Linux Archive

What’s New in Linux 2.6.39

Guest post by Elv13 2011-05-20 Linux 66 Comments

Version 2.6.39 once again took Linus Torvalds and his fellow developers less than 70 days to complete. This is further indication of a slight, though ever more apparent, increase in the kernel's development speed, as about 80 to 90 days still passed between the release of two versions one or two years ago. With 2.6.39, this also meant that there was a slight decrease in the number of advancements which are worth mentioning in the Kernel Log; however, there are still plenty of changes that will make Linux faster and better.

MeeGo 1.2 Release

Guest post by fran 2011-05-20 Linux 17 Comments

"Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo 1.2. This release provides a solid baseline for device vendors and developers to start creating software for various device categories on Intel Atom and ARMv7 architectures. The MeeGo 1.2 Core OS provides a complete set of enabling technologies for mobile computing." Highlights include significantly enhanced connectivity, a switch to QML, and the release of a development preview dedicated to tablet devices.

VDPAU on Radeon Starts Working

Guest post by lemur2 2011-05-18 Linux 18 Comments

Efforts to implement NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) on the open source Radeon Gallium3D drivers (for AMD/ATI chipsets) are reportedly just beginning to work. Being Gallium3D-based means this new VDPAU state tracker is using GPU shaders and not the dedicated Unified Video Decoding (UVD) engine found on modern Radeon HD graphics processors, but using shaders is still a big performance win for HD video playback compared to pegging the CPU constantly. Also, MPEG-2 is the only codec known to work at this time. Once the basic state tracker functionality works, support for other video codecs, such as VP8 and H264, should be relatively easy to add.

Puppy Linux: Top Dog of the Lightweight Distros

Guest post by Howard Fosdick 2011-05-16 Linux 29 Comments

How can you run a full range of current applications on older computers, netbooks, thin clients, and mobile devices? One way is to install a lightweight Linux like Puppy, Lubuntu, or Vector Light. Select the distro with the apps that meets your needs while matching your computer's resources.

Top 20 Countries by Linux Market Share

Submitted by Peter Alguacil 2011-05-16 Linux 15 Comments

Linux currently powers a majority of the world’s web servers and supercomputers. As a desktop OS, however, Linux has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. That said, there are some countries where people have embraced Linux on the desktop to a greater degree than most.

Canonical, Ubuntu Linux, CTO leaves

Submitted by sjvn 2011-05-08 Linux 69 Comments

Only a few weeks after Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's biggest change ever - the release of the Unity-based Ubuntu 11.04 Linux - the company's CTO, Matt Zimmerman is leaving the company.

Jeff Johnson About to Fork rpm – Again

Guest post by Sebastien Onglis 2011-05-02 Linux 54 Comments

Like Britney Spears, Jeff Johnson did it again and decided to fork rpm once more. Following a week long outage of the main website, he announced on the Mandriva development mailing list the launch of rpm6.org, without giving much explanation. Without more information, some people speculate this was caused by an intrusive merge by a Mandriva coder without discussing beforehand, while some others speak of the heavy criticism due to the migration, which still causing issues after several months.

Review: Qubes OS Beta 1

Guest post by fvillanustre 2011-05-01 Linux 17 Comments

"Qubes OS comes from an elegant concept: if you can isolate functional components within disposable containers, and you can separate those components that can be tainted through their interaction with the outside world from the core subsystems, you stand a good chance to preserve the integrity and security of the base Operating System at the possible expense of needing to jump through some hoops to move data around the system. All in all it sounds like a good proposition if it can be demonstrated to be practical." Read the full review.

Slackware 13.37, Ubuntu 11.04 Released

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-28 Linux 66 Comments

Yeah, it's the day of double-dippin' today. And, the contradiction couldn't be bigger. In one corner we have one of the oldest and most respected distributions, and in the other corner we have the sometimes controversial but immensely popular relative newcomer. Slackware 13.37 and Ubuntu 11.04 have been released.

Systemd Update: Improved chroot, Boot Time Analysis

Guest post by diegocg 2011-04-17 Linux 4 Comments

systemd, the new init system created by Lennart Poettering, has added a couple of interesting features. First, he has added support for chroot-style isolation capabilities, but instead of chroot he used the powerful per-process filesystem and PID namespaces supported by the Linux kernel. Second, he has added a new tool, systemd-analyze, which shows how much time took each service to start, so you can optimize your bootup time easily. It can even create simple bootchart-style graphs.

