- Linux in Business
- Linux is used widely in the business world, and its use is
growing rapidly. If you are uncertain about the commercial
viability of Linux, or want to gather material to support
a pitch to management, the links below should help.
- Databases
- A good industrial-strength database server should offer
transaction support, two-phase commit and rollback,
automatic check-pointing, hardware and/or power-failure
recovery, hot backups and replication, just for starters.
But to put these features to use, one needs Report Generators,
Query Tools, Web-to-Database Gateways, and sophisticated
Administration Interfaces.
- Bug Tracking, Asset Management, Help-Desk Automation, Workflow
and Project Management
- There are a variety of commercial and Open Source packages
available for Linux that help automate both internal and
customer or channel relationship processes. There is a broad
spectrum of systems with similar-but-different function, ranging
trouble-ticketing systems, automated FAQ's and chat systems, to
asset management, to workflow systems and project management
systems, to ERP systems (yes, Linux now has nascent ERP
software). The
Bug-Tracking, Help-Desk Automation and Project Management
page provides a glossary of the terms, followed by a long list
of some of the available packages.
- Intrusion Detection and Access Control
- A listing of security and access control tools has been
moved to the Linux Security
page.
- Data Mirroring, Replication and File Synchronization
- An increasingly common request from business management
to system administrators is the ability to mirror/copy
data across multiple systems (possibly geographically
separated). This eliminates the single point of failure
when a file server breaks down (or is stolen, burns in
a fire, etc). Data mirroring is also useful for distributing
files to a set of web servers. It also helps solve
the problem of needing fast access over a slow network
connection: by copying files to a local server, the
speed of the network connection is no longer a bottleneck
for remote file access.
There are a variety of data
mirroring/ file synchronization solutions available.
Note that they generally fall into one of two classes:
real-time mirroring tools, and file synchronization tools.
Note that real-time mirroring is difficult/impossible with a
synchronization tool, since you would have to run it every
few seconds, and that would overload the system. Note
that the synchronization of laptops is hard for a mirroring
tool, because most of the time, the laptop is not connnected
to the net, and thus can't be updated.
Note also that the word "replication" is usually used
in conjunction with the word "database", and if you need
database replication, you should check up on databases.
Note that there are a number of tools specifically aimed
at mirroring web sites. These are not listed below,
there are too many of these, and they really belong in
thier own category, because they have a different set of
features and user requirements.
- rsync provides
fast incremental file transfer between two systems.
By comparing timestamps and file sizes, it only
copies those files that have changed. GPL'ed,
and available as a standard part of most Linux distributions.
rsync is low-tech but simple: Use rsync to periodically
check on and copy modified files. Rsync has several
basic drawbacks: it can't be scaled to large systems
or used to provide live, 'hot' mirroring; and it
also can't easily be used to synchronize to repositories
where both sides are making changes.
-
rdiff-backup improves over rsync by providing simple
backup/archiving features. In addition to copying
files over, it maintains a set of differences, allowing
old versions and deleted files to be recovered.
Note it also preserves hard links, dev files, permissions,
uid/gid ownership, and modification times.
Python scripts, reported to run on Windows and other Unixes
as well as Linux. GPL'ed.
- FAM,
the File Alteration Monitor, monitors file systems
for changed files. FAM monitors for changes in real time,
and thus, it can be used to mirror changed files in real
time. More importantly, it provides a programming API,
allowing custom file-monitoring applications to be written.
Because it is based on an event-driven rather than a polling
design, it is scalable to large systems.
See also
Atif Ghaffar's Realtime Data Mirroring article.
- Unison
is a file synchronization tool. It runs on both Windows and Unix,
and does not require sysadmin privledges to install and operate,
making it ideal for individual users. Unlike rsync, it performs
two-way synchronization, and therefor can detect file change
conflicts. Unlike FAM, it syncs only when instructed to,
making it ideal for offline users (laptops, road-warriors).
GPL'ed.
