Dave Jones: “Ok, [Linux 2.5.2]pre5 gets us in sync with most of the important and easy to merge bits. Here’s a list of whats left between the trees.”

From:	 Dave Jones <davej@suse.de>
To:	 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
Subject: merge in progress.
Date:	 Mon, 31 Dec 2001 03:15:06 +0000
Cc:	 Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>

Ok, pre5 gets us in sync with most of the important and easy
to merge bits. Here's a list of whats left between the trees.


Pending:
o  Bunch of __devexit changes
o  Keith's text.lock -> .subsection changes
   Better to merge this first and see whats left broken before merging
   the __devexit changes, in case there are any more bogus ones.
o  Small EISA cleanups
o  Lots of driver updates for ieee1394, ISDN, network drivers, parport
   & paride, USB, MTD.  Hopefully the larger subsystems like USB will
   get pushed by the relevant maintainers who can explain their bits
   to Linus a lot better than I can.
o  VM updates.
o  Various documentation (Will do this last).
o  A few other small things that don't fall under any specific category.
   Code formatting cleanups etc..


Things unlikely to merge yet.
o  Alans aacraid driver (not bio aware)
o  James Simmons fbdev cleanups (needs more testing)
o  Thomas Hoods PNPBIOS work (little more testing to be sure)
o  sbp2 driver fixes from 2.4 (They break with bio)
o  Simple Boot Flag support (more work needed)
o  Small MP Table parsing changes (more testing needed)
o  Reiserfs fixes.
   (Waiting to hear back from the reiserfs folks that I did these ok)


Maybe:
o  Various other driver fixes
   Look ok, depends on next steps for bio.
o  Various sound driver updates.
   Worth doing these with ALSA hopefully on the way ?
o  Manfreds Dynamic LDT
   Needs checking that it hasn't broken x86 math-emu.
o  net core updates
   I'd rather leave this to davem, and see whats left over.
o  Large arch updates for PPC, s390/s390x & Sparc/Sparc64
   Could merge these, or wait for relevant arch maintainer
   to feed maybe newer updates to Linus.


-- 
Dave Jones.                    http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
SuSE Labs.
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Kernel.org: More cleanups and bugfixes from the bleeding edge of Linux development.

pre5:
 - Dave Jones: more merging, fix up last merge..
 - release to sync with Dave

pre4:
 - Jens Axboe: more bio updates, fix some request list bogosity under load
 - Al Viro: export seq_xxx functions
 - Manfred Spraul: include file cleanups, pc110pad compile fix
 - David Woodhouse: fix JFFS2 write error handling
 - Dave Jones: start merging up with 2.4.x patches
 - Manfred Spraul: coredump fixes, FS event counter cleanups
 - me: fix SCSI CD-ROM sectorsize BIO breakage

pre3:
 - Christoph Hellwig: scsi_register_module cleanup
 - Mikael Pettersson: apic.c LVTERR fixes
 - Russell King: ARM update (including bio update for icside)
 - Jens Axboe: more bio updates
 - Al Viro: make ready to switch bread away from kdev_t..
 - Davide Libenzi: scheduler cleanups
 - Anders Gustafsson: LVM fixes for bio
 - Richard Gooch: devfs update

pre2:
 - Al Viro: task-private namespaces, more cleanups

pre1:
 - me: revert the "kill(-1..)" change.  POSIX isn't that clear on the
   issue anyway, and the new behaviour breaks things.
 - Jens Axboe: more bio updates
 - Al Viro: rd_load cleanups. hpfs mount fix, mount cleanups
 - Ingo Molnar: more raid updates
 - Jakub Jelinek: fix Linux/x86 confusion about arg passing of "save_v86_state" and "do_signal"
 - Trond Myklebust: fix NFS client race conditions

Available at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.5/testing/patch-2.5.2-pre5.gz, 
or you can use one of the mirrors.

GNOME: “After almost 3.5 years of development and months of testing, the team is happy to release an officially stable version of Gnumeric, GNOME Office’s spreadsheet.”

