Hi everyone!
Here’s my late weekly report feauturing:
- Linux turns 17! Happy Birthday!
- GIMP 2.6 released
- RMS: Cloud Computing Is Bad, Blogosphere Responds
- How Kernel Hackers Boosted the Speed of Desktop Linux
- FSF high priority list becomes a campaign, seeks donations
- PCMech complains about lack of Wireless in Linux
That’s it. Hope you enjoy it!
Linux turns 17! Happy Birthday!
17 years ago, Linus Torvalds released (in his words) a “OS you can try to modify for your needs”:
As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I’m working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage where it’s even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I’ve successfully run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.
Linuxjournal.com writes on this story and I would like to join on celebrating my OS-of-choice birthday. Happy birthday Linux and thanks Linus.
More info @ LinuxJournal
The GIMP developers are proud to announce the release of GIMP 2.6. The release notes starts with: ‘GIMP 2.6 is an important release from a development point of view. It features changes to the user interface addressing some often received complaints, and a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image processing library that will eventually bring high bit-depth and non-destructive editing to GIMP.’ and goes on with saying that the toolbox menubar has been removed, that the toolbox and docks now are utility windows, that it is now possible to pan beyond the image border, that the freehand select tool has been enhanced to support polygonal selections, and much more.
More info @ Slashdot
RMS: Cloud Computing Is Bad, Blogosphere Responds
“Kernel hackers Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok showed off Linux booting in five seconds at last month’s Linux Plumbers Conference. Arjan and other hackers have already improved the Linux user experience by reducing power consumption and latency. O’Reilly News interviewed him about his work on improving the Linux experience with PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot.”
After marking the GNU Project’s 25th anniversary with an endorsement by Stephen Fry and the relicensing of OpenGL, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is concluding the month-long celebration by relaunching its high priority list, which enumerates as-yet unwritten or incomplete software needed to run a completely free computer system. Instead of being simply a page on the FSF’s Web site, the list will become a campaign, and be actively promoted and discussed, and given a new emphasis in the Foundation’s activities.
More info @ Linux.com
PCMech complains about lack of Wireless in Linux
PCMech has an interesting article today that essentially rants about the general lack of wireless support in Linux. I’d like to counter him and say “Blame the OEM’s. Linux *is* and always has been trying to rectify this, but the OEM’s are fighting us, and refusing to support Linux, thus making the work painfully slow.” But on a good note, about a year ago Atheros went into full gear to develop drivers for all of its chipsets (MadWiFi) through the aid of the FOSS community, and Broadcom now appears to be softening to Linux a bit by offering Linux drivers for their end user products rather than just their big iron server hardware.
More info @ Raiden.net
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