Ivan, The Editor :-)
Introduction
Welcome to the first Computer Society Newsletter. It is hoped this will become a regular(ish) publication reflecting the current state and views of the hacker community in the University. Readers are encouraged to submit articles for future issues
of the Newsletter. Remember, it is only as good as you make it.
Since SKYNET is really the central hub of the Computer Society, this newsletter will tend to have a bias towards Linux but articles covering other operating systems will be accepted.
This newsletter is also available in PostScript form and plain (UNIX) text as
skynet.ul.ie:/pub/???/newsletter-oct93.ps
skynet.ul.ie:/pub/???/newsletter-oct93.txt
(above not available yet - watch this space)
Suggestions for a name for this newsletter are invited.
The Protocol used to transmit these multimedia documents is called the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and thus the server needed to provide these pages is, on a UNIX environment, called "httpd".
The SKYNET HTTP daemon has been upgraded to NCSA HTTPD 1.3. This supports home pages for individual users on a machine. All users are able to create a directory called "a;public_html" in their home directories and create their own h ome pages in there. Their home directory must have world execute privs set, and the public_html directory must have world read and execute privs along with all the files contained in any subdirectory structure in it. These pages are the accessable to ANYO NE on the Internet by specifying the URL through a Web-browser such as Mosaic (for X, System 7, MS-Windows, AmigaDOS etc) or the character-based Lynx. For example, to access my home page, the required URL is " http://skynet.ul.ie/~ivan/". This will look for the file /home/ivan/public_html/index.html.
Your actual home page may be called anything you want (foo.html) but do try to make index.html a link to it ("ln -s /home/ivan/foo.html index.html").
The SKYNET Web pages are shaping up pretty well at the moment, under the most capable hands of Keith and Andrew.
ANDREW is installed on Skynet in /usr/andrew, so add /usr/andrew/binto your path. ANDREW, or AUIS, requires you to be running the X Window System. It comes with plenty of online help and documentation A good start is "auishelp
", or "
launch". "ez" is the AUIS Multimedia editor. It even supports WYSIWYG HTML (HyperText Markup Language) editing - perfect for creating your own web home pages."
pipescript" is the AUIS replacement for the "more" command. "messages" is the MIME enabled mail program, allowing multi-media mail which can contain inline images, animations, sound etc. Be warned however t hat it does involve converting your current mailbox to the type required by messages. Read the accompanying documentation for more details.
An example of the "ez" editor editing html.
Recently Lucid have joined in collaboration with SunPro (a division of Sun Microsystems Inc.) and the University of Illinois in the support of LUCID Emacs.
LUCID Emacs requires the X Window System to run. The basic input method of Emacs was reworked allowing tighter integration into X.
It has lots of nice extra features such as supporting audio hardware, and pixmaps in buffers (allows browsing of the WEB using the W3 client). Essentially, it is the world's best editor (emacs) made aware of the X Window System in a sensible way .
LUCID Emacs is on SKYNET as /applic/lucid/bin/i486-unknown-linux/lemacs.
POV-Ray generates Targa files as output ( .tga). Unfortunately the two formats not supported by that bastion of viewers, "xv", are IFF ILBM and Targa. "xli" will view Targa files but I don't think it will conver t them from one form to another. It is possible to convert them from a terminal command line using the Pbmplus toolkit installed in /applic/pbmplus (which incidentally will convert from ust about any format to any other :-) ), or alternatively other progr ams such as the MS-Windows based "PaintShop Pro" may prove useful.
Included with the POV-Ray distribution is a hefty PostScript manual (~120 pages), and sample scene files for you to browse, render and amaze yourself with. By clever use of variables, it is possible to render frames of an animation which could later be
compiled into an mpeg etc. 
It runs as an X client on an 8 bit display, using a private colormap. Given the additional overhead of talking to a kernel and a windowing system such as X, Linux XDOOM runs faster than its DOS equivalent. It uses the existing ".wad" f iles.
Its influence has been vast during the last 25 years, impacting on everything from MS-DOS to the structure of the entire Internet itsef. The C Programming Language was an offspring of the Unix project, born out of the need to keep the operating system as portable as possible (the first version of Unix was written in Assembler!!).
Other items of note to have developed from Unix are the X Window System (MIT's Project ATHENA), Network File Systems (NFS - from Sun), the "lint" C analyser, the "sed" stream editor, the "awk" ... er.. . programming language? Mutlitasking, multiuser systems and networked communications today would not be what they are were it not for Unix.
Linux was reported to be the least portable, but perhaps this is before successful ports of Linux to the Motorola 680x0 architecture (Amigas, Ataris - and possible Sun 3s if Sun relent on their Non-Disclosure Policy on the internal schematics), to MIPS and the new development of Linux ontop of the MACH microkernel.
Linux performance is set only to increase however, as Linux kernel developers are now spending time improving disk access, and memory management (including a multithreaded kernel - Linux VIPER). Not bad at all for something started by a Finnish student who wanted something like SunOS for his miserable 386.
It achieves three times the integer performance of Intel's 100-MHz Pentium, and 66% more floating-point performance than the MIPS R8000/8010, a processor designed specifically for floating-point intensive operatings (for Silicon Graphics' Indigo line - Silicon Graphics own MIPS).
The Alpha 21164 is the first processr to execute over 1 billion per second (1.2 billion roughly was measured). DEC plan to sell a 266-MHz version of the Alpha for $1865, and a 300-MHz version for $2699.
CHICAGO is a full pre-emptive multitasking operating system in its own right, providing better memory protection than Windows 3.1. Its GUI is also quite different from the GUI of Windows 3.1 and NT.
It seems to be somewhat sluggish however, and the start button interface is quite weird indeed. The interface looks somewhat nicer, until you recognise the huge influence from NeXTSTEP and then it sort of palls somewhat in comparison. Its a single user system, like NT.
To be perfectly honest, it doesn't seem to justify all the hype around it. I suppose if you are a Windows user, it will be a welcome upgrade - but then again if you are a Windows user, anything is a welcome upgrade :-).
Well, it had to happen. There is now a ZX Spectrum emulator for Linux/X! Along with most other Spectrum emulators for other machines, it will load "snapshots" of Spectrum games (".sni") files.
It's pretty zippy. If you have enough RAM not to be in swap, it runs about as fast as you would have expected a Spectrum to go :-)
The XZX emulator running that old Chestnut, the Hobbit!
Oh, the days of colour clash! Sigh!
Presumably they are being printed for fourth ECE students taking Bob Strunz's ASICS module, but are worth checking out by anyone who has an interest in learning UNIX basics. They cost £2.50 and are Ref. No. 1251.
Skynet WWW Home page: http://skynet.ul.ie/home-page.html
Skynet Anonymous Ftp: ftp skynet.ul.ie
This document was created using the "ez" multimedia editor and debugged and converted to PostScript using NCSA "Mosaic".