Linux Archive

In the past year I've reviewed four lightweight Linuxes for OS News: VectorLinux, Puppy Linux, Lubuntu, and Damn Small Linux. This article compares the four distributions. I invite your comments in response: what are your own experiences with these and competing lightweight distros?

The BBC interviews Torvalds. I like this bit: "For me, Linux on the desktop is where I started, and Linux on the desktop is literally what I still use today primarily - although I obviously do have other Linux devices, including an Android phone - so I'd personally really love for it to take over in that market too. But I guess that in the meantime I can't really complain about the successes in other markets." Linux on the desktop is quite passe. Phones and servers is where it's at.

Linux kernel 3.4 has been released. New features include several Btrfs updates: support of metadata blocks bigger than 4KB, much improved metadata performance, better error handling and better recovery tools; there is also a new X32 ABI which allows to run programs in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers; several updates to the GPU drivers: early modesetting of Nvidia Geforce 600 'Kepler', support of AMD RadeonHD 7xxx and AMD Trinity APU series, and support of Intel Medfield graphics; support of x86 cpu driver autoprobing, two new device-mapper targets, several perf improvements such as GTK2 report GUI and a new 'Yama' security module. Here's the full list of changes.

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 2s. It also includes a list of suggested things to hack on to get even quicker boot-ups."

"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?

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.

"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.

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.

"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."

"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."

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.

"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.

"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'."

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.