And Mosaic will run under Linux.
[10:05.040 --> 10:05.680]  You just...
[10:05.680 --> 10:06.580]  We just...
[10:09.540 --> 10:12.500]  We just can't put it on CD-ROM and distribute it that way.
[10:12.620 --> 10:15.180]  That's why it's not on there.
[10:15.300 --> 10:18.500]  My question though, and this is for anybody who might know.
[10:18.700 --> 10:23.280]  Do you know if there's any development for compatibility in the kernel for PCI?
[10:25.460 --> 10:26.620]  That's going to come along.
[10:26.880 --> 10:32.900]  I just recently saw an announcement about a week ago for SCSI drivers for PCI.
[10:32.900 --> 10:37.700]  The problem with that is that PCI is still sort of leading edge.
[10:37.940 --> 10:41.560]  Maybe not to you and I, but to the people who have to buy the machines, namely the developers.
[10:41.740 --> 10:43.760]  And the developers don't all have PCI machines.
[10:44.700 --> 10:49.680]  We're making sure that Pat Volkerding gets one, but he doesn't write kernel drivers.
[10:49.800 --> 10:55.420]  We try and support the developers of various aspects of Linux, and we support them to that end.
[10:55.940 --> 10:56.360]  Okay?
[10:57.120 --> 11:01.000]  Can we have a quick show of hands of how many people in the audience are using Linux?
[11:01.220 --> 11:05.100]  How many people here are using Linux or have tried Linux, I suppose?
[11:07.840 --> 11:09.440]  Anybody tried FreeBSD?
[11:10.300 --> 11:10.800]  Yeah.
[11:12.300 --> 11:14.880]  How many people are thinking of trying Linux after today?
[11:16.940 --> 11:18.920]  Okay, so that I guess gets the rest of them.
[11:19.660 --> 11:19.800]  Okay.
[11:21.040 --> 11:21.300]  Sorry.
[11:21.380 --> 11:25.040]  I have a question about the differences between the releases of Linux.
[11:25.040 --> 11:27.440]  I know there's an intrusel release.
[11:27.660 --> 11:29.720]  I don't believe it's related to Slackware.
[11:30.120 --> 11:30.280]  No.
[11:30.340 --> 11:31.860]  There are many different releases of Linux.
[11:31.940 --> 11:33.100]  What do you have advantage of this?
[11:33.220 --> 11:33.440]  Okay.
[11:33.560 --> 11:42.200]  There are at least four or five different versions of Linux distributions that you can download off the internet.
[11:42.540 --> 11:45.680]  The most popular is still the Slackware distribution.
[11:46.760 --> 11:55.140]  Second, and these numbers or this order I'm giving you is based on the numbers that were published in the Linux journal a few months ago.
[11:55.320 --> 11:55.940]  It may have changed.
[11:56.040 --> 11:59.840]  I suspect Slackware is even more popular these days because it's gotten easier to install.
[11:59.840 --> 12:09.140]  But it would number Slackware, SLS, soft landing systems, which is one of the first comprehensive Linux distributions.
[12:09.680 --> 12:20.540]  Then there is MCC from the Manchester Computing Center which is more of a stripped down version which people use to install as a base system and then build their own Linux system from there.
[12:20.540 --> 12:30.400]  And then there is another version called Debian which is being worked on right now and is being touted as the next Slackware supposedly.
[12:30.960 --> 12:33.060]  Now I may have missed one or two.
[12:33.420 --> 12:37.340]  There are enhancements to that like the JE enhancements to Linux and so forth.
[12:37.500 --> 12:40.960]  But then there are the commercial distributions of which there are several.
[12:42.540 --> 12:45.920]  The Yggdrasil distribution, the LGX distribution is one of them.
[12:46.320 --> 12:48.200]  That's a separate and distinct distribution.
[12:49.300 --> 12:52.600]  And I suspect that there is at least two more.
[12:52.740 --> 12:58.380]  One from Nascent Technologies and the other one from, I think, from a company called Red Hat.
[12:58.520 --> 12:59.560]  Although I haven't seen anything.
[12:59.860 --> 13:02.120]  It's still to be determined what that is.
[13:02.600 --> 13:02.940]  Yes.
[13:02.940 --> 13:03.600]  I have a second question.
[13:04.220 --> 13:10.260]  Now, how is, do you know about probability between different releases?
[13:10.740 --> 13:14.940]  Let's say, let's say you originally installed your system and you had an interest in a release on kernel.
[13:15.340 --> 13:17.280]  And you download like a new Slackware release.
[13:17.780 --> 13:20.680]  And you start to provide the teams to work and make some problems.
[13:21.060 --> 13:26.740]  Do you know how, how easy it is, how problems that may occur from like going between releases?
[13:28.540 --> 13:31.380]  What do you mean by combining them into the same file system?
[13:31.700 --> 13:35.660]  Well, let's say you're upgrading your system and you decide to get like a new release release.
[13:36.480 --> 13:45.640]  Well, it's better not to, if you're going to switch between major Linux distributions, it's better just to back up the files that you need to save and then install the next one.
[13:45.640 --> 13:46.920]  It would just be too much of a headache.
[13:47.140 --> 13:55.280]  If you want to upgrade your distribution, you can either go out and get the packages you want upgraded piecemeal, which is, which is fine.
[13:55.820 --> 13:57.960]  Or get the next version of the distribution.
[13:58.200 --> 14:02.940]  Slackware in recent versions has offered rudimentary upgrade capabilities.
[14:03.080 --> 14:05.240]  So you can upgrade individual packages and so forth.
[14:05.960 --> 14:06.080]  Okay.
[14:07.060 --> 14:13.100]  And Novell was working on a package supposedly with using Linux, I believe, for internet access.
[14:13.840 --> 14:14.120]  Right.
[14:14.120 --> 14:18.900]  The word on that was, it was more hearsay than anything else.
[14:19.040 --> 14:21.700]  I don't know what the current state of development was.
[14:21.920 --> 14:26.360]  They were going to, the project was codenamed Corsair, I think.
[14:26.720 --> 14:29.020]  And that was written up in PC Week.
[14:29.180 --> 14:32.080]  But nobody, of course, at Novell is saying anything about it.
[14:32.460 --> 14:34.640]  It was going to be based on the Linux kernel.
[14:34.860 --> 14:37.440]  And Bob may have some additional information on that.
[14:37.640 --> 14:37.880]  Yeah.
[14:38.020 --> 14:43.380]  The story on that, it's actually a very interesting marketing issue, even more than a technology one.
[14:43.380 --> 14:50.140]  What Novell saw was that Linux was an extremely efficient kernel for the PC.
[14:50.540 --> 14:53.080]  They wanted to take advantage of that and they found they could.
[14:53.280 --> 15:02.100]  They actually first started talking to Linus Torvalds something like nine months ago about their right to do that, whether that would be okay.
[15:02.100 --> 15:03.240]  And he, of course, said, sure.
[15:03.440 --> 15:04.980]  That's the whole point of the GPL.
[15:06.580 --> 15:09.020]  What happened, though, was they developed this great product.
[15:09.140 --> 15:15.640]  They bought in some outside technology from people like Visix Software, their looking glass front end to it.
[15:15.640 --> 15:19.780]  And they had this really nifty desktop, UNIX, basically.
[15:20.040 --> 15:22.780]  But then they ran into the hiccup of, okay, how do you sell it?
[15:23.020 --> 15:27.000]  Here they're out selling UNIX, you know, capital U-N-I-X.
[15:27.960 --> 15:38.900]  And how do they then convince people that UNIX is a worthwhile product to put on their PC when they're also selling this free product effectively on the PC?
