Keep OSNews alive by becoming a Patreon, by donating through Ko-Fi, or by buying merch!

Linux Archive

Linux kernel developers detail top gripes

Linux 16 Comments
"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 ."
Read More

Linux on an 8-bit micro

  Submitted by kragil Linux 17 Comments
"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."
Read More

Linus Torvalds: the king of geeks (and dad of 3)

Linux 41 Comments
"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.
Read More

Linux 3.3 released

  Submitted by diegocg Linux 13 Comments
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.
Read More

Arch Linux turns 10

Linux 10 Comments
"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.
Read More

Linux gets bigger shield against patent attacks

Linux 17 Comments
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."
Read More

Torvalds: requiring root password for mundane things is “moronic”

Linux 100 Comments
Linus Torvalds on requiring the root password for mundane tasks. "So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace 'my kids' with 'sales people on the road' if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place." Yes, it's harsh (deal with it, Finns don't beat around the bush), but he's completely and utterly right. While there's cases where it makes sense to disable certain settings (public terminals, for instance), it is utterly idiotic that regular home users have to type in their root password for such mundane tasks.
Read More

Linux 3.2 Released

  Submitted by diegocg Linux 4 Comments
Linux 3.2 has been released . 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.
Read More

Talking Point: Should Distros Stick to CDR Size?

  Submitted by rhyder Linux 66 Comments
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
Read More

Linux Mint 12 Released

  Submitted by Nooone Linux 112 Comments
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.
Read More

Racy Puppy Linux Released

Linux 14 Comments
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.
Read More

Tiny Core Linux 4.1 Released

Linux 13 Comments
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.
Read More

A Proper Solution to the Linux ASPM Problem

Linux 10 Comments
"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."
Read More