“Great news! Michael Hall reports from Australia, with the first response from director of PC’s for Kids regarding using GNU/Linux: “It would appear something of a move to Linux is underway, but the lower end machines still present a problem.” Less than a day later, Bill Ries-Knight, via Henry White, has sent us the link to a very promising and deliberate, public response from the director of PC’s for Kids.” More at Seul.org.

“I’m trying to make sure I can keep this testable
as 2.4.9 vanilla isn’t being stable on my test sets.
This is basically a merge of all the “boring” bits.”

Linux 2.4.8-ac12
From: Alan Cox 
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 17:13:35 +0100


ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/

                 Intermediate diffs are available from
                         http://www.bzimage.org

2.4.8-ac12
o        Merge the majority of 2.4.9 except
         - min/max mess
         - fat/isofs changes
         - drm changes (some collisions with other
                         fixes)
         - vm/buffer handling changes
         - emu10k1
         - vfs directory type changes
         - nfs/nfsd/sunrpc
         I'm trying to make sure I can keep this testable
         as 2.4.9 vanilla isnt being stable on my test sets 
         This is basically a merge of all the "boring" bits.

o        Update usb network fixes                        (Herbert Xu)
o        HID id matching fix                             (Pete Zaitcev)
o        ARM i/o fixes                                   (Russell King)
o        ARM alignment trap fixes                        (Russell King)
o        ARM softirq fix                                         (Russell King)
o        Miscellaneous arm updates                       (Russell King)
o        Configure.help updates                  (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz,
                                                         Steven Cole)
o        lock_kiovec page unwind fix                     (Velizar B)
o        do_swap_page recheck pte before failing                 (Linus, Jeremy Linton)
o        do_swap_page doesn't mkwrite when deleting      (Linus)
         | From 2.4.9 with extra comments etc            (Hugh Dickins)

o        Prefetchw macro fix                             (Andreas Franck)
o        Kill another bogus wbinvd macro in ACPI                 (Dave Jones)
o        Switch PnPBIOS to spinlocks and irq off                 (me)
o        Large PPC merge                                         (Paul Mackerras)
o        Remove surplus macintosh rtc printks            (Paul Mackerras)
o        Add modem power features to the mac serial      (Paul Mackerras)
o        Powerbook trackpad lockup fix                   (Paul Mackerras)
o        Adb updates                                     (Paul Mackerras)
o        Fix serial port base offsets                    (Paul Mackerras)
o        PPC sysctl code to use PPC32 not __powerpc__    (Paul Mackerras)
         | The latter is both 32 and 64 bit...

o        PowerMac pmu updates                            (Paul Mackerras)
o        S/390 3270 driver update                        (Richard Hitt)
o        MIPS docs update                                (Ralf Baechle)
o        Update mips maintainers entry                   (Ralf Baechle)
o        Update mips configure.help                      (Ralf Baechle)
o        Add some mips pci ids                           (Ralf Baechle)
o        DECstation turbochannel update                  (Maciej W. Rozycki,
                                                         Ralf Baechle)
o        MIPS64 update                                   (Ralf Baechle)

“It hasn’t been a banner year for Linux on the desktop. But the open-source community isn’t conceding the fight.

Vendors such as Ximian and Sun Microsystems are pushing ahead with Linux offerings for the desktop, despite the breakdown of some key Linux product drives.

And solution providers say these vendors have their work cut out for them. So far in its young life, Linux has matured on the server front but remains a toddler on the desktop.” More at CRN.com.

Wired.com notes the decade of Linux, taking off on Linus Torvalds’ early note that he’d be open to suggestions but he wouldn’t promise to implement them. “But implementation was Linux’s game. Over the next several years, developers joined the Linux bandwagon by the dozens, mostly because they were seduced by the possibility of building an OS that was different from the others out there — especially from the one built by Microsoft, which was itself growing mighty.”

From LinuxPR: Are you finding it difficult to locate a Linux/Open Source opportunity? Please visit HotLinuxJobs at LinuxWorld San Francisco and speak with one of our recruiters about our current openings. We are aware that this is one of the toughest employment markets in recent history, but we believe the demand for Open Source skilled individuals is increasing.

http://mozillaquest.com/Mozilla_News_01/Mozilla_Ro adMap_17aug01_Story01.html More Mozilla 1.0 delays. Info on MozillaQuest Magazine (mozillaquest.com). “Do not expect the Mozilla 1.0 release in October 2001 . . . indicated in the May . . . Mozilla Roadmap. Plans have changed since May. Four Mozilla Milestone releases have been interposed between the current 0.9.3 release and the Mozilla 1.0 final release. In effect, that sets back . . . release of the Mozilla 1.0 browser-suite to 2002.”

`The August revision of the Mozilla Development Roadmap schedule sets Milestone 0.9.4 release for September 7. It also sets Milestone 0.9.5 for an October 12 release.”

Details and full story on MozillaQuest.com

The Bangalore Linux User Group explains why August 25th is considered to be Linux’ birthday, in spite of at least two other valid candidate dates for the title.

CNN reports that Vertex will be using a 56-system, 112-processor Linux cluster running at about 110 gigaflops to do drug research. The cluster replaces an older 50 megaflop cluster running on rented SGI machines.

PC World reports that AMD is taking a new approach in its ongoing speed war with rival Intel. AMD is trying to get out the message that speed in Megahertz is not the end of the road in measuring CPU performance.

An Anonymous Reader writes “MaximumLinux.org has posted it’s take on Yellow Dog 2.0 on a PowerBook G4.
“My distribution of choice was Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft Solutions. Adam and I had the opportunity to speak a bit with the co-founder and CEO Kai Staats of Terra Soft Solutions at the MacWorld Expo in NYC last month and I must say I was impressed. Not only was I impressed with there 2.0 release but there new hardware that they had rolled out that day as well.”