[15:39.400 --> 15:44.720]  And it was their marketing department that could not get their arms around that as a marketing challenge.
[15:45.600 --> 15:49.180]  My take on it from when I first saw that story, my background is...
[15:49.180 --> 15:53.680]  This is why Michael's answering the technical questions, and I'm here to answer the...
[15:53.680 --> 15:55.380]  Bob's got his ear to the wall all the time.
[15:57.000 --> 15:57.480]  The...
[15:58.060 --> 16:05.200]  My take on it was always that this was a great idea, but it didn't make sense to be sold within Novell's structure.
[16:05.200 --> 16:09.440]  It was a product that made perfect sense to spin off from Novell.
[16:10.280 --> 16:10.760]  Apparently...
[16:10.760 --> 16:11.500]  Yeah, of course.
[16:11.760 --> 16:11.940]  Yeah.
[16:12.060 --> 16:12.860]  But I'll...
[16:12.860 --> 16:14.240]  I won't say that I'll...
[16:14.840 --> 16:18.380]  You know, I was brilliant and figured this out because it's pretty obvious to a lot of people.
[16:18.500 --> 16:31.420]  But apparently Ray Norda, who was the chief executive of Novell and has recently retired, is now talking about marketing that product as an independent business unaffiliated with Novell.
[16:31.580 --> 16:34.600]  And that's where the direction to that product is going.
[16:34.600 --> 16:36.360]  Whether it ever happens, we don't know.
[16:36.580 --> 16:36.880]  It's still...
[16:36.880 --> 16:38.620]  Wasn't it aimed at an internet interface?
[16:39.000 --> 16:39.560]  No.
[16:39.780 --> 16:51.120]  It was aimed at being a UNIX for the PC for small users who didn't want to pay AT&T slash Novell like licensing fees to get access to the source code.
[16:51.500 --> 16:53.900]  It was aimed very much to take advantage.
[16:54.060 --> 17:15.820]  If you look around this room, the amount of enthusiasm for Linux is directly proportional to the number of people who have either using UNIX commercially and need to run it at home, or are advanced DOS Windows users who need what those of us who were in the computer industry before the advent of DOS came along,
[17:16.020 --> 17:18.500]  referred to as a real operating system.
[17:21.440 --> 17:41.820]  And that's very much what Novell, particularly Ray Norton, and some of the senior people at Novell realized was the opportunity if they could build a product around Linux, would be to cater to all of those small businesses and high-end programmers who needed something a little more... have a few more features than DOS Windows gives them.
[17:41.820 --> 17:43.260]  Where it's going to go, we don't know.
[17:43.400 --> 17:48.660]  We do know Novell has put serious money into it for the last 8-10 months, developing this product.
[17:48.800 --> 17:49.860]  This is not straight rumor.
[17:50.040 --> 17:51.140]  There's a real product out there.
[17:51.280 --> 17:53.400]  Where it's... what's going to happen to it is anyone's guess.
[17:55.700 --> 17:56.680]  The gentleman in the back.
[18:01.970 --> 18:08.270]  I heard a call for volunteers about four months ago on the internet.
[18:08.910 --> 18:13.430]  A bunch of people wanted to put together a report for the power architecture, but...
[18:13.430 --> 18:18.350]  Apparently the major manufacturers are donating hardware to these primary developers.
[18:18.690 --> 18:25.270]  DEC have donated to Torvalds, a big alpha machine, to port Linux to the alpha platform.
[18:25.710 --> 18:28.290]  IBM have donated power PC units.
[18:28.410 --> 18:31.130]  Whether they went to Torvalds, I'm not sure.
[18:31.350 --> 18:41.990]  But the major manufacturers are seeing all of this enthusiasm from, you know, people like the people in this room and are realizing that they really want in on this bandwagon.
[18:41.990 --> 18:42.510]  So...
[18:42.510 --> 18:44.070]  Would the IBM be the prep platform?
[18:44.870 --> 18:51.150]  The EREP, which is the PCI bus with a level 2 cache...
[18:51.150 --> 18:53.950]  I have no idea which platform they're talking about.
[18:53.970 --> 18:55.990]  It wouldn't be the R6000.
[18:56.950 --> 18:57.490]  No, no.
[18:57.550 --> 18:58.390]  It's the power PC.
[18:58.630 --> 19:00.010]  It's the one that they're doing in conjunction with...
[19:00.010 --> 19:01.550]  That's already been crippled with AIX.
[19:01.550 --> 19:02.030]  Okay.
[19:02.390 --> 19:02.450]  Yeah.
[19:05.010 --> 19:06.730]  Uh, two-fold question.
[19:07.330 --> 19:13.500]  One, what is the version of X that comes with the X1?
[19:13.660 --> 19:13.940]  All right.
[19:14.000 --> 19:17.560]  There are actually two major versions of X out there now.
[19:17.560 --> 19:24.320]  The first one is X11R5, um, which was ported by the X3, uh, development team.
[19:24.320 --> 19:27.280]  That's in version 2.1.1 right now.
[19:27.600 --> 19:29.860]  Uh, that's probably gonna remain where it is.
[19:30.220 --> 19:32.340]  They've begun developing X11R6.
[19:33.160 --> 19:41.580]  And in fact, uh, the beta version of X11R6 or Xfree 3.0 is, is on the latest Linux CDs.
[19:41.580 --> 19:43.900]  The Slackware Pro, the InfoMagic, and so forth.
[19:44.340 --> 19:46.120]  Uh, I haven't had the nerve to use it yet.
[19:47.060 --> 19:48.880]  It's still, still fairly early.
[19:49.720 --> 19:49.740]  Okay.
[19:49.880 --> 19:51.800]  And what are the best video cards?
[19:52.080 --> 19:58.280]  Um, well, video cards, it's... Linux works with a, with a lot of video cards.
[19:58.760 --> 20:00.580]  Uh, I'll tell you the one to stay away from.
[20:00.720 --> 20:01.420]  I don't like to wear...
[20:02.380 --> 20:05.040]  The one to stay... You can probably answer this.
[20:05.140 --> 20:06.840]  It's probably, it's a diamond card, right?
[20:07.140 --> 20:08.500]  No, no, that's too.
[20:09.480 --> 20:11.440]  I don't know what chipset that's based on.
[20:11.560 --> 20:12.560]  It may very well work.
[20:12.560 --> 20:16.280]  You may not have it configured properly, but the one to stay away from is the diamond.
[20:16.420 --> 20:25.940]  Diamond refuses to release the specifications for that card, uh, or that chipset without a non-disclosure agreement, which means you can't distribute the source to the drivers.
[20:27.120 --> 20:28.380]  So it's catch-22.
[20:28.380 --> 20:30.940]  Is that X in the server or client?
[20:32.080 --> 20:32.840]  The X windows?
[20:33.160 --> 20:33.340]  Yes.
[20:33.640 --> 20:34.140]  Oh, both.
[20:34.620 --> 20:34.880]  Both.
[20:35.000 --> 20:38.620]  I mean, with the, with the, with the networking capabilities of Linux, I mean, it can act as both.
[20:38.760 --> 20:48.580]  I mean, you've got X clients built in there, uh, which can connect over the net, or through the network to an X server, or to the local X server, or you've, you know, you've got the server and you can have the clients anywhere on there.
[20:48.640 --> 20:50.760]  I mean, it's, it's like an ordinary UNIX system.
[20:50.760 --> 21:06.040]  I mean, you can run, for example, when I worked on Wall Street as a system administrator, one of the first tests I had for Linux was to take a copy of FrameMaker, which runs on a Sun, and run it on the server, and then X display it back to the Linux workstation,
[21:06.080 --> 21:07.340]  which it, which it did beautifully.
