Linux in the News: New RC, Steve Jobs' Offer to Torvalds Recalled, OpenDaylight Summit...
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-18 09:46:04 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-18 09:46:04 UTC
Summary: Kernel-centric news items from the past few days
Kernel Space
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Linux kernel 3.14 RC3 includes several updated drivers (GPU, media, block, etc.), architecture updates (x86, ARM64, s390), filesystem improvements (Btrfs, VFS, NFS, OCFS, and kernfs fixes), as well as various mm and tooling (perf) improvements.
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Linus Torvalds, the man behind the wonderful project Linux and Git was offered job by Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc. Torvalds never met Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft but he met Jobs in the year 2000 when he was working with Transmeta corporation, an American fabless semiconductor company. Jobs invited Torvalds to Cupertino Camps of Apple. Torvalds was offered thick salary and remarkable position within the organization and was supposed to do Non-Linux things at Apple. This was the point, Torvalds disagreed. Moreover Torvalds did not like the Mac Kernel, Mach.
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Earlier this month at the OpenDaylight Summit, the software defined networking project announced its first code release, called Hydrogen.
Their open source controller is now available for download, published for everyone to see and use. But the structure and culture that got the project to this point, about one year after its formation, isn't so readily available for outsiders to see and understand.
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As users everywhere begin to warm up to the benefits of running multiple operating systems in tandem, virtualization has become one of the hottest corners of the technology arena. Many open source tools are helping to drive this trend, and that is making the work of the Open Virtualization Alliance very important. The group has been up and running for years, and late last year it joined the Linux Foundation in an effort to integrate its efforts more closely with the Linux community.
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All of the code for kdbus is living within its own Git repository right now and also there's code within the systemd Git while a compile-time switch must be activated now within systemd. Developers are hoping kdbus will be reviewed and merged into the upstream Linux kernel this year. Lennart shared a couple of kdbus features out on the horizon include sandboxing support, yielding CPU time to destination, priority inheritance, and priority queues.
Graphics Stack
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This new multi-touch touch-pad implementation presents support for one / two / three finger tapping, two-finger scrolling, clickfinger, drag-n-drop on clickpads, and single-touch touch-pad support. There's also work underway in the clickpad software button support and better timeout handling. Other possible features include trackstick mode support, disable-while-tapping, pinch/rotation support, and other features.
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An SGI fan and Phoronix reader happened to have an old set of SGI tapes dating back to the 90's regarding "Tech Talk" and "KGSI Radio" on SGI wares. The Phoronix reader, Steven Hill, digitized these recordings and obtained permission to release them from SGI after formally being marked confidential.
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AMD has published a second version of their open-source Linux driver code for exposing the "VCE" video engine on modern Radeon GPUs under Linux via OpenMAX for accelerated H.264 video encoding.
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The Radeon R600 Gallium3D driver has picked up support for another OpenGL extension that's mandated by the OpenGL 4.1 specification.
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For those curious how AMD's Catalyst Linux performance is doing as we get 2014 underway with the first Catalyst 14.1 beta, here are benchmarks from nine different AMD Radeon graphics cards under Ubuntu Linux and running this latest publicly available driver when looking at both the OpenGL graphics and OpenCL compute performance.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- GNU/Linux Does Not Need Social Control Media to Succeed
- When it comes to Social Control Media, Richard Stallman was right
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 163 Out of 200: Attack on Computer Science and on Computer Security (or Associating Back Doors and Kill Switches With "Security")
- Nowadays there are many who pretend to be security professionals
- No Allure in Omarchy, the Political Hyenas Only Give it More Free Publicity
- To me, Omarchy seems like a weak project because of the slop (an HR problem)
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- The Register MS Has Just Published Paid Spam That Says "AI" 19 Times
- 1.5 hours ago
- Mainstream Media is Paid to Link "AI" Criticism/Boosting to Jeffrey Epstein Enablers, in Effect Showing How Corrupt This Media Became
- Many readers will have noticed what was a paid-for PR campaign of a global scale
- RSS is King: Why Having Subscribers or Followers in Sites You Neither Own Nor Control is Loss of Autonomy and Search is Mostly Slop (Plagiarising Sites, Not Linking to Them)
- Because digital connections in third parties aren't assets; they endow another party with tremendous power over people (e.g. MElon getting to decide who can and cannot reach people or what messages to "dim down")
