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No, as a matter of fact, Linus expressed concern about Qt dependence. He certainly was not responsible for introducing the Qt dependence.

The cfq scheduler in the -mm (Andrew Morton) trees gives very good results in a desktop use.

With anticipatory or deadline, I'm experiencing awful skips with artsd under KDE 3.2 every time there is a heavy disk access, but it's [almost] completely gone with cfq.

To use it, compile a -mm kernel and add the 'elevator=cfq' to the kernel boot parameters through Lilo or Grub.

See this lwn article for more info.

... at packet sniffing. In other news, FreeBSD
sucks
at
everything
else

From the recent tests performed by a BSD advocate, and linked here, we see Linux 2.6 has TRIPLE the exec throughput of FreeBSD 5.2, TRIPLE the context switch speed, less than half the system call overhead, and all, of course while being far more scalable.

I suggest that if you really have the need to show that FreeBSD is better than Linux, then you should concentrate on something other than performance. Stability might suit you better, because it is far more difficult for someone to get evidence either way to counter your FUD.

Have a nice day.

As for the 500 processor link box? OK!

I love the speed increases that the 2.6 kernel has achieved on the desktop (and for things like media: mplayer never bugs out with that charming "YOUR COMPUTER IS TOO SLOW" message anymore). However, I don't know if it can be considered even remotely stable. Since switching, my uptime has been a Windows like joke.

[...]

- Firewire and sbp2 support is completely broken. Ironically this has, I believe, more from "experimental" in 2.4 to a normal feature, yet it worked fine before and now doesn't work at all (the linux1394 forums forums reflect that I am not alone in this). Trying to copy data to sbp2 drives segfaults, hangs, and worse. Beware of connecting to 2.6 if you have a firewire drive with data you hold dear...

It's important to keep some perspective. Usually whenever anyone says something is full of bugs, they mean that they keep running into the same bug over and over. If you're having problems with Firewire, very likely you're running into one bug in your driver repeatedly. The other people complaining may have the same chipset and the same problem.

My point is that you can't make any generalizations to the entire kernel series (or even subsystem, like 1394) being more or less stable just because you encounter a single bug that you didn't used to. Look more closely at the oopses and your system logs, see where it's happening, file a good bug report. They'll probably have it fixed in a couple releases.

People use "stable" or "unstable" to mean a lot of different things:

1. If they're changing the APIs constantly or not.
2. If the core of the system doesn't crash and performs well under a variety of loads
3. If their system doesn't crash and performs well under their load

...and #3 really needs to be qualified with "for me" or "with this exact hardware, doing this". Because otherwise, you're saying the whole series sucks because of a single bug. And very likely, a bug in a driver. When I read kernel traffic, lwn, or kernel trap, I frequently see mention of fixing some unsafe coding practice...in the core kernel. Drivers are left for their maintainers to update. Some do so quickly and well. Some don't.

Ideally, a system would be so rock-solid that you would never run into even one stability or performance bug. But I don't think that's much more realistic for Linux 2.4 than it is for 2.6.

(This message is not just aimed at you. I see this a lot.)

According to this article on LWN.net there was a patch by Dave Miller that changed the DMA API (see the Changelog for 2.6.5, from Dave Miller submitted through Andrew Morton) which *might* break binary drivers. All the in-kernel drivers are fixed, but the out-of-tree stuff might screw up. Just a heads up.

It's pronounced AMD64.

See this lwn artice for one approach that is currently working quite well (self interest note; I'm involved in the project).

Could you give us your point of view about the status of binary-only kernel modules from the standpoint of the GPL?

In a nutshell, I'm interested in the status of LinkSys's released code for their wrt54g and similar routers -- regular slashdotters may recall that they released the source code, under pressure from the FSF, last year. However, their modified Linux code is distributed with both binary-only files (in the form of compiled Broadcom wireless drivers) and a great deal of source code which claims to be unpublished, proprietary, and prohibited from redistribution.

Ideally I'd like your take on the LinkSys situation specifically, but I'd settle for some discusion of how binary-only kernel drivers and the GPL coexist. There's some excellent background on this topic in this LWN article from last October.

What the Kalman filter does is predict the future state of a model based on previous estimates and measurements. It takes into account the expected measurement error and the expected modeling error, and dynamically adjusts it's "confidence" in both model and measurements based on the estimation errors. The Kalman filter is an optimal filter, in that it can be shown to minimize the estimation error.