- Reconcile
is a file synchronization tool. Mitsubishi Electric
Research Laboratories. Not clear how to get a copy,
or what the license is.
- Mirror,
a data-copying tool similar to rsync. Written in Perl.
Runs on Windows as well Unix. See also
Mirror Master for maintaining multiple mirrors.
- NBD -- Network Block Device
NBD is a standard part of the Linux kernel that allows
a chunk of raw disk (a 'block device') to be made available
over the network. This chunk of disk can then be used to build
a RAID array that spans the network. NBD suffers from the problem
of being rather hard to set up and administer, somewhat
fragile in an unreliable network, and incapable of reconciling
updates if the two sides of the mirror operated independently
for any length of time. It is really meant for a high-availability
server room, where both the network connection and the presence
of a sysadmin can be guarenteed. See also the
Linux Journal article on NBD for good exposition & HOWTO.
See also Enhanced NBD
a project to improve NBD.
- DRDB
is similar in features to NBD (above), but builds in RAID-1 mirroring
support (rather than using the Linux kernel's RAID support).
This makes it more HA-aware, and better able to cope in an
HA server room. GPL'ed, commerical support is available.
- Sistina's
GFS Global File System. High-performance, flexible,
commercial product, expensive.
- SteelEye offer
data replication as a part of thier high-availbility
suite of systems. It appears to be based on NBD (described above)
together with the Linux RAID (md) layer.
Commerical product.
-
EverStor Replicator allows data to be pushed from a Unix
server onto a Windows netowkr environment. Commercial product.
- Version Control, Configuration Management, and
Automated Software Distribution
- Document management systems are vital for controlling
a collection of documents, managing web sites, managing
changes and revisions to software, and updating the
software & config files on large networks of computers.
The venerable RCS, CVS and rdist systems can do a fraction
of these tasks, but there are other tools as well, often
better suited to particular tasks. The
Version Control page lists some of these.
- Network Management
- See the Linux Network Management Systems Page;
primarily focused on SNMP based tools.
- IBM 370/390 Mainframe Support
- Would you like to run Linux on a mainframe
partition?
- RAS - Reliability, Availability, Serviceability
- Large server installations are concerned with issues such as
'failover' and 'high-availability (HA)', which are just
two buzzwords for setting up and managing systems that are
extremely reliable, and are never 'down', even while a repairman
is replacing a failed piece of hardware (disk drive, power supply,
ethernet card ...). The buzzword 'serviceable' just means that
an 'ordinary' system operator can easily keep the system up and
running even while the repairman (the 'service' guy) is taking
things apart with a screwdriver. 'Clusters' are usually
collections of machines that are configured to work together
with each other, frequently (but not always) set up with
redundancy and failover ('fault tolerance') in mind.
- High-Availability.com
offiers Linux HA products.
- SteelEye
offiers Linux HA products.
- The High Availability Linux Project
is the focus point for the development and use of high-availability
servers and techniques.
- The Linux Virtual Server Project
aims to build the clustering features into the Linux kernel and
other subsystems so that a cluster of machines can appear to be
a single (redundant, highly-available) server on the network.
- Global File System
is a project to develop support for SAN (Storage Area Network)
fabric support for Linux. A SAN fabric consists of a set of disk
drives that multiple boxes can access. The disk drives are typically
SCSI or Fibre-Channel attached. The GFS file system allows
multiple hosts to mount the same disk drive at the same time,
an perform typical file-system operations coherently, without
corruption.
- Fake is an IP
takeover switch useful for building redundant servers.
- The MON
tool offers a monitoring infrastructure that can be
used to implement High Availability features.
- The
Linux High-Availability HOWTO describes a new project to add
high-availability features to Linux.
- Please note the rapid response available from the linux security
mailing list, and Linux CERT. Although security and cracker
detection issues are not normally considered to be a part of
'high availability', note that one possible server failure mode
is the cracker's 'cd /; rm -r *', if not the pedestrian denial-of-service
(DoS) attack.
- RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)
provides some protection against disk failure in a single system.
- Anecdotes about the largest linux
installations around in terms of RAM, disk, network, cluster.
- The BugTraq
mailing list.
Please note Caldera is pursuing
X/Open UNIX 95 (Spec 1170) branding for Linux. This includes POSIX.1
(FIPS 151-2) and XPG4 Base 95 (POSIX.2, FIPS 186).
- RAID
- There are several options for RAID (Redundant Array of
Inexpensive Disks) for Linux, from pure-software disk striping
and mirroring, to RAID-capable SCSI controllers and outboard boxes.
Storage management software is another issue. I've slapped
together a quick survey.
- Clusters and SMP
- Clustering interfaces -- a way of hooking up multiple CPU's for
single-system login, load-balanced web-serving, load-balanced
database queries.
- A quick, dirty, old and obsolete survey of Linux
SMP and clustering.
- The old, obsolete Linux Threads FAQ.
- MOSIX for Linux
is a cluster-enablement technology that provides transparent
process migration between nodes in a cluster. Migration
is pre-emptive and transaparent to the user; processes
run remotely via distributed system calls.
MOSIX has been used to build several large clusters, including
a 100-CPU cluster at Hebrew University.
- The
Beowulf clustering technology provides Linux with the basic
infrastructure needed for clustering. Beowulf has been used
to build numerous large clusters, including
the 140-CPU cluster
Naegling at Caltech, the 68 node
Lobos cluster at
the National Institutes of Health, and the
University of Paderborn cluster.
- Cluster batch processing/scheduling is supported with
Generic NQS, a standards-compliant off-shoot of Monsanto NQS.
Inter-operable with commercial NQS products, provides support
for SMP processors, has a robust scheduling algorithm.
In short, ideal for running large batch jobs overnight
on oodles of processors -- circuit simulation, petroleum
exploration, quantum chromodynamics, etc. See
Generic NQS Features
- The Enterprise Task Manager
from Himel Inc. supports a large
number of sophisticated, advanced job scheduling & batch processing
features, including a Java-based GUI front end.
- A survey of load-balanced IP routing & NAT (Network Address
Translation) for clusters and security
lie here.
- LAN Networking
- Any realistic deployment of Linux on the LAN requires peaceful
co-existence of Linux with Windows (SMB/LAN-Manager, Netware 3.x
and Netware NDS) and Macintosh boxes (Appletalk). A variety
of well-known tools are available: see the
KKI Reference
and the
Linux Services
for Mac and Windows Users page. These include SMB clients and
servers, NFS to SMB protocol converters, Netware and NDS servers
and clients, and an Appletalk server.
- Arla,
a free implementation of the AFS client, and an early (beta)
AFS server. AFS, the Andrew File System, is widely used
in larger corporations because it's far more scalable (can handle
larger and more complex file and server hierarchies) than NFS,
SMB/WFW or Netware.
- Transarc has announced
official client and server product support for
AFS on Linux. Particularly interesting is the steep discount
prices being offered for Linux as compared to NT or other Unix's.
- Vision FS
is a commercially supported SMB file & print server
from WinLink
- MPAS provides commercial
Windows/DOS to Linux connectivity tools.
- Single login for Linux and NT boxes avoids the need
for maintaining multiple passwords. The
SMB PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module)
provides this capability. If a user does not have
a password on a Linux box, this PAM module will use
SMB to query an NT server for authentication.
- Single-login for Unix clusters is available with the
traditional Sun NIS (YP) services. See the
NIS(YP)/NIS+/NYS HOWTO
- HylaFAX (TM)
is a fax server that allows Windows and Mac clients to use
a Linux box as a fax server. (see also
MacFlex
and
WinFlex).
- Routers, WAN Inter-Networking, VPN's
- Linux offers a variety of inter-networking possibilities.
