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It may be useful for you to read LWN's embedded nightmare prologue along with the original Embedded Nightmare article. If you have written extra drivers and can get them into the mainline kernel them the benefits of going with a new 2.6 could be big...

Where "reverse engineered" should be translated as "telnetted to the bitkeeper server/port and typed 'help'"

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

Your question feels a bit of strange question to ask as surely anyone who has looked would notice a huge difference between the latest 2.6 (2.6.28) and the latest 2.4 (2.4.37).

Preemptible kernel (so lower latencies are possible)
Far more devices supported (both in terms of architectures and additional add on devices e.g. SATA support)
Better scheduler (initially made O(1) scales better under load and then fairer with CFS)
Task Control Groups
Better support for threads (schedules them in a more intelligent fashion)
Strict overcommit
Massive VM changes
Tickless/dynticks support
Asynchronous I/O support
Introduction of different I/O schedulers (deadline, cfq
Network stack improvements (faster, better under load e.g. NAPI support)
epoll support
Improved ACPI support
Network filesystem improvements
Initramfs support

There is a huge list of Linux kernel changes that happened between 2.4 and 2.5. There is also a good Linux kernel 2.5 changes page on IBM's developerworks. Kernelnewbies has an excellent summary of changes for each of the 2.6 kernels and a 2.5 changes page. LWN is also excellent for kernel news.

I hate it when people don't bother to state exactly the points they object to. What other changes (not listed above) do you think the question poster wouldn't benefit from? Follow the links to the full lists (don't just use the ones off the top of your head)...

What Stallman needs to do is catch up with the biggest development in the computing world of the past 25 years.

Not going to happen. This is a man who, by his own admission, doesn't surf the web. He doesn't go into detail, but I feel it's pretty safe to assume he doesn't want to defile himself by viewing a website that might be hosted or created with non-free software.

The man is completely out of touch with today's computer users. Any why wouldn't he be? His legacy has been about holding onto the past. To maintain a world where people like him were the real power users. A lot of people give him far more credit than he truly deserves. There was free software before Stallman, it just didn't match his definition. His crusade is about trying to make his problem, our problem. No thanks.

Fedora 8 EOL is 7th January, you should think about upgrading it to something newer...

Fedora 8 EOL Announcement

And FWIW, I've got a couple of hundred machines running varieties of Linux (but no Fedora 8) and I haven't seen any silly reboots. I think you might be making mountains out of a coincidental mole hill.

This is not a new article, I saw it way back in October on LWN: http://lwn.net/Articles/302576/ Still interesting though. The real question is: what are the alternatives? KOffice, other than currently being in Beta, is missing lots of critical features, making it suitable for only basic office stuff (which is still enough for most people, though). What other office suites are there? And if a developer wanted to help, where would he do the most good? OOo (yet it has always been criticized as a puppet of it's corporate overloards)? Or KOffice? Or one of the even-less-known suites out there?

Only GPL can contain standards. And the distance between rails should be based what fits in an 80x20 console screen (80 characters wide is the distance between RMS's extended legs). Rail should be renamed GNR for GNR's not Rail. If you cannot pronounce GNR, you are a marketing weenie--names shouldn't matter when True Freedom is at stake.

The rail should be free to be modified. If one wants to increase the distance between the rails, that should be allowed provided they release their new standard and let others change the distance too. If one wants to use other materials, that should also be permitted as long of they too release their specifications. If the trains cannot use the new modified track, it is up to the community to fix the train. After all, the laws will dictate that by using the track, the train should become GPL'd as well. If you dont like this, you are free not to use it; but at the price of True Freedom.

So please dont kind yourself Bjorn, our railways are not standard. You are immoral for even promoting non-Free rail systems.

Alas, I must now end this conversation and have it emailed to my web-email gateway. Good day.

(and hey, I only took off where the AC finished. all that is needed now is to worry about Tivo'ization and Microsoft. one can dream, one can only dream ;-)

Well, at the moment we don't really have the command line as a failsafe. When the X server crashes it seems to lock up the keyboard so Cntl-Alt-F1 doesn't switch to the VT (though I can usually ssh in, and restart X, but then I could also ssh -Y and restart X with a remote GUI, so the "commandline" doesn't really help here).

The problem is the currently we have three different things that can directly mess with the video hardware: The framebuffer, DRI and the X server, and so any of these can cause trouble. This can lead to worse than triple the number of bugs because interactions between these can cause trouble.

Its similar to how having a database server tends to be more reliable than having clients directly accessing the database files. Yes, the database server adds a single point of failure, but that is better than having 20+ nodes each of which can horribly corrupt the database files. While in principle GEM could fail, so could the hundred other modules in my kernel. And a bug in GEM is unlikely to be as serious as a bug in ext3/4.