The beautiful thing about Kalman is that it works with partial data, that is, it can be applied recursively, "as the data are coming in". This is what makes it so suitable for realtime applications, as well as the fact that it is very robust in the face of temporary sensor failure.

Kalman is frequently used in tracking and control applications. Interestingly, Kalman filtering was also recently applied to the problem of task scheduling in the Linux kernel in the Entitlement Based Scheduler. There's lots of info about Kalman filtering on the web, use Google if you want to know more.

Oh, only Linus Torvalds.

Linus Torvalds has 20 million dollars, at least. Red Hat gave him some of its stock, before it was valuable. Sure he gave away a lot of his work for free, but that only primed the pump, didn't it?

Be honest: Who would you really like to be? Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates? Would you like to be like Linus, a rich man who is loved and admired by hundreds of thousands of people? Or would you like to be like Mr. Gates, a "rich" man who cannot buy the things that really matter?

Would you like to be like Linus, a man who makes jokes that are widely repeated? Or would you like to be like Mr. Gates, a man whose voice is so scratchy that it is annoying to hear him say more than one sentence, and who is boring because he never seems to say anything unless there might be money in it?

If you have a few quirky habits, do you want to be like Alan Cox, or do you want to be like Steve Ballmer, who is widely called Monkey Boy?

If you really believe that everything you do must be for money, you have two heroes!! You can be like Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer!

Suppose Linus decides he's bored with what he's doing and wants another job? Will he need to read Monster.com? Somehow the theory in the letter is not fitting some of the facts.

It is necessary to be a scientist 100% of the time. You know someone is NOT a scientist when that person ignores data. The letter puts forth a theory of the world that does not even begin to explain information that is immediately available.

Whoever wrote the letter did not bother to examine the implications of what facts he did accept. If every programmer in the world spent the next 5 years writing free software, what would be the state of computing at the end of that period? Would all necessary software have been completely written? Would there be no more work for programmers? No, at the end of the 5 years there would be a great clamor for new programs that became possible because of the new software infrastructure.

Love creates connections between the lover and the world. The connections create opportunities. We know love works, we just don't yet completely understand how.

I recognize that most people who write free software would not think of themselves as lovers, but that's what they are.

If you are a man who has written free software, and you meet an interesting woman, and you tell a little about yourself, and you talk about what you have done to benefit the world, don't forget to ask her what she has done to benefit the world. If the answer is nothing, she's a lot less interesting than you thought at the beginning. You have created a world for yourself in which you can ask for something better.

However, there is a kernel of truth about which the letter hints. While you are loving the world, don't forget to love yourself. There must be a balance.

I hope that fewer people will add to the disfunctionality of the world by making their view of life as narrow as that of the letter.

better luck next year

I remember this story from almost a year ago, I tried to get involved a number of times but never got a response. Here's the 10 month old announcement: http://lwn.net/Articles/29364/.

Now it surfaces again out of the blue ... is something fishy going on with this book? (lack of complete disclosure is irritating) Someone might need to see a 2x4.

I mailed the JOLT people last week to ask that they make the talk available in a format for which a free software player exists - and they said they would.

They made a previous talk (by Darl McBride), available in Speex format, but it took a few days for the Speex version to appear, so check back to their speakers page in a few days and they should have a playable version :)

You selling software is morally wrong, according to RMS.

And your support for this statement is where, exactly? You've provided the URL to an interview that doesn't seem to back up your assertion and then not clarified precisely what statement RMS made that backs up what you claim he said.

The closest thing I could find in that interview to backing up your statement is:

[Q:] Is it your belief that "high-paying organizations" (i.e. proprietary software vendors) should be banned?

[RMS:] I would not ban high salaries, but I think they should have a high tax bracket. As for making software proprietary, I really don't care whether it is legal as long as in practice it is rare enough to have no significant impact on society.

This does not support your statement and it looks like you don't really understand what RMS means when he refers to proprietary software. He is not against commercial software, he is against proprietary software.

If Microsoft "borrowed" GPLed code and tried to hide it not only would they open themselves up to a serious lawsuit from the copyright holders (with serious monetary penalties), but they could theoretically end up having to share any source code that came in contact with the GPLed code.

This is what the FUDsters would have us believe, but it's not true. As Eben Moglen, General Counsel for the FSF, has repeatedly pointed out, the GPL is a license, not a contract.

