News PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The February 21 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. The Linux SIG will be doing an overview of X-Windows The Macintosh SIG will join Kevin Hopkins in a journey into MacOS X from the viewpoint of a new user. The PC SIG will explore some of the setup and configure tweaking of Windows XP.
We'd also like to thank renewing members Quentin L. Barnes, Charles E. Earle, Richard Hall, George F. Krumins, Jeff Strong, Debra J. Smith, Dave Witt, Mike Latinovich, and Jim Lewis.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.
Apple Computer posted a $38 million profit for its first fiscal quarter of 2002, directly in line with analysts' expectations for the company. Despite an aging product line, Apple shipped 746,000 Macs and 125,000 iPods during the quarter, and posted revenue of $1.38 billion on gross margins of 30.7 percent. Although Apple didn't break out sales at the 27 Apple retail stores around the U.S., they did say that the stores received over 800,000 visitors in December of 2001 alone. International sales accounted for 48 percent of Apple's revenues. Notably, Apple said initial orders for the newly redesigned G4 iMac were greater than expected, and they expected revenue would rise in the second fiscal quarter of the year - highly unusual for a computer maker in the current sluggish economy. [GD]
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/jan/16results.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06682
Apple today introduced faster versions of the Power Mac G4, putting some distance between the company's professional line of machines and the surprisingly powerful iMac (Flat Panel). The top of the line model, at $3,000, features dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, each assisted by dedicated 2 MB L3 cache chips running at up to 500 MHz. It also comes with a 256K L2 cache, 512 MB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk. The mid-range configuration, at $2,300, features a 933 MHz processor with the same L3 and L2 caches, 256 MB of RAM, and a 60 GB hard disk. Both setups also include a SuperDrive and an Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics processor with 64 MB of memory. The new low end of the lineup is actually $100 lower than Apple's previous entry-level Power Mac: the $1,600 model runs on an 800 MHz processor, 256K L2 cache, 256 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard disk, a CD-RW drive, and an ATI Radeon 7500 graphics chip. A DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive is also available as a build-to-order option.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/jan/28pmg4.html
In addition to the standard suite of Apple software - including iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie - the new Power Macs feature an intriguing compilation of third party Mac OS X software, including Lemke Software's GraphicConverter, Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro X, Caffeine Software's PixelNhance, Omni Group's OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, PCalc 2 from James Thompson, and Art Director's Toolkit (ADT) from Code Line Communications. It's obvious that Apple is targeting the new Power Macs at the professional graphics market, but it's also great to see some useful utilities like GraphicConverter being shown to environments where big programs like Photoshop are in abundance. The new Power Macs are expected to become available in February. [JLC]
http://www.apple.com/powermac/software.html
Opera Software earlier this month released the final version of Opera 5.0, their Web browser for System 7.5.3 through Mac OS 9.2 (the Mac OS X version remains in beta testing). Opera boasts fast page rendering, easy keyboard navigation, flexible searching from within the browser interface, page zooming, and a host of tweaky configuration options. It's not perfect - history list entries are easily lost if the Mac crashes, and there's no ideal way to deal with the too-small text on many Web sites (see "Why Windows Web Pages Have Tiny Text" in TidBITS-467_). In our testing so far, though, Opera appears to provide highly credible competition for Internet Explorer 5.1 and Netscape 6, so if you're unhappy with either of those browsers, Opera deserves a close look. It's free to use in banner mode (I haven't seen this yet, since you get a 30-day grace period, but I presume it displays an advertising banner in the interface, much like Eudora does in Sponsored mode); if you wish to support Opera directly, it costs $40 new, or $20 for students and senior citizens, and bulk discounts are available if you want to buy more than nine copies. Opera 5.0 requires a PowerPC-based Mac running System 7.5.3 or later, and it's a mere 2 MB download. [ACE]
http://www.opera.com/mac/
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2002/01/20020109.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05284
Microsoft has released a Network Security Updater for Microsoft Office X that eliminates a network vulnerability made possible by a flaw in the application suite's network-aware anti-piracy mechanism. Office X checks to make sure that every copy running on the network is using a unique product identifier (PID); if an Office application detects a duplicate, it shuts down. As discovered by Marty Schoch, the problem is that the checking code doesn't correctly handle a malformed PID announcement, causing the first Office application launched to crash, with the possible loss of data. So although someone could cause Office applications to crash by sending malformed PID announcements, there is no possibility that data could be created, deleted, or modified. For full details, see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-002. [ACE]
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/OFFICEX/NetworkUpdater.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/officex/
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-002.asp
For many people, the Grammy awards are an annual event wherein the music recording industry congratulates itself for selling lots of albums, and shamelessly uses the occasion to sell a few more albums by putting some hot- selling acts and half-naked celebrities on prime time television. Beginning in 1994, however, the Recording Academy began awarding technical Grammys for individuals and companies which have made "contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field." Past winners include Les Paul (a pioneer of the electric guitar and multitrack recording), Ray Dolby (noise reduction technology), Digidesign (high-end digital recording tools), and George Massenburg (parametric EQ, mix automation, and other production tools).
This year's technical Grammys will go to Robert Moog and Apple Computer. Bob Moog was an early developer of analog synthesizers whose instruments brought electronic music into the mainstream beginning in the late 1960s, while Apple is being praised for playing a leading role bringing computer technology into the process of writing, producing, and recording music. Although Windows-based PCs have made some inroads in the last few years, professional audio is one of those niche markets where Apple sells a lot of high-end hardware, and since the late 1980s Macs have led the way in professional and semi-professional computer-based recording (often in combination with hardware from companies like Mark of the Unicorn and/or Digidesign). It's nice to see the industry acknowledge that Apple's systems and inventiveness continue to play such an important role, although that merely adds to the irony of the record labels' online music services not being compatible with the Mac. [GD]
http://www.grammy.com/news/academy/020131tech.html
http://www.bigbriar.com/
http://www.digidesign.com/
http://www.motu.com/
Apple quietly announced last week it will no longer sell Macs or Apple merchandise through Circuit City. Apple had recently returned to Circuit City only in mid- 2000, following a 1998 pull-out from Circuit City, Sears, Best Buy, Office Max, and other high-profile technology retailers which had failed to showcase (or even properly set up) Apple merchandise. (Apple pulled of Sears again in March 2001.) Neither Apple nor Circuit City gave reasons for the current disassociation, but Apple has been hinting for some time it hasn't been happy with all its channel partners, and would be making changes both to promote its own retail storefronts and support the CompUSA "store within a store" concept. [GD]
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cn/20020209/tc_cn/apple_short_circuits_circuit_city_deal/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06044
AOL Time Warner Inc. is in talks to buy Red Hat Inc., a prominent distributor of a computer operating system, an acquisition that would position the media giant to challenge arch rival Microsoft Corp., according to sources familiar with the matter.
Red Hat, a publicly traded firm based in Durham, N.C., sells products and services based on the Linux operating system, the freely available software developed collaboratively by volunteers. Linux is designed for a wide variety of gear, running corporate computer servers and consumer devices such as personal computers, cell phones and video games.
The Red Hat negotiations –which are still fluid – are the latest indication that AOL Time Warner, the world's largest media company, is looking for alternatives to software made by Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs 90 percent of the world's PCs. The longtime competitors have fought over an array of rival consumer technologies lately, including online subscription services, instant-messaging systems and Web-based video and audio players.
Officials of AOL, Red Hat and Microsoft declined to comment.
To counter Microsoft's desktop hegemony, New York-based AOL Time Warner could use the deal to couple its America Online software, the market leader with more than 33 million Internet subscribers, with Red Hat's operating-system technology, sources said.
The AOL online software, which consumers can install for free from the Web or a compact disk, is now designed to run on Microsoft's Windows operating system. But the AOL software could be configured to override Windows and launch a version of Red Hat's Linux operating system, sources said.
With such a move, AOL Time Warner could potentially make significant inroads into Microsoft's bread-and-butter business. An even graver challenge to Microsoft would be for AOL Time Warner to develop a rival operating system that works exclusively with the media giant's own Internet service provider, its Web browser or proprietary content.
This is not the first time AOL Time Warner has explored alternatives to Windows. There were rumblings last year, during a flash point in the rivalry between the two tech titans, when AOL Time Warner was scouting for an acquisition or partnership with a firm that could provide a competing operating system.
AOL Time Warner has already tried to counteract Microsoft on other fronts, including rebuilding its Netscape Web browser business to better compete against Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer. Netscape technology has been incorporated into a Gateway Inc. tabletop Internet terminal and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 video-game console. Linux also runs the Sony product.
