January, 1999

"Prediction No. 4: Linux will become just another Unix. The Internet lost its charm when big business discovered it. The same will happen with Linux. Linux will wipe out SCO and Unixware and gain ground against NT, but will lose its soul in the process." -- Bob Lewis, InfoWorld.

Once widely denigrated by commercial developers as chaotic programming by committee, open source is now expected to come into its own this year as a business model, with potentially far-reaching consequences for developers and consumers of computer software. -- Amy Harmon, New York Times

Linus Torvalds complains that he is not getting patches for the ISDN subsystem, and threatens to put out 2.2 without them.

(January 9) Creative Labs says there will be no SB Live driver for Linux. From their note: "Creative has no plans of releasing its intellectual property to the general public."

The Linux Kernel Archive Mirror System goes live eliminating all problems in getting kernel sources. The quality of this mirror system remains unmatched - it just works.

Joey Hess inaugurates the Debian Weekly News. The first issue breaks the news that Richard Stallman uses Debian, and talks about Debian at trade shows.

The Artist's Guide to the Gimp by Michael Hammel is published by SSC.

(January 12) Creative Labs advertises for a Linux driver writer to produce an SB Live driver (job posting here).

Kernel Traffic launches, carrying detailed summaries of linux-kernel discussions. The first issue looked at vfork, the "C++ in the kernel" discussion, and more.

Tucows launches LinuxBerg, its Linux software download site.

Samba 2.0 is released. It contains a reverse-engineered implementation of the Microsoft domain controller protocols, allowing Linux servers to provide complete services to Windows networks.

Corel sells its NetWinder division to Hardware Computing Canada.

Debian 2.1 ("slink") goes into "deep freeze."

Slackware finally gets a web site with the launch of www.slackware.com.

LWN completes its first year of publication.

Microsoft Corp. will shout it out to the world when Windows 2000 finally ships. Linux creator Linus Torvald [sic] announced the arrival of the next generation of Linux, version 2.2, with a simple note to the Linux-kernel mailing list. -- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Sm@rt Reseller.

(January 25) Kernel 2.2.0 is released after more than two years of development.

Hewlett Packard and Compaq announce plans to offer Linux-based systems. SGI contents itself with providing information on how to bring up Linux on its systems.

The TCP Wrapper code is replaced by a version with a back door, showing that evil stuff can be concealed in open source code too - at least for a while. The modified version remains available for less than ten hours, and no sites are compromised as a result. (Details here).

Linus announces that 2.2.1 will not be released for several weeks. The world responds by turning up an ugly "crash the system" bug in 2.2.0, necessitating a quick 2.2.1 release.

The Harmony Project, which sought to create a LGPL clone of the Qt library, is officially declared dead.

Loki Entertainment Software announces that it will port "Civilization: Call To Power" to Linux.

Guido van Rossum and others sent out their Computer Programming for Everybody into DARPA.

Transvirtual's open source JVM, Kaffe, attracts attention over at Salon.com.

A month after Sun announced the release of the JDK 1.2, Blackdown's JDK 1.2 is reported to be running on Intel and PowerPC platforms.

February, 1999

But despite the real and considerable benefits of this development model, open-source software is not likely to upset the balance of power between big players and newer entrants in the software markets. And despite the publicity surrounding a few companies that focus exclusively on open-source software, it will not be the force that drives the next wave of startups to success. Nikki Goth Itoi, Red Herring

Kernel 2.2.1, the "brown paper bag release," is turned loose upon the world.

Wichert Akkerman becomes the leader of the Debian project, replacing Ian Jackson.

Red Hat moves to larger offices and falls off the net for a few days.

Lyx 1.0.0 is released (announcement here).

Which is the biggest Linux user group? The Silicon Valley LUG and the Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group have a "mine is bigger than yours" fight, with inconclusive results.

(Feb 15) Windows refund day happens, but very few people actually get refunds. Nonetheless, awareness of the "Microsoft tax" is raised.

Dell starts selling Linux-installed systems, though they only offer Linux on a couple of server models to start.

