Author: Ian Palmer
It’s that time of the week, and we’re coming at you with updates from the Linux Kernel, GNOME, KDE and Mozilla circles. Several things have recently crossed the developers lists, including: new Prism54 drivers for Linux; new accounting system updates; scheduler updates, including a few tools that will allow you to compare various scheduler offerings for 2.6; GNOME 2.6.2; useful information for DCOP beginners; and the trials and tribulations of Firefox localization.
Linux Kernel
- By the time you read this, the new Prism54 drivers will have hit CVS for Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6. If you are interested in details on the latest release, drop by the Prism54 website for more information.
- Updates to the forcedeth Gigabit Ethernet driver were posted by Manfread Spraul on June 30.
- The Precise Accounting features, originally announced for Linux 2.4, have now been ported to Linux 2.6.7. These patches add, as the name implies, more precise CPU usage accounting to the kernel.
- Having problems mounting DVDs with files greater than 2-4GB under Linux? a few inode adjustments from Andries Brouwer should fix the problem.
- Erik Jacobson posted his Process Aggregates patch for Linux 2.6.7, this week. It adds a mechanism for grouping arbitrary processes in the Linux kernel. Some examples of process aggregation include job, and Comprehensive System Accounting.
- Red Hat has re-released it’s GFS cluster filesystem (and related projects) under the GPL.You can find more information (including patches for 2.4 and 2.6), on the CFS project’s homepage.
- There is a new Enhanced Linux System Accounting patch for Linux 2.6.7 out, as of June 25. This patch adds functionality to perform accounting on a group of processes. There is also a paper describing the differences between ELSA and CSA available, if you’d like to read it.
- Marcelo Tosatti baptizes Linux 2.4.27-rc2 on Jun 25.
- Con Kolvias released v7.8 of the Staircase scheduler for Linux 2.6.7 on June 30. While on the topic of schedulers, Peter Williams posted his CPU scheduler evaluation tool on June 28, which can be used to compare the performance of the Staircase Scheduler against the Process Based scheduler. There is also a GUI interface that you can use to switch between the 2 schedulers and adjust the tunable parameters for each. Additionally, William Lee Irwin posted his schedprof for Linux 2.6.7, on June 25. Finally, there were a few interesting discussions about schedulers: a conversation about how high priority nice values work and how they can be tuned; and a broad overview on the new 2.6 scheduling features.
- Jon Maloy announced the availability of the Transparent Inter Process Communication protocol on June 28.
GNOME
- Here’s some helpful code for Gnumeric users. If you ever have use of permuting a range of cells, here is a cell permutation script in Python that should do the trick.
- Debian users with icon problems in Nautilus may want to read this message for potential solutions. If only the volume icons seem to be missing, try adjusting the right gconf setting and see if that helps.
- Fresh from the software factory:
- Net Integration Technologies released an Evolution connector for ExchangeIt, pm June 25, which allows Evolution users to connect to a Nitix server and share calendars, contacts and task lists.
- The Gnome Desktop and Developer Platform reached version 2.6.2 on June 28. Which includes a new releases across the whole GNOME software spectrum.
- ooo-build v1.1.60 was released on June 29. This package contains utilities that simplify the build and install process for OpenOffice.
- Gazpacho v0.1.0 was released on June 30. It is a GUI builder for the GTK+ library.
- GNOME System Tools v0.34.0, a set of GNOME configuration utilities for Unix, was released on June 30.
KDE
- Having problems with KDM and session types in KDE 3.2.2? If so, maybe this message on the proper configuration of KDM session types will be of some use.
- Gentoo users who are looking to have JuK output to GStreamer instead of aRts should find these compilation instructions helpful.
- Kevin Krammer posted some helpful information on DCOP this week for those of you interested in that particular portion of the KDE framework.
- Shaun Jackman has written a KIO-slave to read diffs. It can show a directory listing of all files changed by a patch. As it is an early release, it currently it only supports uncompress context diff files. Shaun is currently looking for contributors to assist him in this project.
- Fabrice Mous posted an interesting message on the kde-enterprise list about OpenMFG, an Open Source ERP/MRP package which has now been ported to Qt. Yet another example of how there is room in the Enterprise for Open Source.
Mozilla
- It seems that localization of Firefox has been a problem. If you are interested in following this issue, you can follow the current discussion on localizing Firefox.
- Norvin Adams has custom versions of Firefox and Thunderbird up which are designed to appeal to people who have been using Internet Explorer and Outlook. If you’re looking for an alternative browser, or would like to introduce Microsoft users to the world of Mozilla, these packages might be a good place to start.
- A helpful usability tip: you can set up Mozilla keywords as abbreviations for commonly used URLs. Less typing in the address bar is always a good thing.
- Netscape users who used PGP and would like to import their keys for use with GnuPG (for example, you’ve switched from Netscape for Windows to Mozilal on Linux) can still have their keys imported.