It was unclear yesterday what price tag Red Hat could fetch. With a market capitalization of about $1.45 billion and about 600 employees worldwide, Red Hat reported $68.2 million in revenue in the nine months ended Nov. 30, down 10 percent over the same period a year earlier.
The software company reported a profit of $1.8 million, or a penny per share, in the nine months, compared with a loss of $10 million, or six cents a share, in the year-ago period.
Red Hat makes its money by packaging Linux for commercial and consumer use and by providing services and support to customers who use it. The operating system itself is freely available on the Internet – thanks to an initiative by a programmer named Linus Torvalds who organized volunteers to write the original source code. Unlike Microsoft, which does not fully divulge its code, the blueprints to Linux are available to anyone who agrees to make modifications publicly available.
Linux has yet to be adopted widely by consumers, largely because it requires some technical proficiency to install. But it is popular with the tech crowd and, according to industry estimates, runs about 30 percent of all computers servers –the powerful computers that function as hubs on a network.
Red Hat has claimed such big clients as Amazon.com Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., providing software and support for IBM servers that use the Linux operating system.
A Brief Description of KVM (K)eyboard, (V)ideo, (M)ouse Switches:
A KVM switch allows you to control multiple computers from a central workstation setup, or (less commonly) one computer from several workstation setups.
For the purposes of this review, we will address controlling multiple PCs from a common keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Why two units?
My needs for two switches are probably quite uncommon. I needed the 4-port model for my workbench, to be able to control multiple units during building, configuration and/or troubleshooting. Previously, I had used a mechanical switch box (4-port) for this purpose. This solution has several inherent problems and inconveniences not associated with electronic solutions:
I needed the 2-port model to help my transition to Windows XP on a new workstation by allowing me to set the old Win98 box next to the new one and switch back and forth, using my workstation setup.
The units:
The devices are housed in a small plastic case roughly half the size of an external modem and about as tall. 4 self-adhesive silicone "feet" are included in the packaging and must be stuck to the bottom of the case. The cable connectors are located on the sides and rear of the units. No external power supply is supplied (or necessary) as power is derived from the monitor or one of the units connected to it.
Naturally, the 4-port model is slightly larger than the 2-port (I've attached some diagrams). These devices are relatively light-weight and tend to slide around fairly easily when placed on a flat surface.
2-Port Switch
Mechanical switch
to cycle between
the connections
(Front Panel) ----------------+
|
|
V
+-----+---+-----+
| |
| +-+ +-+ |
| | | | | |
-+ +-+ +-+ +-
| |
VGA2 connector ------> | PC2 PC1 | <------ VGA1 connector
| LED LED |
-+ +-
Kbd2 connector ------> | | <------ Kbd1 connector
-+ +-
Mouse2 connector-----> | | <------ Mouse1 connector
-+ +-
| |
| |
| |
+--+ +--+ + +-+
|---| |-|-|
^ ^ ^
| | |
| | |
Common VGA Connector -------+ | +-- Common Mouse Connector
|
+-- Common Keyboard Connector
(Rear Panel)
4-Port Switch
Mechanical switch
to cycle between
the connections
(Front Panel) ----------------+
|
|
V
+-----+---+-----+
| |
| +-+ +-+ |
| | | | | |
-+ +-+ +-+ +-
| |
VGA1 connector ------> | PC1 PC2 | <------ VGA2 connector
| LED LED |
-+ +-
Kbd1 connector ------> | | <------ Kbd2 connector
-+ +-
Mouse1 connector-----> | | <------ Mouse2 connector
-+ +-
| |
| +-+ +-+ |
| | | | | |
-+ +-+ +-+ +-
| |
VGA3 connector ------> | PC3 PC4 | <------ VGA4 connector
| LED LED |
-+ +-
Kbd3 connector ------> | | <------ Kbd4 connector
-+ +-
Mouse3 connector-----> | | <------ Mouse4 connector
-+ +-
| |
| |
| |
| |
+--+ +--+ + +-+
|---| |-|-|
^ ^ ^
| | |
| | |
Common VGA Connector -------+ | +-- Common Mouse Connector
|
+-- Common Keyboard Connector
(Rear Panel)
The Features: Each unit has ports for PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse and VGA monitor. Standard keyboards are functional by adapter (DIN to PS/2), although the manual states this is "unsupported". As the manual also states, I was unable to get a serial mouse to work using an adapter (DB9 to PS/2). I was able to get my USB Microsoft Trackball Explorer to work using the provided USB to PS/2 adapter.
The 2-port model has two options for switching between computers. A double-tap on either CTRL Key or the Front-Panel switch.
The 4-port unit has more options.
Switching to a specific unit is accomplished by pressing and releasing ALT, CTRL then SHIFT (on the same side of the keyboard), then the number of the PC you want to switch to (1-4, NOT on the numeric keypad), followed by ENTER.
A scan mode is also available by pressing ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, 0 (zero), then ENTER. This continuously cycles between the connected units until you press the SPACEBAR.
A selective scan mode is available by pressing ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, 9, then ENTER. This allows you to cycle through the units by pressing the left and right SHIFT keys. The keyboard is unavailable for input until the SPACEBAR is pressed, returning the switch to normal operation.
The Costs:
The 2-port model sells for around $60
The 4-port for around $90
The Good:
These switches work flawlessly! Switching between units is easily done either by the hot-keys or the mechanical switch. A side benefit of using an electronic KVM is when a unit needs to be rebooted, it doesn't hang with the ridiculous BIOS message "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue" or the Windows dialog complaining about no mouse being found (and requiring a reboot). The box emulates a standard keyboard and Microsoft-compatible mouse signal for each connected unit. Quite nice.
The Bad:
My biggest complaint about these units are the locations of the cable connectors. These are spread around the edges of the unit, making it look (and act) like a veritable Medusa, with cables sprouting everywhere!
Also annoying is the ease with which the natural pull of the cables causes them to move around on the desktop. If they were heavier, or had all the connections in the rear, this problem would probably not exist.
Overall:
I give these units a thumbs-up. I have mounted the 4-port unit on the wall above my keyboard thus the cable-clutter isn't a factor. The 2-port unit has plenty of space in its location.
If you can get by the cable-sprout, these units work exactly as advertised and are very easy to use. I've never failed to be able to switch to another machine with either of them. If you are currently using a mechanical switch-box, once you try one of these, you will throw rocks at that clunker!!
Here's a batch file to do what double-clicking on the 'Local Area connection' icon in the System Tray does from a DOS prompt. Tested in XP-Pro only.
@echo off :: uptime.bat :: :: Batch file to display XP/2000 :: System Uptime since last restart :: :: :: By: Jim Lewis :: :: Modified 2-5-05 :: :: echo. echo. systeminfo | find "System Up Time" echo. echo. pause echo. echo.ToC
Hey Bucky(s)...
I'm likin' this XP stuff... (XP Pro, Corporate Edition, that is :^) *no* WPA!!
I got my Win2K box (P3-933, 384Mb, IDE RAID Ctrlr, AHA2940UW SCSI, IBM 20G, WD 15G, Plextor SCSI reader, Plextor IDE 12x10x32 CDRW, ASUS 50x IDE reader, 100Mb IDE Zip, ASUS V7100 32Mb AGP 4x, SB Live! 5.1) up-n-runnin' pretty quick. The only issue I had was XP didn't like my Mylex SCSI3UW RAID controller (no drivers in XP *or* from Mylex, bummer).
Otherwise, I was up and on the net in approximately 1 hr. Not bad for a complex box!! XP even found my Cardinal 56K external modem and the UMAX 1200S scanner automagically!!
Some other things that impressed me were:
A) Found all the network shares *including printers* and installed drivers!! Test pages printed right the *first time*.
B) Installed MS Office Premium (all 4 Discs) *without a reboot* !! Now that's Way-Kewl!! Reminds me a lot of Workbench :^)
C) Boot times are significantly shortened from 9x and 2K.
D) The on-the-fly IP changes without a reboot are even better implemented than in 2K.
E) The eye-candy is really pretty good, particularly the Clear type display fonts.
Haven't tried the files and settings migration wizard yet, but if it can be used selectively, I'll be doing that this weekend as well.
Now the Bitches:
A) IE 6.0 has re-inherited the annoying problem of opening a bookmark in a previously opened window... AARRRRGH!! I also induced it to crash horribly on two separate occasions during my software-updating marathon.
