Drama in the Linux world Linus vs Cox; trouble at CentOS

After a dispute with Linus Torvalds, the long time developer and Linux kernel maintainer Alan Cox has stopped development of the Linux TTY subsystem. A debate took place on the Linux kernel mailing list over the question of whether changes in the TTY code should, or could, affect the operation of existing programs

Dispute between Linux gurus Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds



Open Letter to Lance Davis

July 30, 2009 04:39 UTC

This is an Open Letter to Lance Davis from fellow CentOS Developers

It is regrettable that we are forced to send this letter but we are left with no other options. For some time now we have been attempting to resolve these problems:

You seem to have crawled into a hole ... and this is not acceptable.

You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.

You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.

You have, it seems, sole 'Founders' rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.

When I (Russ) try to call the phone numbers for UK Linux, and for you individually, I get a telco intercept 'Lines are temporarily busy' for the last two weeks. Finally yesterday, a voicemail in your voice picked up, and I left a message urgently requesting a reply. Karanbir also reports calling and leaving messages without your reply.

Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.

Clearly the project dies if all the developers walk away.

Please contact me, or any other signer of this letter at once, to arrange for the required information to keep the project alive at the 'centos.org' domain.

Sincerely,

Russ Herrold
Ralph Angenendt
Karanbir Singh
Jim Perrin
Donavan Nelson
Tim Verhoeven
Tru Huynh
Johnny Hughes

http://www.centos.org/
Also on the website, it states:

Facts Regarding CentOS and the Open Letter to Lance Davis
- CentOS is not Dead or going away.

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"Which linux desktop for you?" and "an open source answer to Google Apps"

GNOME, KDE, and Xfce: Which Desktop is Right for You?

OpenGoo: An Open Source Answer To Google Apps




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5 reasons Microsoft is afraid of Linux

5 reasons Microsoft is afraid of Linux.

Maybe "WILL be" is a better choice of words. Right now the market share isn't too concerning for them, I'm sure. But I bet they are looking forward.







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Windows pricing is so jacked up...

Link

Monopoly lets you determine your own pricing, I guess...

Until then, let me just say that a good desktop Linux, like Ubuntu 9.04, Fedora 11, and openSUSE 11.1 won't cost you a penny and that when Apple upgrades its operating system to Snow Leopard, it will cost you $29. Period. No extra charges. No half-a-dozen different versions with different requirements and features sets. Apple and the Linux vendors just deliver the goods, not a beating with their desktop operating system offerings. Too bad Microsoft won't follow their lead. Of course, so long as Windows users are willing to pay to be abused, I guess we can count on Microsoft continuing to beat on them.

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Linux Review: Mandriva 2009.1

this was originally posted on July 3rd... I have come back to edit it as I gave Mandriva another shot. Click "read more" to see the update

Mandriva

This was really a disappointment. I really wanted to like this distro, but that just wasn't in the cards.

The liveCD booted up nicely, came up to an attractive desktop. Everything seemed to work right out of the box. However, Firefox did crash a few times--but I figured this would be resolved once the OS was actually installed.



I really liked the "linux control center", and rpmDrake looked pretty cool (click "read more" below for a couple more screenshots).

After playing around a little more, I decided to go ahead and install. It plodded along normally...and then froze. nothing at all was happening, and I had to shutdown. This was a good way along with the install process, too.

Conclusion:
It may have been a hardware conflict or something of that sort, so I will definitely be trying out Mandriva again. In the liveCD, I didn't see anything that would particularly make me want to switch from Ubuntu, but it does look interesting!









Mandriva

-----------------------------------------------------------------
July 5th - Re-review

So I decided to give Mandriva another chance. I tried to install again, and it did freeze, but I let it sit for long enough and it unfroze and actually completed installation. However, then I messed up the part of installing the bootloader... Mandriva did not show alongside my Ubuntu installation. Doh! So I went ahead and did the install again, but this time there was no Ubuntu alongside the "linux" entry (which I renamed Mandriva). Luckily I had made a backup of /boot/grub/menu.lst so I added my ubuntu entries back in.







