UNIX SIG Notes By Christopher J. Fearnley Linux '95 is Released!!! Linux '95 (aka v. 1.2.0) was released on March 8. Linus' release announcement consisted of a series of "licensing agreements". Of course, Linux is still protected under the GPL ... IT WAS A SPOOF! Unfortunately, not everyone has a good sense of humor. One individual was reported to be scouring the net in search of an alternative before someone reassured him that Linus hadn't gone mad! Ah well, satire is a fine art and probably shouldn't be used much. Linux 1.2 has numerous new features over 1.0. It is much more flexible and overall it's more stable. Since I follow the kernel development newsgroup, I know that there are still some bugs in 1.2. I suspect most of them will be resolved over the next month or so. If you remember after 1.0 was released on March 15, 1994, there was a month of patching (to 1.0.9) before that stable release was completely put aside in favor of developing the 1.1.x series. Three major subsystems were overhauled during 1.1 development: networking (it's REAL stable now), the serial driver, and the floppy driver. Many, many new device drivers are in 1.2. Finally, the kernel is much more modular now. Now that 1.2 is out and XFree86 released version 3.1.1, I suspect that a new release of Slackware will be hitting the streets soon. Also, the Debian release of Linux shows some signs of coming out of beta. So in about a month or so (about the time of the April meeting) it might be worth it to upgrade. Vendor news. Infomagic seems to be the most highly regarded Linux vendor these days. They offer a 3 CD set for $25 and some technical getting started support (they try to point you to the appropriate docs). Other vendors offer less software for a higher price and the impression (not always true) that the product is more stable and/or that they will support it. Some of these shadier vendors even have respected Linux community names behind them. This leads me to suspect inexperience in business vs. sleezyness. Let the buyer beware. Though I haven't bought from them, WGS is offering a commercially polished version of Linux. If anyone trys their product let me know. For now all I know is that, Mark Bolzern, their North American contact seems to have a sound business mind (based on remarks he made at the DC Linux conference I attended last December). If their Linux CD offers good support and is more stable and polished than Slackware or Debian, they could become a success --- time will tell. Trans-Ameritech Systems is offering a LinuxWare product, I know little about it (except from the ads). Let me know if you know anything about it. InfoMagic is planning a 4 CD set for $25 once the current kernel stabilizes more and Slackware makes its next release. So I thought we could try to organize a group CD order. That is if $25 is too much for you and you want to reap the benefits of the group rate!! Let me know if you'd like to get involved in a group order. Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The IRC is a service offered by most Internet providers. It is a means of conducting multi-party conversations on a global basis. Anyone can create a group for private or public chatting. I'm only familiar with the Unix IRCII client. It offers help with the /help directive. Well, that will have to serve for my IRC intro. I'm busy trying to get software configured for the March festival. I will be representing Net Access with a Linux box. So I need to run... See you April 8th at our next meeting. The topic will be "Bash: features and tips".