B) The "Lock Web Items on Desktop" setting causes a noticeable loss of quality in the JPG wallpapers!! This one baffles me, as I can see no good reason for this.
C) I discovered the reason the NetBEUI protocol is unsupported... it's slower than DIRT!! I'll wager the code-weenies just didn't want to take the time to fix it, so they un-supported it instead!! Workaround: IPX/SPX... This Novell protocol works great, is far faster than NetBEUI and allows me to keep NetBIOS unbound from TCP/IP for security purposes.
D) Due to the above workaround, I had to touch every machine in my network (all 7 of 'em!) to install IPX and ditch NetBEUI!!
E) The help system is better than 9x, BUT STILL SUX!! You just can't admin an NT-2K-XP-based box without Google and the Knowledge Base yet.
F) The typical NT-centric slow response of the first opening of; Explorer windows, Admin utilities and programs in general. But I'm starting to get nitpicky here, this is really not a big issue.
Overall, kudos go to the Redmond bunch for a job pretty well done. I agree with KH1's assessment of this being the most Amiga-Like OS from MS yet. I'll update you more as time passes and I get further along.
Shifting gears, I downloaded the Mandrake 8.1 distribution (burnt off on the XP box at 24x, Whoopee!!). Once the XP project is configged to my liking, I'll tackle whipping up a Linux file-print-proxy box. I will try to take better notes for Newsletter coverage on this dude, KH2.
Ya know, I just really didn't have enough to do, did I? ;^)
Jim
Lindows, a start-up developing software that would let many Windows programs run on Linux computers, this week released legal papers designed to head off Microsoft's efforts to thwart the product.
In December, Microsoft asked a federal judge to bar the company from using the Lindows name, which it claimed could confuse consumers.
The suit set back Lindows' software release schedule but also has given the start-up publicity as the latest chapter in the long-running competition between Microsoft and Linux fans. The company had hoped to release a preview version in December, but said the legal action delayed the software, which eventually arrived in February.
And the suit has given Lindows new ambitions. "There's a strong chance that Microsoft may lose its trademark on Windows," said Vice President of Marketing John Bromhead. He also said the company has some backup names prepared in case it loses.
In the latest court papers, which were made public Thursday, Lindows said it conducted a survey of 750 of its registered users and found that not one confused Microsoft with the start-up.
"Not a single respondent believed that Microsoft 'makes, sponsors or licenses Lindows OS' or 'owns or operates Lindows.com,'" the company said in the filing.
Further, Lindows argues that Windows is itself a generic term for a feature of an operating system, bolstering its case by drawing on Microsoft's own testimony when the software giant defended itself against Apple Computer in a 1988 suit.
"No matter how much money a company spends, they should not be allowed to prevent others from using a descriptive term widely used in the industry, especially if that company has been found guilty of illegal tactics to build and maintain its monopoly," said Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.
"This would be like a furniture company selling a 'Super Chair,' driving other furniture companies out of business illegally, and then trying to gain exclusive rights to the word 'chair' and block all competitors from using it," Robertson said.
A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for comment.
Lindows employs software from the Wine project, an open-source effort to mimic in Linux the commands that Windows programs use. San Diego-based Lindows was launched last year by Robertson, former CEO of digital music site MP3.com.
The company said it has released a "sneak preview" of LindowsOS to a select group of testers and plans to release the full version 1.0 later this year for $99.
Lindows said the next step in the lawsuit is a court hearing Feb. 27 in which the judge will hear oral arguments from both sides.
[News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.]
Oracle replacing Unix with Linux
Oracle Corp. is about to replace three Unix servers that run the bulk of its business applications with a cluster of Intel Corp. servers running Linux, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison said yesterday.
He also predicted the "inevitable" demise of large server systems, exposing a potential conflict of interest with longtime ally Sun Microsystems Inc.
It wasn't clear which applications would be moved to Linux, but the Oracle chief portrayed it as a significant step. He said he favors Intel servers because they're cheap and can be easily replaced, and he picked Linux over Microsoft Corp.'s Windows because Linux is "much safer if you're on the Internet." Ellison is a longtime Microsoft foe.
Asked by an analyst what the growth of Intel-based servers could mean for Unix vendors like Sun, Ellison seemed to lose his stride for a moment. "Things will move slowly," he said, adding that many customers aren't convinced yet that clustering even works. "It will be several years before the big machine dies, but inevitably, the big machine will die."
http://www.computerworld.com/storyba/0,4125,NAV47_STO67867,00.html
Linux Standard Base 1.1 released
The Free Standards Group released version 1.1 of the Linux Standard Base ( LSB) as well as the first version of the Linux Internationalization Initiative standard to deal with Linux language barriers.
The standards will make it easier for software companies such as Oracle to bring their programs to Linux, said Scott McNeil, executive director of the Free Standards Group, at a news conference. Oracle will know what Linux features can be expected, not only from one company's version of Linux to another, but across newer versions of the same company's product.
The LSB released version 1.0 in beta testing form in July, then expanded it before settling on version 1.1 as the standard that should be adopted, McNeil said.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-827447.html
PostgreSQL (database software) v7.2 released
After almost a full year of development since PostgreSQL v7.1 was released, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group is proud to announce the availability of our latest development milestone ... PostgreSQL v7.2, another step forward for the project.
http://apachetoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-02-06-002-06-NW-DB-PG
Preemptible Linux kernel patch merged into main Linux development-kernel tree
The preemptible Linux kernel patch that was originally introduced by MontaVista Software and more recently championed by Robert Love has been merged by Linus Torvalds into the main Linux development-kernel tree, beginning version v2.5.4-pre6. This adds a far greater degree of real-time responsiveness to the standard Linux kernel, by reducing interrupt latencies while kernel functions are executing.
"I see a preemptible kernel as a means to an overall better system," Love told LinuxDevices.com in an earlier interview. "Besides the traditional markets for low latency -- audio/video, specialized embedded/real-time, etc. -- a preemptive kernel can benefit any interactive task. The result is hopefully a smoother, more responsive, desktop," he said.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3989618385.html
Someone I know who is very much into the Linux community has known of AOL fooling around with Linux for quite a while now and I don't have any reason to doubt him. My guess would be that they're now either being mismanaged or there is something much deeper that AOL wants from Redhat. It wouldn't surprise me to see a Linux distro from them for users to do AOL, but they could have done this with pocket change already. Along with that is what would they gain by getting Red Hat to do a Linux distro for AOL access. I doubt Grandma Smith is going to care whether it's Red Hat or SuSe, so that rules out namebrand recognition and other distros would be much cheaper. Based on that, I still consider it to be that Red Hat has certain products that no one else has or a doorway into a new market (business?) that AOL wants.
Now, if one of those products was technology to cover up the Linux side of things, that would fall in line with one of those products that only they might have. They would have a killer desktop Linux distro with AOL, AIM, Netscape, and possibly even Open/Star Office in the mix. They could overnight be a desktop nightmare for MS. A purchase of Real which has been rumored for a year now would confirm that even more.
As we discuss Apple's new operating system, there's a strong awareness that, no matter how good Mac OS X itself might be, it can't succeed without applications created outside Apple. As a result, Apple has put a great deal of effort into both encouraging and pressuring developers to produce software that takes full advantage of the new operating system and requires Mac OS X to run - which will in turn convince users to switch. Unfortunately, since Mac OS X and Carbon (the technology that enables programs to run under either Mac OS 8.6/9.x or Mac OS X) are still relatively new, developers have found themselves stuck between the rock of Apple's Carbon rhetoric and the hard place of its incompleteness. Mac OS X 10.1.2 is a major improvement in terms of maturity, but can't yet compare to the Classic Mac OS's two decades of refinement - begun even before the Macintosh, with the initial development of Apple's Lisa computer.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
http://guide.apple.com/macosx/
Mac OS X combines several earlier products into a new and modern operating system, and each brings its own identity and user community along. To make things more interesting, some of the threads Apple has woven into Mac OS X have historically gone in different directions; contrast the Classic Mac OS, designed for non-technical people, with Unix, which was intended for programmers. The end product is a surprisingly successful blend, but Mac OS X's mixed ancestry shows up in some interesting ways. Because each of the different elements includes its own interfaces, biases, and applications, it's impossible to get a good grasp of Mac OS X without keeping in mind the varied heritage of its programs. In part one of this article, I'll go over the three application breeds familiar to most Mac OS users - Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa - and explain their strengths and weaknesses regarding the Mac OS as a whole. In part two, I'll talk about the advantages of Mac OS X's Java support and look at applications written purely for Unix, the heart of Apple's new operating system.