Routers and firewalls can be built with Ethernet, frame-relay,
ATM and X.25 cards. The cost of long-distance leased lines
can be avoided by deploying software VPN solutions. Security
can be provided with a variety of encryption schemes.
- Linux VPN Solutions outlines the
basic concept of a VPN and some of the tools available
for building one.
- Freesco http://freesco.org
Linux router on a floppy. Great for old 486's without fan or
hard disk. It has ISA support but if you have PCI NICs you
can setup the router in about 10 minutes and then monitor it
through a web interface.
- An over-view & pointers to Linux
X.25, Frame Relay and other WAN resources.
- Gcom, Inc. offers SNA,
X.25, and a variety of other protocols for Linux.
- The
Linux SNA project is developing a SNA protocol stack for Linux.
- Allow access to an internal database or other
service, while maintaining security with a firewall,
with Port Forwarding.
- For airline host connectivity, including ALC, AX.25, P1024B, etc.
the Northrop-Grumman line
of products are recommended.
- DCOM, CORBA, DCE, Messaging, TP
- There is a rich selection of implementations of
CORBA
for Linux, including one that is focused on real-time operation,
and another on fault-tolerance. If these features are not
important to you, but Microsoft's name is, then take a look
at DCOM & ActiveX for Linux. Yep, its available!
For the true enterprise-scale developer who sees the promise of
CORBA but needs a secure and reliable infrastructure today,
DCE is available. FreeDCE is in beta test now.
Look Here for listing of packages
plus a quickie install & interop report.
- The Tuxedo
client TP Monitor from
BEA Systems provides
transaction management features.
-
IBM MQSeries transaction messaging client provides reliable & secure
(two-phase commit/rollback)
message delivery between distributed systems.
- TIB/Rendezvous
from Tibco provides
fault-tolerant, certified, publish-subscribe messaging.
- Electronic Commerce, Ecommerce
- Ecommerce is an unfortunately broad term. Some people mean
'web content management systems', others mean 'web based accounting
systems', while yet others think 'shopping carts'.
Implementing Ecommerce reviews some of these technologies.
- Tallyman is a
web-site content management system with 'transaction management'
(viz. with shopping cart, customer tracking, inventory control,
tax&shipping calculation features). Carefully separates
content management issues from server-admin issues from
order-fulfilment, so that your marketing/sales staff don't have
to also be programmers, nor do the folks who are doing
order-fulfilment. This is a sophisticated
package supported by a real company (which is
Akopia?).
Perl, any SQL backend, GPL'ed, anonymous CVS.
- OpenMerchant is a
GPL'ed, perl-based shopping-cart/ecommerce package.
Includes mangement systems for content, inventory, ordering,
searching and statistics. Backed by a growing, venture funded
company.
-
YAMS - Yet Another Merchant System
is a shopping cart system. A sleeper, frequently rated
as good as or better than its comeptitors (listed above).
Perl-based, MySQL-backended, GPL'ed.
- MiniVend provides
a shopping cart and product catalog. Built-in search engine.
Payment processing through CyberCash API. Calculator
includes per-item discounting mechanism.
Supports any SQL DB, but can be used without SQL backend.
Perl, GPL'ed, copius documentation, active mailing lists.
Supported through a loose but large coalition of
consultants.
-
CCVS -- Credit Card Verification System is an embedable
credit card (& check) authorization and settlement system.
Certified for use through major clearing houses. Extremely
portable, suupports most major languages (perl, java, php3,
python, tcl, c). Commercial ($990) with open source elements.
- Appwerx
is a commercial, java-based client-server shopping technology.
- BossCommerce
is a commercial, ColdFusion-based shopping cart technology.
- Content Management Systems
- A list of server applications for publishing and maitaining
sophisticated web sites and/or managing a large amount of content.
- GO.com is a content
management system that runs large sites such as ESPN.com
and ABCNews.com.
- Zope is a fairly robust
web-site content/publishing system, focused in particular on
publishing news items, discussions and weblogs. Python bassed.
