Cliff’s List Filter – May 6 – 11

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Author: Ian Palmer

Welcome again to another edition of the List Filter. While covering the Linux, GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla circles, we’ve come up with some choice bits of news this week. Among the bits we’ve saved: a new release on the fastboot (kexec) front, GNOME Office finally gets a web presence, GDM gets a 2.6 release, Linux 2.6.6 finally drops its RC surname, and the usual bag of tips, tricks and patches. As always, if you’d like us to cover
other sources, please drop us a line.

Linux Kernel

  • OSDL has announced the early release of the OSDL
    Carrier Grade Linux v3.0 Performance specification    . Those of you who work in the
    telecom industry and have an interest in deploying Linux in your infrastructure may
    want to give this document a read.

  • Developers who have been following COWlink
    (copy-on-write links) feature should be aware that Jörn Engel has released a set of patches that implement this feature as a proof-of-concept for the Linux
    kernel.

  • The Linux Test Project announces its May release on May 6.
  • 2.6.5+ users who have been having problems with lost interrupts with ide-cd, should try a tip from Alex Riesen
    and     boot
    with the ‘acpi=noirq’ option     to see if that solves their immediate problems. If that does work for you, maybe applying another ACPI IRQ fix will negate the need for the boot parameter.

  • Coders of userspace programs that need direct access to the mouse, keyboard or PS/2 ports
    should be interested in these enhancements from Tuukka Tooivonen. These patches should apply cleanly to Linux 2.6.5, and may work on later kernels.

  • Own a Crystal Sound cards and having problems with your mixer settings? Josh Parmelee submitted these corrections to the list this week. Try them out and see if they solve your problem.
  • James Smart passes along the announcement that Emulex has ported its LightPulse drivers to Linux.
  • Those of you using the VIA IrDA driver, should consider applying these memory leak fixes from Oleg Drokin.
  • Users running Bluetooth devices under 2.6.6 may be interested in this critical fix, which prevents the system from crashing when a Bluetooth device is unplugged.
  • Linux 2.6.6 was born on May 9.
  • Mikael Pettersson announces the release of version 2.7.1 of his Linux performance counters driver, perfctr.
  • Cryptology enthusiasts might be interested in a few patches from Michal Ludvig, which enables support for the VIA PadLock crypto engine in their C3 Nehemiah CPUs (PadLock ACE). There are three pieces which need to be applied to your kernel sources if you are interested in trying this out: part one. part two, and part three.
  • If you are getting a kernel oops when attempting to load the dummy network device under 2.6.6, try
    these sysfs corrections from Maneesh Soni.

  • Followers of Serial ATA support in Linux will probably appreciate Jeff Garzik’s SATA Status Report, which was released on May 10.
  • Having problems with disks still shutdown after a reboot? Rene Herman proposes the following workaround to the problem. Be sure to apply Andrew Morton’s earlier fix before applying Rene’s patch.
  • Randy Dunlap announces the latest kexec release for Linux 2.6.6. kexec allows you to load an x86 Linux kernel from an already running x86 Linux kernel.

GNOME

  • GNOME Office now has a new website. While it is still a work in progress, it still has some valuable information. Drop by and give it a look.
  • Looking for an easier way to open the properties window of the open folder, in Nautilus? Christian Neumair submits this behavior change that may help you do just that. Give it a try.
  • Users who prefer using the keyboard over the mouse may appreciate these fixes for the Nautilus user interface, also from Christian Neumair, which should fix the keyboard accelerators for most menu items.
  • If you like to use scripts from within Nautilus, be sure to place them in the right directory, or the menu options will never become visible. Thanks to Alexander Larsson for the tip.
  • Software agents discovered the following new software, this week:
    • GDM v2.6.0.2 releases its
      latest stable release on May 6. The announcement is pretty entertaining. “Exam time” can do that to the best of us.

    • Guikachu hits version 1.4.0 on May 8. It is a program that Unix users can use to create PalmOS resource files.

KDE

  • Running superkaramba but would prefer that it not appear on top? There is a bug in the program with a simple fix that is shown in this article, as Thomas McGuire points out. (Be sure to follow the instructions at around paragraph 6).

Mozilla

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