Letters

When you mention the Zaurus applications tkcGallery and MooView [LJ, January 2003], you completely leave out the point that MooView cannot handle even reasonably sized files, just like the included image viewer, while tkcGallery can handle virtually any size image. I've tested up to ten megapixels so far. The general feeling here is that if it is a commercial app you must make some negative mention, and if it is free then there must be nothing wrong with it.

—Shawn Gordon, President, theKompany.com

Guylhem P. Aznar responds: I just could not recommend every single application. Yes, I did mention the problems I had and the existing free software equivalent if there were any, but I also gave strong purchase advice for some unique software such as tkcJabber.

Go to a Borders bookstore some Saturday as I do and pick up a book on Linux, or Linux Journal, and read it. Stay there for two hours and you will have a minimum of two people come up to you and tell you of their companies' recent conversion from Windows to Linux servers.

—Charles Ebert

Hey! This isn't a library! Are you going to buy that?

—Editor

Somehow I managed to forget to bring reading material for my Thanksgiving flight, so I found myself looking through the junk that the airports had to offer. My brother said I should get a magazine but I refused to pay five bucks for something without content. I returned home to my latest Linux Journal. In every issue you folks manage to cram lots of good stuff onto those pages. So many computer magazines are more like bridal zines, to be purchased only when one is in the market for something new. Linux Journal, on the other hand, puts together great articles for people who actually use the machines they own. So I just wanted to send out a thanks. Some days I think your organization is the only place that has a clue as to what people want.

—Tim

I have to disagree with the comments made by Tom Amon in your January 2003 Letters section (entitled “Red Hat 8.0: Love the License, Hate the Look”). Red Hat has made an attempt to bring forward a “best of breed” desktop. Having KDE (or GNOME if you wish) pre-setup with Mozilla, Evolution and OpenOffice seemed, to me, a vast improvement over the 7.3 release. I'll concur with Tom that the result is not perfect (where did Xine go, Red Hat?), but this is a road I would like Red Hat to stay on.

—Timothy J Halloran, Carnegie Mellon University

An excellent article on how to use your Zaurus and what various hardware and software options are available [LJ, January 2003]. The Zaurus is a system that can stand on its own, and more articles on it would be welcome. I can also say that I find the advertising in your magazine an excellent resource of what's available in the Linux world.

—Julian Macassey

The author of “Compiling Java with GCJ” [LJ, January 2003] misses the point of what makes Java a more viable solution than any natively compiled language, namely, platform neutrality á la the Virtual Machine. Simply put, natively compiling Java defeats the primary purpose of why Java was invented in the first place. I compile GIS Java code once on Linux and run that same code on Mac OS X, AIX, Solaris and more, with great success and eye-popping performance. A key Java goal is to limit the long development cycle time of software by avoiding native porting overhead.

—Bryan McKinley

On page 15 of the January 2003 Linux Journal you have a full-page ad from Rackspace. I would advise anybody looking for hosting NOT to go to Rackspace. They are well known for hosting spammers. The “100% network uptime” they boast about in the ad does you no good if your class C is blackholed due to the spammers you share it with. I would advise anybody seeking hosting to closely check the anti-spamming resources before contracting for hosting.

—David D. Hagood

Likewise, you should check out any spam-filtering service you plan to use to see how much legitimate mail gets blocked because of who the sender's network neighbors are. The www.linuxjournal.com web site is at Rackspace, and it works fine for us.

—Editor