Linux Archive

All of us who use computers create a problem we rarely consider. How do we dispose of them? This is no small concern. Estimates put the number of personal computers in use world-wide today at about one billion. The average lifespan of a personal computer is only two to five years. We can expect a tidal wave of computers ready for disposal shortly, and this number will only increase. And as if that isn't challenge enough, there are already several hundred million computers out-of-service, sitting in attics and basements and garages, awaiting disposal.

This is a problem I've been dealing with for a while now. I have a Lexmark printer which I've bought without checking for compatibility with Linux (I bought it when I was still using Windows), and as it turns out, this printer is not supported in Linux. I switched to Linux on my main desktop full-time late last year, so instead of to my desktop, I hooked this printer up to my bedroom Windows 7 media server/HTPC, and whenever I need to print, I just drop the file in question on this machine, and print form there. I need a better solution. Update: As it turns out, Lexmark has recently started releasing Linux drivers (good stuff). Still, the problem at hand stands, as there might still be other printers that suffer from the same problem.

"Tuxera today announced the release of Tuxera exFAT for Android and other Linux systems. Developed using technical documentation provided by Microsoft Corp., Tuxera exFAT provides outstanding performance and stability, and meets the latest SDXC memory card standards."

Last week's release of MeeGo v1 is an effort by US chip maker Intel and European cellular giant Nokia to enter the mobile OS arena. Will it be able to compete? While Apple and Google vie for market dominance, MeeGo offers itself as a 3rd choice with strong Linux roots.

Linux 2.6.34 has been released. This version includes the distributed filesystem Ceph and LogFS, a filesystem for flash devices. Other features are a driver for almost-native KVM network performance, the VMware ballon driver, the "kprobes jump" optimization for dynamic probes, new perf features (the "perf lock" tool, cross-platform analysis support), support for GPU switching, several Btrfs improvements, RCU lockdep, asynchronous suspend/resume, several new drivers and many other small improvements. You can peruse the full changelog as well.

A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data.

This article examines the implications of 4KB-sector disks, including benchmark tests illustrating the likely real-world effects on some common Linux file systems. As disks with 4096-byte sectors become more common throughout 2010 and beyond, strategies for coping with these new disks will become increasingly important.

Last Monday we reported that Synaptics would be releasing its Gesture Suite for use by Linux OEMs, so they can add multitouch and gesture features to touchpads on Linux laptops. Since many people install Linux by themselves, I wondered if they would make the Suite available for individual users as well - I posed them the question, and the reply is that they're looking into it.

The PCLinuxOS distribution is the popular brain child of a man best known as Texstar. PCLinuxOS's website, which carries a pleasant blue theme with ads bordering the pages, claims the distro is "radically simple" and easy to use. If we stopped there, it would probably give the impression PCLinuxOS is aimed at newcomers to the Linux community, but that does not appear to be the case.

We all know Synaptics, the company that seems to produce just about every touchpad you can get your hands fingers on. Their touchpads also do a lot of multitouch and gesture stuff, but up until now, their set of gestures, the Synaptics Gesture Suite, was only available on Windows. Luckily, they've ported it over to Linux, and made it available for OEMs building Linux laptops.

Learn how to use inotify functions for a simple monitoring app. Download the sample code and Use inotify when you need efficient, fine-grained, asynchronous monitoring of Linux file system events. Use it for user-space monitoring for security, performance, or other purposes.

"To be clear about this article's intent, it's not to bash Microsoft, or Windows. Because to be fair, despite using Linux 95% of the time while I'm on the PC, I can find more faults with it than Windows. So, this article's goal is to highlight some of the major pluses of Linux, and also showcase where Windows could improve in the future, should Microsoft take heed of the suggestions."

All Linux users have their own vision of the ideal distribution. Some people crave stability, others want new and exciting features, some people are very security focused and others are concerned about licensing. Warren Woodford has his own vision and he's made it accessible to the world via MEPIS. This week he was willing to take a few minutes to talk about his creation.

One of the things I love about software, particularly open source software, is innovation can come from anywhere. Sometimes it appears out of large tech companies such as Red Hat, IBM or Sun and other times it can come from one person writing code on a second hand computer in their college dorm. Software is really the expression of ideas and concepts, which can come from anyone. So I really enjoy seeing small open source projects try new things. Some will succeed and be adopted and some will fade away, but the amazing thing is to see people put their idea out there and present it to the world. Which is why I was thrilled when a few people directed me to Paldo and suggested it was worth a look.