[21:07.340 --> 21:10.280]  So I was able to run FrameMaker on my Linux box.
[21:11.940 --> 21:12.300]  Okay.
[21:12.600 --> 21:12.860]  Sir?
[21:12.980 --> 21:14.720]  Well, this is kind of totally off the topic.
[21:14.880 --> 21:15.680]  I'm not really new.
[21:15.820 --> 21:19.820]  I'm new to Linux, but I just bought a Linux CD to developers recently.
[21:21.660 --> 21:22.740]  I'm, I'm, like, new to it.
[21:22.840 --> 21:23.780]  I'm just trying to install it.
[21:23.940 --> 21:26.760]  Is that okay to user, or should I connect by the number one?
[21:27.280 --> 21:27.640]  Well...
[21:27.640 --> 21:28.380]  Is that the InfoMagic?
[21:29.240 --> 21:29.380]  Yeah.
[21:29.520 --> 21:31.300]  2C, it's a red, uh, CD?
[21:31.480 --> 21:32.940]  No, it's very current.
[21:33.260 --> 21:35.220]  Uh, it has Slackware 2.0 on it.
[21:35.280 --> 21:35.900]  It's 5.0?
[21:36.000 --> 21:36.160]  Yeah.
[21:36.160 --> 21:37.400]  It'll do your...
[21:37.400 --> 21:42.100]  It would be wrong of me to answer that question, since I have a fiduciary interest in my own company, but...
[21:42.840 --> 21:43.920]  But they're all good.
[21:44.120 --> 21:46.260]  I mean, you can install Linux from every single one of them.
[21:46.660 --> 21:51.460]  Um, obviously, I'm partial to mine, but, uh, any one of them will, will get you Linux installed.
[21:51.660 --> 21:59.560]  It's, it's just a matter of what's provided with it in terms of documentation, how easy is it to install, and what do you get for after the installation support.
[21:59.840 --> 22:00.040]  Yeah.
[22:00.060 --> 22:01.500]  Mike, sorry, over here in the red.
[22:02.460 --> 22:07.500]  Yeah, just in terms of the question I asked before about the core in the Mac, the Power Mac platform.
[22:07.720 --> 22:19.300]  First, um, the guy who was in charge of porting the Amiga port to the Mac, um, tried to get technical information on the machines from Apple, um, and was, um, basically turned away at the door.
[22:19.500 --> 22:21.060]  They didn't want anything to do with it.
[22:21.060 --> 22:25.500]  So, I, the other manufacturers may be, um, you know, well, well, well, well.
[22:25.560 --> 22:27.960]  Well, Apple has its own extra grind with AUX.
[22:28.240 --> 22:28.520]  Yeah.
[22:28.800 --> 22:29.540]  That may be why.
[22:29.820 --> 22:30.240]  No.
[22:30.620 --> 22:31.780]  Actually, they're abandoning other drivers.
[22:31.820 --> 22:31.940]  Yeah.
[22:33.560 --> 22:33.620]  Yeah.
[22:35.440 --> 22:36.620]  I'll tell you.
[22:37.140 --> 22:50.540]  Also, the, uh, but if you were talking about the Power Maps, you wouldn't be porting the Amiga, but because this is the 8000, you would probably want to do a direct port from the, um, PC version.
[22:51.220 --> 22:52.200]  It's a different chip.
[22:52.560 --> 22:53.060]  Uh-huh.
[22:53.780 --> 22:54.000]  Okay.
[22:55.100 --> 22:55.660]  What's that?
[22:55.760 --> 23:02.040]  With respect to a video card, is it worth, uh, getting a two megabyte video card, or would it actually use the second megabyte, or...?
[23:02.040 --> 23:11.180]  Um, that's dependent upon the chip set that you've got, and whether or not it's supported in the, in the high res modes that that card offers.
[23:11.380 --> 23:21.140]  For example, you, generally, you, you don't need more than a meg, I think, if you're going to run 256 colors and 1024 by 768, my math may be off.
[23:21.260 --> 23:32.980]  So if you're going to go beyond that, uh, A, the card has to support, um, that, uh, resolution that would use that much memory, or high color, one or the other.
[23:33.120 --> 23:38.020]  I don't, I'm not sure if the X free server goes beyond 256 colors.
[23:38.180 --> 23:39.780]  That's, maybe somebody here can answer here.
[23:40.300 --> 23:45.680]  Uh, other than that, you, you might not, you know, in other words, unless you're using a super high resolution, you might not need all that memory.
[23:46.760 --> 23:46.840]  Okay.
[23:47.360 --> 23:48.380]  Uh, this gentleman right here.
[23:48.460 --> 23:50.020]  Are there any known hardware?
[23:54.600 --> 23:55.480]  Uh, well...
[23:57.000 --> 24:04.680]  Yeah, not much is written down, because the people who discover these things are too busy to worry about writing it down.
[24:04.900 --> 24:10.560]  We generally document it when we have customers call who attempt, make it an attempt to install things, and they don't work.
[24:11.120 --> 24:16.880]  Uh, as to what doesn't work, you're less likely to find a list of what doesn't work than what does work.
[24:17.020 --> 24:22.680]  Um, in, in terms of PC architecture, it works with most garden variety stuff.
[24:23.300 --> 24:28.220]  Uh, generally, the cheaper it is, the more likely it is going to work.
[24:28.220 --> 24:32.420]  Simply because the developers are more likely to have access to that equipment first.
[24:32.800 --> 24:34.060]  That makes sense.
[24:34.280 --> 24:34.740]  It does.
[24:36.380 --> 24:36.940]  Okay.
[24:37.320 --> 24:38.000]  Uh, over here.
[24:38.000 --> 24:44.040]  Um, on the PC platform, the, the, the, the Explore chips, and the, uh, any chips have become a little more popular.
[24:44.360 --> 24:44.900]  How well is Linux?
[24:45.180 --> 24:45.820]  What's the newer chips?
[24:45.980 --> 24:48.380]  Well, the chips aren't, aren't at the issue, really.
[24:48.720 --> 24:55.220]  Uh, I have heard of some timing issues, but primarily the problem is that those sort of, sorts of chips tend to be run on PCI bus machines.
[24:55.880 --> 25:02.400]  And Linux, again, uh, is developed by people who don't have access to the PCI systems.
[25:02.400 --> 25:06.060]  Uh, as a result, there are problems with PCI carts.
[25:06.380 --> 25:11.480]  Uh, notably, uh, I've spoken to a few customers this week who had gateway PCI machines.
[25:12.000 --> 25:14.820]  Uh, their IDE controllers were, were acting flaky.
[25:14.980 --> 25:18.820]  They actually had to slow them down to, uh, to ISA emulation mode.
[25:18.920 --> 25:20.980]  It sort of defeats the, the purpose of PCI.
[25:21.060 --> 25:23.400]  I think PCI is, is going to be supported.
[25:23.540 --> 25:24.600]  No, I won't say I think it is.
[25:24.660 --> 25:25.740]  I know it will be supported.
[25:25.860 --> 25:35.660]  It does work, uh, to a limited extent, but don't expect to use anything in the way of SCSI, uh, uh, or, or, uh, other exotic cards at this time.
[25:35.840 --> 25:36.860]  Give it, give it a little bit of time.
[25:37.000 --> 25:38.580]  Now, this gentleman all the way in the back.
[25:45.120 --> 25:47.920]  I'm sorry, you said user, user group activity about Linux?
[25:49.100 --> 25:52.020]  Uh, Bob, I think, can answer this question.
