Network World Funsion reports that Red Hat has announced that its latest operating system is available for Intel 64-bit Itanium machines.This makes Red Hat one of the
first to introduce a 64-bit Linux operating
system.

Slashdotters discuss the FOLK project, described as “34 additional Linux kernel projects, rolled into
one gigantic mega-patch, with more on the way.”

Kelly McNeill writes, “For the past eight days, Microsoft has looked little like the feared tech predator that rivals claim plans to dominate the Internet. Just as the company announced that its MSN Instant Messenger is finally back on track, the preview version of its new Windows XP software has suffered a delivery snafu. The column’s at osOpinion.

Sebastopol, CA–Anyone who has ever tried to plug a peripheral into a
Linux box knows the importance of device drivers. This is an exciting,
but largely undocumented, area of Linux development necessary for
anyone who wants to support computer peripherals under the Linux
operating system or develop new hardware and run it under Linux.

"Writing device drivers is both easier and harder these days," says
Jonathan Corbet co-author of the new, second edition of "Linux Device
Drivers" (O'Reilly $39.95). "It is easier in that a lot of the basic
kernel subsystems have been redesigned to work in a more simple and
safe way. The interfaces for access to system buses and setting up DMA
operations, for example, are much cleaner and easier to use. The
quality of the debugging tools is improving as well. But the need to
deal with concurrency and locking adds a distinct challenge. Avoiding
race conditions and other concurrency-related bugs is tremendously
difficult, and tracking down this type of bug is no fun. Fine-grained
locking brings a great deal of complexity, but without it, scaling the
kernel to large systems is difficult if not impossible."

"Linux Device Drivers" reveals information that previously has been
shared only by word of mouth or in cryptic source code comments on how
to write drivers for a wide range of devices.

Version 2.4 of the Linux kernel includes significant changes to device
drivers, simplifying many activities, but providing subtle new features
that can make a driver both more efficient and more flexible. The
second edition of this classic book thoroughly covers these changes, as
well as new processors and buses. "Perhaps the biggest change in
version 2.4--one that will affect every driver author--is the
incorporation of fine- grained locking in the kernel," says Corbet.
"In 2.0, everything was protected by the "big kernel lock," and device
drivers had no need to deal with concurrency on SMP systems.  Version
2.2 had split that up somewhat, but it's only in 2.4 that locking has,
in many cases, been pushed down into the driver level itself. Any
device driver that is not written with SMP in mind is not correct in
2.4."

You don't have to be a kernel hacker to understand and enjoy this book;
all you need is an understanding of C and some background in Unix
system calls. Drivers for character devices, block devices, and network
interfaces are all described in step-by-step form and are illustrated
with full-featured examples that show driver design issues, which can
be executed without special hardware. Major changes in the second
edition include discussions of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and
locking, new CPUs, and recently supported buses.  For those who are
curious about how an operating system does its job, this book provides
insights into address spaces, asynchronous events, and I/O.


Additional Resources: 

Chapter 3, Char Drivers, is available free online at: 

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive2/chapter/ch03.html
An interview with the authors is available online:
http://linux.oreilly.com/news/lddans_0601.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, 
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive2/

The O'Reilly Network Linux DevCenter:
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/1565926099.jpg


Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition 
By Alessandro Rubini & Jonathan Corbet
2nd Edition July 2001 
0-59600-008-1, 586 pages, $39.95
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
http://www.oreilly.com
###

In the latest edition of the Linux in Education Report: A slideshow on using Linux for teaching English as a second langauge, the (disappointing) state of Linux in Russian schools, and briefs on a new Open Source calculator by the name of Leibnitz, and a searchable library book database written in Perl/Tk called, er, Book Database. Full report at seul.org.

Byte.com’s Moshe Bar posts his summer reading list, debates the merits of VMWare and Win4Lin, and gives a brief overview of creating an e-mail announcement system with procmail and Festival.

Alan Cox has posted notice of the latest Linux 2.4.7 kernel, available from your nearest friendly Internet neighborhood mirror site. Read on for the pre-5 changelog:pre5:
– remember to bump the version string
– Andrea Arkangeli: softirq cleanups and fixes, and everybody is happy again (ie I changed some details to make me happy 😉
– Neil Brown: raid5 stall fix, nfsd filehandle sanity check fix

Computerworld: “The utter overzealousness of the Linux crowd has done a disservice to
Linux and to the IT world as well. These misguided souls have consistently distorted Linux’s
capabilities and helped sow confusion among IT over its future viability as a mainstream
operating system. As former Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg wrote, Linux still doesn’t offer compelling reasons to switch from entrenched operating systems,
most notably 32-bit Windows.”

