Linux Archive

Close on the heels of the release of Linux 2.6.11 is the discussion of what should be included in the next revision. Andrew Morton who maintains the MM tree considered as the soft development tree from which things are later pushed to Linus lists the status for various new features here.

"I get asked, by more junior Linux users, and people just looking to try it out, which distribution of Linux I use or recommend. It occurred to me that I never actually published an answer to this question, even though it is, by far, the question I am asked most often. I think my stock answer is maybe slightly unusual only because, unlike most of the rest of the Linux-using world, I hate every distro I've ever tried. That's right: every distribution of Linux sucks in its own special way. Some just suck less", says Brian Jones on Linux.com.

W. McDonald Buck, retired CTO of World Bank, finishes his four part essay on the subject of why Corporate Desktop Linux is an unrealistic goal in the short term for Linux advocates. "The hard truth is that the benefits that are most important to individual technical people are simply not important to those lacking technical skills. When you couple this with the relatively meager hard dollar cost savings, the prospect of some extra costs of migration, and the large risks of such a move, is it any wonder few corporate customers are making the transition?"

He may be the saint of the Linux community, but it sounds like Linus Torvalds - with his secret security fixes - could still be a challenge to work with.

Thinking of changing an old laptop's OS from Windows to Linux? Don't do it until you read this. The benefits, the pains, the arguments, and the results. It's possible, but will everybody like it? Read on to find out. My take: For such an old laptop the article describes, either DamnSmallLinux or Windows98SE/ME or FreeBSD with IceWM or BeOS 5.03 are the best bets. Anything with modern UIs would crawl. I am using Gnome/XFce with ArchLinux on my Sony Vaio 333 Mhz PII-mobile with 128 MBs of RAM (almost twice as fast as the laptop in question) and it's already not as spiffy as Win98SE is on the same laptop. I also have to live with compromises (not loading most services etc).

Kerrighed is a Single System Image operating system for clusters. Kerrighed offers the view of a unique SMP machine on top of a cluster of standard PCs. The goals of Kerrighed are high performance of applications, high availability of the cluster, efficient resources management, high customizability of the operating system and ease of use. Kerrighed is implemented as an extension to Linux 2.4.24 (a set of Linux modules and a small patch to the kernel). Port to kernel 2.6.x is planned for later this year.

Part III of Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth is published. In it retired World Bank CTO W. McDonald Buck looks at what the CTO needs to consider in making a realistic desktop switch to Linux (-after- having switched to OS software on Windows & Linux in the server room) in a big company and how to avoid ending up toasted.

Handling exceptions in C++ has a few implicit restrictions at the language level, but you can get around them in some instances. Learn ways to make exceptions work for you so you can produce more reliable applications.

The Vector Linux crew is pleased to announce the release of VectorLinux Soho v5.0 - a feature-rich full-sized Linux Distribution.

Arch is a very capable distro. If you want a fast, lightweight distro that puts you in the driver's seat, Arch is your best bet, says the review at NewsForge.

PCLinuxOS is without a doubt one of the cleaner and easier to use Linux Distributions available today. Based on Mandrake, with development led by Texstar, it continues to be a Live CD distribution that often finds it's way as a permanent solution for many desktop workstations. The latest release is looked at by a GUILinux Team Member. Read the full review Here.

Embedded software powerhouse Wind River's metamorphosis into an embedded Linux vendor appears to be complete. The company will announce today that first embedded Linux distribution, and that it has already delivered 1,000 "developer seats" for the Carrier Grade Linux 2.0 compliant software.

The latest in a series of desktop Linux related articles from NerdSyndrome, The Power of Community on the Linux Desktop examines how community driven open source Linux distribtutions such as Ubuntu and Fedora Core are promising to change the way we use desktop computers for the better.

Recently I stumbled across a very nice article, written by Torsten Scheck, published on pro-linux.de, a German Linux site. This article proved to be so helpful to me that I decided it would be worthwhile to translate it into English and republish it. Comments of the translator will be added in italics. I hope a lot of people will find this little gem as useful as I did...