[25:52.440 --> 25:54.480]  Yeah, uh, actually, can I get a show of hands?
[25:54.540 --> 26:02.660]  How many people here got a, uh, an announcement, uh, from ACC about this meeting as, as part of a user group announcement?
[26:04.400 --> 26:05.820]  Oh, well, it did arrive.
[26:06.020 --> 26:06.120]  Okay.
[26:07.140 --> 26:11.000]  Uh, here's what, uh, the user group consists of in, in New York.
[26:11.160 --> 26:26.100]  And until someone comes up with a better one, which I'd be thrilled if someone did, is what we're trying to do is, uh, sort of along the lines of Linux in any case, uh, is try and tag into as many other user group activities as we can and other events.
[26:26.100 --> 26:29.220]  So, for example, the hackers conference was having a big conference.
[26:29.420 --> 26:30.100]  It's all organized.
[26:30.380 --> 26:35.320]  And we just helped sponsor, drag Michael along to, uh, to answer questions.
[26:35.340 --> 26:41.080]  So, in that sense, this is a Linux, New York City Linux user group sponsored event.
[26:41.600 --> 26:51.540]  Uh, there, there will also be a Linux, uh, user group sponsored event at UNIX Expo, uh, in the evening of, uh, uh, I believe it's the Tuesday evening.
[26:51.720 --> 26:53.400]  That'll be October 3rd or 4th.
[26:54.100 --> 27:08.720]  Um, and again, while we'll, uh, this is the, uh, New York City Linux user group, we'll take full credit for it, uh, the fact that Bruno Blenheim, uh, put on an Expo and donated a room and, and all the rest of it, uh, is sort of us taking advantage of it.
[27:08.980 --> 27:19.920]  So, on top of that, the announcement that I sent around also included, uh, a comment to the effect of, uh, we'd like to have a September user group meeting, but I don't have the time to organize one.
[27:20.080 --> 27:35.620]  Ergo, if, uh, anyone in this room wants to organize a September meeting, and the key thing to meetings, even more than, uh, uh, uh, nationally known, uh, Linux people to speak, the key to any meeting, particularly in the New York City area, is to find a room,
[27:35.820 --> 27:37.220]  uh, that's accessible.
[27:38.060 --> 27:39.800]  A room that they'll let us into.
[27:40.000 --> 27:40.380]  Exactly.
[27:40.660 --> 27:41.040]  That's right.
[27:41.040 --> 27:51.000]  So the, so the issue is, if you know where there's a room, uh, and you're prepared to help organize one, uh, sure, let me know, and, and I'll certainly provide some of the publicity for it.
[27:51.080 --> 27:51.500]  That'd be great.
[27:52.240 --> 27:52.560]  Okay.
[27:52.760 --> 27:53.760]  The gentleman right back there.
[27:53.860 --> 27:53.900]  Yeah.
[27:55.080 --> 27:58.080]  Um, pretty basic, actually.
[27:58.280 --> 28:02.240]  Most machines these days are equipped to run at any 386 or 486.
[28:02.820 --> 28:08.080]  Uh, generally, I would say 4 meg of RAM, although you can run it with less, you're not going to be able to do much.
[28:08.080 --> 28:14.360]  4 meg, 4 meg, uh, for a minimal installation, uh, 8 meg if you're going to run X Windows, or more.
[28:14.500 --> 28:15.400]  You know, the more the merrier.
[28:15.900 --> 28:25.360]  Uh, in terms of disk space, that's heavily dependent upon which distribution you have, how much of it you want to install, and whether or not you're going to run parts of it from the CD-ROM.
[28:25.580 --> 28:38.280]  Uh, for example, with Slackware Pro, you can get away with as little as 8 megabytes of a Linux partition, or 11 megabytes of an uncompressed, uh, DOS partition, and run the bulk of it off the CD-ROM.
[28:38.820 --> 28:43.260]  Um, so, but it can go as high as 2 or 300 megabytes.
[28:43.720 --> 28:48.000]  You know, for all the binaries, the, uh, the libraries, the fonts, and so forth.
[28:48.120 --> 28:49.100]  So, it varies.
[28:49.180 --> 28:55.220]  I think the average distribution from the folks that we deal with tends to be about 80 to 120 meg.
[28:56.060 --> 28:56.500]  Okay.
[28:57.120 --> 28:58.220]  Uh, you, sir.
[28:58.500 --> 29:01.280]  Can you tell me about the differences in, uh, version 2.0?
[29:02.000 --> 29:02.880]  2.0.
[29:03.080 --> 29:05.540]  Well, everything was upgraded, basically.
[29:06.060 --> 29:09.560]  Uh, Pat sat on that for, well, he didn't sit on it.
[29:09.660 --> 29:16.260]  We were working with him, and it took a while to get all the bugs ironed out, uh, between various applications.
[29:16.260 --> 29:19.540]  But, essentially, the compiler was upgraded.
[29:19.940 --> 29:21.200]  The kernel was upgraded.
[29:21.600 --> 29:22.840]  X-Windows was upgraded.
[29:23.100 --> 29:27.460]  Uh, all the major system applications, the, uh, the tech, uh, program.
[29:27.760 --> 29:30.000]  The, uh, the GhostScript interpreter was upgraded.
[29:30.660 --> 29:35.840]  Um, the libraries, the C libraries, uh, even the X libraries, I believe, were upgraded.
[29:36.020 --> 29:37.420]  So, everything is new in there.
[29:37.480 --> 29:39.600]  The installation program has been spiffed up.
[29:39.600 --> 29:45.200]  It now, uh, offers you options for configuring, you know, your monitor when you, uh, when you're, when you're installing.
[29:45.200 --> 29:49.200]  Uh, it's gotten a little easier to install, and everything's been updated.
[29:49.220 --> 29:51.700]  So, it's on par with everything else that's out there right now.
[29:51.840 --> 29:52.880]  It's, it's not old anymore.
[29:53.260 --> 29:53.700]  Okay.
[29:53.940 --> 29:55.380]  Uh, let me just take somebody else, sir.
[29:55.860 --> 29:55.960]  Yeah.
[29:56.360 --> 29:58.260]  What's happening with the start of Wine?
[29:59.160 --> 30:01.160]  Well, Wine is being worked on.
[30:01.520 --> 30:05.360]  Uh, like everything else with Linux, most of it is, is pretty much volunteer work.
[30:05.900 --> 30:12.640]  Um, it does run some Windows applications, but as of right now, it's really, uh, it's not ready for prime time.
[30:12.640 --> 30:16.760]  It's, it's certainly not up to the level that the DOS emulator is right now.
[30:16.920 --> 30:19.520]  I mean, I, I hear it plays a pretty good game of solitaire.
[30:20.120 --> 30:25.300]  Uh, but that, that's, you know, don't expect too much from it.
[30:25.400 --> 30:25.760]  It's out there.
[30:25.860 --> 30:30.040]  You can, you can run basically alpha versions of it, or even pre-alpha versions of it.
[30:30.140 --> 30:37.820]  But you're not, uh, I wouldn't trust it, and I wouldn't use it for anything that you, that you planned on, uh, having to recover the file with, files with afterwards.
[30:37.820 --> 30:39.440]  Do they have something like Wabi?
[30:40.080 --> 30:44.240]  Well, Wine is essentially the Linux version of Wabi.
[30:44.600 --> 30:48.240]  Um, so that's, I mean, that's the answer to it.
[30:48.300 --> 30:49.420]  It's being worked on.
[30:49.580 --> 30:50.400]  You can't push it.
[30:50.720 --> 30:54.040]  It's, it's, it's not, you know, like I said, there will be no Wine before it's time.