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/
API in the Sky
The defining characteristic of a Mac OS X application today is the set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) it uses, the group of requests an application can make of the operating system - from "what time is it?" and "draw this paragraph in Palatino 12 in that window" to "open this URL in Help Viewer." To avoid redundant effort, programs use APIs as much as possible. This means, for instance, that most applications don't need to deal with fonts directly, because they can have the OS generate font menus and display text. Because of Mac OS X's long and complex history, programmers can choose among several different API sets, each of which manifests some of its own characteristics in programs using the API.
Mac OS X can run applications based on Apple's _Classic_ APIs, which are also available on Mac OS 9 (and earlier), and were previously called the Mac Toolbox. Mac OS X also offers the _Carbon_ APIs, a subset of the Mac Toolbox, designed to offer compatibility with Mac OS 9 while also making specific incompatible changes that make possible major benefits under Mac OS X. Carbon's changes enable preemptive multitasking, superior virtual memory, and crash protection for applications in Mac OS X - none of these additional features are available to Carbon applications running in Mac OS 9. In addition, Mac OS X includes the NeXT-developed _Cocoa_ APIs - in fact, many of today's Cocoa applications were previously available under NeXTstep, the operating system developed by Steve Jobs's former company, NeXT.
All three of the above API sets are proprietary to Apple, but Mac OS X also supports a couple important public API sets (covered in part two of this article). First, Mac OS X supports the Java APIs, designed by Sun to enable the creation of programs that use the Java programming language and run on multiple operating systems. Then there's support for Unix APIs through Darwin, Apple's open source Unix operating system foundation. Based on BSD Unix, the Unix API layer is what enables Mac OS X to run the powerful Apache Web server. This richness of APIs gives Mac OS X many more applications than one would expect in a new operating system - but keeping track of the various types of programs can be confusing.
http://java.sun.com/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/darwin.html
http://httpd.apache.org/
Classic
The most familiar programs under Mac OS X - for now, at least - are Classic programs. These are mostly written for Mac OS versions 7 through 9 and tend to run the same as they would in Mac OS 9. To accomplish this, a copy of Mac OS 9 runs as an invisible Mac OS X program (called, appropriately, Classic). The Classic layer of Mac OS X is good enough that most programs run exactly the same under Mac OS X as they would under Mac OS 9. The exceptions are mostly programs that control hardware directly, such as CD recorders, since Mac OS X has new and incompatible drivers to manage such devices.
The broad compatibility offered by Classic is critical for the success of Mac OS X, since the many existing Classic programs enable people to use Mac OS X on a daily basis, getting work done with familiar tools instead of waiting years for programs to be rewritten. Microsoft Office 2001 and Eudora 5.1 are two excellent examples of important Classic programs - the Office applications enabled people to use Word, share Office documents, and crunch numbers normally when running Mac OS X until Microsoft released the carbonized version of Office X in mid-November of 2001. In a similar vein, the Classic version of Eudora is still being widely used in Mac OS X while Qualcomm works on the Carbon beta of Eudora (recent releases of which have improved significantly).
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/office/
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/officex/
http://www.eudora.com/betas/
Because the Classic APIs are based on Mac OS 9, Classic programs can't take full advantage of Mac OS X's new capabilities. In addition, since Classic works by running an entire copy of Mac OS 9 inside Mac OS X, there is a great deal of duplication - some of which is managed well, and some of which isn't. For example, you can connect to file servers through the Classic Chooser, or through the Carbon Finder. Either way, file servers are available to both Classic and Carbon programs, but they show up in different places depending on how you are navigating. The Carbon Finder shows them on the desktop, or under the Computer top-level folder; old Open/Save dialogs and Navigation Services show them at the top level, but lack a Computer container; in Terminal and Unix-based programs, they're under the top-level Volumes folder.
To run Classic programs, it's first necessary to "boot" Mac OS 9, which adds significant startup time for the first Classic program launch; Classic can then stay running until logout or restart, but a Classic crash can still bring down all Classic programs (only Carbon and Cocoa programs gain the benefits of the new protected memory model). Additionally, since there are separate clipboards for Classic/Carbon applications and Cocoa applications, there is a brief delay before synchronizing them, so it's possible to copy from a Classic program and then paste the wrong thing in Cocoa program, or vice-versa.
Carbon
Carbonized programs running under Mac OS X are more interesting, because they automatically take advantage of improvements introduced with Mac OS X with less effort than a complete rewrite in Cocoa. Some of the major changes are implicit and automatic for all Carbon programs - such as improved memory management and live window dragging. (Taking advantage of other changes in Mac OS X requires explicit support that must be added to any application that's ported to Carbon.) In addition, Apple is now putting essentially all of their operating system development effort into Mac OS X, so the benefits of Apple's ongoing development work have shifted from Mac OS 9 (which is now being revised primarily to support Mac OS X better) over to the new platform. Mac OS X is rapidly getting better, and these improvements are focused on Carbon and Cocoa applications.
http://developer.apple.com/carbon/
Once developers have carbonized their Classic programs and become familiar with the new environment, we'll see a resumption of the normal process of development and improvement, instead of the current stage where existing applications are moving to Carbon, but not acquiring many new features. Developers are starting to cease work on their Classic programs and shift attention to Carbon and Mac OS X. The rate at which this transition occurs is important to Apple - if it's too slow, people will continue to use Mac OS 9 for "real work" and consider Mac OS X a toy. As key developers gradually cease Mac OS 9 development, as Microsoft has done, pressure to upgrade will grow stronger.
Distinguishing Carbon programs from their Classic counterparts is made easy by the different window interfaces. Classic programs use the old 2D Platinum appearance (rectangular windows, grey borders, zoom boxes in the upper right), while Carbon (and Cocoa) programs use the Aqua interface, with rounded edges, drop shadows, 3D style buttons, and the colored close, minimize, and zoom buttons in the upper left.
The improvements in Mac OS X open up new possibilities for Mac applications. Most Carbon programs are currently just prettier versions of Classic programs, but Apple doesn't draw attention to that. After attaining feature completeness in Carbon, developers start introducing new features unique to Mac OS X. This was the case, for example, with Interarchy 4.1 and BBEdit 6.1 - both programs merely attained Carbon parity with an existing Classic version. Then came Interarchy 5, which offered OpenSSH encryption for FTP transfers thanks to Mac OS X, and BBEdit 6.5, which included better integration with external programming tools, a Unix shell worksheet window, and a tool for controlling BBEdit from the command line. Because Mac OS X is so rich in new APIs, it offers tremendous opportunities for growth.
http://www.interarchy.com/
http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit.html
http://www.openssh.org/
Looking beyond the immediate need to migrate programs, Apple is attempting to make Carbon a superior platform for developing new applications, as illustrated by changes in the underlying way the system handles events such as mouse clicks, keystrokes, window drags, and so on. The way Classic programs work is that they run in a tight loop, waiting for the user to do something. During that time, they also voluntarily cede processor cycles to other applications. Even though a Classic application may not be doing anything, it's still wasting processor cycles waiting for events.
In contrast, Carbon applications in Mac OS X can take advantage of a different approach to handling events, called Carbon Events (the same approach Cocoa applications use). With Carbon Events, programs register with the operating system the types of events they will react to and how they will respond to these events. When such an event occurs, the system triggers the right application response, but if nothing relevant happens, the program doesn't consume _any_ processing time. The idea is that this will make programming simpler, since the programmer only has to deal with the specific stimuli they're interested in, and also make the system faster since it will only give programs processor cycles when they have something to do.
Cocoa
After Steve Jobs left Apple, he founded NeXT, which built computers that resembled Apple prototypes - cutting-edge hardware, with many of the same technologies as Macs (Motorola processors, PostScript, etc.). To match this advanced hardware, NeXT developed the NeXTstep software, which was essentially three things, a Unix-based operating system, a windowing system based on Adobe's Display PostScript, and a programming API that enabled the fast development of graphical applications. That API has evolved over the years, becoming OpenStep when NeXT gave up on the hardware business, and then Cocoa when Apple acquired NeXT.