But programming book lists crop up all over the place. In this Stifflog interview with Yegge, Torvalds, Hansson, Norvig, Thomas, Van Rossum, Gosling, Stroustrup and Bray the interviewees mention their favourite books (of the most popular I think only K&R and Programming Pearls weren't on your list).

Many people have Knuth's Art of Programming on their shelves (but it's harder to find people who have read all of it).

One of the Kernel Hacker Bookshelf series on LWN recommends Unix Internals.

One of the consultants who taught at my University said that the Mythical Man Month and Peopleware were good. I've read these too and can also recommended them (although they are more about managing programmers rather than programming per se). The consultant also recommended Design Patterns (although he said not to read the book cover to cover but rather to just be aware of them so you could refer to them later).

Reddit has a Must Read Programming books thread.

I've heard the "Dragon Book" (Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools I think is the 2nd edition) being talked of favourably.

What is the single most influential book every programmer should read? thread on Stackoverflow.

Many people seem to recommend reading Godel, Escher, Bach...

Joel Spoolsky's list of books every programmer should read.

Maybe someone will collect the 20 most popular books into one easy to read post rather than the scattershot of links I've given you here...

Great general programming book: "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike.

Kernel hacker Val Henson wrote an excellent review of The Practice of Programming . I bought the book on the strength of that recommendation and find it is the most useful book I have read on programming in the last ten years.

SUSE always made clear distinction between commercial/non-free software they include and core OS. Core OS always was and is GPL'ed Linux.

You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE. Back in the day, SuSE intentionally tried to package non-free software without warning the user: see this talk by RMS:

Stallman made an additional remark about Linux. Many different distributions are available, and one day, he tried to install one of them called "SUSE". He noticed that SUSE installed non-free (from a GPL point of view) software, but didn't tell you so. They were concealing the fact that non-GPL software was being installed on your computer. Asked about this, the SUSE people told RMS that it was intentional, that they didn't regard this detail as important, but that mentioning it might worry people and discourage them from using SUSE. Bottom line : RMS says "Don't Use SUSE" (for those interested, he recommends the Debian, which is one of the rare things him and I agree on :-)).

Since then, of course, they've seen the light and nowadays OpenSUSE is pretty good (I believe) about making a fully free distribution. There was some debacle with a non-free EULA on some beta releases, but I think that is resolved now.

The unregulated so-called "free market" will take care of everything, right?

A working free market requires a number of assumptions, such as that people know what they're buying, that nobody has too much market power, and that efficient matching of buyers and sellers is actually the desired outcome. This last item especially doesn't hold for (at least basic) health care, where being universal is probably more important than being economically efficient.

Just look at what great shape our economy is in...

That's partly a case of people (well, banks) not understanding what they were buying, and I think partly a case of the nation approaching its collective credit limit. Different (not more, different) regulations would have helped with the former, and the government not price-fixing the credit markets would probably have helped with the latter.

you can start from here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/105375/

Block integrity patches were discussed in excellent article on LWN in July 2008. Kernel 2.6.27 was released in October 2008. This is old news.

You think this guy grasps the more advanced pieces of C++?
http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/

Given that OpenStreetMap Cairo looks pretty complete I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of GPS devices already out there.

It's interesting to watch the trickle down effect of technology and grassroots efforts to harness it, coming fact to face with traditional government regulation, such as amateur cartography being illegal in Russia. I guess personal GPS devices and the internet are pretty subversive.

If you have caches of a size smaller than your real RAM, the order in which you try to access memory really CAN make a difference because cache is many times faster than regular RAM and will try and do things like speculative readahead. If what you are working with is already in the cache by the time you request it then you won't stall for as long.

If you are forever causing the cache to become flushed and forcing the cache to be refilled with a different contents (perhaps because you are causing a large number of random memory access and the cache's readahead is getting your future access wrong so it has to be turned off) then performance will by comparison be slower than a sequential memory access workload.

The above is of course a gross simplification (and doesn't apply if what you are reading fits entirely within cache and is already there). If you have the technical chops you can read more about how order of access can have an impact on speed in Ulrich Drepper's what every programmer should know about memory on LWN.

If you have caches of a size smaller than your real RAM, the order in which you try to access memory really CAN make a difference because cache is many times faster than regular RAM and will try and do things like speculative readahead. If what you are working with is already in the cache by the time you request it then you won't stall for as long.

If you are forever causing the cache to become flushed and forcing the cache to be refilled with a different contents (perhaps because you are causing a large number of random memory access and the cache's readahead is getting your future access wrong so it has to be turned off) then performance will by comparison be slower than a sequential memory access workload.

