Linux

Now that Memorial Day has come and gone, summer is unofficially here. What better way to celebrate than with another rousing "Year of Linux on the desktop" debate?! Sure enough -- it may be an oldie, but it's clearly a goodie, and in recent days, bloggers far and wide have been ready and willing to entertain the question again.

In fact, two such topics have dominated the Linux blogs lately, and they're inherently related. First came the well-worn question of whether Linux needs marketing, a topic that was kicked off when Danijel Orsolic noted that "Linux is not an OS."

Given the number of Linux distros out there, how did we pick just 14? Some were obvious; the likes of Slackware and Debian have been around since Linus was in short trousers. SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva and Ubuntu are similarly too significant to ignore. What about the others?

The next major Linux version will include new Wi-Fi drivers for chips from Atheros, Intel, Intersil/Prism and Marvell and new drivers for Intel LAN chips. The kernel will also in future make better use of energy saving features in the latest Wi-Fi hardware and Oracle is contributing code for the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) cluster protocol.

Recently I started work on a new Ubuntu tips book that will partner my existing title, Ubuntu Kung Fu. The new book is still being planned and won't be published until next year, but I thought I'd share 10 tips that are on my list to be included. If you have any others that you think would go into such a book, put them in the comments below. I'd love to hear them, as would other readers, I'm sure.

When you think of the IBM of the past and bring hackers into the picture, the two do not seem to gel. But for some years now, the ultimate American blue chip company has been concentrating on making Linux run on all its servers, storage and middleware.

It does so in its own inimitable, understated way. You won't find a lot of media coverage of IBM's Linux business; things happen quietly. IBM's version of Tux is indicative of this as well: its Linux logo sports a white shirt, blue coat and a bow-tie.

What was Richard Stallman's greatest achievement? Some might say it's Emacs, one of the most powerful and adaptable pieces of software ever written. Others might plump for gcc, an indispensable tool used by probably millions of hackers to write yet more free software. And then there is the entire GNU project, astonishing in its ambition to create a Unix-like operating system from scratch. But for me, his single most important hack was the creation of the GNU General Public Licence.

Shortly after the release of Linux 2.6.29 last Tuesday, the kernel subsystem developers began to prepare the first changes to be merged into the main development branch for Linux 2.6.30.

After eight pre-release versions and, thanks to the holidays and LCA 2009 (linux.conf.au) a somewhat extended development phase, Linus Torvalds has now released Linux version 2.6.29. A penguin masked Tasmanian devil called Tuz will stand in as Linux mascot for this release, with the aim of drawing attention to the plight of endangered animals.

Linux evangelists point out that their chosen operating system is free – in terms of price, and in terms of personal liberties. You can make copies for any of your friends. You can run a business on it.

Now, while people exist who don’t know of anything other than Microsoft Windows, there are also those who simply have made the conscious choice not to use Linux. Just what is the big problem that prevents adoption?

When the global economic crisis unfolded last year, Linux advocates were quick to predict the rise of their favorite operating system.

However, these arguments were met by seemingly logical counter-arguments that foresaw otherwise. One of them even went as far as predicting the downfall of open-source projects. Well, contrasting forecasts like these can be treated in equal footing until the numbers finally come out.