Unfortunately linux evangelist and publicist Joe Barr has passed away at the age of 63. There is an in memoriam at Linux.com. His blog is still up and cynically his last article is a goodbye to Bill Gates. Joe Barr gained momentum and fame with his magazine “The Dweebspeak Primer” available here. If I’m wrong and there is a heaven then it will run Linux pretty soon.
Some Linux kernel developers have issued a statement in which they call upon the hardware manufacturers to deliver open source linux-drivers for their equipment. Here’s the statement:
We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable. We have repeatedly found them to be detrimental to Linux users, businesses, and the greater Linux ecosystem. Such modules negate the openness, stability, flexibility, and maintainability of the Linux development model and shut their users off from the expertise of the Linux community. Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors. Therefore, in order to take full advantage of the cost savings and shared support benefits open source has to offer, we urge vendors to adopt a policy of supporting their customers on Linux with open-source kernel code.
Here’s the original statement including the list of developers. The Linux foundation also issued a supporting statement. This would be a great step forward. I support the statement as well. For most hardware you can select a product that has open source drivers however for graphics adapters you are stuck. There is only a small number of manufacturers of graphics adapters. Intel is offering adaptes with open source drivers but these are way below par on features and speed.
Hans Reiser (inmate BFPS63) finally heeds the advise of his lawyers. After ignoring the advise of his lawyers and taking the stand to defend himself at his trial Hans now resorts to silence. A juror said after the trial that Reiser might have been acquitted had he exercised his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
Too bad Hans resorts to silence now because Threat Level, who have been following the Reiser trial all the way, came to visit Hans Reiser in Santa Rita jail to ask him some questions. All for nothing because Hans declined any comment “on the advice of my attorneys”. From the article:
And as he hung up the telephone handset connecting us through the glass, all this reporter could think was that Hans Reiser waited too long to start heeding his lawyers’ advice.
The jurors have spoken and found Hans Reiser guilty of first degree murder. Hans Reiser could not give believable explanations for his suspicious behaviour after his wife “disappeared”. Hans faces 25 to live.
Now this is a remarkable piece of technology. Ksplice allows you to patch a running Linux kernel without the need to reboot your system. Of course there are restrictions. The patch should not introduce semantic changes to kernel datastructures. Now this is not really a restriction since most security patches won’t change the kernel datastructures and this technique is typically used to apply security patches to running systems. ZDnet also reports on Ksplice.
When I have the time I will definitely play around with this software.
After eight release candidates the new Linux kernel is here: 2.6.25. Of course there are many fixes and support for new devices and even support for a new architecture (MEI MN103E010). Control groups were introduced in 2.6.24. You can assign tasks to so-called cgroups and control the amount of memory and CPU to the group of processes. There are many more enhancements. I had to download this puppy and try it out. Thanks to all the kernel hackers for this great release.
Hans Reiser (of ReiserFS fame) is still on trial. We’ve seen some dramatic witness testimonies already. Now the mother of the disappeared Nina Reiser and the father of Hans Reiser took the stand. This trial and the testimonies of the witnesses are becoming a freak show. Read the part about the father explaining that he (just like Hans) removes seats from his car when they malfunction instead of replacing them. There’s a whole lot of bizarro stuff going on. Threat Level is still writing up reports as the trial continues.
Some stupid idiot put $100.000.000 in SCO to revive the sons of bitches. SNCP (Stephen Norris Capital Partners) injected the money and will take a controlling interest doing so. According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims. Maybe SCO can start by paying up to Novell. Novell claims that the licensing fees could amount to more than $37 million plus interest.
The Unix community should be prepared for another round of FUD and lawsuits…
Update: Groklaw.net has a very interesting thread on this. Of course there’s already a connection to Bill Gates.
Hours, even days when precision required it, my computer was calculating fractals while I was sleeping or went to school. I used fractint to generate beautiful fractal images using DOS, windows & X11. For Mac OS X there is Fractal Domains (both PowerPC & Intel). But time moves on and so does technology. Fractals are turned into art. Now take a look at the winners of the 2007 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest. In fact all contest entries are worthwhile to inspect. Here’s one example of the winners to wet your appetite.
Oh no. My favorite linux distro, Gentoo, seems to be in turmoil. The server that hosts this blog runs Gentoo. In a blog entry written by Daniel Robbins (the creator of Gentoo Linux) he writes about the unfortunate news that the Gentoo Foundation’s charter has been revoked for several weeks, which basically means that as of this moment the Gentoo Foundation no longer exists. You will not find a trace of this on the official Gentoo website.
Daniel left the Gentoo project but can’t watch from the sideline how things get worse. He ends the blog entry with some positive news that he is going to offer to clean up the mess under certain conditions. The offer is now also online and you can find it here. Daniel states that a lot will have to change. Daniel is willing to clean up the mess under certain conditions. He wants all trustees to accept his leadership and the trustees he appoints. So he needs some kind of totalitarian regime to clean up the mess in an acceptable time. I normally do not support or sympathize with totalitarian regimes as absolute power corrupts, but in this case: Go Daniel! Go! Get in and save one of the best Linux (meta-) distributions out there.
Now I like a good screensaver and phosphor (written by Jamie Zawinski) is one of them. Phosphor emulates an old green monochrome terminal screen with a very long afterglow (due to the phosphor). Phosphor can be used in many ways. You can configure it to get its output from a file, URL or from a program. It can even emulate a VT100 so you can use terminal control characters. You could recreate some visicalc screens and old stuff like that, whatever keeps you ticking.
Now Jason Kress thought that it might be cool to display random Linux kernel source files using the phosphor screensaver and I like that. Jason created a small C-program to select a random file from all .c files found using the find command. I don’t like the fact that find has run to completion before a file is selected. Please keep in mind that the linux kernel has well over 9000 .c files. When I start my screensaver I’m taking a break. Possibly because my computer is compiling. I don’t want the screensaver hamper my compilation with a heavy find command on the disk.