See also the
Zope Application Server review article for an independent
review/overview.
- PHP is an HTML-embedded
scripting language. It is frequently used to handle dynamic
content and themed web sites, and runs 'a million web sites'
including some of the better-looking, bigger, busier sites.
Open Source, GPL'ed.
Support for the engine and and a variety of optimizers and
PHP-compiler and performance tools through
Zend.com.
The Midgard Project
provides a content and layout administration tool for PHP.
- Enhydra is a open-sourced,
Java/XML-based application server. FreeBSD-style license.
Commercially supported through Lutris Technologies.
- Allaire ColdFusion for Linux
is a commercial, java-based
application server. Developed for NT, ported to Linux.
- CompuPic is a
commercial image/media database & content maangement system.
Free for non-commercial use.
- Search Engines
- So you want to have a small search engine at your website?
Many website servers, application servers, etc. have built in search
engines. But sometimes these are not adequate, or are too specialized.
Here are some stand-alone engines:
- ASPSeek GPL'ed,
indexing robot, a search daemon, and a CGI search frontend.
Search results can be limited by time period and sorted
by relevance (PageRank is used) or date.
- mnoGoSearch is GPL'ed,
uses SQL as a backend, and supports many/most of the common
Linux SQL flavours. Different sections (heading, body, title,
keywords) can be given different weights. Supports boolean
queries, the robot exclusion standard, fuzzy searches,
customizable templates for page layout, C, PHP, Perl interfaces.
This seems to be the most sophisticated of the packages.
- SWISH++
Runs on NT as well as Linux, can index MSOffice documents. GPL'ed
source code that seems to be cleanly designed. A number
of
interesting features, including ability to pre-filter before
indexing (for indexing compressed files, Adobe pdf documents,
etc.), word-stemming, incremental indexing. Developed in C++,
with perl bindings.
- ht://Dig builds indexes by
spidering one or more servers on the local intranet. It
respects robot exclusion rules via robots.txt, understands
meta-tag keywords, and can index protected pages when supplied
with a login/password. Supports fuzzy search (soundex, etc.),
boolean search queries, customizable templates for page layout.
GPL'ed.
See also
PHP interface to ht://dig
-
harvest supports a large number of different document
types. User can select how many search results are
returned, etc.
- Perlfect
search. Customizable, many features. GPL'ed, with
full commercial support.
- Namazu,
a simple search engine for small/medium-sized sites.
GPL'ed.
- phpDig
is "the smallest search engine in the universe".
Spider/search engine written in Php with a MySql
database in backend. GPL'ed.
- mifluz is a
repackaging of htdig functionality into an embedable library.
This seems oddly at odds with thier other stated goal, which is
to build a high-end serch engine.
Commercial support available.
- Senga is a project to build
a large-scale, open-source search-engine that could be able to
index the entire web.
Commercial support available.
- Snatcher
developed in Japan,
particularly strong for Japanese searches. GPL'ed.
- Java Search Engine, a
spider & search engine written in Java.
- C. Browne's List
of Word Processors for Linux
- C. Browne's
List of Spreadsheets for Linux
- C. Browne's
List of Financial Software for Linux
-
Financial Applications for Linux.
- For Point-of-Sale accounting,invoicing & inventory management, see
Qba (Qddb Business Application).
- The BATS
ISP Billing and Tracking System from
AstroArch
- The Virtual Law
Project to port small-office/legal s/w to Linux.
- Chat, Groupware, Shared Whiteboard
- An important part of running a business is allowing your employees to
efficiently communicate with each other. This is particularly important
when many of your employees are spread out geographically in many cities,
states or countries. The old standards are of course e-mail and the
telephone, but, for some people and personalities, this may not be the best
way to communicate. 'Groupware', and in particular, chat and shared
whiteboards are good technologies for those who can't afford or don't want
to spend all day on th phone, or may want to exchange freehand drawings
a bit more easily than the fax allows.
