Linux Archive

One Spanish region has made the switch completely, even encouraging a local company's development of a Linux distribution. Other European governments are considering following a similar policy.

Interesting topics this month as well in the Linux Gazette newsletter: "Making Your Own Toy Boot Floppy", "Meeting C# and Mono", "Debian APT Part 1: Basic Commands" and "Using the Logical Volume Manager".

From DistroWatch: "A "promo" edition of Turbolinux 8 Server can now be had for free, after registration. The registration page is in Japanese only, but it's a simple matter to fill in your name (middle row) and email address (bottom row) and agreeing to the license by clicking on the long button on the bottom left. The next page will give you a login name and password to access the ISO image. Read the Release Notes and visit the product features page for detailed information."

Linux was originally written as a general-purpose operating system without any consideration for real-time applications. Recently Linux has become attractive to the real-time community due to its low cost and open standards. In order to make it more practical for the real-time community, patches have been written to affect such things as interrupt latency and context switch. These patches are public domain and are becoming part of the main Linux tree. LinuxJournal tests the preemptible patch.

ZDNet is reporting on a recent Butler Group report that estimates that by 2009 Linux will have greater market share than proprietary OSes from Sun, HP, and IBM.

This article over at PCLinuxOnline.com tries to suggest how the ideals of free software can be better conveyed to the normal computer-using public. It takes an alternate view to the 'GNU/Linux vs Linux' naming debate, ignoring entirely the issue of whether 'Linux' is an OS or just a kernel, and instead focusing on the notion of freedom.

Linux will be the main operating system for IBM's upcoming family of "Blue Gene" supercomputers--a major endorsement for the operating system and the open-source computing model it represents.

Major technology companies and DesktopLinux.com today announced their sponsorship of the inaugural Desktop Linux Summit to be held in San Diego on Feb 20-21, 2003. The Summit will be the first event entirely devoted to desktop Linux and will be hosted by the top executives of leading technology companies worldwide including Codeweavers, Hewlett Packard, Lindows.com, Lycoris, MandrakeSoft, Sun Microsystems, SuSE, and Ximian.

"We are proud to release the 3.0 incarnation of Vector Linux. This is a big rewrite as we made the decision to go completely Slackware compatible and also LSB compliant. This gives us the ability to update as Slack does and keep up with security fixes and other vunerabilities on a more timely basis." Read more for the rest of the announcement.

Contrary to popular belief, the cops will not arrest you if you don’t use Windows. There are some interesting alternative operating systems out there —and with perseverance, you won’t go crazy trying to use them. Chief among them is Linux, the largely free, enormously geek-popular system that hard-line anti-Windows users rave about, which has Tux the penguin as its mascot. Read the rest here.

Running open source software on a Mac is a different animal — almost like an x86, but not quite. Configuring new hardware has always been a problem in Linux; it is now compounded for the Mac user. Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) has built this port of Linux with the hardware of current Macs in mind, such as the iMac and the G4. YDL 2.3 is a treat to install and use on these machines. Read the rest of the review at UnixReview.

Con Kolivas, a practicing doctor in Australia, has written a benchmarking tool called ConTest which has proven to be tremendously useful to kernel developers, having been designed to compare the performance of different versions of the Linux kernel.

UnitedLinux, the joint software development effort by four Linux distributors, is working on a version of its software for desktop computers, according to executive Gregory Blepp.

eWeek hosts four articles regarding Linux on the desktop. "Linux Renews Desktop Bid", "Linux Is Ready to Roll, With or Without Office", "OEMS are MIA When It Comes to Desktop Linux", "Red Hat Linux 8.0 Tops Desktop Class".