LXer Weekly Roundup for 05-Oct-2008
Here are the most prominent stories that hit the LXer Newswire this past week all gathered together for your reading pleasure. Gentoo looks to restructure, a look at who really is contributing to Linux development, is gOS better that Ubuntu? And last but not least we celebrate the birthday of the Linux Kernel as it turns 17. Gentoo Linux Cancels Distribution: For some Linux distribution projects, new releases come twice a year. That had been the plan for Gentoo Linux this year, until it canceled its current planned release -- the second time it's done so in the past 12 months. But the news doesn't necessarily mean a setback for the project. Instead, Gentoo developers said they are pushing a new model for their distribution -- one that eschews the conventional release wisdom used by Red Hat, Novell, Debian and others. Instead of fixed releases, Gentoo is promoting its vision of a live, continuously updating distribution. In practice, that effort revolves around its weekly minimal images, which are then supplemented with customized installed packages. Sundown On Solaris?: Netcraft -- er, Jim Zemlin, confirms it: Solaris is dying. Customers are leaving it and legacy Unix behind for Linux, in his purview. Open sourcing the platform was too little, too late. Well, maybe not sundown, but it's getting mighty dark out. These are actually not new sentiments; I picked them up from Jim when I talked to him back at OSCON -- a place where, ironically enough, I had also talked to folks from Sun. They were and are smart guys, deeply proud of the work they're doing, but I hope they all understand they are never going to steal any of Linux's thunder. (The refrain I've heard from many different quarters about this issue has been expressed in almost the same exact words by all concerned: "If only they had done this [open sourced Solaris] three/five/ten years earlier...") The lack of quality video drivers is destroying Fedora: I was user of nvidia video card and I was happy to use it in F7 and F8 but unfortunately I replaced that card with a newer one. That time the card was ATI. Of course I did not check if that card is supported in Fedora 9 (I have to blame myself) and just took it. Recently I noticed the news about that how "open" ATI would be in the future. And now I experience their "openness" with my computer. After the fresh install of my Fedora I downloaded the RPM file for the Livna repository with the intention to install the video drivers for the new video card. And you can only imagine what was my reaction to see no drivers in the repository. There were only some testing and development packages and I took the risk to install them. The result was - hanging system with and without reason. 21 of the Best Free Linux Financial Software: The repercussions of the credit crunch have continued to occupy headline news in recent weeks. We have witnessed the demise of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, the rescue of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the proposed merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS (which would never have been permitted under normal circumstances), and the list goes on. Who's really contributing to Linux?: I wasn't at the Linux Plumber Conference in Portland, OR, but everyone who pays close attention to Linux knows that Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel developer and Novell engineer, blasted Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, for contributing "In the past 3 years, from the 2.6.15 kernel to 2.6.27-rc6, Canonical has had 100 patches in the Linux kernel." That, as Kroah-Hartman pointed out, means Canonical "did 00.10068% of all of the kernel development for the past 3 years." In other words: almost nothing. I was about to praise Ubuntu ...: I still might be in a position to heap praise upon Ubuntu 8.04 for its performance on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) since I reinstalled it a couple of weeks ago with a separate /home partition and a not-screwed-up UUID scenario. But I keep getting these freezes in which ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-delete won't save me. I have to do a hard reset with the power button. Now this could be due to the shaky nature of my power connection (the power jack from the laptop's brick doesn't quite meet up with the hacked power plug I installed to make this laptop work after I first acquired it). Having a dead battery doesn't help. Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman: Web-based programs like Google's Gmail will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time, according to the free software campaigner The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free software. gOS 3: Is it better than Ubuntu?: Combining the best parts of Mac OS X and Ubuntu, gOS is truly a worthy competitor in the OS wars. It has simplicity, a well designed interface, a rock solid linux core and web apps. But is it good enough? Is it ‘a Linux for the rest of us!’ ? Let’s jump in and take a peek at the latest gOS, version 3. Tutorial: Four Easy Fun Useful Things You Can Do With Linux: In this ENP classic, learn how to colorize and test your Bash prompt, run your own local timeserver, deliver customized MOTDs that change, and create elegant ASCII art. Carla Schroder shows you how to do all these things the easy way. Linux - Is It For You?: Do any of you use Linux as your primary operating system? I have been dual-booting Linux and Windows for about five years now, though it’s a rare thing, indeed, for me to use the latter for anything. I know whatever you decide to use is entirely up to you, unless you are stuck using someone else’s computer. 100 reasons Linux beats Windows: That's right; you heard me. Here are – count 'em – one hundred reasons why Linux beats Windows. 5 Things I Wish Linux Had: Ken Hess outlines his 2009 Development Wish List for Linux. Linux turns 17: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT, was the subject of Linus Benedict Torvalds post to comp.os.minix on October 5, 1991 -- seventeen years ago today. it began, |
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