Recently over a conversation, my tech lead mentioned that he thinks the GNU project is a failure. His point of view is that after two decades they have never released a complete GNU operating system suitable for production use. He also mentioned that apart from Richard Stallman, no one else thinks of Linux as GNU/Linux. [He was glad to meet the second person].

I almost freaked out hearing this. Since then, I spoke to a few other people who felt the same. I was thinking to myself, this is what I call, “missing the forest for a tree“.

I think Free Software Foundation [FSF] is one of the most successful movements in the history of humanity. And I consider the GNU project as a big success. To justify this, we need to look at the history of the GNU project and the FSF in general.

In 1983, Richard Stallman quit this job at MIT to begin developing a free software operating system. His hope was that a free operating system would open a path to escape forever from the system of subjugation which is proprietary software. He had then experienced the ugliness of the way of life that non-free software imposes on its users, and he was determined to escape and give others a way to escape.

The word “free“ in “free software” pertains to freedom, not price. Once you have the software you have three specific freedoms in using it.
1. The freedom to copy the program and give it away to your friends and co-workers;
2. The freedom to change the program as you wish, by having full access to source code;
3. The freedom to distribute an improved version and thus help build the community.

The GNU Project was conceived in 1983 as a way of bringing back the cooperative spirit that prevailed in the computing community in earlier days. To make cooperation possible once again it was important to remove the obstacles imposed by the owners of proprietary software.

FSF decided to make the operating system compatible with UNIX. A Unix-like operating system is much more than a kernel; it also includes compilers, editors, text formatters, mail software and many other things. Unfortunately many people think that an operating system means a kernel and everything else is secondary.

By 1990 FSF had either found or written all the major components except the kernel. By then Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds and made free software in 1992. Since Linus decided to release the Linux kernel under the GNU public license [GPL], FSF thought combining Linux with the almost-complete GNU system would be the right thing to do. Today we have a huge number of people who are using this operating system and are experiencing the freedom which Richard Stallman had dreamt of.

Another important point to consider is would Linux be possible without GCC and the other libraries which Linus used? Again I‘m not saying it would be impossible, but it‘s all about helping each other to solve a common problem.

Who cares if it is called Linux or GNU/Linux? GNU‘s intension was to come up with a free operating system. This does not mean they have to write everything from scratch. Their idea was to reuse whatever is available and write software which was not available or not free.

So today we do have a free operating system, which is been used and relished by countless users. The good news is for FSF the ultimate goal is to provide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want to do and thus make proprietary software obsolete.

Please remember, its freedom of software in the spirit of community building and not satisfying personal egos.

Must read : http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html

Recently I was interviewed by a Journal. Following is a section of it.

1. Is Linux to make a breakthrough on the desktop? : Yes
Linux has always been a hacker‘s paradise. Linux started as a college project and slowly came to the limelight with the Internet & open source wave. Linus Torvalds started branding LINUX as ‘Just for FUN‘ OS. In mid 1990‘s, Linux started replacing lot of Unix, Solaris & Windows servers. Its performance, stability and cost factors proved Linux to be best suited on the server side. By late1990‘s Linux had captures almost 30% of the Server market share. This proved to be a great boost to the Linux community and Open Source Community in general. At this point, seeing the performance, stability, cost factor and n other benefits, the Linux community started considering Linux as a good option for desktops.
(I feel the saddest part of Linux is that it‘s always been compared to Windows by end-users. Most of the people I meet & talk about Linux inevitably start comparing Linux with Windows. I think this might be one of the strongest forces behind Linux moving to the desktop world. Personally I‘m not a supporter of Linux as a desktop. It‘s such an under utilization of a powerful OS like Linux.)
At this point most of the Linux distros(Flavors) started concentrating on the GUI part of Linux. KDE, GNOME, Ximian (now Novel) and many others came up with excellent X-windows support for Linux. In fact, I remember, KDE 2.0 was release and then Microsoft came with their Windows XP and lots of end users started saying, “What happened to Microsoft, why are they copying Linux desktop style+“ Listening to this statement alone makes one feel that Linux is sure to make a breakthrough in the desktop world.
Looking at the various options & the level of customization available in Linux, I‘m sure there is no other desktop OS in this category. It‘s worth noting that Linux not only runs on workstations, mid- and high-end servers, but also on “gadgets” like PDA‘s, PCs, mobiles, a shipload of embedded applications and even on experimental wristwatches. The Linux kernel gives you the flexibility to run a decent desktop on a 486 machines with 4 MB RAM.
The number of projects running in big companies like SUN (Mad Hatter project), Novel, Red Hat, HP, etc is valid enough for one to conclude that Linux has already made a breakthrough in the desktop world.