So Cocoa was mature well before it was integrated into Mac OS X, while Carbon was designed and written at Apple starting in the early phases of Mac OS X development. For this reason, Cocoa applications from NeXT developers like The Omni Group and Stone Design had a considerable head start over their Carbon counterparts. As Apple has fleshed out the Carbon environment in Mac OS X 10.0 and 10.1, Carbon and its applications have reached a kind of parity with Cocoa, but each has strengths and weaknesses. Cocoa applications require significantly less work on the programmer's part because of everything Cocoa provides, but writing a Carbon application is a more familiar process for a Macintosh developer. Plus, there are some things Macintosh programmers expect to be able to do that are possible only in Carbon. As Apple continues to work on both, the differences between programs written in either environment will decrease.
http://www.omnigroup.com/
http://www.stone.com/
It's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Carbon and Cocoa applications, both of which use the same Aqua appearance, but here are some clues. If it's relatively small, uses drawers (like Mail), has a Font panel for selecting fonts, it's almost certainly a Cocoa application. Another minor distinction that exists currently is the difference between the way Carbon and Cocoa applications let the user navigate Open and Save dialogs (for more on the discrepancies see "Apple's Dirty Little Secret" in TidBITS-601_). Apple is wisely trying to iron out the remaining discrepancies in application behavior. In the long run, it shouldn't matter to an end user if an application has an object-oriented NeXT heritage or the Classic Mac OS in its ancestry, although Cocoa applications will always be significantly smaller than Carbon applications, given that so much of the necessary code for a Cocoa application is built into Mac OS X.
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06594
Not Your Father's Mac
As of this writing, Classic is still essential to Mac OS X, since there are many Classic applications without carbonized versions or Cocoa equivalents available. As developers release Carbon and Cocoa programs, Classic will become a vestige of Mac OS history. Already, major software releases for the Mac OS - with the Classic-only QuarkXPress 5.0 being a notable exception - are generally Carbon apps, due to large existing code bases and lack of familiarity with Cocoa. But NeXTstep/Cocoa developers have another opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of their favorite programming environment, and they're hoping to woo existing Mac developers over to Cocoa, which provides all the advantages of Mac OS X for far less effort than writing a new Carbon application.
Mac OS X goes beyond Classic, Carbon, Cocoa, with support for native Unix and Java programs as well. Macintosh development in those environments is just getting started, but as developers previously unfamiliar with the Mac discover what's possible in Mac OS X, Apple's best-of-both-worlds operating system is garnering increasing attention. Part two of this article will take a look at these developments.
[Chris Pepper is a Unix System Administrator in New York City. He's amused and somewhat surprised that Mac OS X has turned out to be such a great management workstation for the Unix systems he works with. Chris is involved in various documentation efforts, including those for Interarchy and the Apache Group.]
http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/
TidBITS#615/04-Feb-02
In the previous installment of this article we looked at three of the five breeds of programs that run in Mac OS X: Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa. Those three are most notable because they're used for the majority of current Mac OS X programs. Because all three of these APIs (application programming interfaces) are proprietary to Apple, they're available only in the Mac OS, and Apple is actively working to make them a productive and pleasant environment for Macintosh users and developers. However, Mac OS X also supports the public Unix and Java APIs that provide access to a plethora of cross-platform programs, including many types that aren't available in Classic, Carbon, or Cocoa. This week we're going to concentrate on the wide variety of Unix applications that you can run in Mac OS X; we'll save Java for the next installment.
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06694
The core of Mac OS X is Darwin, a full-blown Unix operating system. When you start Mac OS X, Darwin boots up, finds and mounts hard disks, starts virtual memory, and begins running various programs. Some of those programs are Carbon and Cocoa applications, such as the login window and the Finder, but others are standard Unix programs, like the Apache Web server.
Types of Unix Programs
Unix programs come in many different types, and full-blown interactive applications are greatly outnumbered by tiny command-line utilities and non-interactive server programs. In fact, almost every command you type at the Unix command line is a small program, but one you run from the command line rather than by double-clicking. To access Mac OS X's Unix command-line prompt, launch the Terminal application from the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. Type "ls" (without the quotes) to run the program that lists files in the current directory, which is essentially what the Finder does every time you open a new window. Other core commands include more, which displays text files, and man, which displays online help called "manual pages." To learn about each of these commands, try typing "man ls", "man more", and "man man" (once you've started man, press the space bar to scroll, and type q to exit). Hundreds of these small command-line utilities are included with every version of Unix; to see most of them, type "ls /usr/bin". Don't let this overwhelm you - although it's possible to learn Unix purely from the online help, there are, of course, hundreds of books on Unix available (some were recommended in last year's TidBITS gift issue).
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06657
Most of these programs are much simpler and smaller than Mac applications - copy, delete, and list files are three different Unix commands (cp, rm, and ls, respectively). In comparison, the Finder includes these capabilities and a great many more in a single application. Some programs in /usr/bin, however, are full-blown interactive (but text-based, rather than graphical) applications, with their own user interfaces, such as the vi and emacs text editors.
In addition to command-line tools, Unix systems sport a great many server programs, the most well-known probably being the Apache Web server. Apache runs invisibly in the background, responding to requests from Web browsers and recording its activity in log files. This approach is an inversion of a typical Mac application, where the interface is the centerpiece, and the rest of the program exists to satisfy requests made through the interface. There are a few such faceless programs on Mac OS 9, but they're common (and totally essential) on Unix systems.
Most full-blown Unix applications use the X11 Window System (often called X Windows) to provide graphical interfaces. X11 itself may feel more primitive than the Quartz and QuickDraw imaging systems which manage text and graphic display for Carbon, Cocoa, and Classic applications, but X11 is available for a wide variety of systems, facilitating cross-platform development. Because there are so many alternative X11 window managers, it offers tremendous flexibility, far beyond Apple's customization options. In addition, X11 was designed for network environments; X11 programs can display their windows on remote X11 systems across the Internet (even running different operating systems), so X11 programs implicitly include many of the capabilities of programs like Timbuktu. X11 isn't included with Mac OS X, but free and commercial versions are available.
http://www.netopia.com/software/products/tb2/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/
http://www.tenon.com/products/xtools/
Getting & Installing Unix Programs
One of the best things about Unix is the vast number of freely available programs, but with this richness comes complexity. Because programs are normally compiled for a specific processor type and operating system (such as Apple's System 7 on a Motorola 680x0, or Linux 2.2 on an Intel Pentium-series processor), Unix programs are mostly distributed as source code kits, intended to be compiled on a variety of operating system/processor combinations. Developers can't test against every system configuration, which makes Unix software far less plug-and-play than Macintosh and Windows software. Worse, Unix programs often require adjustments to their source code to work on a given system; this process of adjustment is called porting. Since most users don't want to port programs before using them (or more likely, aren't capable of it), Unix developers go to considerable trouble to make their software work on a wide variety of systems, but there are always gaps, especially with new operating systems like Mac OS X.
The Unix world addressed this problem with package management systems that simplify the process of porting and installing software. Some, like Red Hat's RPM, install pre-compiled packages, but this approach suffers from size bloat and version dependency confusion. Others, like the Debian GNU/Linux dpkg utility, perform source code porting using automated recipes for compiling software - start with a source package, unpack it, make these changes, compile it with those commands, and install it with another command, and so on. Automated source code porting eliminates the size problems in the pre-compiled binary package approach, but it does require the user to have development tools available, something that's almost certain in Unix generally, but less so in Mac OS X since many people upgraded to Mac OS X 10.1 without getting the Developer Tools CD-ROM. You can download all the Mac OS X developer tools for free, but at over 200 MB, downloading isn't feasible for all users. In reality, most package management systems combine both approaches, in an attempt to provide the best of both worlds.
Several package managers are available for Mac OS X, but Fink - an adaptation of Debian GNU/Linux's dpkg - is currently the best of the lot. It includes straightforward instructions and can install a great many Unix programs without requiring the user to understand the details of compiling and installing Unix software. Fink also normally installs software in its own directory, making it easy to uninstall cleanly, something that's not otherwise guaranteed. Fink is available in both source-only and binary-and-source versions; both can compile a broad range of Unix programs, and the binary distribution includes pre-compiled versions of the most popular software. The neat thing about Fink is that only _one_ person has to figure out how to port a particular Unix program to Mac OS X and submit their procedure, after which anyone else can have Fink follow that recipe and install the same software automatically.
For Mac users who prefer to avoid dealing with Unix and its applications directly, programmers are creating graphical applications to manage specific Unix facilities. There's Brick House, which provides an Aqua interface to the ipfw firewall built into Mac OS X, or MemoryStick from TidBITS's own Matt Neuburg, which graphically displays your RAM usage using the Unix vm_stat memory utility. There are also more general tools to bring Unix power into Mac OS X's Aqua environment, including ShellShell and DropScript. ShellShell is an extensible tool for generating Unix command lines from a graphical interface, executing them on behalf of the user, and showing any results to the user. It uses its own configuration language, and the author, Robert Woodhead, invites others to submit their own modules for use with ShellShell. Wilfredo Sanchez's DropScript takes a different tack - the user first drops a script containing Unix shell commands onto DropScript to create a new Cocoa application from the script. Then, any files dropped onto that DropScript-created application are processed by the original shell script as if the user had typed the appropriate commands. This makes DropScript an easy way to provide pre-built command line programs to compress, back up, or otherwise manage files from the Finder.
