http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:19:25 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/25487/Linux_3_2_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25487/Linux_3_2_Released/ Linux 3.2 has been released [like 34 weeks ago, sorry for the delay]. The changes include support for Ext4 block sizes bigger than 4KB and up to 1MB, btrfs has been updated with faster scrubbing, automatic backup of critical filesystem metadata, detailed corruption messages and tools for manual inspection of the metadata; the process scheduler has added support to set upper limits of CPU time usage to groups of processes; the desktop reponsiveness in presence of heavy writes has been improved; TCP has been updated to include an algorithm which speeds up slightly the recovery of connection after lost packets; and more. New drivers and small improvements and fixes are also available in this release. Here's the full changelog. Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:35:19 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 4 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News diegocg http://www.osnews.com/story/25457/Android_Drivers_To_Be_Included_in_Linux_3_3_Kernel/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25457/Android_Drivers_To_Be_Included_in_Linux_3_3_Kernel/ "Android drivers are returning to the Linux kernel. Kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has retrieved the Android drivers removed from the staging area of Linux 2.6.33 in the spring of 2010 andput them back into his development branch for version 3.3 of the Linux kernel. [...] The plan is for a Linux 3.3 kernel to be able to boot on an Android device without further patches." Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:09:24 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 15 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25438/Puppy_Has_A_Litter/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25438/Puppy_Has_A_Litter/ Without corporate backing or advertising, Puppy Linux has become one of the world's ten most popular Linux distributions. In the past few months Puppy has whelped a litter of like systems, each with its own unique DNA. This article summarizes Puppy and then describes the new brood. Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:26:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Linux 33 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/25415/Talking_Point_Should_Distros_Stick_to_CDR_Size_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25415/Talking_Point_Should_Distros_Stick_to_CDR_Size_/ It's starting to look like the end of an era for Ubuntu users as Canonical mull the creation of an ISO that won't fit onto a CDR. The question is, does it matter? Canonical owes at least part of its success with Ubuntu Linux to the unique way that it has been distributed. From the start it has been available as a downloadable ISO image and a free CD, posted at no cost to the user. This was great news for people who wanted to install Linux but did not have the luxury of a decent Internet connection. In a sense, installing via a CDR image has always been like a kind of cache, in that you're moving part of the content that you need onto permanent storage rather than pulling it through the network connection Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:37:07 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 66 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News rhyder http://www.osnews.com/story/25371/Linux_Mint_12_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25371/Linux_Mint_12_Released/ So, it's no secret that the Linux desktop - at least, the GNOME-side of things - is a bit in a state of disarray. Unity hasn't exactly gone down well with a lot of people, and GNOME 3, too, hasn't been met with universal praise. So, what to do? Linux Mint, currently one of the most popular Linux distributions out there, thinks they are on to the solution with their latest release, Linux Mint 12. Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:07:22 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 110 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News Nooone http://www.osnews.com/story/25370/Racy_Puppy_Linux_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25370/Racy_Puppy_Linux_Released/ Puppy Linux is a small sub-130 MB distro popular for its high performance, adaptability, and ability to run on older hardware. The project just announced the new Racy Puppy, a version enhanced to run on new PCs. Racy includes Xorg 7.6 and the 3.0.7 kernel. Racy derives from Wary Puppy, a long term support release optimzed for older hardware. Puppy also offers Slacko and Lucid versions, for full compatibility with Slackware and Ubuntu, respectively. Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:58:23 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Linux 13 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25365/Tool_Kills_Hidden_Linux_Bugs_Vulnerabilities/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25365/Tool_Kills_Hidden_Linux_Bugs_Vulnerabilities/ "Australian researcher Silvio Cesare has released a tool capable of automatically detecting bugs and vulnerabilities in embedded Linux libraries. The script correlates vulnerability advisory CVEs for third party libraries to determine if holes have carried over to Linux platforms or have not been patched." Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:45:53 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 1 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25363/Tiny_Core_Linux_4_1_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25363/Tiny_Core_Linux_4_1_Released/ Tiny Core Linux is an 11 MB graphical Linux based on the 2.6 kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, Fltk, and Flwm. It's a minimal but extendable distro that runs from memory and loads from any bootable device. Version 4.1 has just been released with many improvements detailed in the release announcement, including app upgrades and bug fixes. 4.1 continues Tiny Core's rapid evolution, which has seen point release upgrades every month or two. Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:20:11 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Linux 13 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25324/A_Proper_Solution_to_the_Linux_ASPM_Problem/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25324/A_Proper_Solution_to_the_Linux_ASPM_Problem/ "At long last, it looks like there is an adequate solution to the Active State Power Management (ASPM) problem in the Linux kernel , a.k.a. the well-known and wide-spread power regression in the Linux 2.6.38 kernel, which has been causing many laptops to go through significantly more power than they should. This is not another workaround, but rather a behavioral change in the kernel to better decide when the PCI Express ASPM support should be toggled." Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:40:45 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 10 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News Mike http://www.osnews.com/story/25302/SaaS_might_be_stalling_Native_Linux_App_Development/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25302/SaaS_might_be_stalling_Native_Linux_App_Development/ Linux advocates have for so long advocated browser-accessed software as a service as a way to break out of Microsoft's proprietary desktop. Now that this world has arrived, there's less incentive to work on native Linux apps. Sun, 06 Nov 2011 04:35:59 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 22 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News twitterfire http://www.osnews.com/story/25301/Support_Linux_by_Not_Writing_Linux-Only_Software/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25301/Support_Linux_by_Not_Writing_Linux-Only_Software/ While it may seem like Linux-only projects are betraying their loyal base by developing Windows or OSX versions, I would argue that cross-platform development is actually better for Linux as a whole, better for individual software projects and their developers, and ultimately better for Linux users. Sun, 06 Nov 2011 04:34:31 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 60 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25298/Linux_Mint_12_Builds_Custom_Desktop_on_Top_of_GNOME_3/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25298/Linux_Mint_12_Builds_Custom_Desktop_on_Top_of_GNOME_3/ When GNOME did its version 3 and Ubuntu came up with Unity, the popularity of Linux Mint sky-rocketed, because they stuck with GNOME 2.32. The Mint team has been working on their next version for a while now, and today, they first unveiled what they're working on. There's good news - the team is working on making GNOME 3 likeable. Their question for this release: "How do we make people like Gnome 3? And what do we provide as an alternative to those who still do not want to change?" Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:56:58 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 62 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News Dart http://www.osnews.com/story/25275/The_Right_to_Dual-boot_Linux_Groups_Plead_Case/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25275/The_Right_to_Dual-boot_Linux_Groups_Plead_Case/ "Red Hat, Canonical and the Linux Foundation have laid out a set of recommendations for hardware vendors in hopes of preserving the ability to install Linux on Windows 8 machines. Windows 8 machines should ship in a setup mode giving users more control right off the bat, the groups argue." Group hug-cheer combo for Red Hat, Canonical, and the Linux Foundation please. Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:25:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 38 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25254/Linux_3_1_Released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25254/Linux_3_1_Released/ Linux 3.1 has been released. The changes include support for the OpenRISC opensource CPU, performance improvements to the writeback throttling, some speedups in the slab allocator, a new iSCSI implementation, support for Near-Field Communication chips used to enable mobile payments, bad block management in the generic software RAID layer, a new "cpupowerutils" userspace utility for power management, filesystem barriers enabled by default in Ext3, Wii Controller support and new drivers and many small improvements. Here's the full changelog. Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:32:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 11 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News diegocg http://www.osnews.com/story/25199/Linux_has_Only_10_Great_Desktop_Apps/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25199/Linux_has_Only_10_Great_Desktop_Apps/ Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of "great" apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We've managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time." Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:47:25 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 302 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News lucas_maximus