Linux Archive

"I recently got my test copy of Elx (Everyone's Linux), which made it almost certain to me that Linux is going to be on everybody's desktop much sooner than I ever expected. The complete system is so well crafted for users of Windows that it took my friend, who is a hardcore Windowsian, quite a while to figure out that its not just "another" version of his favorite Windows." Is it some XP or something" came the reply before he could find out that it was Elx." Read the rest of the editorial at DesktopLinux.com. However, NewsForge reviews a 29-pages .pdf file (228 KB) published at DeveloperWorks, written by an IBM Technical Writter. Mr Chapman says that "desktop Linux is good but not for everyone".

Last week RedHat entered into the PowerPC market, leaving Yellow Dog Linux, the distribution that is a port of RedHat to the PowerPC, in a precarious position. When SuSE and Mandrake also entered the PPC market, LinuxPPC was the first of the PPC-only Linux companies that put a break into their further development. As PPC-only Linux company, where is YDL will be standing in the near future? Read the editorial at TuxPPC.

"I predict that Linux will eventually be at the foundation of nearly every enterprise system and that the whole issue of which server operating system to choose will then disappear into ambient background noise. It's not often that I make predictions about predictions, but because the above prophecy is so bold, I'll make an exception: I predict that this will turn out to be one of the easiest predictions I've ever made." Nicholas Petreley predicts the future of Linux for ComputerWorld.

"It's been a tough year for Linux companies. Those that didn't go bust announced large layoffs as investors realized that businesses built around a free operating system weren't poised for aggressive growth. The Linux Hatchery at this month's Comdex convention was home to just two companies, down from about 150 last year." Read the rest of the story at NewsAlert.

A new snapshot of the (AMD's 64-bit Hammer CPU) x86-64 Linux kernel tree has been released. It is based now on the 2.4.14 kernel. Changes to previous snapshot: Merged to 2.4.14 and some bug fixes. For information on how to compile and use it see at their main web site, full source tarball and patch against Linux 2.4.14 are available.

The journaling file system ext3 made it to the test version of 2.4.15 Linux kernel and it seems that it will be as standard of the final version of the kernel. ext3 has pretty much the same design and capabilities of ext2, but it adds journaling. Our Take: Can't wait for the day that SGI's next generation, truly advanced file system, XFS, will make it to the main source tree. Update: In a related note, the NTFS driver for Linux was updated today with support for WindowsXP's NTFS 5 among other new features.

"Linux penguins are braying louder, but companies don't plan to adopt many of them in the near future. Almost every large company has at least thought about Linux, and some of them are running pilot projects or even day-to-day (albeit nonessential) systems on the open-source operating system. And because the economy is still weak, many tech observers believe that Linux--and its price tag of "free"--will attract more businesses looking to cut costs. At least that's the theory. Practice indicates something else." Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNews.

The title says it all, get it while it's hot! This release is mostly a stability version for the new Linux VM system and 2.4.15 will also be the same. After that release, Linus Torvalds is expected to open the 2.5 development source tree.

This week KernelTrap interviews John Levon, the author of OProfile and a contributer to KernelNewbies. He offers much insight into both of these projects, as well as reflecting on Linux in general. OProfile is a statistical x86 profiling system for the 2.4 Linux kernel, useful in understanding what percentage of the CPU is being utilized by different processes, including those in kernel space and those in user space. KernelNewbies is an excellent resource for people looking to understand the Linux kernel, comprised of a web page, an IRC channel, and a mailing list.

"Over the past year, the information technology elite have started to dismiss Linux as a flash in the pan that tried and failed to dominate in a world owned by Windows. Woebegone Linux and open-source companies are scattered across the landscape like so much shrapnel. The stock prices of IPO high fliers VA Linux and Red Hat currently trade near half of their pre-IPO offering prices. Meanwhile, Windows XP gets the press and the plaudits. But what's happening behind the scenes?" Does Linux found its place in... Hollywood, being the No 1 choice for a rendering farm? Read the rest of the feature article at Salon.com.

Kerneltrap interview's Keith Owens this week, an experienced kernel hacker who has long contributed to the Linux kernel. His contributions include updating ksymoops and modutils, both of which he maintains. He also works on kbuild 2.5. Earlier, he built the original Integrated Kernel Debugging patch. He's also working on kdb and XFS.

The Gartner Group, the well known consulting and analyst firm, is analyzing Linux progress and future. Interesting read, as it offers explanations behind IBM's $1 billion investement on Linux among other information. Our Take: We don't know what the future holds, but there is a new Linux kernel just released (2.4.13) while SuSE is to start shipping its new, SuSE Linux 7.3 distribution in the United States and North America today.

Kerneltrap has posted the latest in-depth kernel hacker interview with Russell King, who originally ported Linux to ARM and continues to oversee ARM Linux development: "I started hacking on Linux for my Acorn A5000 machine back in Spring 1994 while still at Southampton University, after a fellow student, Martin Ebourne, introduced it to me. An A5000 is a desktop-like ARM based machine. It was already about 3 years old and underpowered at that time, with only 4MB of RAM but it was the machine I had." Russell talks about ARM, the 2.4 kernel, the upcoming 2.5 kernel and much more.

Terra Soft Solutions, the developer of Linux solutions for PowerPC microprocessors, announced the immediate availability of Yellow Dog Linux version 2.1. YDL 2.1 offers the following updates and improvements: YDL installer now supports individual package selection, KDE 2.2.1, XFree86 4.1.0, 2.4.10 (default) and 2.2.19, Mac-on-Linux 0.9.60 which automatically grabs the ROM image from your Mac OS partition--reducing setup to a minimum. - Webmin web-based system administration tool, Mozilla 0.9.4, Ext3 journaling file system, Sound support on iBook 1 and iBook 2 (2001), Sleep support on full range of Apple portables (include all iBooks), Improved support for Apple Network Servers and support for NVidia GeForce 2 & ATI Radeon video cards.