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, 16 May 2012 20:27:36 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/25946/Systemd_tuning_gets_boot_times_down_to_less_than_2_seconds/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25946/Systemd_tuning_gets_boot_times_down_to_less_than_2_seconds/ Lennart Poettering, the author of systemd, has announced: "I just put a first version of a wiki document together that lists a couple of easy optimizations to get your boot times down to [less than] 2s. It also includes a list of suggested things to hack on to get even quicker boot-ups." Sun, 13 May 2012 23:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 65 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News diegocg http://www.osnews.com/story/25854/Interview_Linus_Torvalds/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25854/Interview_Linus_Torvalds/ Liuns Torvalds is a finalist for this year's Millenium Technology Prize, prompting Scott Merrill with TechCrunch to do an e-mail interview. Interesting how Torvalds ignores the existence of ultrabooks - the Air is the exact same Intel-designed machine. Curious. Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:14:56 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 17 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News ingraham http://www.osnews.com/story/25853/Canonical_is_not_interested_in_the_Linux_Kernel/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25853/Canonical_is_not_interested_in_the_Linux_Kernel/ "Linux vendor Canonical said it has 'no interest' in Linux kernel development. Two weeks ago a Linux Foundation report showed that since version 2.6.32, Microsoft had committed more code to the Linux kernel than Canonical. Since then, Canonical has faced claims from rivals that it does not contribute to Linux as much as it should given its popularity. Recently Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told The Inquirer that his company has no interest in contributing to the Linux kernel." Why is this such a bad thing? You can contribute more to open source than code alone. Like, I don't know, users? Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:09:40 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 54 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25808/VectorLinux_7_Fast_Flexible_and_Supported/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25808/VectorLinux_7_Fast_Flexible_and_Supported/ VectorLinux is one of those useful but lesser-known Linux distros. It's been around since 1999 and I've used it since 2006, off and on, in the role of a secondary OS. Now, with the disruptive changes Ubuntu forces on its user base with each new release, I've found myself increasingly attracted to Vector's stability and convenience. This article introduces "VL" to those who may not be familiar with it. Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:48:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Howard Fosdick) Linux 24 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/22992/Building_A_Preemptible_Linux_Kernel/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22992/Building_A_Preemptible_Linux_Kernel/ I don't actually have a reason for trying to build a Linux kernel with the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch set. There's no way I can even measure the impact of it. Still, I felt like having a "real-time" Linux box, and set out to make one. Little did I know how difficult it would be to even get started. Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:36:29 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 48 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 Feature James Ingraham http://www.osnews.com/story/25791/No_more_releases_for_Linux_2_4/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25791/No_more_releases_for_Linux_2_4/ "On the Linux kernel mailing list, Willy Tarreau has announced that there will be no more releases for version 2.4 of the Linux kernel. Tarreau, who is responsible for maintaining the Linux 2.4 kernel, said that 'few people' still use this version. According to him, these users are better served by a central Git repository that collects bug fixes and that he has now created such a repository for them." I remember when 2.4.0 was released... Proper USB support! Them were the days. Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:48:31 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 6 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25772/SCHED_DEADLINE_v4_released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25772/SCHED_DEADLINE_v4_released/ After more than one year of development, the 4th version of the SCHED_DEADLINE Linux scheduler has been submitted to the kernel community. Besides taking into account prior comments and observations, this version improves the handling of rq selection for dynamic task migration and has native integration with the PREEMPT_RT project (although a patch for the standard mainline kernel is provided as well). The official development has been moved to a GitHub repository. Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:12:21 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 0 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News cloud http://www.osnews.com/story/25769/Linux_kernel_developers_detail_top_gripes/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25769/Linux_kernel_developers_detail_top_gripes/ "Over a thousand developers contribute code to any given Linux kernel release. It's a process that works well from a technical perspective, but it's also one that has its fair share of shortcomings. In a panel at the Linux Foundation Collaboration summit this week, top Linux kernel developers detailed their common pet peeves about the Linux development model. It's a model that is not for the feint of heart ." Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:41:24 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 16 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News fran http://www.osnews.com/story/25758/Linux_on_an_8-bit_micro/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25758/Linux_on_an_8-bit_micro/ "It is common to see newbies asking in microcontroller forums if they can run Linux on their puny little 8-bit micro. The results are usually laughter. It is also common to see, in Linux forums, asked what the minimum specs for Linux are. The common answer is that it requires a 32-bit architecture and an MMU and at least a megabyte of ram to fit the kernel. This project aims to (and succeeds in) shatter(ing) these notions. The board you see on the right is based on an ATmega1284p. I've made one with an ATmega644a as well, with equal success. This board features no other processor and boots Linux 2.6.34. In fact, it can even bring up a full Ubuntu stack, including (if you have the time) X and gnome." Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:13:07 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 17 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News kragil http://www.osnews.com/story/25736/Scientific_Linux_the_great_distribution_with_the_wrong_name/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25736/Scientific_Linux_the_great_distribution_with_the_wrong_name/ "Scientific Linux is an unknown gem, one of the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones. The name works against it because it's not for scientists; rather it's maintained by science organizations. Let's kick the tires on the latest release and see what makes it special." Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:44:41 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 20 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25705/Linus_Torvalds_the_king_of_geeks_and_dad_of_3_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25705/Linus_Torvalds_the_king_of_geeks_and_dad_of_3_/ "If you meet Linus Torvalds, he comes off as a mild-mannered, down-to-earth Finnish-American. He lives with his wife Tove, three kids, a cat, a dog, a snake, a goldfish, a bunny and a pet rat in a comfortable 6000 square foot home just north of Portland's tony Lake Oswego neighborhood. The house is yellow - his favorite color - and so's the Mercedes. But he's not really like any of his neighbors. He drives his Mercedes fast, slamming the car into gear and flooring it. There's no coaxing, no hesitation. Either the hammer is down, or the car is at rest. And he has an abnormal number of stuffed penguins on his mantle." Yup, sounds like the to-the-point Fin we all know and love. Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:47:16 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 39 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25725/Linux_3_3_released/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25725/Linux_3_3_released/ Linux 3.3 has been released. The changes include the merge of kernel code from the Android project. There is also support for a new architecture (TI C6X), much improved balancing and the ability to restripe between different RAID profiles in Btrfs, and several network improvements: a virtual switch implementation (Open vSwitch) designed for virtualization scenarios, a faster and more scalable alternative to the "bonding" driver, a configurable limit to the transmission queue of the network devices to fight bufferbloat, a network priority control group and per-cgroup TCP buffer limits. There are also many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full changelog. Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:04:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 14 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News diegocg http://www.osnews.com/story/25620/Arch_Linux_turns_10/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25620/Arch_Linux_turns_10/ "If you follow Arch Planet, you may have already heard the news that we are celebrating a decade of existence, with the release of 0.1 Homer on March 11, 2002. If you haven't already, grab some birthday cake and head over to Arch Planet to read several developers chronologies and wonderful words of praise for Arch Linux. There is also a brief article from The H Open Source as well as discussion on Reddit. With good fortune and a little luck, hopefully we'll be around to celebrate another 10 years!" Happy decade, Arch! My water cooker just pinged, so I'll drink the next cup of tea in Arch' honour. Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:06:17 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux 10 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News http://www.osnews.com/story/25702/Linux_gets_bigger_shield_against_patent_attacks/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25702/Linux_gets_bigger_shield_against_patent_attacks/ The open source community should feel a little safer from software patent attacks, writes InfoWorld's Simon Phipps. "The Open Invention Network, a consortium of Linux contributors formed as a self-defense against software patents, has extended the definition of Linux so that a whopping 700 new software packages are covered, including many developer favorites. Just one hitch: The new definition also includes carve-outs that put all Linux developers on notice that Phillips and Sony reserve the right to sue over virtualization, search, user interfaces, and more." Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:29:25 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Linux 17 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News snydeq http://www.osnews.com/story/25682/Linux_operating_system_for_Raspberry_Pi_ready/ http://www.osnews.com/story/25682/Linux_operating_system_for_Raspberry_Pi_ready/ "The Linux operating system for the Raspberry Pi bare-bones computer is ready to download. The Arch Linux ARM download is based on Arch Linux, which the Raspberry Pi Foundation says 'provides a lightweight base structure that allows you to shape the system to your needs'." Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:35:19 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Linux 29 http://www.osnews.com/topics/9 News