How truly trustworthy are binary files on Linux? I only ask this question because of a recent article on Slashdot that brought up an interesting point about binaries distributed on Linux. Not directly of course, but the implications are there.

AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Enviornment) is a tool to check the file integrity. It is an opensource substitute for TRIPWIRE. It allows to take snapshots of all the major configuration files, binaries as well as libraries stats. It helps to find which binaries have been changed in case of compromisation of the system.

Brought up in the Phoronix Forums yesterday by a reader was a reference to Ryan Gordon's resume that he was contracted to port Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 to Linux. This led a Phoronix reader to email Ryan "Icculus" Gordon and now we managed to get our hands on Ryan's e-mail response.

Following our news post on Friday regarding this matter, Mr. Gordon was asked on Twitter as to the Unreal Tournament 3 Linux status.

By rights, copyright really shouldn’t apply to binary executables, because they are purely “functional” (not “expressive”) works. The decision to extend copyright to binaries was an economically-motivated anomaly, and that choice has some counter-intuitive and detrimental side-effects.

For technical and non-technical users alike, maintaining a large installed base of Linux machines can be a harrowing experience for an administrator. Technical users take advantage of Linux®'s extreme configurability to change everything to their liking, while non-technical users running amok within their own file systems.

An interesting topic for a change: is Linux binary portable? That is, can we take a binary file and be sure it’ll run in any other Linux system? What happens if we broaden that to any POSIX system, will it blend? Eh, I mean, will it run?

In response to criticism from some involved with OOXML, Microsoft is adding Office binary formats to a list of technologies that are protected from patent violation claims

"...We make use of an installation script to install the GNU/Hurd system, which resides in the intial ramdisk having the base linux file system. The file system contains all the necessary binaries for the execution of the script...."