Linux Kernel

Linux kernel 2.6.29 was released this week and sports hundreds of changes, bug fixes and new functionality, but one change sure to raise a few eyebrows is the addition of Tuz, the Tasmanian Devil disguised as a penguin who takes over from Tux as the mascot for the release.

While you were likely to be opening up Christmas presents, Linus Torvalds was giving Linux users around the world a special present: the release of the next major Linux kernel: Linux 2.6.28.

The Linux Foundation is holding its first End User Summit beginning Monday in New York, in an effort to bring Linux kernel developers in closer contact with users at Wall Street institutions and other major companies.

Does anyone really know what will be better in Windows 7? I don't and I follow Windows almost as closely as I do Linux. With Linux, on the other hand, we know exactly what we're getting well in advance of its arrival. In this latest Linux kernel, I see several outstanding new features that have been coming down the road for some time.

More than 135 Linux kernel developers have signed a document in protest of vendors that create closed-source code modules for the kernel, calling the practice "harmful and undesirable."

The kernel developers are generally quite good about responding to security problems. Once a vulnerability in the kernel has been found, a patch comes out in short order; system administrators can then apply the patch (or get a patched kernel from their distributor), reboot the system, and get on with life knowing that the vulnerability has been fixed. It is a system which works pretty well.

Chris Mason has recently released Btrfs v0.10, which contains a number of interesting new features. In general, Btrfs has come a long way since LWN first wrote about it last June. Btrfs may, in some years, be the filesystem most of us are using - at least, for those of us who will still be using rotating storage then. So it bears watching.

As it approaches its one-year anniversary next month of selling laptop and desktop computers pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux, Dell is continuing to expand the fledgling program to new computer models and markets.

Linux's ext4 filesystem, the successor to ext3, may well be the filesystem many of us are using a few years from now. Things have been relatively quiet on that front - at least, outside of the relevant mailing lists - but the ext4 developers have not been idle. Some of their work has now come to the surface with Ted Ts'o's posting of the ext4 merge plans for 2.6.25.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.

Workloads running on Linux servers are shifting to become more business oriented, including databases and line-of-business applications, and the operating system appears headed for measurable growth over the next three years, according to a white paper released Tuesday by IDC.