One of the consequence os this is that you can't force someone to open up their own code if they link against GPL'ed code in violation of the license. At most, you can force them to stop using the GPL'ed code.

See this lengthy rebuttal by Pamela Jones of Groklaw fame, or this more accessible, shorter version.

Ulrik

Here is another from LWN: LWN: Linux in Spain

I've been using 2.6 since .0 with absolutely no problems (execpt for monkeying with nvidia binary driver patches for a while there).

The only complaint I can come up with (which isn't actually a complaint at all) is that 2.6 is still lacking kexec() support. Randy Dunlap has been doing some work on it including patches for 2.6.1 (works with .2 and .3 too), but it doesn't really seem to have much momentum for getting included.

I've only rebooted my workstation 3 times since 2.6.2 came out, and 2 of those was a 'kexec -e' reboot. So I haven't had to wait on my annoying Video BIOS, Motherboard BIOS, or Adaptec BIOS in almost a month, which is nice.

Still, I can see why it is not included because it does break non-standard consoles (e.g. fbcon) on kexec reboot. Sure this is offtopic, but everyone else seems to be bitching about their beefs with 2.6 so I thought I would too :)

This page on LWN might be the one your thinking about. It's been referenced several times here on /. as well as Groklaw.

I bet that by the time SCO is convicted the company will be bankrupt and all the money will have magically disappeared. If they aren't already planning this, I would be surprised.

From the article:
Many customers are concerned about using Linux since they have become aware of the allegations that Linux is an unauthorized derivative work of the UNIX(R) operating system.

Why should anyone be concerned about allegations?? Everyone can make allegations! I am more concerned about criminal behaviour of companies!

I've been a happy subscriber for many months. Their coverage of everything Linux is unsurpassed! Subscribe to LWN.

OK, smart guy you want SMP+NUMA? Solaris can't do this.

And another thing, each one of those CPUs is about 150% the speed of Sun's finest on both integer and FP, so if you want to match it, show me Solaris running a 750+ CPU box.

Behind yes, but not a long way, and the gap has been closing over the past several years.

I'm really looking forward to performance and security of NFSv4, but am apprehensive that the setup appears to be more complicated than just editing a couple files in /etc.

BTW, given all the recent hoopla over Sun's commitment to free and open source software, they ought to be recognized for sponsoring the CITI group at UMich that had a lot to do with Linux NFSv4, and for sponsoring the Connectathon series of conferences that I'm hoping will make my Linux desktop NFS client interact better with my Sun NFS fileserver.

step C could be frustrating, is there a quicker way to go about it?

You could making your changes to a User-mode Linux kernel to avoid the reboot. Or running it inside a virtual machine. That way you only have the kernel's boot time, not the main system BIOS, ATA-100 BIOS, SCSI BIOS, etc.

Also, what is the likely() and unlikely() functions you speak of. Google shows a lot of unrelated info.

They're macros that tell the compiler if the expression contained within is likely to be true or false. There's an article about them here. If you've ever seen any code that mentions __builtin_expect, it's the same thing with better names:

#if COMPILER_SUPPORTS_BUILTIN_EXPECT
#define likely(condition) __builtin_expect(!!(condition), 1)
#define unlikely(condition) __builtin_expect(!!(condition), 0)
#else
#define likely(condition) (condition)
#define unlikely(condition) (condition)

As far as Stallman and his minions are concerned, Free means GPL.

That's complete rubbish. GNU even maintain a list of licenses that qualify as Free Software licenses but are GPL-incompatible.

That's the whole story. GPL or go to Hell. Nothing else.

Then how do you explain the fact that Stallman condones the use of the LGPL for glibc and a BSD-style license for Ogg Vorbis?

LWN's list of 56 CD-based distributions

This is a section in a list of distributions of various types with short descriptions.

I found several sites with Linux distribution lists online without too much searching. The distribution list at LWN is more complete (over 300 listed) and more informative. LWN's list includes CD based, floppy based, Zip based, embedded, country specific, etc. Check it out....

• Gentoo growing in popularity
  
  According to this article[1] on InternetNews, Netcraft's January survey
  counted over 24,000 Gentoo installations on active web servers, showing
  almost 20% growth over 6 months. Also, as we've reported in the past,
  Gentoo has been getting more and more recognition from various sources
  recently - while Gentoo Linux did not win the award, it was a finalist for
  a Product Excellence Award at LWE 2004[2], and has been featured in
  publications like Linux Journal[3] and Linux Weekly News[4]. Here's a
  shout out to all the developers and community members who keep making
  Gentoo great.
  