On the other hand, it must be argued that some groupware functions
are in fact better addressed by installing and maintaining good
email configurations and flexible email clients, setting up news
(nntp) servers, and setting up NFS/Samba servers in a way that is
actually useful, rather than restricitve, to the users. By
encouraging the use of some of the more traditional unix technology,
some of the scalability and administrative problems of some groupware
packages can be avoided.
(Danger: the list below is very very incomplete, there's lots of good
stuff out there I haven't found yet.)
- Zope is a fairly robust
web-site content/publishing system, focused in particular on
publishing news items, discussions and weblogs.
- Phorum is a web-based
discussion server. PHP based, backended to PostgresSQL or
MySQL. Provides various administrative/moderator features.
Open Source license.
- Sporum
is a web-based discussion server. Provides user
registration/login for public, semi-public, private forums.
Includes search engine. Perl scripts,
MySQL back-end. Theme'd. Commercial service & support
available.
- Teamwave provides a
cross-platform (NT, Mac, Linux) commercial groupware solution.
- The
ArsDigita Community System from
ArsDigita is an open
source groupware system. Includes, among other things, functions
for collaborative calendaring, discussion boards, chat,
messaging, and shared bookmarks.
- Jetspeed, a part of the Java Apache project
- Collaboration Virtual Workspace
is an open source project that uses a rooms-paradigm to
implement chat, audio/video conferencing, whiteboards, and
shared text, documents. Java based, runs on NT and Linux.
- LDAP
- Pre-compiled versions of the standard
UMich LDAP Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol tools can be down-loaded from:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/ldap-3.3-2.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/ldap-devel-3.3-2.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/ldap-3.3-2.src.rpm
- The LDAP NDS Project
aims to provide LDAP-based Network Directory Services
as an upgrade to the standard NIS directory services.
Goals include integration with SSL for encryption/security.
This site provides a number of patches to the standard LDAP
source.
- The OpenLDAP Project
endevours to create a commercial-grade, full-featured
Open Source suite of LDAP tools, applications & development
environment.
- Hodges'
LDAP Tutorial and FAQ provides a good overview and extensive
pointers to resources.
- The Perl-LDAP
Homepage distributes perl modules.
- The Linux LDAP
Project also aims at creating a stable LDAP distribution
for Linux (Now defunct, superceeded by OpenLDAP).
- Besides a broad range of references and pointers to documentation
and specs,
Critical Angle, Inc.
also provides a version of the
stand-alone lapd (slapd) server.
- A Java implementation of an LDAP client is available from
OpenWise Technologies.
Not clear if it is well tested under Linux, but they did send
me the press release announcing availability.
- Graphical System Management
- Graphical/menu-driven system management tools -- configure disks,
add devices, configure modems, SLIP/PPP, set up IP, mbone,
firewalls, etc. from a menu.
- VNC allows you to
control Windows NT and Macintosh desktops from the comfort of
your Linux keyboard. (And, of course, vice-versa, too...)
- The KDE and
Gnome desktops
both come with basic graphical system management utilites.
- COAS from Caldera
is a new project to create a full-featured, flexible and
sysadmin-friendly management interface with command-line,
curses, X11 and Java interfaces.
- Linuxconf
offers a large number of features, including sendmail setup,
firewalling, NIS, IPX, LILO, PPP, named, RARP, DHCP and more,
all from either a curses or a web interface.
- Webmin, a web-based
admin package.
- The YaST® sysadmin tool.
- The Offix project
defines a drag-n-drop infrastructure for such tools.
-
Figurine Configuration Modeler
- Encryption
- The more well-known, widely available Linux encryption packages
listed below can be found on many Linux sites.
A good set of encryption-related links can be found in the
Free S/WAN
documentation link page
See also the
Free S/WAN Glossary for the definition of a many
security-related terms.
- PGP -- Pretty Good Privacy -- public key encryption.