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/brickhouse.html
http://www.tidbits.com/matt/#cocoathings
http://www.madoverlord.com/Projects/SHELLSHELL.t
http://www.advogato.org/proj/DropScript/
Finally, there are a variety of commercial Unix programs. They're often much more expensive than their Mac and Windows counterparts, and sometimes more powerful as well. For these high-end developers, Mac OS X provides a familiar Unix-based environment with OpenGL graphics support (OpenGL is a cross-platform API for accelerated 3D graphics) that facilitates porting products like Alias Wavefront's Maya. Maya is a heavy-duty animation program used for everything up to full-length feature films. Maya would never have made it to Mac OS 9, but it's available on the Mac now, thanks to Mac OS X's Unix core.
Environmentally Friendly Mac OS X
The Mac OS has traditionally stood alone, but Mac OS X's Unix foundation throws open the doors to new applications and uses. Some of those are coming from traditional Unix applications - generally command-line tools and servers - ported to Mac OS X, but that's not all. Brick House and other programs that provide graphical interfaces to Unix tools offer a great deal of power to Mac users without resorting to the often arcane command line. Developers are also starting to take advantage of Unix's power for Mac programs - as with Interarchy, which has leveraged the ssh command built into Mac OS X, and BBEdit, which can now run shell scripts directly. Finally, high end Unix programs like Maya are starting to appear on the Mac. Still, Unix in Mac OS X is something of a wild card - Unix provides vast power and flexibility for text manipulation, networking, programming, collaboration, and security, but how this power will be directly exploited in Mac programs, and by Mac programmers, remains to be seen.
[Chris Pepper is a Unix system administrator in New York City. He's amused and somewhat surprised that Mac OS X has turned out to be such a great management workstation for the Unix systems he works with. Chris is involved in various documentation efforts, including those for Interarchy and the Apache Group.]
http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/
January 17, 2002 - Just prior to the main CUCUG meeting, Linux group did a side by side installation of SuSE and Mandrake Linux.
President Jim Lewis began the main meeting by welcoming everyone to CUCUG 2002. He conducted the traditional introduction of officers. He then noted we'd had a pretty interesting Linux SIG. He said "I learned stuff I didn't have to teach myself."
Jim reported he'd upgraded the club's PC box. There had been a Maxtor hard drive problem, in particular the 20 GB model with fluid drives. There was a discussion about quality parts. The higher capacity Maxtors (greater than 30 GM) don't have any problems. Jim said he likes IBM drives.
Kevin Hisel reported on our local ISP provider @Home will be converting to AT&T due to the @Home bankruptcy. The transition should be seamless. Local cable modem users will just change their domain name from @Home to insightbb.com. This will necessitate a change in email address. Kevin noted that there are 7700 @Home customers in Champaign and Danville. Richard Rollins reported that Insight will be in St, Joseph by the end of the month. This brought up a discussion of other local providers. It was reported that Prairieinet no longer requires the use of a radio card. They have a new ethernet box - either Ethernet or USB. Speaking of Prairieinet, Jim said there are "All kinds of negatives stacking up with those guys." Another provider, Starband, uses a satellite and has lots of latency. They provide on 500K of bandwidth. Online games are out, because there's a two to two and a half second delay. This for about $69 per month.
There was a question about home PNA? Home networking has lots of issues. It's better to use wireless.
Another question: "What caused hardware prices to go up? RAM in particular?. It's a commodity, Kevin Hisel responded. OEMs are buying lots of RAM. Windows XP takes twice the amount of RAM to run effectively than past Windows versions.
One of our member's Linux box got hacked off of his cable modem. After some discussion, Kevin Hisel deduced that WUFTP was the hole the intruder exploited. Line Sniffer was installed. It was recommended that he get a Netgear router to insulate the machine from the net.
Mac News: Jack Melby told us about the new G4 iMac with its 15" flat panel display. Some have dubbed it the iLamp because of its appearance. Jack said you can carry it by its neck. He noted the new iPhoto is very nice. News that didn't happen at Macworld included a new line of G4 desktops running at over 1 GHz. Jack said there were IBM drive problems and a shortage of processors caused the delay. It is rumored that Apple will announce this in the next couple of weeks (which they have). It was speculated that they might wake until Macworld Japan for this G4 speed bump announcement.
Some asked the question: "OS X for x86 based machines?" No, Jack said, Apple is after all a hardware company.
Ed Hadley talked about PDF file he'd seen on a UK site on disassembling the new iMac. The 106 page document, complete with images, was available at http://imac.trueband.net/imac_flatpanel.html but the site appears to have been taken down so the document is no longer available.
Other Apple news speculation is that an iMac with a 17" monitor may be coming and that all the new G4s would be dual processor machines.
PC News: XP is out. Lots of patches have been released. Kevin Hisel said he is very pleased with XP overall. He testifies that it is very, very stable.
Mike Latinovich reported that Windows Update was broken. This is an item, on Windows machines, in Internet Explorer which takes you to the site Microsoft has set up for automatic installation of necessary patches, if any, are available. Mike later clarified this statement by saying that it was 'broken' due to some maintenance that was being done on the computers that were hosting the sites at Microsoft at the time that was mentioned. It has since been fixed, and everything is back to normal. The problem was, while it was broken, it was either showing that there were no patches or it showed all the patches available or some you had applied already. In short, it just wasn't working right.
There was a question about what was the base system you had to have to be able to upgrade to XP. Kevin Hisel said if you have Windows 98, you can upgrade to XP.
Mike Latinovich talked about the security and privacy initiative being promulgated by Bill Gates.
Jim Lewis and Kevin Hisel both stated that they are amazed at how much stuff is compatible with XP.
George Krumins talked about the Solaris upgrade policy. He said Sun was no longer going to support Solaris for the x86 platform. Kevin Hisel express some annoyance about this, since he had used it a work for a number of years. George later clarified this issue by reporting that Sun was stopping development of Solaris for the x86, but was still going to support the current version for a number of years.
Linux News: Dan Jansen reported that there is a new version of the kernel that supports USB-2. When asked about whether there would be an inclusion of Firewire support, it was stated that Firewire is being controlled by an ogre (Steve Jobs?).
On another front, Microsoft has been pressuring foreign governments to adopt their software and large numbers are moving to Linux and other alternative OSes.
George Krumins reported that the PS2 is now running Linux. PS2 sales during the Christmas season beat the Game Cube and XBox sales combined. It was noted that one percent of XBoxes were defective, not an unheard of failure rate in the industry.
Charlie Earle asked about the 2.2GHz Pentium 4. Is there a heat problem? "Not really," our resident experts felt.
Dan Jansen and John Ross did a joint presentation on installing Linux. John demonstrated a basic install using Mandrake Linux, while Dan Jansen demonstrated an advanced install using SUSE Linux.
John started off by booting his PC from the Mandrake installation CD. John's purpose was to demonstrate how easily a novice can get up and running with Linux. After booting from the CD, John was prompted for the level of control he wanted over the install process. He selected a standard installation as opposed to one of the more expert options. John accepted the default values for setting up the system. The installation program found his Windows partition and offered to make it available to the Linux system, and setup dual booting. It also found the space he had left on the disk for Linux. It suggested a way to partition this space, which John excepted.
When John was prompted for the software packages he wanted to have installed on the system, we had a discussion about why you would want some of the packages options. Some of the major categories were office packages, software development packages, networking packages, server packages like databases and web servers. The key things discussed were that even if you don't expect to compile your own software, you should go ahead and install the software development packages. This is a particularly complex set of packages and it is difficult for a novice to install them after the fact. As for the server packages like the web server, it was pointed out that if your machine is exposed to the Internet, your risks of getting hacked go up as you install more of these network services. This is not a Linux specific issue, but is a standard rule of thumb that applies as much to the Microsoft and Apple platforms as it does to Linux. If you are behind a firewall, go ahead, install them, and have fun!
After the software was installed, the system prompted for networking information. The major point here was that it offered to create firewall settings for the system, to protect the system if it is exposed to the Internet. He accepted the default security, which is the recommended setting for the novice.
