Stable Kernel Patch 2.6.12.2 Released
Chris Wright has released 2.6.12.2, with minor fixes for socket hashing, ACPI, some memory fixes, a spinlock bug fixed in the e1000 driver, a fix for the qla2xxx driver and a typo fix.
- posted by hussein @ 12:13 0 comments

 
Kernel 2.6.13-rc1 Patch Released
Linus announced the first -rc patch to 2.6.13 yesterday, with fixes and patches all over the map. Linus noted that the 2.6.12 release was not badly delayed by the Bitkeeper-to-git transition, and hopes the 2.6.13 cycle won't take as long. Read the Changelog for more details.
- posted by hussein @ 20:29 0 comments

 
More On Cell SPUs and SPUfs At Developerworks
Arnd Bergmann has written an article on the new Cell processor and the abstractions that Linux uses to access the SPUs. The design is very Unixlike, with access to the SPUs done via a virtual filesystem. An interesting followup to the details released during the unveiling at Linuxtag, the article also has some nice links to more information about the new processor and the PPC architecture.
- posted by hussein @ 17:18 0 comments

 
Linux-based Cell Workstation Unveiled At Linuxtag 2005
One of the awaited presentations at Linuxtag 2005 was the unveiling of the PPC64 Cell processor workstation, running Linux. The Linuxtag blog (in German) reports that the workstation was running a slightly modified Fedora Core 3 distro. One of the most interesting features of the Cell is a tiny virtual filesystem on each SPU ("synergistic" processing units), stored on the 256K of local memory. The functionality of the SPU can be accessed via this filesystem, such as loading a program context into memory by writing a virtual file. Check out the Linuxtag links for pictures and more stories from the event.
- posted by hussein @ 18:55 0 comments

 
Linux Tops The Top 500
The latest incarnation of the TOP500 List was released during the 20th International Supercomputer Conference (ISC2005) which took place from June 21st to 24th in Heidelberg, Germany. Linux runs on the top 3, and powers 8 out of the top 10 (the other 2 are System V derived proprietary Unix operating systems). The top computer is the PPC64-based BlueGene/L in Livermore, United States.

You can get more information (including abstracts) on the presentations at ICS2005 from the conference webpage.
- posted by hussein @ 15:44 0 comments

 
nVidia Drivers 1.0-7667 Released
A new set of (evil, proprietary etc.) nVidia graphics drivers are available for Linux on IA32 and AMD64/EMT64T. Additionally, you can get them for FreeBSD and Solaris x86 too. This looks mainly like a bugfix release for some of the problems faced on version 1.0-7664 of the drivers early this month.
- posted by hussein @ 14:15 1 comments

 
Stable Kernel Patch 2.6.12.1 Released
Chris Wright announced the first security update to kernel 2.6.12.1 to LKML. You can find the patch attached to his reply email, or alternatively you can download it from kernel.org.
- posted by hussein @ 12:56 0 comments

 
Linus Torvalds On Software Commoditization
The technology blog Good Morning Silicon Valley brings us an interview with Linus Torvalds on the future of open source, proprietary software and Microsoft. Hopefully, the eventual commoditization of software will break Microsoft's monopoly on software infrastructure, and thus level the playing field and bring forth more interesting things in the software landscape. The topic is also touched on in an essay by Ian Murdock, which will appear in the book Open Sources 2.0.
- posted by hussein @ 04:43 0 comments

 
Andrew Morton Talks Potential Merges For 2.6.13
Andrew Morton ponders the patches that will eventually make their way into 2.6.13 on LKML. The patches in question are the Oracle Cluster Filesystem, some memory management patches, some hope for Xen getting in, the long-awaited Reiserfs 4 may get in, inotify, FUSE for userspace filesystems (which is handy for experimental stuff like grid filesystems), kexec and kdump (handy for crash dumps and debugging) and more. The discussion is still ongoing.
- posted by hussein @ 19:12 0 comments

 
Linux Hardware Incompatibility List
David N. Welton has set up a list of hardware which is incompatible with Linux at www.leenooks.com. Depending on your inclination, this is either the stuff you should avoid buying (send a message to hardware manufacturers with your wallet) if you're shopping for hardware, or it's a list of stuff that you can write Linux drivers for (take up the challenge).
- posted by hussein @ 04:36 0 comments

 
Kernel 2.6.12 Release Announcement
Linus has just mailed the announcement of the release to LKML. The changelog on the kernel.org site isn't the full changelog, but the one from -rc2 onwards. Linus also added the explicit reminder that all patch signing-off information will be made public, and included it Documentation/SubmittingPatches.
- posted by hussein @ 05:43 0 comments

 
Linux Kernel 2.6.12 Released
We should expect an announcement from Linus soon, as kernel 2.6.12 has been released on kernel.org (and should also hit the various mirrors soon). The changelog can be found here. This is the first official release of the kernel after the source code management tool migration from Bitkeeper to Git. More information about the release can be found at LWN.net.
- posted by hussein @ 04:33 0 comments

 
Hello, World
Greetings, readers.

When Linux first started off as a personal pet project of Linus Torvalds, even he did not anticipate it growing into the kernel for the GNU project, and subsequently into a large-scale, enterprise-grade operating system which is not only entirely free (as in freedom), but also a significant player in the technological mainstream. Both Linux and free software shook the IT business world, and some people in that realm are still coming to terms with what Linux will eventually do for IT.

For the geek and free software hacker, the growth of Linux represents a very cool opportunity to build an entirely new and exciting software infrastructure together with the commercial software industry, but not beholden to it. This liberates us and gives us an opportunity to take computers and technology where our imagination takes us.

Therefore, this blog is to document these developments, for we live in exciting times.
- posted by hussein @ 00:00 0 comments