- GPG -- Gnu Privacy Guard
- OpenSSH provides an
open implementation of the secure shell protocol. SSH
provides the critical ability to securely log into a remote
server over the open internet. Without SSH, remote server
administration can be a practical impossibility.
- stelnet, sftp: The traditional remote login/file-transfer
clients, implemented on SSL. Often percieved as not being
quite as flexible, easy-to-manage or as secure as ssh.
- OpenSSL provides an open-source
implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. SSL
is commonly used by web browsers connecting to e-commerce web sites,
to provide encryption and security.
- ECAD/CAE/EDA
- A very very limited list of electronics design and engineering
tools, including PC Board Layout tools, Verilog simulators and the
like, are listed here. There may be more,
but I don't know of them.
- Performance
- Accredited performance benchmarks are needed. Until then
we will have to live with claims that
Linux provides the fastest Ethernet on planet Earth, period,
or that Linux beats SunOSTM and
SolarisTM in performance,
running natively on SparcTM
hardware. Data on the
BYTE Magazine UNIX Benchmark is available from
Silkroad.
It would be nice to see TPM-A B and C figures ...
- Graphing Tools
- (OK this has nothing to do with enterprise computing,
but this page is still under construction).
The
Linux Graphics Mini-HOWTO
lists the different packages available for plotting, graphing,
2D, 3D, etc. See also the faq from comp.graphics, or
http://wusarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/
- Odds & Ends
- An assortment of stuff that caught my eye:
- ViewTouch provides
touchscreen point-of-sale (POS) components and technologies,
as well as RAD (rapid application development) tools for
custom, applications-specific GUI's.
- Software UNO provides a
variety of tools for porting Windows applications to Linux.
- VBIX allows your
Visual Basic programs to be
easily ported to Linux.
- The VBVM
virtual machine allows your MS Visual Basic 5 programs to
*run* on Linux.
- AS/400 utilities
including an AS/400 file translator, and a TN5250 emulator
for Linux.
- Scientific
Applications on Linux
- The
Silent Messenger is a public-address paging gateway,
ideal for high noise areas where a intercom public address
paging does not work.
-
Process Control Engineering for the chemical and
pharmaceutical industries.
- The Abacus 4
industrial process control system for continuous and batch
industrial processes. (See also
www.abacus4.com)
- The Linux Lab Project
provides resources & drivers for laboratory instrumentation.
- The
Video CD File System provides access to
MPEG1 content stored on White Book standard Video CDs.
- A very simple
SMS Client allows sending of short messages to cellular phones,
pages. Uses Cellnet GSM Short Message Service centre using
TAP.
- Wish Lists
- I wish that Linux supported these things:
- Persistent Storage for Linux.
A good persistent storage implementation would allow the
computer to be powered off, and then powered back on, without
interrupting the execution of programs.
- Capabilities. A new, very different
security model than the one that Unix was born with.
- A
wish-list of kernel enhancements is kept by Albert Cahalan.
- A
wish-list of wishes extracted from c.o.l.d.s
- The list of
Operating System Research Projects
can be construed to be another sort of a wish-list for Linux.
- Implementation and adherence to a large variety of
Industry
Standards. OK, OK, maybe Linux already does almost all
of these. I keep reading the list over and over, and there must
be at least one, just one, in there, somewhere, that Linux hasn't
done yet ... but which one? OK, I *am* enjoying this ...
- Multimedia
- Links to various audio/video sites
- Laptops
-
Linux Laptop Center provides the most extensive coverage
of links and info for hundreds of different laptops and notebooks.
Some sample miscellaneous links below:
This page attempts to survey Linux in a corporate, commercial
enterprise setting from a programmers' or technicians' perspective.
If you are looking for information about the technologies and building
blocks for building e-commerce sites, small and large servers,
and complex custom commercial systems, I believe you will find
this page useful. Topics currently covered include:
system and network management, databases, high-availability &
fault-tolerance, e-commerce, project management tools,
as well as a few wish lists.