[30:54.060 --> 30:54.680]  And that's true.
[30:54.920 --> 30:56.820]  It's, when it's ready, it's ready.
[30:57.320 --> 30:57.800]  Okay.
[30:58.820 --> 30:59.520]  Uh, sir?
[31:00.160 --> 31:14.520]  I heard, uh, some talk a while ago on some of the Linux manuscripts that, um, somebody had was, either was a developer or had developed some motif, uh, some libraries that were, uh, that were compatible with motif libraries.
[31:15.160 --> 31:17.040]  For developing motif applications?
[31:17.340 --> 31:24.860]  Well, yeah, so you could, even if you didn't go out and, you know, spend $200 on motif, you'd be able to compile motif apps and stuff like that.
[31:24.860 --> 31:27.560]  Um, it's possible.
[31:27.740 --> 31:36.040]  I haven't heard about it, but then again, um, well, I would be surprised if I had, if I had known about it or if it were available, it would be in very wide use right now.
[31:36.520 --> 31:44.520]  Um, in fact, Bob is, is the distributor of, uh, motif, the exclusive distributor of the Sequoia motif product in the U.S.
[31:44.940 --> 31:47.280]  Uh, and I think he might have heard about that, too.
[31:47.800 --> 31:53.820]  Yeah, there's actually a whole bunch of really good window managers that run on Linux on X Windows.
[31:53.820 --> 31:55.420]  Well, he's speaking of development, though.
[31:55.960 --> 31:56.580]  Yeah, exactly.
[31:56.780 --> 32:01.960]  So the, the catch is, uh, of course, that they are not motif, uh, compatible.
[32:02.340 --> 32:06.200]  And in particular, uh, where we sell a lot of motif, too.
[32:06.560 --> 32:20.040]  Uh, so it, I guess my first point is, you don't really need motif unless you're planning on writing applications that you're going to run on motif systems in the real UNIX world, if you like, on Sun and HP versions.
[32:20.560 --> 32:24.640]  And if you're going to do that, then you have to have the motif window manager.
[32:24.780 --> 32:26.240]  It's really as simple as that.
[32:26.480 --> 32:32.600]  Uh, I'm not aware, I don't know if Kurt's aware of, of any of these products that do much better than that.
[32:32.600 --> 32:45.040]  But that's certainly who we're selling all of our motif versions to are people who are taking, um, motif applications off of a Sun machine, working on them on their Linux box in order to put them back on a Sun machine.
[32:45.040 --> 32:51.220]  And using the GNU C and C++ compilers, that's very straightforward and a very reliable thing to do.
[32:51.420 --> 32:57.560]  There is at least one effort that I know about, um, ongoing to develop a free motif clone.
[32:57.820 --> 33:03.260]  Um, I think that, uh, uh, that's being sponsored by the folks over at Yggdrasil.
[33:03.480 --> 33:05.100]  Uh, I don't know if that's active.
[33:05.620 --> 33:08.220]  I don't know anything about it other than that they said they were doing it.
[33:08.220 --> 33:15.260]  Um, and I have heard other people, uh, make mumblings about wanting to, uh, to do it.
[33:15.420 --> 33:18.380]  Now, whether or not it's, it's, it's happening, I can't say.
[33:18.920 --> 33:23.620]  Um, well, I just will say that I don't understand what all this, what all this fuss is about motif.
[33:23.800 --> 33:26.960]  Open look works just fine, and so do any of the other window managers.
[33:27.220 --> 33:27.300]  I...
[33:27.300 --> 33:30.340]  I don't particularly like actually using motif window manager.
[33:30.560 --> 33:31.020]  I think it sucks.
[33:31.260 --> 33:34.320]  But there are some applications that are made...
[33:34.320 --> 33:35.340]  Yeah, yeah, you're right.
[33:35.500 --> 33:35.620]  You're right.
[33:35.680 --> 33:36.660]  It's application driven.
[33:36.660 --> 33:38.880]  You need the library to file and stuff.
[33:39.080 --> 33:39.160]  You're right.
[33:39.160 --> 33:39.260]  Yeah.
[33:39.700 --> 33:41.480]  Yeah, that may, that may be some time.
[33:41.620 --> 33:45.280]  Like everything else in the Linux world, if you don't believe it's gonna happen, it probably will.
[33:45.800 --> 33:46.200]  Okay.
[33:46.380 --> 33:46.800]  You, sir?
[33:46.940 --> 33:49.820]  Uh, AIX has met the, uh, system planner.
[33:49.900 --> 33:50.100]  Uh-huh.
[33:50.440 --> 33:52.140]  Which is a fairly friendly user interface.
[33:52.240 --> 33:53.260]  Is there any equivalent to that?
[33:53.920 --> 33:56.100]  Um, not right now.
[33:56.260 --> 33:56.840]  Not for Linux.
[33:57.440 --> 34:04.700]  Uh, the reason for that, I think, is that most of the people who have used Linux up to this point are either very technical or mostly technical.
[34:04.700 --> 34:09.220]  Uh, and consequently, I think they would view that as an affront on, on there.
[34:11.160 --> 34:19.360]  But, having said that, I'm seeing more and more people, uh, of less than stellar hacking abilities using Linux.
[34:19.520 --> 34:25.220]  I mean, we're talking about the more, the more average people who are either UNIX curious or internet curious.
[34:25.620 --> 34:28.740]  And Linux gives them both, both of those things.
[34:28.740 --> 34:30.320]  They can connect to the internet very readily.
[34:30.520 --> 34:33.800]  Uh, and they can learn, uh, UNIX, uh, very readily.
[34:33.920 --> 34:36.520]  It's very cheap or, or free if they have a high-speed modem.
[34:37.100 --> 34:42.800]  Um, so, I suspect that, uh, it's just around the corner.
[34:44.020 --> 34:44.520]  That's...
[34:44.520 --> 34:52.400]  And what about in the, the, um, uh, remote procedure calls and distributed on Rust and Climax 2 or Constance?
[34:52.620 --> 34:53.580]  That I couldn't answer.
[34:54.640 --> 34:56.420]  Kurt, do you have an answer for that one?
[34:56.480 --> 34:58.160]  Yeah, our privacy libraries are available with Linux.
[34:58.760 --> 35:02.980]  So, you can't do this on RGC sort of system calls and stuff.
[35:04.480 --> 35:04.920]  Okay.
[35:05.700 --> 35:06.280]  All right.
[35:06.540 --> 35:06.700]  Yeah.
[35:06.880 --> 35:13.980]  So, in general, actually, this is a point we didn't make earlier, uh, given that this is in, in theory, a user group meeting.
[35:14.200 --> 35:24.560]  Uh, if anyone has a better answer for any of the questions that come up, please stick up your hand and, and wave it around like crazy and, and, uh, we'd be very interested in hearing from you.
[35:24.780 --> 35:34.520]  Uh, the, the catch with any technology as complex as something like Linux, uh, is that at best you're gonna be expert in only one corner of the technology.
[35:34.780 --> 35:39.200]  And, uh, whoever has spent more time in the other corners is obviously going to have better answers.
[35:41.160 --> 35:43.520]  Um, I noticed that there's some interviews applications.
[35:44.100 --> 35:44.740]  Excuse me?
[35:45.080 --> 35:47.920]  There's some interviews based applications like iBrowls.
[35:48.340 --> 35:48.440]  Right.
[35:49.360 --> 35:52.560]  Is this, this interview is gonna be distributed as a development run?
[35:54.360 --> 35:55.600]  Well, it's already in there.
[35:55.760 --> 35:57.720]  And, and at least in Slackware it is.