    Let us emphasise _Stable_.  In the last 11 months Gnumeric has received
    bug reports from all over the world.  Of those there are :
      - 0 crashes remaining
      - 0 data corruptions remaining
      - Approximately 30 priority improvements
      - Approximately 70 enhancement requests
    From one side, our dedicated team of testers (Thanks Chema, Adrian, &
    JPablo) have beaten this release until their knuckles were bloody.
    From the other, Morten's unrelenting application of 'Purify' has
    ensured that there are no known memory leaks either.  The bug bounty
    offered on the last few releases has yielded only 10 happy drinkers.

    Weighing in at ~200,000 lines of code Gnumeric offers well tested
    import facilities from several proprietary and free spreadsheets
    including MS Excel (tm), Lotus 1-2-3 (tm), Applix (tm), Psion, Sylk,
    XBase, Oleo, and HTML.  It can also export to MS Excel (tm) along with
    several open formats such as LaTeX longtables, HTML, and roff.
    Rounding out the i/o routines is a highly configurable text
    importer/exporter to ensure that data can be transfered smoothly.  New
    formats can easily be added in a modular fashion via a plug-in.

    Gnumeric has 361 spreadsheet functions, 17 analysis tools, and 2
    solvers.  The majority are MS Excel (tm) compatible, but there are
    several (eg number theory and financial derivatives) that are unique to
    Gnumeric.  Most MS Excel (tm) functions are supported (298 out of 316).
    Although a few financial functions with insufficient documentation are
    still unimplemented.  Contributions are welcome.

    Gnumeric's internal architecture has gone through several revisions and
    should handle moderately large spreadsheets (~ 1M cells) comfortably,
    even on older hardware.  There plans for future improvements but the
    1.0.x line should be light and fast for most uses.

    Graphs are a relatively recent addition to Gnumeric but there is
    already support for MS Excel (tm) import.  Using Guppi (via Bonobo) to
    display the graphs has resulted in gorgeous anti-aliased layout.  We've
    barely scratched the surface of Guppi's feature set, and there are many
    usability improvements to come.

* Thanks

    Ximian Inc has sponsored Gnumeric in one way or another since Miguel
    hatched the concept back in the dawn of time.  The project would not
    have been possible without their support and the contributions of so
    many Ximian employees.

    Jon Trowbridge (another Ximian monkey) has done superb work on Guppi.

    Beyond the individuals listed explicitly in the credits thanks are owed
    to the many people who have contributed patches during Gnumeric's
    development.  Here is a list of those whose names showed up in our
    ChangeLogs.  If I missed you please accept my apology.

    : Abel Cheung, Ade Lovett, Akira Higuchi, Alastair McKinstry, Alex
    Barnes, Andreas J. Guelzow, Andreas Voegele, Andrew Chatham, Birger
    Langkjer, Changwoo Ryu, Christophe Merlet, Christopher Fairbairn, Cody
    Russell, Cort Dougan, Dan Damian, Dan Winship, Daniel Risacher, Darin
    Adler, David Chan, Dean Scott, Dom Lachowicz, Elliot Lee, Ettore
    Perazzoli, Fatih Demir, Federico Mena Quintero, Francisco Bustamante,
    Frederic Devernay, Frodo Looijaard, Gregory Leblanc, Gregory McLean,
    Havoc Pennington, Heath Martin, Ian Campbell, Jacob Berkman, Jaka
    Mocnik, James Henstridge, James R. Van Zandt, James Youngman, Jarl van
    Katwijk, Jeff Garzik, Jeffrey Stedfast, Jesus Bravo Alvarez, Joe
    Sakosky, John N S Gill, Karl Eichwalder, Karsten Weiss, Kevin Handy,
    Kjartan Maraas, Lauris Kaplinski, Lutz Müller, Maciej Stachowiak,
    Manish Singh, Manish Vachharajani, Marin Purgar, Martin Baulig, Martin
    Norbäck, Martin Sheppard, Matt Bissiri, Matt Loper, Matt Wilson,
    Matthias Warkus, Michael Levy, Mike Kestner, Nat Friedman, Nathan
    Cullen, Nick Lamb, Nuno Ferreira, Owen Taylor, Pablo Saratxaga, Paolo
    Molaro, Peter Moulder, Peter Wainwright, Phillip J Shelton, Raja R
    Harinath, Richard Hestilow, Richard Hult, Robert Brady, Robert Meeks,
    Rodrigo Moya, Rodrigo Stulzer Lopes, Sebastian Wilhelmi, Sergey Panov,
    Stephen Wood, Thomas Meeks, Tim Mooney, Timur I. Bakeyev, Tom Tromey,
    Tomas Ogren, Tristan Tarrant, Tung Nguyen, Valek Filippov, Valerie A
    Henson, Vlad Harchev, Wayne Schuller, Yuan-Chung Cheng, Yuri Syrota,