2. Why are financial services companies in Linux? : To make business
Based on my experience with a few banks & financial companies, Linux is still in an R&D phase of its implementation. Small banks & financial institutions have moved more positively to Linux than the big players. Following are the compelling reasons for companies to consider Linux
+Low Total Cost of Ownership
+Performance
+Security : (which some are still not convinced)
+Stability : (again some are still in the R&D phase)
+Scalability
+Long Term Cost Savings
+Linux running on any possible hardware. So they don‘t have to invest in new infrastructure
+Avoid vendor lock
+Ease of use : Especially for hosting websites, running some servers, etc
+Almost all types of file systems & file extensions work : Greater flexibility
+More control & customization : OS is no more a black box
+Software availability : anything from .exe to .sh runs on Linux

With such great advantages its too tempting for any one to resist. But as I pointed out earlier, Linux is still under the R&D phase. Lot of financial institutions have started replacing their Windows & UNIX boxes with Linux boxes. But as of now, in most of the big places this is done only on few workstations and servers running non-critical business apps. Mostly the internal apps have been moved to Linux mainly to cut costs.

The biggest disadvantage that the end users see (rather, used to see) in Linux is lack of big software service companies backing Linux. This lack of backing is usually perceived as lack of support. This is the key for the service companies. Most of the financial service companies (in general all the service companies) are pitching themselves as ?Support Providers‘ and gradually moving to app developers on Linux platform. (Note that usually I refer to Linux as a platform rather than an OS). This is the beginning of a new era where custom applications are developed on Linux, for Linux.

3. What‘s next? : Microsoft goes bankrupt
Well, future is uncertain, but there are surely some things about Linux that can be predicted. We have seen Linux capture the hacker‘s world, then moved to capture the server world & now to the desktop world. There are huge efforts going on to move Linux from this R&D phase to a full-fledged implementation phase. We have seen some banks & financial institutions move there non-critical business apps to Linux boxes. On successful implementation of these, I‘m sure they would move all their business apps to Linux servers. As this would happens, we would also see a lot of desktops & workstations being migrated to Linux. The service companies have a lot to gain in this move, if they are well equipped.
Even in service companies, all the source control servers, mail servers, domain servers, test labs, etc have been migrated to Linux platform. Slowly we‘ll see all the developer and QA machines also move to Linux. I cannot think of any place where Linux cannot work. It‘s evolving at such a great pace and is so customizable that it will soon fit all the requirements. Nonetheless, Linux is not the ultimate in the OS world; it‘s still evolving and has a pretty steep learning curve.

1. Log into the CVS repository server
2. Go to the cvs root dir
3. tar the whole cvs root dir using the following command tar -zcvf tarfileName .
4. copy this tar file to the new cvs repository server under the appropriate directory
5. untar the file using the following command tar -zxvf tarFileName
6. Delete the CVSROOT folder
7. Make sure on the new CVS repository server you have a group created called cvsUsers
8. Change the ownership and group permission for access using the following commands
• chown -R ./
• chgrp -R ./
• chmod -R 775 ./
• chmod -R +s ./
9. Execute the following command to initialize the CVS repository cvs -d init. This will create the CVSROOT folder under the cvs root directory
10. Game over!

After struggling with Gnome for a month, I finally decide to switch back to KDE . KDE is so much more intuitive to me. If you have to simultaneously work on Windows (for various reasons) and Linux, gnome just throws you apart. May be I could not setup gnome…

1. Configuration changes
vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

Under the [global] section, specify the following
workgroup =
hosts allow = 127.

Under the [tmp] section, uncomment the following
comment = Temporary file space
path = /tmp
read only = No
guest…

Caution: While using GNOME as the window-manager, you wont be able to lock your screen display. Unfortunately, when you click on this option in the menu, nothing happens. One might wonder, while all the other options in the menu work, why is this not…

After a long break, I have finally returned back to the world of Linux. I have Fedora Core 2 setup on my Laptop. (Did I say “my”, well ThoughtWorks‘ Laptop).

Things are quite different and at times strange. Couple of things that shook me…