Linux Archive

If open source were a religion, Linus Torvalds, the Finnish engineer who wrote the core of the operating system that would become Linux, would be its prophet. In 1991, Mr Torvalds created the kernel, or core software, that would eventually be adopted by millions of computer users and lay the foundation for a vibrant open-source community. In an email interview with Red Herring, Mr Torvalds says the increasing focus of venture capitalists and large companies on open source can only be good for a community that, until now, was on the fringes of the commercial realm.

"It's a question that crops up with depressing regularity: Why don't Linux filesystems need to be defragmented?. Here's my attempt at answering once and for all. Rather than simply stumble through lots of dry technical explanations, I'm opting to consider that an ASCII picture is worth a thousand words." Read the explanatin here. Elsewhere, "Why is Linux Successful?"

Were you to walk around LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week, for almost every person you'd see sitting, you'd see a laptop in front of them. And, if you're a snoopy person, like me, you'd also see that about half of those laptops were running Linux. That doesn't sound like that much? Think again. Even a year ago, Linux-powered laptops were a rarity. Find out why Linux journalist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks the Linux desktop is poised for success.

Check inside for our photo review of this year's LinuxWorld. In short, Novell rocked the show, while Red Hat and Sun were missing completely! We think that there were fewer people visiting this year... However, we got to see the new PalmSource ALP OS, we chatted with Motorola about their Linux SDK's state of affairs and more!

"Versora's Progression Desktop migration tool gets better with every release. Now on version 2.0, the developers have expanded the capabilities of the software and qualified it with many more operating systems. It's never been easier to transfer your settings from Windows to GNU/Linux."

Much of Linux system administration involves tediously combing through plain-text configuration files. Fortunately, Linux has a rich array of UNIX-derived data extraction utilities, including head, tail, grep, egrep, fgrep, cut, paste, join, awk, and more. This article uses real-world examples that show how these simple command-line programs can make you a better sysadmin. Also look at each data extraction utility and its options, and learn how to apply them to typical day-to-day work files.

The Ark Linux team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Ark Linux 2006.1 and Ark Linux Live 2006.1. This release adds KDE 3.5.4, X.Org 7.1.1, amaroK 1.4.1, and the new tool "rpmhandler", which makes installing third party packages easier.

"The Linux initial RAM disk is a temporary root file system that is mounted during system boot to support the two-state boot process. The initrd contains various executables and drivers that permit the real root file system to be mounted, after which the initrd RAM disk is unmounted and its memory freed. In many embedded Linux systems, the initrd is the final root file system. This article explores the initial RAM disk for Linux 2.6, including its creation and use in the Linux kernel."

This chapter provided a summary of the present state of User Mode Linux (UML) and its user community. It contrasts UML with other visualization technologies, and discusses a bit of UML's history and purpose. Also, this chapter covers basic concepts of SCSI over Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) using raw/block device files and volume managers. In addition, it covers block size, multipath I/O drivers, and striping with a volume manager, and concludes with a discussion of filesystem performance and CPU loading. Examples are included for each topic throughout the chapter.

SymphonyOS, one of the more refreshing Linux distributions, is in trouble, since its lead developer is in financial troubles. "Core symphony development is currently stalled as I am without electricity in my apartment. I need to raise some money this week in order to have electric restored and cover some expenses. Project donations are greatly appreciated and any referral for paying projects are greatly appreciated as well. I have really big plans for symphony in the near future that will hopefully blow some larger distros out of the water. I cant wait to share them all with you."

"Here's your fast guide to SearchOpenSource.com's most-read how-tos on Windows-Linux relations. These tips can either help you migrate from Microsoft's operating systems and applications to Linux and open source software or make them peacefully coexist. Get the scoop on Knoppix, using Excel with open source databases, file sharing with Samba and more."

Now that the Linux Ottawa Symposium has finished, the organization has made public the recopilation of the papers presented (Volume 1, Volume 2). They touch many areas like performance on multicore/NUMA environments, filesystems, many VM topics, power management, virtualization, and more. 886 Pages of low-level kernel stuff. There goes your weekend.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has put the slides and a transcript to his keynote at OLS online. The title speaks volumes: "Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel". He starts off: "I'm going to discuss the a number of different lies that people always say about the kernel and try to debunk them; go over a few truths that aren't commonly known, and discuss some myths that I hear repeated a lot."

In the Linux land 99% of the applications are open source. It is part of the nature of the GNU/Linux community ecosystem to endorse open software. But there are a few applications that are not open and as they fill up a niche, they are pretty popular. Come in and vote for your favorite.