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
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- Set aside severe performance issues, poor handling of "edge cases", general bugs, lack of compatibility, and even crashes
- Huge Strike at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Coming Friday (May 1st)
- International Worker’s day
- Dr. Andy Farnell on Why Calling Slop or Chaff "Hey Hi" (AI) Harm Us All, Except for "Ten or Twenty Rich Industrialists"
- "words to avoid"
- Internet Trolls Likely Trying to Distract From the Demise of IBM, Problems With Red Hat
- there seems to be trolling online aimed at suppressing discussion
- Debian Upgrade Coming Up (Soon)
- Yesterday we contacted the datacentre staff about it
- Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part III - Threats From Burner Accounts Formally Treated as a Crime
- Countries that cannot preserve freedom from self-censorship are countries where free press ultimately cannot prevail
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- "A single witness shall not rise up against a person regarding any wrongdoing or any sin that he commits; on the testimony of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed." (Deuteronomy 19-21)
- The spouse of Garrett repeatedly points out that Garrett can barely code or can only do so very poorly
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 57 Out of 200: 5RB and Brett Wilson LLP Made the Garrett and Graveley Particulars of Claims a Lot Like Photocopies!
- They seem very much irritated that I speak about this
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- Links for the day
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- Corporate Media Did Not Specify What Microsoft Means by "Buyouts" (Layoffs), It May Be Hardly Different From Severance
- Time will tell, but investigative journalism hardly exists anymore, so we won't hold our breath
- The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part V - "Diversity" and "Inclusion" at EPO Means Sleeping With Sister of "Cocaine Communication Manager" and Making Them Millionaires
- Remember that top applicants or key stakeholders of the EPO are already complaining about a lack of quality
- Links 25/04/2026: Fake GAFAM Valuations (Gripping the Market Based on False Accounting), "Evidence Isn't Just for Research", and "Putin Defends Mobile Internet Outages"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 24, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, April 24, 2026
- Gemini Links 25/04/2026: 3.4k+ Capsules, Microsoft Layoffs, Call for Nuclear Disarmament, "Internet is Sad and Lonely"
- Links for the day
- Links 24/04/2026: Zelenskyy Says Ukraine's War Position "Most Stable", Samsung Workers on Strike Due to Pay
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- Recent Happenings at IBM Reaffirm Rumours About the CEO; He Might be Resigning (or Pushed Out) Soon
- If the rumours are true (no, we did not check those tax records for ourselves), it's not unthinkable that IBM is already doing what Apple did months ago
- Gemini Links 24/04/2026: Public Reticulum Gateway Node, Smol Computers, and Old E-mail
- Links for the day
- Links 24/04/2026: Intel Abandoning Computer Freedom (Even Further), Iran Reports That American Software and Hardware Remotely Sabotaged/Hijacked During War
- Links for the day
- 24/7 Wall St. Editor-In-Chief and CEO Calls IBM Is "America’s Worst Big Tech Company", Talent is Leaving, Supposedly Strategic Units Culled
- 21 hours ago by Douglas A. McIntyre
- The Great Wonders of Slop "Efficiency"
- Thankfully nothing was lost in the transmission and lots of work (datacentre emissions) got "done"
- IBM's Debt Increased Over $5 Billion in 3 Months While IBM Laid Off Many in Europe, US, Confluent, HashiCorp, and Red Hat
- An increase of $5,000,000,000+ in debt in just 3 months!
- IBMers Expect Another Giant Wave of Layoffs, Talk (and Sing) About the PIPs
- The media won't be covering the key facts
- Drama at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Week
- We'll be covering the EPO quite a lot this weekend and next week
- As We Predicted, Francophonie Countries in the EU and Outside the EU Dumping Microsoft for National Security Reasons
- We expected Belgium or some other Francophonie place to do so next
- Even to Microsoft Insiders It Seems Like XBox Has Already Died or Surrendered to the Japanese Companies
- Now the Microsoft layoffs are evident for people to see
- EPO Cocainegate Escalates - Part VI - The Strikes Go On and On (Major Strike Today)
- We'll be covering this later today in relation to what the Office dubs "ethics"
- Absolutely Terrible Journalism About Microsoft Layoffs This Week
- 7 hours ago by Leila Sheridan
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 56 Out of 200: 5RB and Brett Wilson LLP's Copy-Paste Machination for Garrett and Graveley
- Here is another straightforward example of their junior barrister overusing copy-paste on his Mac
- Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part II - Lawyers Are Not "Hired Guns" (and Should Never Act Like Ones)
- The matter is being investigated
- Nadella is Killing Microsoft. Slop Kills It Even Faster.
- A decade from now we'll look back at slop like we look back at skateboards
- Huge Microsoft Layoffs Coming Shortly (With Financial Report)
- There will be lots of slop layoffs. Be ready. It's a bubble.
- Gemini Links 24/04/2026: Data Breaches and Unofficial Gemini Protocol Specification Archive
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Offers About 10,000 of Its Senior American (Read: Expensive) Workers to be Laid Off
- How many slopfarms and media parrots play along?
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 23, 2026
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- merits public awareness and wider scrutiny
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- Links for the day
- Links 23/04/2026: YouTube Age Limits Expanded and 'Secret' Model With Bug-Finding Hype Campaign 'Leaks'
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- Media Operatives of Microsoft Paint Microsoft Layoffs as Buyouts (Intentionally False Narrative)
- Those are mass layoffs disguised as something else
- IBM's Stock Has Collapsed Over 10% in One Day, Insiders Explain What's Happening
- Today, due to a lack of time, we mostly present an outline of what people say (not IBM-sponsored media hacks with LLM slop)
- Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part I - Threats Sent From Burner Accounts Since February, Belatedly Reported to British Police
- Threats connected to Graveley or Garrett or 5RB or Brett Wilson LLP [...] We're not dealing with a law firm here; we're dealing with the underworld
- EPO Cocainegate Escalates - Part V - Where Does the António Campinos 'Family Affair' Go From Here?
- Do cocaine in public, get caught, take paid "sick leave", come back to lead Europe's second-largest organisation
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