[35:57.860 --> 35:58.420]  It's, it's, it's available.
[35:58.600 --> 35:59.800]  It's freely available on the internet.
[36:00.400 --> 36:01.800]  I just saw a couple of applications.
[36:01.800 --> 36:04.840]  Uh, well, the, oh yeah, all the development tools are in there.
[36:05.020 --> 36:05.180]  Really?
[36:05.320 --> 36:06.260]  Oh yeah, absolutely.
[36:06.920 --> 36:08.560]  Unless you didn't get the complete version.
[36:08.720 --> 36:13.580]  A lot of times people just get the runtime version, uh, because they're not interested in doing interview.
[36:13.720 --> 36:18.100]  I mean, there's so many different library and widget sets out there that you could, you go crazy.
[36:18.220 --> 36:19.940]  I don't personally do any X programming.
[36:20.200 --> 36:24.560]  My hair started falling out years ago, uh, with, with C programming.
[36:24.560 --> 36:32.580]  Uh, so I, I, I pretty much got out of the programming business and stuck in system and integration, uh, uh, system administration and system integration.
[36:32.880 --> 36:33.940]  I just merged the two words.
[36:34.340 --> 36:34.580]  Okay.
[36:34.580 --> 36:34.640]  Okay.
[36:35.780 --> 36:36.180]  You, sir.
[36:36.360 --> 36:37.540]  How secure is one?
[36:39.840 --> 36:42.880]  In this room, it's not very secure at all, I don't think.
[36:43.380 --> 36:51.180]  Um, well, Linux, because Linux is so widely used, the bugs or the security flaws in Linux are being found, uh, fairly quickly.
[36:51.340 --> 36:59.760]  There was one very well advertised one a few months ago, which would get you root access on most, uh, most any Linux machine, uh, prior to a certain version.
[36:59.760 --> 37:01.180]  That's subsequently been fixed.
[37:01.840 --> 37:05.740]  Um, any UNIX system is only as secure as the administrator wants to make it.
[37:05.820 --> 37:18.780]  And if you want to leave loopholes in there, they're in there, uh, the, for example, the default, uh, distributions, most of them offer you the option of installing, uh, basically null accounts or accounts like guest with no passwords.
[37:18.980 --> 37:24.480]  Uh, those could be counted as a security hole because most people simply just say yes and install them.
[37:25.160 --> 37:27.920]  Um, you know, I'm sure there's lots of stuff in there.
[37:27.920 --> 37:32.820]  And, uh, lots of stuff waiting to be discovered, but, um, I don't know.
[37:33.020 --> 37:38.280]  It's, it's, it's, I would say it's probably no less secure than any other version, um, which isn't saying much.
[37:40.700 --> 37:48.520]  Does your, uh, your distribution of Slackware professional contain all the, uh, the binaries as well as the source, or is it just the binaries?
[37:49.500 --> 37:52.480]  Yeah, we, uh, a few, just an interesting anecdote.
[37:52.480 --> 37:58.180]  I got, um, uh, and I think this is the first time I've, I've, I've mentioned this publicly.
[37:58.780 --> 38:04.140]  The, uh, FSF came after us about, uh, four or five months ago.
[38:04.360 --> 38:11.980]  Uh, we got a very threatening letter from their attorney, uh, indicating that we were not properly distributing the software.
[38:11.980 --> 38:27.600]  In other words, uh, for those in this room that aren't familiar with the GNU public license, it basically requires you to either distribute the binary with the accompanying source, or include a written, uh, notice that you will supply the support, the source code on demand.
[38:27.900 --> 38:33.340]  Um, we subsequently contacted them and explained to them that wasn't an intentional omission.
[38:33.340 --> 38:35.620]  We were simply mirroring the archive sites.
[38:35.720 --> 38:43.280]  And the archive sites weren't doing a very good job of, uh, uh, uh, matching the source code to the existing binaries that they were storing.
[38:43.820 --> 38:47.660]  Uh, subsequent to that, we came out with a Slackware, uh, Pro Edition.
[38:47.840 --> 38:53.120]  And the, the new Slackware has a complete one-to-one correspondence binary to source.
[38:53.380 --> 38:59.060]  The only exception on that was the X-Window system, which by itself, I think the source was well over 100 megabytes.
[38:59.060 --> 39:00.860]  We didn't have the room for that.
[39:01.100 --> 39:04.860]  And, uh, the source license for that doesn't require it to be redistributed.
[39:04.980 --> 39:09.740]  And I don't think many people in this room or beyond are really into hacking the X-Server.
[39:09.860 --> 39:11.260]  That's for the X-Free development team.
[39:12.060 --> 39:12.140]  Okay.
[39:13.260 --> 39:14.400]  Are there any other questions?
[39:15.140 --> 39:21.140]  RAM and hard drive disk limitations, is it the same as DOS or if you go on to the vector device?
[39:21.480 --> 39:22.860]  And then streams or sockets?
[39:23.680 --> 39:24.080]  Okay.
[39:24.300 --> 39:25.740]  Well, sockets, of course, are in there.
[39:25.740 --> 39:35.080]  Because, uh, Linux is, uh, well, to my mind at least, it looks, from an administrator standpoint, it looks an awful lot like, uh, like BSD.
[39:37.040 --> 39:37.480]  Um...
[39:37.480 --> 39:37.820]  Excuse me?
[39:38.780 --> 39:39.220]  Streams?
[39:39.300 --> 39:40.600]  I don't think streams are in there.
[39:40.880 --> 39:43.400]  Uh, and I, I doubt they'll be implemented any time soon.
[39:43.540 --> 39:47.080]  AT&T doesn't have the best name with, uh, with UNIX hackers.
[39:47.720 --> 39:50.600]  Um, as a result of some of the things they did with System 5.
[39:50.600 --> 39:55.060]  However, there are a lot of System 5 enhancements to Linux.
[39:55.320 --> 40:02.020]  I mean, the things that weren't too offensive with System 5 found their way into Linux.
[40:02.020 --> 40:06.600]  For example, the, uh, uh, the system of RC initialization files.
[40:06.740 --> 40:17.100]  It used to be with, uh, uh, even with up until recently with, I think, with SunOS, it was just maybe one major RC file in, in, in the Etsy directory, which called a few others.
[40:17.100 --> 40:20.860]  Now there's an entire subdirectory, uh, the RC.d subdirectory.
[40:20.980 --> 40:22.860]  So that's the System 5 RC.
[40:23.480 --> 40:25.760]  Uh, then you have the, uh, the TermLive stuff.
[40:25.820 --> 40:31.500]  You have the System 5 style in it, uh, and various other aspects of it, of which I forget.
[40:31.640 --> 40:35.280]  But, yeah, it's, it's more a hybrid of, of System 5 and BSD.
[40:35.460 --> 40:38.800]  Personally, I think, uh, from an administrative standpoint, it's more BSD.
[40:38.800 --> 40:46.920]  But I think from a programmer standpoint, uh, oftentimes it behaves, behaves a lot like System 5 or POSIX, which tend to start to merge into, into one another.
[40:47.220 --> 40:51.880]  It's touted as being the, a POSIX-compliant operating system.
[40:52.020 --> 40:59.160]  They make no, um, allowances to either BSD or System 5 when they say, you know, what it's compatible with.
[40:59.280 --> 41:06.920]  But if you use it and if you, and you've used BSD or System 5, you'll see the differences or, or the, the, the features that have been taken from both.
[41:07.020 --> 41:08.020]  So it's very much a hybrid.
[41:08.800 --> 41:10.640]  Do you have RAM and hard drive?