Dan Jansen's presentation was geared toward some of the advanced things that can be done when setting up a server. The SUSE install program was different from the Mandrake install program, but offered essentially the same features. Dan went into detail about options for partitioning your hard disk. He set up a 10MB boot partition and explained that this was all that was required for the core operating system. Everything else that we think of as part of Linux are really add-on packages layered on top of Linux by the people providing the distribution. Dan setup a swap partition recommending that it be setup as twice the size of the machines physical RAM. For the rest of the system, Dan demonstrated how to create a software RAID-1 mirror using partitions on two physical drives.
This evening's topic for the Mac SIG was upgrading the club's PowerMac G4 to the latest iteration of the MacOS. This recently purchased machine came with OS X 1.0.3 and OS 9.1 installed. SIG Chairman Jack Melby hoped to use the Software Update panel in System Preferences to perform the updating task, but our online connection was on the blink again and we were forced to install from CDs. Luckily, Jack brought in all the appropriate software "just in case." Unfortunately, we burned up a good chunk of time trying to get an active Internet connection, before we dropped back to "Plan B."
Jack began by explaining that if you didn't have 10.1 you would need to upgrade OS X and OS 9. If you had an upgrade disk, you must upgrade OS X first to OS X.1. He noted there were several "gotchas" if you didn't follow this course of action. For those that didn't, he noted their difficulties and explained that the upgrade CDs recently released from Apple were capable of installing the full OS X although it had been "fixed" so it wouldn't - Apple wanting you to have purchased a copy of OS X first. However, if a user messed up during the upgrade installation process, members of the Apple community argued there are legitimate reasons for hacking the upgrade disk into a full install disk. Jack went on to explain.
The standard method for upgrading, as explained in the manual, is to upgrade to OS X 10.1 first, and then to upgrade OS 9 to 9.2.2. The reason for this is that doing it the other way around can affect the existing OS X installation in such a way that the upgrade disk does not recognize a valid OS X System folder.
If the user does not follow this procedure, then the OS X upgrade disk says that there is no valid OS X installation, and that therefore no upgrade could be made. Actually, the upgrade disk is a full installation disk for OS X 10.1. However, in order to discourage pirating, Apple has added a small routine which looks for valid OS X installation and will not install if it can't find one. The user can convert this upgrade to a full installation disk by following a procedure which makes a read/write disk image, allows the user to delete the file that checks for a valid installation from the image, and can then permit burning a bootable disk from the image that is identical to the full installation disk.
The consensus seems to be that someone who makes a mistake in not following the outlined procedure should not be penalized by being forced to pay $129 for a full installation set of disks just because of a mistake that can be called simply an oversight. As a result, numerous postings detailing the procedure for conversion of the upgrade disk into a full installation disk have appeared on the Web, each followed by a letter from one of Apple's lawyers "suggesting" that the post be removed.
Most users consider this type of oversight on the part of the user to be a "legitimate reason for hacking the upgrade disk into a full OS X installation disk".
The procedure is as follows:
1. Make an read/write image of the 10.1 update CD using Disk Copy.
2. Mount the image
3. Double click on the mounted CD (the window that opens on load is a decoy)
4. Open the System Folder
5. Open the Installation Folder
6. Open the Packages Folder
7. Open the Essentials.pkg Folder
8. Open the Contents Folder
9. Open the Resources Folder
10. Remove the File Named "CheckForOSX"
11. Save the image as "read only" and "compressed"
12. Unmount the mounted disk by dragging it to the trash.
(DO NOT trash the disk image itself!)
13. In Disk Copy, select "Burn image" and burn the CD.
Jack then "carefully" began the process of upgrading our Mac's System
software. While he was doing that he fielded people's questions. In discussing the Classic environment, Ed Hadley raised the question about Extensions. Jack said he strongly recommended buying Conflict Catcher. Ed had brought in a listing of his Extensions to see which ones could be safely eliminated from his system.
Someone asked, "How easy is it to install and application in OS X?" Jack said, "Installing an application in OS X is simple. You just drag its folder to the Applications folder. Uninstalling an application in OS X is just as easy. You simply drag its folder to the Trash."
Jack noted that there was a a keyboard shortcut for entering OS X at boot-up by pressing the Power up button and holding down the X key. This is similar to starting from a CDROM by holding down the C key during bootup.
At one point, Jack showed some of our interested Linux users the program FSCH, File System Check, from within the Terminal. Jack explained that OS X machines can have one of two file systems: UFS, or Unix File System, or HFSplus, the Mac file system. Jack warned us to stay away from UFS.
While talking about the Software Update panel that he had hoped to use, Jack showed us how to go to the Update menu to deselect items you didn't want to install.
As Jack ran through the installation process, he showed us the Registration process, setting Dock preferences, how you can start Classic by starting an OS 9 application or from the Classic pane in System Preferences, and using Command-S to enter single user mode. He also specified the FSCK command he'd used earlier: fsck -y He demonstrated the rebooting process as well.
We ran out of time before the entire upgrading process was completed, but everyone got a good feel for how it was done.
The January 2002 WinSIG meeting was to feature a Windows XP install on the club PC, co-hosted by Kevin Hisel, Mike Latinovitch and Jim Lewis. Before I start, I should say this was not your "normal" OS installation. We have Windows 98 SE installed on the Club PC and we wished to keep it that way (for now, at least). So, we installed another 20GB hard drive to receive the new OS. That's when the troubles began. But, in a "normal" installation of Windows XP, as the *only* OS on the *only* hard drive, things would have gone much more smoothly.
Anyway, here are the details.
The bad news: we did not accomplish an XP installation!
The good news: the club PC was upgraded (again), to add an additional 20GB hard drive and a 24x10x40 LiteON IDE CDRW drive. (This dude ROCKS!! A full 80 minute CD burn in just a little over 4 minutes for just a little over $100! What a deal!!)
More bad news: the 20GB drive FAILED after partitioning and formatting with a "no-spin-up" error. Couldn't even run drive diagnostics on the d*** thing! Now we have to RMA the drive and re-install it. This was not Windows XP's fault, it was a hardware failure, which happens with computer equipment from time to time.
More good news: in the course of trying to install XP on the drive already in the machine, us Windows Hags got to learn a little about some really neat Linux hard disk partitioning and formatting utilities!
More bad news: they didn't help... We still couldn't get XP to install on the only hard disk left in the system.
More good news: professionally, I was glad this occurred at the group meeting, rather than in the presence of one of my clients!
The story:
Basically, we (re-)discovered what we *assumed* to be a limitation of Microsoft operating systems. Namely that Microsoft OS's don't like to coexist on the same drive if it's your primary system drive (see the Fast-Forward section below).
Since FDISK (Microsoft's disk partitioning utility) will not allow you to make two partitions on the same drive "Primary" partitions, we thought we needed a replacement utility to enable us to do this. Linux to the rescue! We used a Linux boot CD to get to a Linux CLI console and run the Linux partitioning utility. This utility allowed us to designate multiple "Primary" partitions and report them as NTFS (or any of the many various other formatting 'flavors' supported by this amazing program).
After many reboots and frustrating attempts to "force" XP to accept our changes (sadly, to no avail), we finally admitted defeat and closed up shop. I now am on a mission to the Microsoft Knowledge Base to discover the error of Microsoft's (err, *our*) ways. (A little 'Corporate Speak' for all you Bill-o-phobes :^)
All attempts at installation were made by booting from the XP distribution disk. Could this be our downfall? Read on...
After much Web-surfing and researching, the best I can infer (since no article spelled this solution out exactly, I'm just reading between the lines here) is this:
1. Boot to 9x, insert the XP disk and allow to autoplay.
2. Select dual-boot and install to the proper partition from there!!
At first blush, this would seem to be the answer to our troubles. However, as is common when working with Microsoft operating systems, 'logic need not necessarily apply here'!! This may or may not, in fact, work. Only the final attempt will tell the story.
Since Kris Klindworth was kind enough to take 'custody' of the club PC from me after the meeting, I haven't had a chance to attempt this fix yet. Maybe by the next meeting I'll have a 'final answer' for everyone :^)
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Fast-forward a week and a half....
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Greg Kline asked me to give him a heads-up on XP for the Circuits Column in the News Gazette, so I figured this was a good opportunity to test my newly-gleaned information.