    Many thanks to the translators too
    : Ain Vagula, Andras Timar, Andreas Hyden, Andrew V. Samoilov, Carlos
    Perells Marmn, Christian Meyer, Christian Rose, Christopher R. Gabriel,
    Dennis Smit, Duarte Loreto, German Poo Caamaqo, Gustavo Maciel Dias
    Vieira, Jarkko Ranta, Jvrgen Tegnir, Kai Lahmann, Kovacs, Leandro
    Noferini, Martin Norbdk, Ole Laursen, Olivier Jousselin, Roy-Magne Mo,
    Spiros Papadimitriou, Stanislav Visnovsky, Szabolcs BAN, Takeshi
    Aihana, Tiago Antao, Tino Meinen, Tõivo Leedjärv, Vincent Renardias

* Future Plans

    The 1.0.x branch is considered stable and we intend to use a version
    scheme similar to the Linux kernel.  1.1.x will branch within the next
    few weeks and will move to the gnome2 platform with the goal of having a
    fairly short turn around for 1.2, and releasing soon after the gnome2
    release.

* Availability

	http://download.gnome.org/GNOME/stable/sources/gnumeric

Timothy R. Butler writes, “Looking back over the past year, I think most people would have to agree it has been a ground breaking time for open source. While it is true that open source companies suffered just like the rest of the tech sector from poor economic conditions, those same conditions have also made open source appear even more attractive.” Read more at OFB.biz.

Anonymous Reader writes, ” KernelTrap reports that Michael Cohen has announced to the lkml his intention to begin a new 2.4 development tree. The first release of this -mjc branch includes a number of performance enhancing patches, including Robert Love’s preemptible kernel patch, Rick van Riel’s reverse mapping patch and George Anzinger’s real time scheduler patch. Michael says of this patch, ‘I feel that there’s need for a rapidly developing ‘-ac [like]’ tree, and so, here we go. Feel free to test it.’ As to the maintenance of this branch, he says, ‘Ideally I’d like to have this maintained (possibly using bk) by those at #kernelnewbies.’ Read his full announcement email here at KernelTrap.com.”

Reuters (on CNN.com) reports that Dmitry Sklyarov returned home on Monday and praised the support he received from campaigners while in jail in the United States for allegedly violating the DMCA.

Marc Boorshtein writes, “The IDRS is an open source team geared web development platform written completely in Java(TM). Pages are contructed in an XML like language called RML that allow for clear seperation of business and presentation logic. The system is designed to seperate work between designers, programmers, database administrators and system administrators. IDRS 2.0 alpha 3 contains bug fixes and re-written tutorials. It would be greatly appreciated if people would try running through the tutorials and provide feedback on their effectiveness.
Visit the alpha realease at http://idrs.sourceforge.net/alpha.html.

And visit us at http://idrs.sourceforge.net/.”

Craig tells us of a story at SourceMagazine.com by Joseph Creek CTO of Redmond Linux: “Now that Redmond Linux has been released, I have some time to devote to other passions, such as computer gaming. Just like Linux, many games are released under open source licenses such as the GP. And just like Linux, these can be pretty cool. In this article I will discuss some of the better games I’ve seen on linux: NetHack: Falcon’s Eye, TuxRacer, and FlightGear.”

