i

Linux wins UNIX Review Outstanding Product Award!

In the December 1994 edition of UNIX Review, the Linux operating system received an Outstanding Product Award.

Each year, the staff examine and discuss hundreds of tools and applications. Awards are presented as a tribute to the year's best software for UNIX. Linux won the award in the "Gem" catagory.

To quote the review, "... this success shows that the freeware community is still alive, thriving, and teaching commercial sites new things about cooperation and cutting-edge technology. A real tour de force!"

Other winners in the same awards were:

Software Development Front End:

Advanced Application Development Environment, by Forte Software, Inc.

Software Development Back End:

SunPro Workshop for C++, by SunSoft.

Networking:

Mosaic, by the (American) National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Groupware:

Lotus Notes for UNIX, by Lotus Development Corp.

Editor's Award:

O'Reilly and Associates for documenting many aspects of UNIX/X with "lucid prose, quality presentation, and deep understanding of what readers need".

For more information about UNIX Review magazine:
UNIX Review, Reader Service Department, P.O. Box 5176, Pittsfield MA 01203-9940.
Editor's e-mail address: abinstock@mfi.com


End of Lucid Inc.

For anyone else who was wondering what happened to the Internet site lucid.com in their attempts to ftp the latest verison of Lucid Emacs, I read recently that the UNIX Software Development Company, Lucid Inc., closed down sometime over last summer.

Lucid was renowned for its C and Lisp compilers for UNIX, and as the innovators behind Lucid Emacs (described in #1 of the newsletter).

The Lucid Emacs product is not dead however - it is still freely available, albeit under the name of XEmacs. It is supported by
the remaining collaborators of the project - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the University of Illinois.

Jamie Zawinski, the primary developer and maintainer of Lucid Emacs - formerly of Lucid, Inc. - is now working with Netscape Communications, Inc.


Svgalib DOOM for Linux

DOOM, the game that changed the whole computer entertainment industry, was made available for Linux again recently in a slightly different format. In its original guise, it was an X-Window System client. Now it has been release as a 320x200x256 console version, identical to its MSDOS counterpart.

The Linux Svgalib DOOM uses the Svgalib library for graphics functions and the Voxware sound system. Initial impressions indicate that it is well faster that the MSDOS version. The Svgalib version is based on a v1.8 engine, and thus requires newer Wad files
to work with - the older Wads crash in Demo mode with the new engine.

Unlike its MSDOS counterpart, DOOM for Linux does not use the Novell IPX protocol for networking but TCP/IP. In this respect, it is compatible with DOOM clients for other workstations, such as the Sun Solaris version.

Personally I love this version of DOOM, and it allowed me to delete the DOS version entirely. It does seem to have two tiny bugs - it locks up with newer Linux kernels (greater than version 1.1.63?), due perhaps to changes in the way the keyboard interface is written.

Also, it doesn't quite work with my PS/2 mouse. This may be due in part to the Svgalib shared library on my machine, I'm not sure. Anyways, the quick and easy workaround is a little script to run the "mouse droppings" conversion program. Then, a compatible mouse type can be selected and it runs fine. On exiting from the game, this conversion program is then killed.

If only there was a Linux version of Descent... *sigh*...


Netscape Web Browser

Anyone who has been using the Web recently will have come across the new Web Browser Netscape. It was release amid a blase of publicity from Netscape Communications, a new commercial Web software company.

NCOM is fronted by Jim Clark (ex-founder of Silicon Graphics) and Marc Andreessen (one of the original Mosaic authors).

Netscape is available for UNIX, MS-Windows and the Mac. It takes advantage of the multi-streamed nature of the TCP/IP protocols, opening parallel connections to a Web server This lets it retrieve inline images from a page in parallel, at an amazing speed.

It also supports interlaced GIFs, allowing the picture to be built up
in increasing detail as it is downloaded. Its interface is very well-constructed and intuitive, and impressive.

Nonetheless, Netscape does have a few worrying points:


Specs for a Linux-based PC

Since many people are considering installing Linux on the PCs, I thought it might be a good idea to give some kind of guideline as to what hardware is suitable.
The minimum specifications are probably a 386SX16, with 4MB or Ram, a 20MB hard drive, a 512KB Graphics Card and a 14in SVGA Monitor. However, a 486SX is really needed, and perhaps more cost-effective for first-time buyers - offering greater upgradability.

Hard Drive:

Go for as large a hard drive as you can. Especially if you intend to drive-share Linux with other operating systems such as DOS, MS-Windows or OS/2, you will be quickly suprised at how fast the drive fills up. A 250MB drive is really the minimum for a decent Linux installation, sharing with MSDOS and MS-Windows.
I would partition 80-100MB MSDOS, and 150-170MB Ext2FS (Linux). For such a small system it is probably easy to use a swap file rather than a swap partition. Incidentally, make sure the drive capacity quoted is the actual physical capacity and not this terrible practice of listing a double-spaced size.

System Unit:

While desktop units take up perhaps less space, do remember they have fewer free drive bays and expansion ports than tower units have. Tower units are becoming increasingly cheap recently. Bear in mind expansion prospects such as CD-ROM drives, extra hard-drives and tape-streamers when buying your system unit.

Graphics Card:

A 512KB SVGA Card is really the minimum here. With that you'll be able to run the console version of DOOM. 1MB is really needed to run X at any decent resolution (800x600x16m, or 1024x768x256).
Be careful too in choosing the card brand. Not ever card is supported by X, and the same is true for the Svgalib. In general,
most Cirrus Logic, Tseng ET4000, Video 7, Trident, Western Digital and ATI cards are supported. Some S3 cards are supported but not the Diamond Stealth. However, compatibility of graphics card is not as big a problem as it used to be with Linux as of recent.

Sound Card:

When buying a sound card, your best bet is probably a true 16-bit card capable of sampling at CD quality (44.1 kHz) in stereo. Go for a card that is Sound Blaster-compatible.
Check out the cards that provide built-in CD-ROM and SCSI/2 interfaces for little extra cost.

Bus Type:

ISA, EISA, VLB and PCI are supported by Linux.
Peripheral Chip Interconnect (PCI) is perhaps the fastest Local Bus type, but appears to be suffering some teething problems as a standard. It allows for true plug-and-play capabilities. PCI is not compatible with ISA.
VESA Local Bus (VLB) can be very fast but suffers from the ISA problem of requiring jumpers. VESA is backwardly compatible with ISA.

Memory:

4MB is an absolute minimum, and at this you would want to be patient for compiling or running X.
8MB gives a welcome boost in speed, and is fine for running X or compiling although at times it can get sluggish when both are running together.
16MB is good for graphics work, multi-user functionality etc. X is very fast in 16MB of RAM.
32MB is really needed for more than about 3 - 4 simultaneous users.

CD-ROMs

At present, it really makes sense to consider double-speed CD-ROM drives and 16-bit soundcards, thus achieveing the MPC2 multimedia standard. With anything less applications using digital video playback etc. will drop frames, games will be sluggish ... While triple- and quad-speed drives exist, their expense at present does not justify their purpose.