The above is of course a gross simplification (and doesn't apply if what you are reading fits entirely within cache and is already there). If you have the technical chops you can read more about how order of access can have an impact on speed in Ulrich Drepper's what every programmer should know about memory on LWN.

If you have a single 32 byte fragment in a 4KB page, you cannot release the page back to the OS. If you can reduce memory fragmentation by 1% you reduce the amount of memory you need to request from the OS by 1%. There is still work being done on allocators that minimize fragmentation. It is not clear how you can defragment memory after it has been allocated though. It would be very hard to safely update the pointers in a C program to point to the new memory locations after defragmentation. Possibly these memory defragmenters move around pages of virtual memory so that the kernel can allocate 8KB and larger chunks of physical memory (Kernels typically bypass VM and prefer pages that are physically adjacent). I understand that the motivation for the 4K stacks in the Linux Kernel was the difficulty in finding two adjacent free physical pages. This would be even more of an issue on Windows which apparently use 12K stacks.

From a technical standpoint, with Git, there's nothing about the central server that is unique. Instead, it's a social convention. Everyone knows where to get the code. Linus discusses this here. http://lwn.net/Articles/246381/

Perhaps, my imagination is failing; but, I don't think this will change. Most people want to go to a well known trusted place to at least get a secure hash of the code they are downloading.

For instance, the Debian distro is available via bit torrent. No sane person, downloads the latest Debian .torrent posted by 1337_KeRNeL_haxor on the pirate bay. They get it from debian.com or some other trusted site.

Also, we really need those central servers. Without them you'll constantly run into distribution problems. Just imagine having to post a message like,"Will someone PLEASE seed the repository. I need to grab the latest kernel."

says:

The only problem is that firmware typically comes with a restrictive license which does not have redistribution in mind. In many cases, firmware redistribution is prohibited entirely, or the situation is, at best, ambiguous. Thus, for example, the Prism54 firmware page reads as follows:

We do not yet have a re-distribution license for [the firmware files] by Intersil (or globalspanvirata or Conexant) but since Intersil wrote the original GPL driver and then supported the Open Source community in maintaining it, we figure it's only fair we're allowed to redistribute them here. Our official permission is pending.

In today's legal climate, the "we figure it's only fair" license strikes some users as inadequate. Distributors, fearful of being sued, really need to have a license which makes their right to redistribute the firmware clear. Without that license, most of them will not ship the device firmware, and the distribution will not support the hardware in any sort of easy way. So attempts to get vendors to put their firmware under a reasonable license have been going on for years.

The situation really hasn't changed in the last 4 years.

Good point. However, it's possible that we underestimate just how much Red Hat, Novell and IBM contribute to the kernel. To the 2.6.20 kernel, for instance, these three contributed nearly a fourth of all changes.

Obviously I don't have proof of every developer's identity. The major projects generally do, however, use some sort of public-key ID to make sure they know who their folks are. Debian does ID their developers as part of the key-signing process. Thus I've looked over a number of developers passports and drivers licenses.

So, if one of those people committed some sort of deliberate crime like inserting a trojan, or uploading their employers code without permission in a way that seriously messes up the project, you can find and prosecute them. In practice, we have never had to do that. I'm a little surprised, actually.

Here's an article I wrote about this 10 years ago!.

Bruce

No, Stallman does not use Lynx. In fact, he doesn't surf the web at all.

Stallman wants to live his life as if he's still living in a 1970s computer lab. He's out of touch, disgusting to look at, and pragmatically WRONG when you step back from his rhetoric.

Mozilla.org decided to use both. That means that you can not create any image derived from the Firefox logo. So for example all these iconsets and wallpapers are illegal

Linus, and Debian have trademarks on their names and logos, but the artwork is free-software so, derived works are allowed.

He is not sure right now because he uses lynx.

Also, he seems not to browse the Web at all in the traditional sense, as he pointed out last December on the openbsd-misc mailing list:

"For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time."

He also seems to delegate a lot of web research to others, as evident from a number of posts in the same discussion where he wrote that he "had been told" certain things about the OpenBSD ports collection and the licensing issues connected with it. So whatever he may have to say about browsers, his computer usage habits habits certainly aren't transferable to everyone.