NOW...everything is working normally. So far, no firefox crashes. The updater is doing lots of updates. System is up-to-date.

I don't really use a lot of software, but it seems like everything that I use was already included:

• the Gimp
• Openoffice
• Firefox
• Brasero
• Pidgin

I did have to install gParted, though.

this seems like a pretty solid OS, and it seems to have several things that I like...

• video drivers installed (although not totalliy free [as in freedom], it works!)
• with the "Linux Control Center" it looks as though setting up Samba MS Windows shares and otherwise connecting to MS Windows is made to be pretty easy
• the RPMDrake package manager looks like it works well, as does the software updater
• good amount of software options in the rpmDrake repositories

That's about all I can say, really. It WORKS, and it would do everything I need to do. Although there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with Mandriva (aside from the initial install flop), there is not anything that "draws" me to it over any other distro. For now I most certainly prefer Ubuntu (or even Fedora).


Forums/Linux Reviews


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Celebrating freedom with open source

Celebrating freedom with open source

Happy Independence day to my US readers. This holiday is a celebration of the United States adoption of the Declaration of Independence which declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Of course many countries have similar celebrations serving a similar event in their history. And with this celebration, I thought it would be a good day to remind everyone what open source is all about…at least on a fundamental, non-TCO-ROI level.

Freedom.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/
# Date: July 4th, 2009
# Author: Jack Wallen


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funny because it's true: Microsoft reminds us that Windows is f*cking expensive

Microsoft reminds us that Windows is f*cking expensive

also another related article:
Microsoft punishes Linux, Mac and white box PC builders

This one is pretty funny... mostly about a guy that bought a Gateway PC and tried to run Vista...and what ensued...
It Is Like a Cow in That I Can’t Use It to Get Work Done

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Linux, anyone? - Part 2

So now I have my stable LTS version of Ubuntu, which I love since it is low maintenance. However, I just keep wanting more. I just LOVE the concept of open source software, and would really like to be more involved. So, henceforth, what I am planning to do is test several different distributions of Linux. This will help me get a good feel for what I want/need, as well as boost my knowledge of how everything works. One day I may even create my own distribution...who knows... That is a lot of work, though.

I have DistroWatch to thank for information, reviews, and links to the different distros.
Also Raiden's Realm for reliable reviews and detailed information.

So... here is the list of distributions I will experiment with, and will try to review as I am able:

• Linux Mint
• Ultimate Edition
  
• CentOS
• Fedora
• Slackware
• Arch

I'm really excited about the last two, being they are the most involved. We'll see how it goes, though. Wish me luck!


edit: I'll even add these to this list!

• openSuSe
• Puppy
• Sidux
• Sabayon
• PC Linux OS (PCLOS)
  

Go here to check out the forums for an updated list of the Linux OSs I am going to try out.
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Linux, anyone?

I've been using Linux for several years...pretty much since college. Mostly on and off until 2 years ago,though, dual-booting with Windows. Then I went full steam ahead, and no longer use Windows at all (except at work...where I have to).

The first Linux distribution ("distro") I remember using was Red Hat. I think I still have the CDs somewhere. I struggled, and didn't really know what I was doing, but I still had Windows so it was okay.

As time progressed, updates kept coming, and Linux evolved. It got both easier and better.

I stopped using Red Hat, and tried out openSuse. I did not really care for openSuSe at all. I think this was version 10.2

At the suggestion of a friend, I tried Ubuntu. It was great. I was still using off and on at this point, and at one point got pretty into computer games, and stopped logging into Linux for a while. And then I logged in one day and updated. I forget what version I upgraded from/to (maybe 6.10 to 7.04? and then to 7.10?), but it had been a while. The new version was GREAT. the wireless actually worked, the NVIDIA driver worked also. everything was more as it should be, with less customization on my end. I've been hooked ever since. I am currently using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS "Hardy Heron."

The LTS is "long term support", which means it stays stable longer because it is updated less often, while getting security updates and bug fixes for longer. good stuff.

I am going somewhere with this, but I think I'll wait to update tomorrow. keep you hangin ;-)









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