One thing that I love about running a Linux based system is the rate of advancement and the ingenious features and functions that are incorporated into the kernel from opensource developers and development groups. Through an IRC conversation I was referred to check out the LinuxPMI project, Linux Process Migration Infrastructure.

With my limited attention span it is sometimes hard for me to find something that holds my interest, but this project has definitely done that.   For an explanation of the goal I will refer to the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxPMI):

“You may have a network of 10 computers and there is one user working on each machine (node). 9 users are working on simple tasks that do not necessary use their machine to the full potential. 1 user is working on a program that spawns a lot of jobs that would normally overload the computer. Since we have 9 computers on the network that have a lot of free resources, they can basically take over some of the jobs from the one computer that would normally be overloaded. In other words, LinuxPMI will migrate jobs from busy computers to computers that are able to perform the same task faster. Even if all 10 users were using their machines for heavy tasks, it could be that not all machines are fully occupied at the same time, and LinuxPMI will use these to reduce load on other machines.”

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This is in response the blog post at http://www.linux.com/community/blogs/linux-marketing-and-competition.html, which offers some insight and methods to properly market Linux.

 Many of the loyal Linux users have been trying to market Linux to their frineds, families, co-workers, etc..  In most cases our efforts are ignored on the basis that the users do not want to learn anything new.  Public marketing can help us to spread the word, but as with most things word of mouth is the best method to get people's attention.

 I have been helping co-workers by fixing their infected, corrupted and improperly configured windows systems for quite a few years now, during that time I have gotten very close to saying I won't touch windows but I care too much about properly helping the uninformed to do that. That caring is the primary reason why I try to get people to use Linux based distros.

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From the Slackware-Current Changelog:

Fri May 8 18:49:03 CDT 2009
Hello folks! This batch of updates includes the newly released KDE 4.2.3,
but more noticeably it marks the first departure from the use of gzip for
compressing Slackware packages. Instead, we will be using xz, based on
the LZMA compression algorithm. xz offers better compression than even
bzip2, but still offers good extraction performance (about 3 times better
than bzip2 and not much slower than gzip in our testing). Since support
for bzip2 has long been requested, support for bzip2 and the original lzma
format has also been added (why not?), but this is purely in the interest
of completeness -- we think most people will probably want to use either
the original .tgz or the new .txz compression wrappers. The actual
Slackware package format (which consists of the layout within the package
envelope) has not changed, but this is the first support within Slackware's
package tools for using alternate compression algorithms.

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I found an interesting article on PC World from Keir Thomas listing the 7 most common reasons people give for quitting Linux, in which he offers explanations and rebuttals for the listed reasons.

 Read the original article - http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/164205/top_7_reasons_people_quit_linux.html

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It was announced in an article on InternetNews.com that Microsoft is planning to work with hardware vendors to develop a complete security stack that includes software and hardware components.  This stack is currently being testing in a Washington school district, so that means that the hardware and software components already exist.

This news causes some concern on my part. If some new hardware is encoded with programming that only lets a user execute applications that are verified through the Microsoft stack,  then what about the Linux users that utilize the same hardware. Would the hardware fail to function since our systems don't have the appropriate MS libraries?  or would the manufacturers build secondary programming that will allow the hardware to work with non-Microsoft operating systems and applications that do not have the verification.

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I enjoyed some of the submissions for the "We're Linux" video contest.  Specifically I enjoyed the first and second place submissions.  In reading the announcements about I contest I noted that the winner won a tip to conference, but what I would like to know is if there are any plans to use their videos as a television commercials to help promote the use of Linux based operating systems.

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