From LinuxMedNews: “Seems as though there are some rumblings over at OpenOffice.org.
They have put up a PDF document they are calling a ‘Roadmap’, but
doesn’t appear to contain any schedule information other than that it is
a roadmap ‘through December 2001’. It would appear then that a major
release date announcement is not forthcoming. It does contain an impressive list of
improvements to the old StarOffice code base including standard XML formats for all file
categories: spreadsheet word processing, presentation, etc. There’s also some just
posted screenshots of build 625.”

Tuesday, July 10th, 2001 — From the home of Wayne’s World, Aurora IL: Tonight LIVE on
www.thelinuxshow.com

At 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et…. Kevin Hill, Jeff Gerhardt, PJ
Hyett, Doc Searls(Linux Journal), and Arne Flones have another great show
lined up tonight on The Linux Show!! (and yes the Loki tribes server is up
and running, jeff will be playing after the show tonight.)
In Segment One – Hot News: We will be covering the hot Linux news of
the last few weeks. In particular, we will talk about VA Linux
not accepting hardware orders after today (July 10th).

In Segments Two- “Microsoft, Linux and the Fat Lady”- or Contrary to many
opinions, Linux is far from over and Microsoft still has a very very long
road ahead
This is an editorial segment hosted by Jeff Gerhardt that will carry
over the next several weeks.

We are going to take this segment as an opportunity to re-ignite our (TLS)
position of taking Microsoft to task at will. We have been called to task
on this issue a number of times over the years. We do not accept the
argument that we need to play nice to look make the Linux Community look
“corporate.”

This week we will focus on the Wall Street Journal article, written by ROBERT H. BORK AND KENNETH W. STARR. These two highly controversial men are
about as conservative and corporate as you can find. To the surprise of
many, both come out on the side that the most recent finding by the appeals
courts are only a temporary reprieve for Microsoft. Quoting the article…
“On no count, moreover, was Microsoft’s behavior found lawful….Now there
is to be a hearing, and there are compelling reasons to take divestiture
seriously.”

This is far from over folks……

In Segments Three- Jabber and Disney

We will be joined by Don Bergal, the Vice President of Marketing for
Jabber, Inc. We will be talking about the ongoing success of a true Open
Source success story, Jabber. Jabber’s most recent news is the announcement
with (of all people) Disney. Jabber.com, Inc., is one of the premier
providers of commercial instant messaging and presence management software.
Disney has announced that the Walt Disney Internet Group has licensed the
Jabber Commercial Server for its instant content delivery and communications
capabilities.

The Walt Disney Internet Group licensed the Jabber Commercial Server for a
range of capabilities, including alerts and real-time content delivery
services. The Walt Disney Internet Group plans to deploy these services on
one or more of its sites in the near future. These Jabber services will be
delivered via Walt Disney Internet Group’s internally developed Jabber
client for Windows, which were created by working closely with Jabber to
ensure scalability and performance.

Doug Parrish, chief technology officer of Walt Disney Internet Group said,
“As a platform to instantly distribute relevant and personalized
notifications, media and content directly to visitors to our Web site,
Jabber will provide an excellent user enhancement”.

Don Bergal, is responsible for product management and marketing at
Jabber, Inc. He has 14 years experience in the software, services and data
communications industries. Prior to joining Jabber, he was COO of eDeploy, a
software developer/ASP, and a leader in delivering online project
collaboration solutions. As a founding member of the management team at
wireless data service provider Wireless Telecom (later renamed Vaultus), he
held a range of responsibilities from Vice President of Marketing to Vice
President of Product Development. Prior to that, he held product
management, engineering management, and sales positions at
SynOptics/BayNetworks and Rational Software. Mr. Bergal earned a BS
Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business
School.

Other opinions are welcome at GeekCast. If you would like to join
us on the show, check our IRC Chat
(irc.thelinuxshow.com #linuxshow).

Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.
Catch the Linux show at
www.thelinuxshow.com