Linuxcare rolls out its service offerings, becoming a high-profile Linux company almost overnight.

Security holes in wu-ftpd and proftpd create problems for site administrators.

Linux-Mandrake 5.3 is released; this release is strongly based on Red Hat 5.2, with a bunch of extra goodies added.

KDE 1.1 is released.

Samba 2.0.1 is released, followed quickly by the 2.0.2 "brown paper bag" release.

The Debian 2.1 release is scheduled for March 2.

Let's face it, Windows Refund Day showed not the strengths of Linux, FreeBSD, etc., but their weaknesses. The sparse turnout and pseudo-guerilla theater at the so-called rallies indicated that the open-source-OS market is immature at many levels. Mark Hall, Performance Computing

The international release of SuSE 6.0 is finally made available.

Glibc 2.1 is released, then bounced from the gnu.org site because it does not build properly with gcc 2.8. The increasing gap between the gcc and egcs compiler projects is thus highlighted.

The Burlington Coat Factory announced that it will be installing Linux on over 1100 machines in 250 stores.

IBM announces a partnership with Red Hat to insure that Red Hat's distribution will work properly on IBM systems.

LWN becomes available in Japanese, thanks to the efforts of the folks at ChangeLog.net.

Bruce Perens resigns from the Open Source Initiative following repeated disagreements over what is really free software.

Prosa Debian GNU/Linux is released, featuring a great deal of localization for Italian-speaking users. (Announcement here).

"Uncle George" announce the release of his port of the JAVA JDK 1.2 non-commercial sources for the Alpha architecture. Reports come in of progress on the Blackdown JDK 1.2 port, but no code is yet available for release.

March, 1999

(March 2) The Debian 2.1 release fails to happen on schedule. A couple of last-minute problems popped up, and the Project chose to miss the trade show window rather than release a distribution with known bugs.

GNOME 1.0 is released with great fanfare at a LinuxWorld press conference.

Word leaks out that Sun will release Solaris under some sort of not-quite-so-open source license.

Betting $5 on a 100-to-1 underdog can be fun. Betting $50,000 would be foolish. Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars. -- Jesse Berst, ZDNet.

Weekly coverage of Zope events starts up. The weekly report, usually written by Amos Latteier, is sponsored by Digital Creations. Check out the first such report.

Troll Tech announces that it will port the Opera web browser to Linux.

Linux Magazine debuts, bringing some additional competition to the Linux print business.

VA Research and Intel team up to port Linux to Intel's Merced processor. Intel also invests in VA directly.

Red Hat launches its Linux portal.

VA Research buys the Linux.com domain, announces plans to turn it into a Linux portal.

Like a Russian revolutionary erased from a photograph, he is being written out of history. Stallman is the originator of the free-software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system. But you wouldn't know it from reading about LinuxWorld. Linus Torvalds got all the ink. -- Leander Kahney, Wired News.

Dell starts bundling support from Linuxcare with its Linux-installed systems.

IBM, Compaq, Oracle and Novell all announce investments in Red Hat.

Kernel 2.2.3 is released, after numerous complaints are raised about the buggy nature of 2.2.2. (pre-release announcement here).

(March 9) Debian 2.1 is released (announcement here).

Cendant announces the deployment of Linux systems in 4000 hotels.

Version 1.0 of the Qt public license is announced. This license is deemed to be "open source," but grumbling continues.

Corel announces that it will create and market its own Linux distribution.

Augustin said he intends to take his privately held company out for an initial public offering - but not until next year, after the company gets through some growing pains. Charles Babcock, ZDNet on why we shouldn't have seen a VA IPO yet.

Apple announces that parts of its upcoming operating system will be released under an open source license. The higher-level applications which make Apple unique are to remain proprietary, however.

The BeroLinux distribution is merged into Linux-Mandrake (announcement here).

CeBIT '99 happens in Germany. KDE wins the "Software Innovation of the year" award (announcement), the Linux Community wins a "highlight" award, and