First, I rendezvoused with Kris Klindworth on a dark-and-gloomy, rainy January morning to pick up the Club PC. It almost seemed clandestine... meeting in the Carle parking facility at the Champaign County Fairgrounds at 9:00AM... lots of cars there, but Kris and I the only people there... I almost believed I had received classified equipment to deliver to my "controller". (Not really, but at least it *was* rainy and dreary :^)
The exchange came off without a hitch... thanks, Kris!! I then motored over to the News Gazette offices where Greg Kline would interview me as I installed XP on the newly replaced drive.
The good news: after booting to Windows 98 SE, I inserted the Windows XP Professional CD and it fired right up and asked me what I wished to do. I selected the Dual-Boot option and installed the OS on the blank hard drive.
More good news: the replacement drive formatted and received the OS without a hiccup!
Yet more good news: this time everything worked as advertised! XP installed fine and now there is a boot menu with a choice of operating systems to boot from (XP or Win 98).
Even more good news: the machine now will actually boot to either OS with the menu choices. Kewl!!
The rest of the good news: the Circuits piece was a success! We did not have to hang our heads next to the Mac (yea!!) for installation problems. And... I learned a valuable bit of info about installing in Dual-Boot scenarios.
All-in-all, a productive (if a little less convenient) exercise that turned out just fine. Now, I can turn the machine back over to Kris for the Linux installation!
At the next meeting WinSIG will explore some of the setup and configure tweaking of XP.
Be There (or be Square :^)
Jim Lewis
WinSIG Chairman
The January meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, January 22, 2002, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Jim Lewis, Emil Cobb, Dave Witt, Mike Latinovich, Kris Klindworth, Rich Hall, Jack Melby, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, Jim Huls, and Richard Rollins.
Jim Lewis: First, Jim asked if Kevin Hopkins had gotten his notes on the non-XP install at the last PC SIG. Kevin said he had no. Jim responded that he probably hadn't sent them yet, so he'd do that. Jim then related that the presentation had turned into a Linux tool demo. Jim said he has an idea why it didn't work. They'd tried to boot from the XP CD rather than booting into Windows 98 and feeding it the CD. Jim said they'd played with Linux FDisk.
There was a discussion on how best to promote the club.
Jim reported that there may be a way to rent the projector at ITC for a bargain rate. The gentleman who has so graciously been providing for our use of a projector desires to leave at 9:30 pm and this creates some difficulty with SIG presentations.
The Board disposed one of the TIMMs by selling it to Emil Cobb.
Several Board members asked, "What was the deal with the Internet connection?" Jim will check into why it wasn't functioning.
The Promotion topic was revisited. The question was raised, "What kind of club do we want to be?" Do we want to attract a bunch of newbies and help them with their problems or do we want to be an association of knowledgeable users? Kevin Hopkins reported that Channel 3 TV has a Community Calendar we could post meeting notices to at promo@wcia.com if we wanted to address the general public.
The Board authorized the upgrade to Windows XP on club PC.
Emil Cobb: Emil reported that thirty-one people were in attendance at the last meeting.
Dave Witt: Dave let us know he had installed Mandrake 8.1 on his home machine and it was easy. On a personal note, Dave is now working at Horizon, a hobbies business.
Mike Latinovich: Mike said the meeting was pretty good. A lot of people showed up. His only complaint was that it was impossible to see what was going on during the Linux SIG.
Mike said he wished the Windows SIG had turned out, but it was interesting how it did work out. Mike noted, "People are asking questions which is good." Using two separate machines, set up to show a comparison between the two installations of Linux, was a great idea, Mike stated.
Kris Klindworth: Kris said he thought Dan and John had done a good job with presentations. Other Board members concurred.
Kris said next month the Linux SIG would be doing an overview of X-Windows, the underpinnings of the GUI stuff. They'll be talking about how to configure it.
There was a discussion of creating some basic Linux CDs for those new to the system. Kris said John is making requests for CD distributions. Kevin Hisel related the history of club's software library and its policies. The standard price for "CUCUG disks" is $5.
Kris reported that the Linux SIG is contemplating a half day "Linux install day". Bring in your box and they help you get it up and running. After some discussion is was determined that this might be attempted in two months.
Discussion returned to the Beginners Linux CD, with the suggestion of possible software to include, like the Star Office suite or Utilities disks. Kevin Hisel said, "Make a list of disks and I'll send out an email." Jim Lewis said that Mike Latinovich's CUCUG web forums (http://www.cucug.org/starship/index.php) would be a good way to distribute the news of these disks.
Richard Hall: Rich reported that we had 14 renewals in January. Mike Latinovich and Dave Witt took that opportunity to renew at the Board meeting.
Rich said he had been working on the club's taxes. After essentially buying two new machines, he said, we finished the year spending $300 more than we made. A general discussion of our finances followed.
Rich also noted he had paid the room rent for the year. Jim reported we're in good standing with ITC.
Jack Melby: Jack reported that the Mac SIG had upgraded the club machine to the current OS X 1.2. The Internet connect at ITC had failed, making the process a little more cumbersome. Jack said a couple of the Linux people were there and seem interested in the new OS.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin suggested that we update membership and visitors forms to reflect the inclusion of the Linux platform.
Kevin reported that currently we have 32 members.
Regarding newsletter business, Kris will email the Linux SIG notes to Kevin for inclusion in the next newsletter.
Kevin said he felt his expertise may be falling behind the level required to produce a quality newsletter for the level of member we now have. He was assured his perspective made it easier for others to get a handle on some of the more complex topics that have arisen lately.
Emil requested a list of local members for badge production.
Kevin reported that the Mac SIG had ran out of time while upgrading the OS on the club machine, so he completed the job following the meeting.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin reported that the WinSIG had failed in its attempt to upgrade the club PC to Windows XP. Which, Kevin said, was unfortunate as it tended to taint XP once again, undeservedly so, he thought.
Kevin voiced the opinion that the Linux SIG ran too late. He said our break started at 8:15. President Lewis took responsibility for that, saying it was a judgement call. "The Linux SIG was way too interesting this month," he joked. "We have to tone it down." With the interest that was being shown, it didn't seem appropriate to call a halt to the topic. This is just one of the bugs that will have to be worked out of the evolving system of our two groups coming together.
Kevin went on to thank Mike Latinovich for putting up the CUCUG forums on the web. Kevin said we need to get more people to use it.
On a personal note, Kevin said his XP set up hasn't crashed yet. Jim Lewis said he'd had one crash while running a DOS application written in 1991. It happened when he was trying to go to full screen mode.
Kevin concluded his segment by saying it was "good to see the BBS back."
Jim Huls: Jim said he really liked the web board idea.
He said he'd had "No positive experience with XP." It was having hardware issues on Gateway P4 hardware.
Richard Rollins: "I love the Linux SIG," Richard enthused. "I'm buying a new machine and it'll have a new drive for Linux."
Richard noted that "the Windows SIG lacked content." He liked using Linux to get it up and running. Turning serious, Richard said, "We've got to fix the Internet connection at ITC. We've been burned on it at two separate meetings."
Richard also commented on the meeting time management issue.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Illinois Technology Center. The Center is located at 7101 Tomaras Ave in Savoy. To get to the Illinois Technology Center from Champaign or Urbana, take Neil Street (Rt 45) south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the McDonalds on the corner of Kirby/Florida and Neil in Champaign, you only go 2.4 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. Curtis will be at the two mile mark. Go past the Paradise Inn/Best Western motel to the next street, Tomaras Ave. on the west (right) side. Tomaras is at the 2.4 mile mark. Turn west (right) on Tomaras Ave. The parking lot entrance is immediately on the south (left) side of Tomaras Ave. Enter the building by the front door under the three flags facing Rt 45. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html . The Illinois Technology Center is also on the web at www.IL-Tech-Ctr.com .
Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.
Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):
President/WinSIG: Jim Lewis 621-2343 lewisj@pdnt.com Vice-President: Emil Cobb 398-0149 e-cobb@uiuc.edu Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 kh2@uiuc.edu Treasurer: Richard Hall 344-8687 rjhall1@uiuc.edu Corporate Agent: Jim Lewis 621-2343 lewisj@pdnt.com Board Advisor: Richard Rollins 469-2616 Webmaster: Kevin Hisel 406-948-1999 khisel @ kevinhisel.com Mac SIG Co-Chair: John Melby 352-3638 jbmelby@johnmelby.com Mac SIG Co-Chair: Charles Melby-Thompson 352-3638 cmelby@princeton.edu Linux SIG Co-Chair: John Ross 469-0208hurricanejohnn@prairieinet.net Linux SIG Co-Chair: Kris Klindworth 239-0097 kris.klindworth@Carle.com
Surf our web site at http://www.cucug.org/