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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The Radeon R600 Gallium3D driver has picked up support for another OpenGL extension that's mandated by the OpenGL 4.1 specification.
-
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
- Ageism in Tech
- Your protocol is "old"...
- In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
- Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
- Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
- Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
- 2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
- By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
- Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
- the sort of mentality we're up against
- The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
- They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
-
- Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
- We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
- Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
- PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
- More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
- Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
- Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
- There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
- The History of Daily Links and Politics
- "I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
- Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
- Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
- "The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
- There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
- Gemini Links 19/07/2025: Git For Authors and Filtered Antenna
- Links for the day
- UEFI 'Secure' Boot Abuses by Microsoft to be Brought Up in the UK High Court in 3 Months
- we'll seek compensation
- Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
- If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
- Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
- Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x
- Lupa Will Soon Know of 3,100+ Active Gemini Capsules
- And some people in the "Small Web" try to tell us that Gemini is dying?
- The Slopfarms Are Taking Real News Articles and Replacing Them With Lies Generated by Machines
- Bluntly speaking, Fagioli is nothing short of an online scammer
- Links 19/07/2025: Techtarget to Cull 10% of Staff, New Threats to Free Press in the US (Home of Dangerous and Violent Stranglers From Microsoft)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/07/2025: "Climate Justice” and Forking Programs
- Links for the day
- What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
- focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
- Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
- "When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
- Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
- "Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
- The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
- "Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
- linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
- They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
- Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
- Links for the day
- Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
- Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
- Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
- Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
- The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
- Morale at Microsoft is really bad
- Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
- Not bad for this "Fosschild"
- Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
- Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
- Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
- Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
- Links for the day
- How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
- Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
- Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
- Will the cutoff date be extended again?
- Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
- Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
- Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
- Links for the day
- [Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
- Brett Wilson LLP in space
- Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
- There are apparently no laws against that
- Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
- Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
- Social Control Media Productivity
- Snapping photos of the bone
- The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
- That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
- Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
- "As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
- Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
- Microsoft is in a freefall
- Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025