Free Software Linux

INX is an interesting Linux distro released today, which is based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and it is console only, without any graphical “X” programs. According to the release note INX is intended as a ‘tutorial’ and “introduction to the Bash command line”. It is important to note that INX is not the only console-only Linux distro. However their intention seems to be clear, as they are looking to build a console only “liveCD” distro which is “fun, and not intimidating for console beginners.”

A short post.

"So yet another week, another -rc," began Linux creator, Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.27-rc8 Linux kernel. He continued, "this one should be the last one: we're certainly not running out of regressions, but at the same time, at some point I just have to pick some point, and on the whole the regressions don't look _too_ scary. And -rc8 obviously does fix more of them." Linus went on to note that most of the changes since -rc7 are small, "and there aren't even a whole lot of them."

Today, I have been playing around a bit with the new version of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex) Alpha 6 release. As expected the release itself is not very stable and broke my Ubuntu install in a lot of places including compiz fusion. I was expecting an Alpha release to act like this so I installed it on one of my several “test machines”, where I can go crazy with it without having to worry about breaking something. If you plan to try out the any alpha release, please don’t try it on your main machine. Under normal circumstances, when there is a new release of Ubuntu, you can just pull up your synaptic package manager and you will be prompted to upgrade to the latest version.

According to Trovalds, he is not sure about the exact date when Linux was born. Some consider his announcement to be the actual date of birth for linux in August 26 1991. Others feels that the first official release of 0.01 to be the Birth date of Linux; which is today, September 17, 1991. As with every aspect of linux, there are controversies and misconceptions. Take your pick, I just need a reason to celebrate with a drink. ;)

The what?

If you haven’t been following the news lately (not the political type), Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu (Canonical), has officially named Ubuntu 9.04, “Jaunty Jackalope“; which is expected to be released on April 2009. But before that we are expecting Intrepid Ibex next month. Even though Ubuntu is my default distro in all my computers; two things I absolutely dislike about Ubuntu, is their naming convention and their default look. At the rate of six months release cycle I am hoping they will soon run out of funny names for Ubuntu.

Daniel Phillips noted that his new Tux3 versioning filesystem is now operating like a filesystem, "the last burst of checkins has brought Tux3 to the point where it undeniably acts like a filesystem: one can write files, go away, come back later and read those files by name. We can see some of the hoped for attractiveness starting to emerge: Tux3 clearly does scale from the very small to the very big at the same time. We have our Exabyte file with 4K blocksize and we can also create 64 Petabyte files using 256 byte blocks." He went on to discuss some of the remaining features yet to be implemented, including atomic commits, versioning, coalesce on delete, a version of the filesystem written in the kernel, extents, locking, and extended attributes.

Ever since the first rumors about an Apple tablet computer, and more recently an ultra-portable notebook caught my attention a couple of years ago, I’ve been holding out on upgrading my beloved Sharp Zaurus. Seemingly surrounded by Asus EeePC 701 in Manila after the New Year celebrations, I doggedly resisted the urge to buy, for fear of the ever-imminent Apple ultra-portable arriving and relegating to the back of the cupboard any other UMPC I succumbed to now.

Linus Torvalds announced the 2.6.27-rc5 Linux Kernel, noting that his "weekly releases" tend to happen every eight days, adding, "the bulk of it is all config updates, and with arm and powerpc leading the pack." Linus continued:

"While the config updates amount to about three quarters of the diff, and if you don't use a rename-aware diff the blackfin include file movement pretty much accounts for the rest, hidden behind all those trivial (but bulky) changes are a lot of small changes that hopefully fix a number of regressions.

"I'd like to get a first round of review on my AXFS filesystem," began Jared Hulbert, describing his new Advanced XIP File System for Linux. XIP stands for eXecute-In-Place. The new filesystem received quite a bit of positive feedback. Jared offered the following description:

A recent discussion on the Linux Kernel mailing list noted that threaded 64-bit applications suffer a drastic slowdown in pthread_create performance when stack utilization goes above 4GB. Ingo Molnar offered an explanation of the problem, "unfortunately MAP_32BIT use in 64-bit apps for stacks was apparently created without foresight about what would happen in the MM when thread stacks exhaust 4GB. The problem is that MAP_32BIT is used both as a performance hack for 64-bit apps and as an ABI compat mechanism for 32-bit apps.

"It is about time to take a step back and describe what I have been implementing," began Daniel Phillips, referring to his new Tux3 filesystem. He provided a simple ASCII diagram that detailed the filesystem's hierarchical structure, describing each of the elements. About one he noted, "the volume table is a new addition not central to the goals of Tux3, but a nice feature to have given that it comes nearly for free. One Tux3 volume can have an arbitrary number of separate filesystems tucked inside it, indexed by a simple integer parameter at mount time. People say they like this idea and it imposes no significant complexity, so it goes in." Daniel continued:

If the wine you drink, car you drive, food you eat, clothes you wear and even pets you have defines you as a person; does your choice of Linux Distro defines you too?

If you use Ubuntu… You like to follow the crowd and do whatever everyone else does. No individualism.

If you use Debian… You are a giver. You let the crowd followers be more popular with your ideas.

If you use Gentoo… You are a perfectionist. While everyone is partying, you are still getting dressed.

If you use Arch… You do it for the Lulz. 4Chan!

"Things really _have_ calmed down, and hopefully we've also resolved a lot of the regressions in -rc3," began Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.27-rc3 Linux kernel. He noted that much of the patch size was from the inclusion of the new ath9k wireless driver, with much of the rest of the patch size due to the renaming of many arch include files in the ARM, AVR32 and m68lnommu architectures. Linus continued:

"All the small changes are where the regression fixes are, and other random improvements. And they're all over. The ShortLog (appended) probably gives a taste of it."

read more