/ linux-news-1
linux-news-1
1 From: Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius) 2 Subject: Linux News #1 (October 5-10, 1992) 3 4 5 L i n u x N e w s 6 7 A summary of the goings-on of the Linux community 8 9 Issue #1, October 5 through 10, 1992 10 11 12 Proudly reporting on Linux since 1992! 13 14 15 16 **** Editorial 17 18 Linux News is an attempt at a weekly news service about what happens 19 in the Linux community. Most of the material will probably be 20 announcements of new programs or versions of programs, but I will also 21 cover things like new ftp sites, Linux articles in the trade press, 22 and other things that Linux users should in my opinion be aware of. I 23 won't summarize individual problems and their solutions, unless they 24 are severe and widespread. I will also try to restrict announcements 25 to things that are actually on the ftp sites, and meant for public 26 use; testing releases will not be included (most people who are 27 probable beta testers will follow comp.os.linux closely anyway). 28 29 I hope that Linux News will be useful for people who want to follow 30 what is happening around Linux, but don't have the time or energy to 31 wade through the high volume of comp.os.linux. Linux News will always 32 have a subject like that includes "Linux News" in it, so it should be 33 easy to find it. Also, if there is enough interest, I might create a 34 channel on the linux-activists mailing list, so that interested 35 parties could get it via mail. 36 37 The contents of Linux News will be based mainly on postings in 38 comp.os.linux. I won't include announcements on mailing lists, since 39 those are usually only intended for the testers who read the lists. 40 If there is something you want me to include, send it to me via mail. 41 Feedback via mail is also greatly appreciated, I would especially like 42 to know whether there are people who appreciate this kind of thing (if 43 there are none, I will just drop this project). 44 45 Note: This is only a summary, if you want more information about a 46 given subject, please see the source that is referenced at the end of 47 each note (for Usnet articles, the reference is the Message-ID of the 48 article). I try to include all the relevant information, including 49 ftp sites and filenames, as given in the announcements (I probably 50 won't have the time or energy to check these things, or to find 51 pointers to other ftp sites). 52 53 For this first issue, I have picked announcements (mainly based on the 54 subject lines) from the past few days. I have probably missed 55 several. 56 57 58 **** News items begin here. 59 60 61 October 5. David Wexelblat announced Xfree86 version 1.1, the 62 free X server for 386 Unices, including Linux. 63 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/X11. 64 (Source: <1992Oct5.125823.16113@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>) 65 66 October 5. H.J. Lu released a bootable rootdisk. This is not the 67 same rootdisk that Jim Winstead maintains, but Jim and hlu are 68 considering ways to merge the two disks. 69 The disk is based on kernel version 0.98. It only contains a few 70 of the basic binaries. Hlu's announcement gave this partial list: 71 bash, gnu tar, compress, elvis, doshell, chmod, chown, cp, ls, mv, rm, 72 ln, mount, umount, swapon, more, ps, free, mkfs, mkswap, fsck, fdisk. 73 There should be enough software to install Linux on a computer, but 74 there is little or no documentation. Because of this lack of 75 documentation, this rootdisk is may not a good idea unless you are an 76 experienced Linux user/installer. Inexperienced users are encouraged 77 to try out the MCC and SLS releases. 78 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk. 79 (Source: <1992Oct5.201521.9644@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 80 81 October 5. H.J. Lu released the Linux Base System, a set of three 82 disk images of floppies with the Minix filesystem that contain a lot 83 of software. They are intended to be used with hlu's bootable 84 rootdisk (see above), and require the 4.1 jump table shared libraries, 85 since these disks don't contain the shared library images (good, 86 because it saves space, bad because you need to get them from 87 elsewhere). 88 Disk 1 contains /bin, /dev and /etc (but ps and friends are on the 89 bootable root disk, since they are kernel dependent). The software on 90 this disk includes fileutils 3.3, shellutils 1.7, textutils 1.3, tar 91 1.10, bash 1.12 (all of these are GNU packages), ldd 1.1, compress 92 4.2.3, zsh 2.20, doshell, fdisk 0.93, admutil 1.3, poeigl 1.6, LILO 93 0.5, and setfdprm 94 Disk 2 contains /usr, including diff 1.15, find 3.7, grep 1.6, 95 fgrep 1.1, make 3.62, gawk 2.13.2, flex 2.3.7, bison 1.18, patch 96 2.0.12u7, sed 1.09, elvis 1.6, minicom 1.3.2, rzsz, more, setterm, od, 97 strings, and uuencode/uudecode. 98 Disk 3 is a development disk without compiler and library. It has 99 crt0.o/gcrt0.o, gdb 4.6, as, ar, gprof, ld, nm, objdump, ranlib, size, 100 and strip. 101 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/basedisk. 102 (Source: <1992Oct5.201812.9714@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 103 104 105 106 October 6. H.J. Lu told that gcc 2.3 should be released by Richard 107 Stallman in a couple of weeks, and that it has Linux support built in. 108 (Source: <1992Oct6.162001.23488@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 109 110 October 6. Rick Sladkey released a new version of his port of GNU 111 Emacs for Linux. The new version is 8 bit clean, which is useful for 112 many Europeans whose alphabet includes letters that are encoded with 113 the top bit set. It also has XMenu support for the X11 version. It 114 is compiled with libc-4.1 and lixX11-2.1. 