Linux Archive

The creator of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds, has weighed in on the issue of backporting features from newer Linux kernels into older ones, calling the practice a good thing for the most part. When asked by e-mail to comment for internetnews.com, Torvalds wrote: "I think it makes sense from a company standpoint to basically 'cherry-pick' stuff from the development version that they feel is important to their customers. And in that sense I think the back-porting is actually a very good thing."

"New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 -- yes, 95! -- easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards. That sends the cost of commercial, paid versions of Linux dramatically higher", says Fred Langa for InformationWeek.

Conectiva Linux, developed by Brazilian vendor Conectiva S.A., is the most popular distribution in South America, so it’s quite surprising that there aren’t more reviews of their products online. This is really quite surprising – while you may not have heard much about Conectiva Linux itself, you almost certainly know quite a lot about three of their most important contributions to the open source community – the Conectiva Crystal icon set, apt-rpm, and Synaptic.

Linux kernel 2.4.26 was released today. You download it from kernel.org or from one of the mirrors.

A month ago, a trial version of a little-known Linux application called "CoLinux" was released that is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. It's the work of a 21 year-old Israeli computer science student and some Japanese open source programmers; in Israel, analysts are already saying it could help transform the software world.

"You ever tried Linux?" my wife's Uncle Toby asked me as I sat in his home office that cold winter day. We had been discussing the rise and fall of the BeOS and he mentioned that he had tried a few different *nixes on his home server/firewall. "Here let me show you," he said as he flicked the switch on the monitor next to his Windows XP box.

The Ark Linux team has announced the immediate availability of Ark Linux 1.0 alpha 11, a new version of its easy to use, easy to learn desktop operating system.

Proprietary OS vendor Green Hills and its CEO Dan O'Dowd have launched a broadside against the use of Linux in military and defense applications.

The new Linux 2.6 kernel offers many improvements over the 2.4 version. One area of technical advancement is in the kernel networking options. Although there are enhancements in most of the files associated with the networking options, this article focuses on major feature improvements and additions that affect entire sections rather than on specific files.

What is a distribution and how does it differ from the distribution next door? Do they provide a different-enough experience to the user who is in search of a capable desktop?

Ximian's Robert Love explains by example how Project Utopia will benefit the Linux desktop.

Speakers and attendees at the open source events of Portland's InnoTech Conference last week concurred that Linux was at home in the enterprise, handling heavier database demands and other workloads and proving itself on a number of platforms.

Linux kernel 2.6 introduces improved IO scheduling that can increase speed -- "sometimes by 1,000 percent or more, often by 2x" -- for standard desktop workloads, and by as much as 15 percent on many database workloads, according to Andrew Morton of Open Source Development Labs. This increased speed is accomplished by minimizing the disk head movement during concurrent reads, says Yahoo!News.

Dan Gillmor says: "It looks like I'm going to have to reconsider something I'd been taking for granted -- that Linux on the desktop, and especially the laptop, was a non-starter in the operating systems race. While I wasn't paying sufficient attention, the proverbial tortoise has been playing some serious catch-up." Read the rest at SiliconValley.com.