  1. http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3 313211
  2. http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/linuxworldny/V40/ind ex.cvn
  3. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?thold=0&mo de=thread&order=0&sid=7002
  4. http://lwn.net/Articles/59138/

No, there really was a SCO Linux

Solaris is not so slow it's unusable on 32 CPUs ... If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up and leave the discussion to people with some interest and background in the subject.

Get upset about offtopic Linux posts, fair enough. But just lay off the attempted cheap shots at Linux. It just makes you look like an imbicile.

32 CPUs, eh? Well that must be a very funny scalability curve that Linux has, because it seems to come good again at around 512 CPUs. Jackass.

Linux Weekly News also has a great series on driver porting at http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/. It's in the subscription-free area, so go there and have a look at it.

Linux Weekly News also has a great series on driver porting at http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/. It's in the subscription-free area, so go there and have a look at it.

I couldn't agree more. A month ago I started serious kernel programming and my code wouldn't have been what it is if I hadn't found out about the free, online version of the second edition.

Some other useful sites :
the Linux kernel API reference

Linux cross reference, especially the `identifier search'.

the driver porting series over at LWN.net (which Rufus211 alreay pointed out).

the module init tools FAQ

this document, aptly titled `the linux kernel'

apart from these there are many more interesting links, but mostly those have to do with specialty domains, such as networking or memory management. I pasted my bookmarks.html to my personal website.

And lastly, if you want to do cross-version /dev (mknod and devfs), mmap, module or networking development, please take a look at our project's cvs server through our website (webcvs) at ffpf.sourceforge.net. The directory ffpf/srv/v1.1/generic contains some files I created that work on both 2.4.24 and 2.6.1 and which I'll test on a 2.3.99 system shortly.

There's a 30 article series over at LWN about porting drivers to 2.5/6 with both overview articles (like this hello world one) and specifics (like how the block layer changed).

LWN has some documentation on this for some time now: http://lwn.net/Articles/driver-porting/

So with Sun's JDS sold in China and not to mention red flag linux -- naturally owned by the king's son -- all over the desktops of an extremely populous nation, and now according to the original slashdot posting, Israel and so forth, worldwide Microsoft is going to take a big hit.


I've also heard rumors that 75 percent of servers are running Microsoft. (I'd guess this is due to the "ease of administration"... probably can pay their admins a lot less.)

My guess is, once the desktop market gets chipped in to, the server market will also get hit since more capable admins will be easier to find (Since those on the bell curve who tend to be admins will become more familiar with linux.)

Thoughts?

Anyway, I always figured some day a tech company whose "technology" is only marketing would eventually fail, but it will still take years and years.

Rivendell aims to be a complete radio broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition, management, scheduling and playout of audio content.

Rivendell aims to be a complete radio broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition, management, scheduling and playout of audio content.

Rivendell aims to be a complete radio broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition, management, scheduling and playout of audio content.

I'm not sending anyone a check for $699.

Don't worry, you couldn't even if you wanted to.

Jay (=

1. So how does SE Linux protect systems against trojans?

SE Linux removes what you might consider to be the "superuser" account (aka 'root' under *nix or 'administrator' under Windows).

You can configure the system to act just as it is now -- having an account that is all-powerful (root or another one), or you can have very limited focus accounts that can not 'see' or use the resources of the others.

The core OS still has the ability to do root-like things and dole out those permissions, though the scope of what needs to be watched is greatly reduced.

By itself, this is not interesting. As a base for a security policy, the increased ability to log who-did-what, and the ability to stop per-process resouce use (not just per 'user'), it becomes very very interesting.

Here are some links on it;

Security-Enhanced Fedora Core 2

Looking forward to Fedora Core 2

(follow this thread) Re: Proposal: Discourage rpmbuild --sign

The main SE Linux site

1. So how does SE Linux protect systems against trojans?

SE Linux removes what you might consider to be the "superuser" account (aka 'root' under *nix or 'administrator' under Windows).

You can configure the system to act just as it is now -- having an account that is all-powerful (root or another one), or you can have very limited focus accounts that can not 'see' or use the resources of the others.

The core OS still has the ability to do root-like things and dole out those permissions, though the scope of what needs to be watched is greatly reduced.