Posted at LWN.net: “The Blackdown Java-Linux Team is proud to announce the availability of
Java3D 1.2.1_03 and Java3D 1.3-beta1 for Linux:

The Java 3D API enables the creation of three-dimensional graphics
applications and Internet-based 3D applets. It provides high-level
constructs for creating and manipulation of 3D geometry and building
the structures used in rendering that geometry. With this software,
you can efficiently define and render very large virtual worlds.”

– By Jeff Field –

My laptop came with Windows Millennium pre-installed. The first time I turned it on, I booted it from a Mandrake CD and wiped Windows from it, so when I purchase hardware for my laptop, it is important that it be Linux compatible. I recently needed to replace my network card, and so I looked for one that worked with Linux. What I found was the LinkSys PCM200 CardBus network adapter.

Since I purchased my laptop, I had used an older 10-megabit LinkSys EC2T PCMCIA NIC. The EC2T used a coupler/dongle for the network cable connection, meaning that the dongle had to be connected between the card and the cable. I started to have problems with the coupler connection becoming loose and disconnecting me from a network, and I had recently upgraded my home network to 100 megabit. Due to those two factors, I began to search for a Linux-supported 10/100 megabit CardBus card that did not use a coupler, but uses an Xjack instead. (An Xjack connector protrudes from the side of the CardBus card, sticks out about an inch from the laptop, and is permanently connected to the card.) The search led me to the LinkSys PCM200 card, based on the Tulip chipset, which had both 100-megabit support and an Xjack connector.

Installation and documentation
The documentation included with the card was extremely minimal, and what was included seemed Windows-focused. However, installation is very easy; you simply remove your old card and install the new one in the same spot. I did this, and connected the network cable. The first thing I noticed and enjoyed was that there was no flimsy coupler connector to deal with, meaning I could move my laptop without worrying about it disconnecting from the network.

The first time I booted it up with the new network card, Mandrake removed the EC2T and moved its network settings to the new PCM200. Once this was complete, the laptop booted into X with no problems. The installation was completely transparent, and I was impressed with both the card and with Linux for how easy this installation was.

For those who do not have some sort of hardware auto detection, you need to compile PCMCIA support and the tulip_cb module in order to support the card, a process which I outline below. Once you do this the card should work just as easily as it did for me under Mandrake.

Installing Cardbus support
In order to install PCMCIA support into your own custom-compiled kernel, first you must configure and compile a kernel with module support, preferably using a newer 2.4 kernel. There are many resources to tell you how to compile a kernel, and I will not go into that here. For more information on compiling a kernel, see the Linux.com Kernel HOWTO.

Once you have configured and compiled a kernel with support for the tulip_cb module, you need to download the PCMCIA Card Services package from pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net. After you download the package, you should extract the package to the /usr/src directory, which will create a pcmcia-* directory, where * is the version. Once this is done, you need to change to that directory and run “make config,” much like with a kernel, and go through the configure process. I suggest you take a look at the installation HOWTO in order to figure out which configuration options you need.

Once you configure the package, run “make all” followed by “make install,” which will install the kernel modules and the configuration files (stored in the /etc/pcmcia directory). When this is done, you may have to configure various settings that depend specifically on the sort of PCMCIA/CardBus controller you have, which can be determined by the included probe utility. Last, you need to change the options for how the PCMCIA drivers will be loaded — whether to load on startup or not, what parameters to pass to the card manager program, and various timing settings, dependent on which controller you have.

Conclusion
The LinkSys PCM200 is an excellent, low cost CardBus card for your Linux enabled laptop. I purchased the card for $55 from Computers4Sure.com and it arrived quickly with no trouble. Linux support was excellent and the card performed well, so if you are looking for a low cost 100 megabit CardBus card, look no further than the LinkSys EtherFast PCM200.