Distros like Familiar, Angstrom, Mamona etc are built from scratch for embedded CPUs. Debian is nice, but to get Debian on my old IPaq with internal 16MB flash is next to impossible, while Familiar builds the entire 12MB image with GPE and everything from scratch in a short evening. I like the packaging policies of Debian, but embedded usually needs a bit different approach. I'td be nice if Ubuntu/Canonical worked with OpenEmbedded on this. I recommend taking a look at existing embedded distros that target ARM, MIPS and PPC cores, there are several that do quite a few things better than debian. http://lwn.net/Distributions/#embed http://lwn.net/Distributions/#pda

Distros like Familiar, Angstrom, Mamona etc are built from scratch for embedded CPUs. Debian is nice, but to get Debian on my old IPaq with internal 16MB flash is next to impossible, while Familiar builds the entire 12MB image with GPE and everything from scratch in a short evening. I like the packaging policies of Debian, but embedded usually needs a bit different approach. I'td be nice if Ubuntu/Canonical worked with OpenEmbedded on this. I recommend taking a look at existing embedded distros that target ARM, MIPS and PPC cores, there are several that do quite a few things better than debian. http://lwn.net/Distributions/#embed http://lwn.net/Distributions/#pda

I wonder if something like this could be done with Linux now that 2.6.27.5 has been out for a few days and that situation with the RESET_REG_SUP bit has been resolved. This certainly is great news for Vista users looking for a new board.

It's been done in 5 seconds..

Doesn't even require a special motherboard, they did it by modifying Fedora on a EEE pc (something not known for it's speed)
http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/user/arjanintel

You already can boot linux in just a few seconds!

You should probably put belkin on the political do-not-buy list as well. They pulled this stunt years before D-Link did.

I want something like an Eee Box, but optimized for movies and gaming. We could call it the "We Box".

We Box would be a PC roughly the size of a Mac mini. The front has four USB ports, one SD card slot, and one optical drive. The back has two more USB ports, HDMI, and S-video output. The inside has the best GMA that Intel makes, as well as Bluetooth (or wireless USB) and Wi-Fi. And it should boot to some Linux flavor from an internal SSD, using the recent 5-second boot optimizations for console-style instant on, with an Eee PC style full-screen tabbed start menu. Don't forget to put in easy access to CNR to buy apps and games, and bundle a wireless keyboard, trackball (not mouse), and gamepad for usability from the couch.

That's simply not true ! I must have made oh, about $200 in donations from my open source projects. Over the course of 2.5 years. OK so maybe the guy had a point.

More seriously, these are hobby projects ... I get to do what I want, when I want, simply for the pleasure of coding. If other people actually like my software enough to throw a couple bucks my way, then all the better.
If the consultant was suggesting making any money from hobbyist projects (closed source or not), he is a loon.

Similarly, your consultant is, quite frankly, an idiot if he thinks most open source software gets done by hobbyists. Case in point, not more than 35% of that flagship OSS project, the linux kernel, is done by volunteers.
And on a personal note, while I have never been employed primarily as an open source developer, all my employers have encouraged, or at the very least allowed, me to contribute to OSS projects that were used in-house. Mainly in the form of patches, but hey every bit helps.

Being a Ubuntu user since Feisty, I believe that the article is spot on. The reason I say this is because there is a huge problem with desktop responsiveness, and it started after Feisty: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/131094

This is NOT the plausible small hit due to increase in hardware support. The problem reported by so many on that bug report above is about having a modern system hanging for 1 or 2 seconds (or more), for operations that were "instantaneous" on Feisty.

FWIW, in the LWN comments about 8.10 there is yet another person mentioning the same issue: problems with kernels after Feisty http://lwn.net/Articles/304710/

"It's not about booting faster, it's about booting in 5 seconds."
http://lwn.net/Articles/299088/
http://lwn.net/Articles/299546/

or a bit more involved:
TCCBOOT compiles and boots a Linux kernel in 15 seconds
http://lwn.net/Articles/108341/

"It's not about booting faster, it's about booting in 5 seconds."
http://lwn.net/Articles/299088/
http://lwn.net/Articles/299546/

or a bit more involved:
TCCBOOT compiles and boots a Linux kernel in 15 seconds
http://lwn.net/Articles/108341/

"It's not about booting faster, it's about booting in 5 seconds."
http://lwn.net/Articles/299088/
http://lwn.net/Articles/299546/

or a bit more involved:
TCCBOOT compiles and boots a Linux kernel in 15 seconds
http://lwn.net/Articles/108341/

That will change: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

it *certainly* doesn't boot nearly as fast as BeOS did

Yes it does: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

Just that no one seem to care, because people want the bloat. They want to wait 10 seconds to load a bootsplash image, because omg it looks so fancy. Nothing stops the distromakers from making their distro boot in 5 seconds.

I'm going to have to link to an article I read a few days ago: http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/
In short it's about some Intel hackers makes Fedora boot in 5 secounds on an EEE PC, not exactly the best hardware.