[41:10.920 --> 41:12.800]  Uh, RAM, uh...
[41:13.380 --> 41:14.540]  There's no 640K?
[41:14.940 --> 41:22.920]  No, there, there are no limitations, artificial limitations, like what DOS imposes, uh, with the 640K.
[41:23.200 --> 41:29.260]  The only time you'll see anything like that, uh, and this has been recently, just, I think, just recently added to the kernel.
[41:29.260 --> 41:33.860]  At boot time, at least with Slack, the latest versions of Slackware, and I suspect, it's a kernel thing.
[41:34.000 --> 41:35.500]  It's not, uh, a Slackware thing.
[41:36.000 --> 41:44.360]  Um, before the kernel switches into protected mode, uh, it, it's only limited to, I think, uh, a megabyte of address space.
[41:44.360 --> 41:52.960]  And if the kernel you're using is fairly bloated with excess drivers, uh, and other devices, uh, you'll get a message that says, at boot time, which says, memory is tight.
[41:53.220 --> 42:00.540]  Uh, that's caused a lot of people to worry that maybe they were running out of resources when, in fact, the message is superfluous.
[42:00.540 --> 42:03.480]  Because everyone gets it the first time they boot their system.
[42:03.640 --> 42:06.840]  Because there's always more device drivers in a boot kernel.
[42:07.020 --> 42:12.100]  Because of the need to be able to recognize as many devices as possible to get Linux installed.
[42:12.940 --> 42:12.940]  Um,
[42:18.070 --> 42:18.190]  I...
[42:19.370 --> 42:21.550]  Yeah, I, I, I don't see...
[42:21.550 --> 42:24.430]  If, if your machine supports it, yeah.
[42:24.650 --> 42:28.130]  The hard drives, the only issue with hard drives currently...
[42:28.130 --> 42:30.230]  Well, there are, actually, there are two issues with hard drives.
[42:30.230 --> 42:34.250]  The first is a BIOS limitation, um, a boot limitation.
[42:34.450 --> 42:45.970]  If, for example, you have the bootable portion of Linux installed beyond 1,024 cylinders on your, on your hard drive, you won't be able to boot it.
[42:46.470 --> 42:47.310]  Uh, you have to...
[42:47.310 --> 42:50.070]  Linux, once it boots, takes over.
[42:50.210 --> 42:55.930]  And if it's set up right, will properly recognize or interpret the hardware as is.
[42:56.030 --> 42:59.090]  In other words, it doesn't pretty much rely on the BIOS at all.
[42:59.090 --> 43:00.550]  Uh, it stays away from that.
[43:00.650 --> 43:02.550]  It doesn't make any assumptions about the hardware.
[43:02.810 --> 43:03.730]  It goes out and checks.
[43:04.370 --> 43:08.770]  Uh, often times I see people will call me up, uh, with a problem with their system.
[43:09.250 --> 43:13.310]  And the first thing they'll say is, I tried this under DOS and it worked under DOS.
[43:13.430 --> 43:20.470]  Well, I've seen DOS work with machines that had severely, severely brain-dead RAM.
[43:20.770 --> 43:22.230]  Uh, and the miniature boot...
[43:22.230 --> 43:28.330]  Well, any version of UNIX, not just necessarily Linux, but any version of UNIX, it, it sort of exercises that RAM a little bit better.
[43:29.090 --> 43:31.330]  And they suddenly discover the deficiencies of their system.
[43:31.910 --> 43:38.870]  Um, so, compatibility with DOS is, uh, really not the litmus test of whether it's going to work with Linux.
[43:39.090 --> 43:47.150]  But Linux, you know, does, does support, I would say, on whole, more things than DOS does without having to go out and get external device drivers.
[43:48.590 --> 43:51.990]  Uh, I don't think there is any physical limitation.
[43:52.270 --> 43:56.590]  I mean, if you've got, for example, you can have two SCSI controllers in your, in your system.
[43:56.750 --> 43:58.870]  And you can have as many as seven devices on each.
[43:59.670 --> 44:00.050]  Um...
[44:00.050 --> 44:01.650]  No, I meant per, per drive.
[44:01.770 --> 44:02.570]  Per drive?
[44:03.830 --> 44:04.210]  Um...
[44:04.210 --> 44:05.030]  That I can't answer.
[44:05.150 --> 44:05.770]  I don't think...
[44:05.770 --> 44:08.530]  The NG will go to tetrabytes, but DOS...
[44:08.530 --> 44:10.810]  Yeah, I don't think that's a limitation of...
[44:10.810 --> 44:11.790]  Does anyone else know?
[44:11.790 --> 44:17.750]  Uh, the EXT file system is limited to two gigabytes per partition.
[44:18.050 --> 44:18.350]  Okay.
[44:18.470 --> 44:22.430]  Not currently, and you can have however many extended partitions you make.
[44:22.650 --> 44:22.790]  Yeah.
[44:22.790 --> 44:22.910]  I don't know.
[44:22.910 --> 44:25.750]  It's probably not a good idea to have partitions that large anyway.
[44:25.870 --> 44:25.990]  Yeah.
[44:26.050 --> 44:26.810]  Yeah, for safety.
[44:27.490 --> 44:27.910]  Okay.
[44:28.390 --> 44:28.950]  You, sir.
[44:29.610 --> 44:33.670]  How about the, uh, extended IDE crisis before Denver?
[44:35.370 --> 44:35.930]  Uh...
[44:35.930 --> 44:36.550]  You know?
[44:36.750 --> 44:37.350]  Not yet.
[44:37.530 --> 44:38.050]  Not yet.
[44:38.750 --> 44:40.510]  Not yet, is the answer.
[44:41.350 --> 44:47.110]  Do they have, do you know if they have, uh, a switch where you can become, make them un-extended IDE drives?
[44:47.370 --> 44:47.430]  I don't know.
[44:47.470 --> 44:47.810]  Oh, yeah.
[44:48.790 --> 44:53.610]  The, the difference is, is if you're all, you'll, you'll only see about 504 meg.
[44:54.110 --> 44:57.770]  So if you've got a one gig IDE drive, you can only use 504 meg.
[44:57.890 --> 44:58.850]  Does the switch say magic?
[44:59.110 --> 44:59.530]  No magic.
[45:00.830 --> 45:02.190]  The drive is fast.
[45:02.550 --> 45:02.910]  Okay.
[45:04.310 --> 45:04.790]  All right.
[45:04.970 --> 45:05.910]  Do we have any other questions?
[45:06.730 --> 45:09.470]  You said a couple of things, and I'm very curious.
[45:09.470 --> 45:14.450]  You said that, uh, it was a kernel problem, rather than a slacker problem.
[45:14.610 --> 45:18.430]  Now, I know the virus developers are still trying to slacker, or sort of all that.
[45:18.610 --> 45:23.020]  Uh, but who is it that, who is it?
[45:23.560 --> 45:31.200]  Well, the, the core of the operating system, the kernel, excuse me, it was written by, uh, Linus Torvalds in Finland.
[45:31.200 --> 45:44.420]  Now, the device drivers are maintained by whomever chooses to, whoever is brave enough to write a device driver for a particular device winds up supporting it, and then usually it's handed on to someone else.
[45:44.960 --> 45:50.680]  Um, it's, I don't even, I have no idea how many people are involved directly with the kernel.
[45:50.680 --> 46:00.240]  I know, looking at the, the recent README files, which accompany the latest versions of the kernel, there are literally a hundred, two hundred names in that list.
[46:00.480 --> 46:05.140]  And there's probably more, uh, people who maybe collaborate, and then only one person submits the changes.
