Linux Archive

LynuxWorks is shipping BlueCat Linux 5.0, its first production release based on Linux kernel 2.6. LynuxWorks calls the release "the industry's first commercially available embedded Linux distribution based on Linux 2.6," although SnapGear earlier released a free embedded Linux distribution based on 2.6 which it claimed represented the "world's first production Linux system powered by the 2.6 kernel."

OSDL: it's not just for data centers and carrier-grade Linux anymore. Not as of this morning, that is, when OSDL issued a press release to announce the formation of a third initiative: the Linux desktop. Newsforge article, press release, Q & A. Trolltech has also joined OSDL and will participate in the Lab's new Desktop Linux Working Group.

Onebase is still a very new distribution - the first version appeared only in July 2003, and Onebase 2004 released in early January 2004 is a major rewrite and enhancement of the original concept. It started out as a source-based system, but with this release it embraced binary packages as well, becoming a hybrid. It is not based on any other major distro or package management system, instead it prides itself on doing things its own way. These are still the early days, but this is also what makes it an interesting distro, and the one to watch.

Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds' right-hand man and the maintainer of the 2.6 kernel, will not be attending the LinuxWorld conference in New York this week, but he did speak with eWeek's Senior Editor Peter Galli about the recent 2.6 kernel release and his vision for Linux.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds spoke to Australian IT during his visit to Adelaide this week for Linux.conf.au, his second after attending last year's conference in Perth. Linus now says that while Linux is well deep into the server space and market, the home desktop will take 5 to 10 years to be equally competitive with other solutions.

"One of my dirty little secrets is that I have never successfully installed Linux on anything. I've tried many times over the years, because I bought into the idea that it could revitalize old computers. I'd cobble together a 486 processor, some no-name disk controller, a clonky old hard disk, a VGA card from the Boer War, and off we'd go. My Linux experience terminated shortly thereafter with an incomprehensible error message concerning IRQ 9, lost interrupts or goblins in the bidirectional bus buffers." Read the commentary at ZDNews.

This is a second article in a series of reviews from newsforge comparing MEPIS and Lindows.

This year will see Linux finally crack the lucrative desktop market as more commercial software vendors tool up and cash in on the operating system and kernel developers improve graphical interface integration says cult hero and Linux founder Linus Torvalds. Computerworld's Rodney Gedda cornered the penguin power supremo at the Linux.Conf.au in Adelaide.

This is a commentary. From a Linux user who does tech support for Windows users and works in the real world of a corporate Windows network environment. 2004 has been touted by many as the year of the Linux desktop. Indeed with the backing of IBM, Sun and now Novell, the business world looks like getting a serious Linux desktop contender. But has Linux on the desktop really got what it takes?

Metrowerks Senior Software Engineer and veteran real-time programmer Bernhard Kuhn has created a Linux kernel patch that he claims enables hard, real-time performance in the Linux kernel by adding priorities to interrupts and spinlocks. Kuhn believes his approach to be more "natural" and akin to traditional real-time operating systems (RTOSs) than the dual-kernel approach taken by real-time projects such as RTAI and RTLinux, and he is hopeful that his patch might one day win enough interest and support to become part of the official Linux kernel tree.

Linus Torvalds released the final 2.6.1 Linux kernel. This release has a lot of changes since 2.6.0, many things have been merged from the -mm tree. This release includes a patch for the mremap() vulnerability.

Linus Torvalds has released Linux Kernel 2.6.1-rc3. This release includes mostly small bug fixes.

When Knoppix was first released it was heralded as revolutionary in the Linux world. Its autodetection and configuration capabilities were unsurpassed. Many of my colleagues remarked that if 'KNOPPIX can't do it, Linux can't do it'. Theoretically, one would be able to get a Knoppix CD, pop it into an arbitrary system, run it, save one's data to a partition, USB stick, etc....), reboot and the existing system would be left completely as it was before the CD was placed in the system.

"Contributors to Linux are nothing short of dedicated when it comes to offering their coding efforts, but as many are aware, much of that effort is wasted in the way of duplicated work, a great deal of which happen to only be the "sexy" parts of the code base. The problem is not so much in getting developer support, but in getting the masses organized and motivated to tackle the otherwise neglected aspects of the open source operating system." The following osViews editorial contributor has some interesting ideas to not only help Linux development but also the platform as a whole and even its promotion.