- Claims of Tens of Thousands of 'Silent Layoffs' at IBM (and Red Hat)
- Looking at recent activity in thelayoff.com, about 80% of the comments and posts are about PIPs
- Links 27/08/2026: "Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops" and Microsoft's GitHub Actions Breaks Down Again (Too Many Layoffs, Loss of Knowledge)
- Links for the day
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- Narrowing down to desktops and laptops, and judging by Web requests that go through Clownflare, many people there use GNU/Linux or Google's 'bastardised' version of it (with spyware preloaded)
- Richard Stallman Complains That Linux Gives a Bad Name to GNU and Asks for Feedback on What's Wrong with Systemd (and Wayland)
- Maybe some people want to send him a detailed, polite explanation
- Increasing Focus on Patent Injustices
- We'll soon cover the EPO a lot more
- There's No "Next XBox"
- Nothing comes ahead except layoffs and price hikes
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 26, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, August 26, 2026
- Gemini Links 27/08/2026: Conditioning, Lagrange 1.21, and Computer Games
- Links for the day
- Links 26/08/2026: Patent Troll InterDigital Utilises Software Patents in Unconstitutional Court, "WikiHow Launches Copyright Infringement Suit Against" LLM Plagiarism
- Links for the day
- The Register MS Has New Fake Article ("SPONSORED FEATURE") With "AI" 21 Times In It
- The Register MS is one among many culprits
- Gemini Links 26/08/2026: “Doomsday Clock”, Rwanda Genocide, and Boasting About Using LLMs Instead of Writing Code (Due to Employer's Pressure)
- Links for the day
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- the crackdown on Nitter means we should all avoid accessing or linking to x.com (Twitter)
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- They say "jealousy is the sincerest form of flattery"
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- combined population is measured at 44,182,048
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- To become a CEO at IBM one must lie
- Controlling Culture and Social Behaviour by Digital Locks
- if you don't fully control the technology in your possession, then you're not using that technology, this technology covertly uses you
- Goodbye, Dolly
- This week we say "goodbye, Dolly."
- Links 26/08/2026: Election Bribery (aka Vote-Buying) Deemed "OK" in the US, "Nitter is Shutting Down After a Cease and Desist Letter" by MElon
- Links for the day
- Analogue So Much Better and Faster
- From what we can gather, the tram ticketing system does not use Windows; we never saw it crashing or rebooting (or showing some Windows logo) in decades, so we assume it runs some kind of Linux
- Linux Today Dumped All Social Control Media Last December
- Linux Today seems to have concluded that all Social Control Media is just a waste of time
- Don't Say X.com is OK Because People Can Access It by Alternative Means
- Can Mozilla please clarify who inside Mozilla greenlit a return to X.com?
- The Reach of techrights.org Is Increasing
- We are on the side of women victims
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 162 Out of 200: An Outline of Events
- An outline of events
- Pushed to Live
- We still have some other work - stuff related to the editing of pages - which is work in progress and has been subjected to testing for many months
- GNU/Linux Measured at 10% in Germany, Based on Cloudflare
- It's peaking late at night
- Richard Stallman's GNU Project Began 42 Years Ago With GNU Emacs and More
- GNU Project announced almost 43 years ago (next month it's the anniversary)
- Fake Articles "Sponsored by HPE" Published in The Register MS
- Selling proprietary products as 'alternatives' to other proprietary products
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 25, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, August 25, 2026
- Gemini Links 26/08/2026: Journal Plans and Extending Finger Protocol
- Links for the day
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- If one was to assert that "Linux == Android" or "Android == Linux" (it's not that simple), then "Linux" already accounts for about 30% of Web requests
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- Of course Garrett not being able to afford his own case is a key factor here
- Links 25/08/2026: "U.S. Marines Cancel Drill With South Korea", "UK Prime Minister Burnham Arrives in Ukraine"
- Links for the day
- Not for the First Time This Week, Site Called "It's FOSS" is Promoting Software That is NOT FOSS (And It Knows It)
- Is this an editorial choice? Advertising? What is it?
- Gemini Links 25/08/2026: Geometry and FidoNet History, "Goodbye I2P and Yggdrasil, Welcome Telnet!"
- Links for the day
- Links 25/08/2026: Microsoft Salaries Leaked Again, "Oasis Photograph Sparks Copyright Lawsuit"
- Links for the day
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- This discredits any publisher that plays along
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- it'll be 43 next month
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 161 Out of 200: Low Standards in Defamation Cases Just Muddy the Waters and Distract From Legitimate Cases
- The judge at the trial said that Garrett's case was a waste of the court's money
- Rolling Out Some Changes Soon
- To the regular reader no change will be seen
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 24, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, August 24, 2026
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