By itself, this is not interesting. As a base for a security policy, the increased ability to log who-did-what, and the ability to stop per-process resouce use (not just per 'user'), it becomes very very interesting.

Here are some links on it;

Security-Enhanced Fedora Core 2

Looking forward to Fedora Core 2

(follow this thread) Re: Proposal: Discourage rpmbuild --sign

The main SE Linux site

But there are some. Not yet for 2.6, though, but you can find infos on driver porting here :-)

If you're that worried about startup, why not roll your own scripts?

Hell, I remember a great approach to starting/init'ing services using Makefiles a few months back. The article can be found here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/50115/

That article inspired me to create my own binary that gets called from init. My binary is basically just a static series of system() calls. I chose these over exec() because they require one less call to sh.

Long story short - using a Makefile or a simple C binary can allow you to fine tune your startup. However, the flip side of this is that you'll have to know your system startup inside and out.

For example: Let's say that I write a short story about Mickey Mouse and attempt to sell it. Mr. Eisner, through his lawyers, will attempt to stop my distributing/selling it. In reality, being a broke programmer that lacks the funds to take on a multinational corporation in a court of law, I would be forced to concede before I ever entered a court room. But lets assume that I did have the funds and the tenacity to attempt to take on such a battle. First, the complainant, Disney, would file their complaint, or lawsuit, and attach exibits, namely my story, and submit it to the court. At that point they have not violated copyright law by reprinting my story for their complaint as it is needed for them to make their case. Second, although my story will now become part of the court record -- and therefore open to public review -- I would still own the copyright on that story; that means that even if Disney prevailed in court and loved the story that I wrote they still would not have the right to publish it without making a deal with me; and for that matter no one else can publish it without making a deal with me and Disney (since it is a work derivied from their character).

Where it will really become interesting is if it is considered a database that could be protected under the proposed HR 3261. A timeline is a collection of facts that could conceivably be protected by the proposed law; that is the reason for releasing it under the Creative Commons license. Fortunately, collections of fact are only protected if they are organized by some unique means. Courts have ruled that phone books, because that are sorted alphabetically, are not protected at the moment; that is why corporations that collect data are trying to change the law. I would guess that numeric and chronologic ordering of data would not be considered a unique method of organizing the data and thus would not be protectable under the current law.

Here's a link to ESR's original post where he forgot his meds and acts like he's on an episode of The Lone Gunmem. So this is what Daryl is talking about in his Harvard presentation.

Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case

After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point.

*sigh*

The quote goes like this:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety"

And it was Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson.

This is one of the most frequently abused quotes on Slashdot, especially by idiot armchair-Libertarians*, since the misquote usually says "those that would give up liberty to gain safety deserve neither", which means that anyone who gives up ANY liberty for ANY amount of safety is somehow no longer entitled to either. Franklin's point was that while some liberties can be worth relinquishing in the name of real and necessary safeties, it's when one is ready to trade in essential liberties for a little temporary safety that one is being cowardly and foolish.

As for the GPL, I think the tradeoff of liberty is 100% worth the safety received. Do you really think that we wouldn't have seen a zillion proprietary forks of the Linux kernel by now if it weren't protected by something like the GPL? We haven't seen the BSDs fork too terribly, true, but they also never became as popular. In fact, I don't think *BSD ever could have become as popular as Linux is now, since you there's no way you could get an industry consortium to all contribute to the same kernel that was under a BSD licence, since every business involved would be too worried that one of the others would eventually fork and stop contributing back, whereas the GPL ensures that no one company can just say "Ha ha, screw you guys, we're taking your work and not giving a damn thing back!" Naturally, the GPL isn't for everything - even RMS agreed that the Vorbis decoding libraries should be BSD licensed, not GPL or LGPL. (So anyone who insists that he's completely insane/inflexible can suck it. He can be annoying with the GNU/Linux thing, though...)

* note to the humorless and/or spastic: No, I am not implying that the parent poster is necessarily one of these, nor am I saying that all Libertarians are idiots, so put your flamethrower down and think before hitting "Submit", please.

My next video card purchase will be from a company that makes GPL-compatible drivers. Suggestions anyone?

We're basically screwed. Nvidia's success with binary-only drivers has made ATI do the same thing. Unless the Weather Channel decides to fund development of drivers for the newer cards, Radeon 8500 is the end of the open-source line. And no one else really exists in the high-performance 3D graphics card market.

I hope Red Hat uses some of their new half a billion to do something about this, but they've probably got other goals to hit first.