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
- The Register MS Helps Prove the "AI" Frenzy in the Media is Evidence of Compromised Media, Not Legitimate "Revolution"
- Ignore the hype and carry on
- Microsoft Insiders on "Effectively Being Silently Laid Off From Microsoft"
- People are laid off by the thousands without the media uttering a word or the companies confirming anything
- Microsoft's XBox CEO Asha Sharma Tells Staff That Many Thousands of Layoffs Are in Fact "Return to Growth"
- Get it? Layoffs are "growth".
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- Gemini Links 08/10/2026: Economical Thrashing, How I Killed the Earth, and Thoughts on Gemini
- Links for the day
- Links 08/10/2026: Wikimedia Bemoans Chaffbot Slop (Bots Sold as 'Agents') That Sabotage It, ICC's Taliban Warrants
- Links for the day
- Links 08/10/2026: Slop Scammers (Pushers) Inflate Hosting Bills and "YouTube Testing Everything"
- Links for the day
- London Became Synonymous With the Royal Courts of Justice
- London used to be a place where we go on holiday/retreat/break; nowadays we have only one destination there
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXIII - Extremism in the Mix and Getting the Police Involved
- In 2012 I was getting heckled a lot for opposing back doors in Linux; it has not stopped since
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 07, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 07, 2026
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: On Feeling Guilty Leaving the US, Multinet, and Limiting Net Usage
- Links for the day
- The Cyber Show Explains the Concept of "Data Rape"
- a metaphor some might find crude
- FREE BEER is Still Online, But Barely Active
- 25 years ago or even 20 years ago many spoke of open/free beer (or "COLA")
- Syria: GNU/Linux Has Surged to 8% "Market Share"
- I don't have a convincing explanation for this
- IBM Dimming Down the Lights on IBM Consulting, No Knowledge or Experience Required
- They just "ride" the (old) brand, that's all
- Statement on American SLAPP
- Crossposted from schestowitz.com
- Today The Register MS Published "SPONSORED FEATURE" and "SPONSORED POST" With "AI" 31 Times in Them
- This isn't a "Reality" or "Era of AI", it's a paid-for spam campaign
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: Nostalgia, Neutral Map, and Shorthanding
- Links for the day
- Links 07/10/2026: Unrest in France and Rumours of Plague in Russia
- Links for the day
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXII - The Lozza Problem (in Length)
- Garrett's case was a waste of the Court's money
- JavaScript in Richard Stallman's Web Site
- For search he is using CGI, not JavaScript
- EPO's Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Plans Presentation Next Week (Coinciding With Apparent Coronation of 'Cocaine King' Campinos)
- They've outsourced this session to the dictator's spying eye
- The GNOME Foundation's Code of Conduct Has Been Misused to Hide Corruption
- People who value free speech and freedom of expression won't touch social control media with a 10-foot bargepole
- Voting for Freedom of the Press
- American elections happen every 4 years
- What Brett Wilson LLP and Matt Garrett Don't Want People to See/Read
- Book-burning is counterproductive
- Book-Burning Mindset Does Not Work
- It makes the suppressed voices more widely known
- Microsoft's XBox in 'Freefall'
- XBox is practically finished
- Slop is Plagiarism
- Plagiarism is not "theft" and copyright infringement is not "piracy"
- IBM is Almost Defunct
- IBM is doomed. It just tries to test how much more patience the shareholders have.
- Criminalisation of Journalism
- "Journalist Derya Okatan arrested in Turkey for allegedly possessing classified material"
- Brigading Against Women - Part XXI - Hiding Behind the Veil of "Privacy" After Telling Nazi Things in IRC Channels of Techrights and Physically Threatening People
- To merely explain an abuse (or crime) requires naming people; that's a fundamental tenet of reporting
- Links 07/10/2026: Quitting Smartphone and "Meta's Muse Is Spying on All Your Friends and Family"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 07/10/2026: Greed, In Praise of Zotero, and The de-Google Path
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 06, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, October 06, 2026
- Microsoft Hiring Only on the Cheap
- Much of the same can be said about GAFAM and IBM
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Nightfall Express, Shorthanding, and Raspberry Pi Desktop Gets a Debian Trixie Refresh
- Links for the day
- 20th Anniversary Next Month
- We are currently trying to agree on a plan for next month's celebrations
- Taking Photos With Richard Stallman (RMS)
- What's the point?
- GAFAM Attack on FreeDesktop
- Now they push lots of LLM slop into Linux
- EPO Union Bemoans Lack of Social Dialogue as Dictator Wishes to Govern Forever (No Elections, No Rivals), Hide the Many Issues
- "Exchange of open letters"
- GNU/Linux Has Risen in France Since the Order to Adopt GNU/Linux (in Public Services)
- We can expect the same in countries like Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands
- On Microsoft Hiring Freeze or No Permanent Jobs at Microsoft Anymore (Amid Many Silent Layoffs)
- Microsoft has changed what it can offer workers
- IBM Cannot Hide the Layoffs Forever
- we welcome whistleblower to tell us more and send us documents related to that
- EPO's Central Staff Committee Asking The Council to Get Rid of Corrupt Campinos
- We'll be covering EPO scandals around the time of that meeting
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: EU Kids Act, Practicality of Gemini, and Games
- Links for the day
- Links 06/10/2026: Data Breaches Epidemic and Turkey Blocking Journalists
- Links for the day
- The Whole Point of Computing is That Computers Are Deterministic (Speed With Predictable Accuracy)
- Unlike stochastic parrots that stochastically utter out lies
- It's Not a Linux Back Door If It's an Unpatched Device
- "Linux Backdoor" is a glaring misfit, a possibly 'obscene' term
- What is a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA)? When Law Firms Become the Litigants.
- And the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) needs to be more serious about tackling this
- Brigading Against Women - Part XX - Attempts by Lozza to Deplatform Techrights and Tux Machines Only Days After I Sued Garrett and My Wife Also Sued Garrett (Shortly Before the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Joined)
- in 2024
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- Links for the day
- "SIRIUS CORPORATION LIMITED" as Evidence of the Financial Shell Games in the UK
- Rianne and I still have some fond memories of the time the ex-wife of the CEO treated us like human beings
- Lots of Silent Layoffs at IBM Last Week, Employees Explain Patterns of Those Impacted
- It wasn't just gossip, it actually happened even if the media chose to look the other way (as usual)
- Gemini Links 06/10/2026: Fighting for Purpose, Gemlogs, and Gemtext
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 05, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, October 05, 2026