[46:05.360 --> 46:09.120]  Collaboration, does it sound like just like people just like, uh, say that this is the new Linus one?
[46:09.220 --> 46:09.760]  Oh, no, no.
[46:09.900 --> 46:11.740]  There's more or less a central registry.
[46:11.740 --> 46:17.780]  The things tend to go through Linus, I think, unless he's got somebody else, uh, uh, managing that now.
[46:17.940 --> 46:21.660]  But basically, things get registered with him, and he'll put it into the official kernel.
[46:21.780 --> 46:27.060]  Now there, that said, there are other, uh, changes to the kernel which can be added.
[46:27.640 --> 46:34.760]  Um, and ordinarily, if Linus doesn't decide to put them in the kernel, you'll find them, uh, on the side.
[46:34.900 --> 46:37.580]  For example, let's say Linus decided not to include this.
[46:37.680 --> 46:40.760]  So it'll be on the FTP site, maybe in the alpha or beta directories.
[46:40.760 --> 46:42.580]  Uh, and they can be installed.
[46:42.980 --> 46:47.620]  Ordinarily, though, uh, they are very specific to a given revision number of the kernel.
[46:47.800 --> 46:51.520]  And if you try installing them on some other revision, it's, it's a crapshoot.
[46:51.800 --> 46:58.020]  So, getting into the kernel is probably the best way of seeing it, you know, continue, continue on.
[46:58.200 --> 46:58.500]  Mike?
[46:58.960 --> 46:59.620]  Yeah, hi.
[47:01.620 --> 47:03.940]  Uh, if you have any clues in my mind.
[47:06.440 --> 47:06.820]  Oh, okay.
[47:06.820 --> 47:08.920]  Which I gather, I know, fits with your schedule as well.
[47:09.040 --> 47:10.940]  If you want, I can chat for a couple of minutes.
[47:11.220 --> 47:13.160]  All right, well, we're about to get kicked out.
[47:13.160 --> 47:15.600]  Uh, but...
[47:15.600 --> 47:16.800]  Having said that...
[47:16.800 --> 47:17.080]  Sorry.
[47:17.200 --> 47:17.620]  Go ahead, bud.
[47:18.000 --> 47:19.280]  Here, do you want to...
[47:20.140 --> 47:21.600]  Why don't I take over and...
[47:21.600 --> 47:21.740]  All right.
[47:21.740 --> 47:22.700]  How long are you around for?
[47:22.880 --> 47:24.220]  Oh, I don't have to leave until 6.
[47:24.400 --> 47:24.920]  Okay, here.
[47:24.980 --> 47:25.960]  Why don't I take over for a second?
[47:26.100 --> 47:26.360]  All right.
[47:26.620 --> 47:27.100]  This is...
[47:27.100 --> 47:32.440]  Given that we're about to get kicked out and this is a user group meeting, let's meet outside.
[47:32.940 --> 47:34.460]  People like Kurt...
[47:34.460 --> 47:35.880]  How do you pronounce your last name, Kurt?
[47:36.820 --> 47:37.180]  Hockenberry.
[47:37.180 --> 47:41.220]  As well as, uh, Michael Johnson will be around outside to, uh...
[47:41.220 --> 47:43.440]  You can debate technical questions with.
[47:43.780 --> 47:44.180]  I...
[47:44.180 --> 47:50.740]  Before, though, we get kicked out, if you had a couple of questions, I just want to do, uh, my own curiosity, uh, on the thing.
[47:51.040 --> 47:55.860]  Of the people who are using Linux, how many people, uh, got it down off the net?
[47:57.740 --> 47:58.380]  Okay.
[47:58.920 --> 48:11.560]  Now, another interesting one that I keep fielding constantly is how many people are considering, or either are using Linux or are considering using Linux in some form of professional environment.
[48:11.960 --> 48:13.460]  Uh, by that...
[48:13.460 --> 48:15.420]  And I'm talking, uh, broadly defined.
[48:15.620 --> 48:24.920]  Either, uh, selling services by connecting people to the net or connecting machines into their, uh, UNIX, uh, network at work or that kind of thing.
[48:25.980 --> 48:26.460]  Interesting.
[48:26.760 --> 48:42.460]  This is, um, in general, uh, again, being in the marketing business of, of, uh, PC UNIX products and Linux generally, uh, it's the constant skepticism we get of high-end users saying, yeah, but it's not really a professional product and people aren't really using it,
[48:42.560 --> 48:45.100]  uh, for mission-critical applications.
[48:45.120 --> 48:59.120]  And what's fascinating, uh, just as a little anecdote, uh, that some of you may have heard already, uh, we, uh, was out at, uh, Uniforum in March, uh, walking by the IDG, uh, people who publish Computer World, who do a lot of market research.
[48:59.300 --> 49:06.300]  And this woman jumps out from behind the counter, sees my badge at that time saying, Linux Journal, and says, what do you know about this Linux stuff?
[49:07.000 --> 49:09.420]  And, uh, so, you know, we chatted for a bit.
[49:09.420 --> 49:21.660]  And she apparently was in charge of a survey that IDG do, um, every, uh, couple of months, uh, of use of various different versions of Linux on, uh, of UNIX, that is, in commercial accounts.
[49:21.800 --> 49:24.840]  So they send these out to Vice Presidents of MIS, these sort of places.
[49:25.500 --> 49:39.120]  Um, and she got a significant write-in component of these MIS directors admitting to using Linux as their new operating system that they were implementing on their UNIX networks.
[49:39.120 --> 49:40.000]  Came out of the closet.
[49:42.560 --> 49:42.960]  Exactly.
[49:43.320 --> 49:44.860]  And she was absolutely amazed.
[49:45.000 --> 49:49.020]  So she was asking me things like, well, who's selling this stuff, and where is it advertised?
[49:49.420 --> 49:52.340]  And what's the 1-800 number for their marketing department?
[49:53.440 --> 50:01.220]  And I tried to explain to her that it was, well, Linus Torvalds is in charge of the kernel, and, you know, various other guys are in charge of different parts of it.
[50:01.220 --> 50:03.280]  And, uh, she said, okay, so what's their phone number?
[50:04.040 --> 50:09.620]  And, uh, trying to explain to her that she needed an internet connection to, uh, to get a hold of these people.
[50:09.760 --> 50:14.200]  But, uh, it's probably the most interesting aspect of Linux, is this stuff really works.
[50:14.300 --> 50:18.600]  It's really stable on the PC, and it's showing up literally everywhere.
[50:18.900 --> 50:36.260]  Uh, so if you can't get, uh, your questions answered by, uh, Kurt or Michael, uh, or someone else here, uh, you can certainly get your questions answered out on the net, uh, uh, in the Linux newsgroups, comp.os.linux.announce.misc.helpanddevelopment.
[50:37.320 --> 50:43.100]  And then, of course, there's the Linux journal, uh, and then there's user groups literally all over the country springing up.
[50:43.320 --> 50:45.820]  Uh, 20 different answers, one of them might be right.
[50:46.920 --> 50:47.440]  That's true.
[50:47.740 --> 50:50.880]  That, uh, but that's been true with UNIX, uh, all along, I think.
[50:51.540 --> 50:51.580]  Amen.
[50:52.120 --> 50:56.600]  Okay, well, thanks very much for coming, and thank you, Michael, for, uh, speaking.
[50:57.240 --> 50:57.600]  applause
[51:05.630 --> 51:10.310]  I'm the Assistant Administrator at the Institute of Technology, and I'm also a student.
[51:12.070 --> 51:13.970]  I don't, I don't know if I should say that.
[51:14.450 --> 51:15.630]  I don't know if I know it.