Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

The previous 2.4 Linux kernel maintainer, Marcelo Tossati, resurrected a discussion on adding support for out of memory notifications to the Linux kernel. He explained, "AIX contains the SIGDANGER signal to notify applications to free up some unused cached memory," then noting, "there have been a few discussions on implementing such an idea on Linux, but nothing concrete has been achieved." In a request for discussion, Marcelo added, "on the kernel side Rik suggested two notification points: 'about to swap' (for desktop scenarios) and 'about to OOM' (for embedded-like scenarios)."

Ken Chen submitted a patch to reduce the memory footprint of schedstat in a thread titled, "schedstat needs a diet". He explained, "schedstat is useful in investigating CPU scheduler behavior. Ideally, I think it is beneficial to have it on all the time. However, the cost of turning it on in production system is quite high, largely due to number of events it collects and also due to its large memory footprint." His patch converted numerous unsigned long variables to unsigned int, "most of the fields probably don't need to be [a] full 64-bits on 64-bit [architectures]. Rolling over 4 billion events will most likly take a long time and user space tools can be made to accommodate that."

"This is a request to merge KGDB into the mainline kernel," Jason Wessel announced, posting a series of patches aiming toward that goal. He continued, "as of right now KGDB is comprised of 21 different patches adding in the core api and docs first and then working up to add drivers and arch specific support to KGDB. The patches were broken down into logical pieces for review and comments."

"I'm trying to keep some external drivers up to date with the kernel, and the first two weeks after the release is the worst time for me. There is no way to distinguish the current git kernel from the latest release. It's only after rc1 is released that I can use the preprocessor to check LINUX_VERSION_CODE," explained Pavel Roskin, describing the ongoing effort to keep the out of tree MadWifi driver in sync with the latest released kernel.

In How Far Behind is Linux?, WSJ writer Lee Gomes sets up a beautiful strawman about the security of GNU/Linux versus Windows and knocks it down with its own answer.

The virtual memory subsystem of a processor implements the virtual address spaces provided to each process. This makes each process think it is alone in the system. The list of advantages of virtual memory are described in detail elsewhere so they will not be repeated here. Instead this section concentrates on the actual implementation details of the virtual memory subsystem and the associated costs.

It’s been almost 200 years since Charles Babbage first started work on his difference engine, and programmable computation is fast approaching 100 years old. Over this time there has been a lot of change in software development and in this article we look at the evolutionary pressure that has shaped that.

Fred Trotter has an article in which he discusses Electronic Health Records, the Iroquois Nation's notion of considering the impact of the current generation decision 7 generations from now and Microsoft's HealthVault as well as Google's announced Personal Health Records:

All of the various clients and servers for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Community Site) are now available! Thanks TTimo for a job well done as always. You can find all the info you need on the ETQW GNU/Linux FAQ page.

Jaroslav Sykora posted a series of five patches to handle the kernel portion of what he described as "shadow directories", providing an example which utilized FUSE to access the contents of a compressed file from the command line.

Exchanging business cards is a rudimentary form of networking (the people, not the server kind). However, to get the most out of the exchange, you need a card that attracts attention and reflects the image or values you want to project.read more

Thanks to Canonical's System Builder Program, pre-installed Ubuntu Linux PCs are available throughout the world and not just from Dell. Everyone in the Linux desktop world knows that Dell now offers Ubuntu Linux 7.04 on some of its laptops and desktops. Some also know that Dell will soon be offering the latest Ubuntu, 7.10, on its systems. Dell, however, is far from the only PC builder that offers Ubuntu to its customers.

Last month I was threatened with police intervention after taking pictures of my two-year-old. Why? We were in what you might think of as analogous to an outdoor mall. It’s a former industrial complex that’s listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Today the area has been revitalized with restaurants and office space, a large greenspace in the middle, and an attractive manmade river and waterfall.

How is the third version of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) being received four months after its official release? Not well, if you believe the Evans Data survey released on September 25. However, those who concern themselves with licensing issues at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and at Palamida, a company that advises customers on issues that surround free and open software (FOSS), paint a different picture. According to these FOSS experts, adoption of GPLv3 is going as expected, and, while reasons for caution exist, the new version is likely to replace GPLv2 some time in the next few years. As for the Evans Data survey, they suggest that the information released overgeneralizes a complex situation.

OpenOffice.org Base is undoubtedly a powerful database application, but when it comes to its built-in reporting engine, words like "underpowered" and "outdated" come to mind. Fortunately, you don't have to put up with this situation any longer: with the Sun Report Builder (SRB) extension, you can add nifty reporting features based on Pentaho reporting engine -- assuming you can figure out how to use it without any help.

Press Release: Medsphere Systems Corporation today announced that all legal disputes involving the company and Steve and Scott Shreeve have been settled and resolved by mutual agreement of the parties.Medsphere looks forward to continuing the recent growth and development of the company. In recent months, Medsphere has signed four new contracts for the implementation of OpenVista, the company's comprehensive open source electronic health record (EHR) based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) VistA solution. The company recently also announced the appointment of Michael J. Doyle to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer.

The fallout from the events leading up to the recent vote on whether or not to approve Microsoft's Office Open XML documents format as an ISO standard continues unabated, more than a month after the software maker conceded it had lost that vote.

The Secure Shell (SSH) network protocol makes it easy to connect computers that are running Linux, share files, and remotely run applications. Along with an X server, it can make sharing a single computer simple on a home network. In my home, my wife and I need to share a desktop computer -- often at the same time. The computer runs Slackware Linux, and we have individual user accounts, Thunderbird email profiles, Firefox bookmarks, and other documents. Linux gives us the ability to share the computer by using multiple X Window sessions, each on its own virtual terminal. But the computer has only one monitor and one keyboard, which limits us to one user at a time.

Nokia has released the latest in its line of touchscreen Internet tablets, the N810 is the first device in this series to come with integrated GPS and a slide-out keyboard. Nokia announced the tablet, which runs on the company's Maemo Linux operating system, at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

The sincerest complement a Linux distribution can get is when the onetime CEO of a rival Linux company switches to that distribution. That’s exactly what happened when Kevin Carmony, former CEO of Linux desktop distributor Linspire, publicly announced that he’s switched to Ubuntu.