Virtual Security: Release of the First Beta Qubes OS

Submitted by Dirge 2011-04-15 Linux 14 Comments

"The team led by security expert Joanna Rutkowska has released the first beta version of the Qubes OS Linux distribution. The operating system can also be installed on a USB stick thanks to its new installer. Qubes aims to provide security through virtualisation. It uses a Xen hypervisor to run applications in separate virtual machines based on Fedora 14. As a result, online banking data are not at risk when a game running in its own VM turns out to be a trojan."

ASUS Releases Honeycomb Linux Kernel Source Code

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-08 Linux 12 Comments

Well, this is fascinating. ASUS hasn't even released its Eee Pad Transformer yet, but it's already put up for download the source code to the Linux kernel used in the Android Honeycomb operating system the machine runs. In other words, Google isn't withholding anything it is not allowed to withhold. As said by many - storm, teacup, meet. Go here, select download, select Android.

Linux 2.6.38 Released

Guest post by diegocg 2011-03-15 Linux 9 Comments

Linux 2.6.38 has been released. This release includes support for a automatic process grouping ("the patch that does wonders" ), significant scalability improvements in the VFS, Btrfs LZO compression and read-only snapshots, support for the B.A.T.M.A.N. mesh protocol (which helps to provide network connectivity in the presence of natural disasters, military conflicts or Internet censorship), transparent Huge Page support (without using hugetblfs), support for the AMD Fusion APUs, many drivers and other changes. You can read the full changelog as well.

Gentoo Linux 11 Released

Guest post by fran 2011-03-09 Linux 53 Comments

"Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below..."

Linux Is Vulnerable to Malicious USB Devices

Guest post by Petur 2011-03-08 Linux 32 Comments

"A bug in the Caiaq USB driver, which could be used to execute arbitrary at the kernel level has been reported by Rafael Dominguez Vega of MRW InfoSecurity. The device drivers are vulnerable to buffer overflow condition when an USB device with an unusually long name (over 80 characters) is connected to the machine."

An Open-Source Intel GMA 500 Driver Appears

Guest post by SmithJohnson 2011-02-28 Linux 5 Comments

If you're an owner of a netbook or other hardware containing an Intel Poulsbo / GMA 500, the Linux 2.6.39 kernel should be rather exciting. Entering the Linux kernel's staging tree is an initial open-source driver for this notorious Intel graphics processor derived from Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX graphics core.

Splashtop OS Released to General Public

Guest post by fran 2011-02-24 Linux 9 Comments

Splashtop OS, previously only available via OEM machines, today released its operating system to the general public. "Splashtop Inc, the worldwide leader in instant-access computing, today announced the immediate availability of Splashtop OS , a lightweight, web-centric operating system optimized for notebooks and netbooks. First introduced as a beta last November, Splashtop OS is a browser-based 'companion OS' that co-exists with the Windows operating system."

CrunchBang Linux Review

Neolander 2011-02-18 Linux 14 Comments

"A lot of modern Linux distributions created with desktop users in mind go out of their way to be user friendly. Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Fedora - and many more. It is a sign of how desktop Linux has matured that even non-techy types can get a fully featured and easy-to-use open source operating system up and running in not much time at all. The creators of CrunchBang Linux, however, haven't quite gone in the same direction."

PCLinuxOS 2011 KDE: A Review and Retrospective

Submitted by Kroc 2011-02-18 Linux 7 Comments

"PCLinuxOS is a great distro for individuals who favor rolling updates, performance, and a dedicated community. If you're a first-time Linux user or if you favor aesthetics over technological prowess, better choices are available."

Both RIM and an Open Source Group Aim to Have Android Without Dalvik

Guest post by Amy Bennett 2011-02-17 Linux 2 Comments

A new open source project hopes to take Android and change it so it has a clean-room OpenJDK-based Java VM and will be based on what they refer to as a more standard Linux kernel. Meanwhile, rumor has it that RIM is considering using somebody's Java VM to run Android apps, but it won't be Dalvik.