115 Changes from the early 4.1 jump table release include TCP/IP 116 support with open-network-stream, larger sharable code segment, 117 compiled with jump-table library, emacsclient and server work 118 correctly, full Berkeley /etc/termcap included. 119 Rick says that if you don't need the new version unless you need 120 eight bit I/O, or want the X11 version. 121 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu, nic.funet.fi, and sunsite.unc.edu (directory 122 names not given in announcement, but probably the usual directories 123 for binaries). Files: emacs-4.1.tar.Z (README and diffs), 124 emacs-etc-4.1.tar.Z (support programs), emacs-shared-4.1.tar.Z (non-X 125 version and its DOC file), x11emacs-shared-4.1.tar.Z (X11 version and 126 its DOC file). 127 (Source: <JRS.92Oct6000657@lepton.world.std.com>) 128 129 130 131 October 7. After a longish pause of three months, a new version of 132 the FAQ was released by Marc Corsini. It was both posted to the 133 newsgroup, and sent to FTP sites. The FAQ maintenance has been 134 divided among several people, with the hope of making it possible to 135 release new versions more often. 136 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/doc/FAQ_10_05 137 (Source: <1992Oct7.175825.1127@athena.mit.edu>) 138 139 October 7. H.J. Lu released a port of ispell 3.09 for Linux. Ispell 140 is a spelling checker modelled after the ITS spelling checker. It can 141 run both interactively, in batch mode (similar to Unix spell), and 142 under GNU Emacs. Hlu distributes his port as a disk image. 143 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/basedisk/ispell309.Z 144 (Source: <1992Oct7.165002.11433@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 145 146 147 148 October 8. Peter MacDonald announced that the new version of the SLS 149 release (based on the 0.98 kernel) has been uploaded to tsx-11, and 150 that a proper announcement will be made shortly, after a few people 151 have tested it. 152 (Source: <1992Oct8.223711.496@athena.mit.edu>) 153 154 155 156 October 9. H.J. Lu released gccdisk, a repackaged gcc 2.2.2d7. This 157 is not a new version: there are no changes to the compiler or 158 libraries, it is only intended as an easier way to install things. 159 Gccdisk is meant to be used with the Linux C library disk (see earlier 160 note), because gccdisk does not include any shared library images that 161 are necessary to run the programs (they use jump table 4.1). 162 There are two disk images of Minix filesystem floppies. The first 163 one includes gcc, cpp, cc1, and crt0.o/gcrt0.o, and some header files 164 for /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-linux/2.2.2d/include. The second disk has 165 cc1plus. 166 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/gccdisk 167 (Source: <1992Oct9.040521.7441@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 168 169 October 9. H.J. Lu released a Linux C library disk, with version 4.1 170 of the library. Like the gccdisk, this is only a repackage, not a new 171 version. 172 Libdisk consists of two disk images of Minix filesystem floppies. 173 The first disk contains the shared library images and a few libraries, 174 the second one has the header files and the rest of the libraries. To 175 get all the required header files, you also need Linux kernel source 176 (0.97 pl 6 or above), since some of the header files contain kernel 177 version specific information (so those headers are part of the kernel 178 sources of the version that they belong to). 179 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/libdisk 180 (Source: <1992Oct9.040653.7509@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 181 182 October 9. David Johnson told that he had hacked gnuplot 3.2 for X11 183 under Linux, and had sent the source code to tsx-11; he did not 184 provide binaries due to an old compiler and slow upload connections. 185 Leon Dent reported that the patches for 3.1 with VGA also worked 186 for him with 3.2. 187 (Source: <1992Oct9.053806.29092@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>) 188 189 October 9. H.J. Lu released a new version of his bootable rootdisk. 190 This version is based on kernel version 0.98 pl 1, and also updates 191 compress to 4.2.4. 192 There were some problems with corrupt versions on tsx-11, but they 193 should be corrected by now. If you downloaded before this date, and 194 are having problems, you might want to try downloading again. 195 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:pub/linux/GCC/rootdisk 196 (Sources: <1992Oct9.062632.10646@serval.net.wsu.edu>, 197 <1992Oct9.184533.18763@serval.net.wsu.edu>) 198 199 October 9. Bruno Haible announced that CLISP, a Common Lisp 200 implementation, is available for Linux. He says it is mostly CLtL1 201 compliant. 202 The files are packed with LHA, so you need a copy of that to 203 unpack them. 204 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/lisp, and 205 ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.115.2]:/pub/lisp/clisp/linux 206 (this latter one is will always contain the newest version). 207 (Source: <1992Oct9.230722.27309@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>) 208 209 210 211 October 10. Bruno Haible announced a port of MAXIMA for Linux. It is 212 an implementation of Macsyma in Lisp by Bill Schelter, and requires 213 CLISP (see above). 214 FTP: tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/packages/lisp 215 (Source: <1992Oct10.010541.22905@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>)