“Fix the cs46xx right this time – (me)”

Linux 2.4.5-ac6
From: Alan Cox 
To: editors@newsforge.com
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 12:00:48 +0100 (BST)


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

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

In terms of going through the code audit almost all the sound drivers still 
need fixing to lock against format changes during a read/write. Poll creating 
and starting a buffer as write does and also mmap during write, write during
an mmap.

2.4.5-ac6
o        Fix the cs46xx right this time                  (me)
o        Further FATfs cleanup                           (OGAWA Hirofumi)
o        ISDN PPP code cleanup, cvs tag update           (Kai Germaschewski)
o        Large amount of UFS file system cleanup                 (Al Viro)
o        Move UFS file system to use dcache for metadata         (Al Viro)
o        Fix endianness problems in FATfs                (Petr Vandrovec)
o        Fix -ac quota crashes                           (Jan Kara)
o        Fix bluetooth out of memory handling            (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o        Fix freevxfs readdir                            (Christoph Hellwig)
o        Fix freevxfs sign/unsigned issues               (Christoph Hellwig)
o        Fix doctypos, other freevxfs cleanup            (Christoph Hellwig)
o        Fix flush_dirty_buffers warning                         (J A Magallon)
o        Add Carlos Gorges to credits                    (Carlos Gorges)
o        Further atm cleanup fixes (kmalloc/signedness)  (Mitchell Blank)
o        Fix hotplug variable in matroxfb                (Petr Vandrovec)
o        Fix ns558 crash                                         (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Revert to Pete Zaitcev's khub locking           (Pete Zaitcev)
         | It works for me, Johannes changes don't seem to

o        Fix usb Config.in breakage for input devices    (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Add another 3c509 ISAPnP id                     (Marcus Meissner)
o        Fix oopses and null checks on iphase            (Mitchell Blank)
o        CS46xx update                                   (Thomas Woller)
o        Fix mmap cornercase                             (Maciej Rozycki)
o        Tidy up aironet and saa9730 delay abuse           (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o        Force initial umask to be sane for broken       (Andrew Tridgell)
         init programs
o        Teach CML1 to strip out  from the       (Eric Raymond)
         Configure.help
o        Resync with Eric's master Configure.help        (Eric Raymond)
o        Revert FIOQSIZE         
o        Fix missing copy_*_user in cosa driver          (me)
         | From Stanford tools

o        Fix missing copy_*_user in eicon                (me)
         + clean up ioctls a bit more
         | From Stanford tools

o        Fix use after free in lpbether                  (me)
         | From Stanford tools

o        Fix missing return in rose_dev                  (me)
         | From Stanford tools

o        Fix use after free in bpqether                  (me)
         | From Stanford tools

PRNewswire: “Acer will use the Palm OS platform to deliver its first Acer Mobile
Device, expected later this year as part of Acer’s Mobile Data Strategy — a
vision aimed at providing easy wireless access and exchange of enterprise and
personal information via a handheld computer.”

LinuxSecurity: “This week, advisories were released for samba, icecast, kdelibs, kerberos, ncurses, gnupg,
ipfilter, WebTool, man, openssl, pmake, vim. The vendors include FreeBSD, Trustix,
Mandrake, NetBSD, EnGarde, SuSE, Immunix, Progeny, and TurboLinux. If you are using any
of these distributions, we highly recommend you update all vulnerable packages.”

– By Dan Berkes –
The point where we ditch the keyboard/mouse input combination for something more practical, ergonomic, and much cooler is fast approaching. One small step toward that destination — at least on all things Linux — is KGesture.Turn your computer keyboard upside down and shake it. If a fine sprinkling of pizza dust and burger bits don’t materialize, it might mean that you have a social life. Barring the shower of food flakes, keyboards are still nasty things. Pound away long enough on one of them, and you may be asked to make a guest appearance at your HMO’s physical therapy department.

That mouse sitting off to the side of your keyboard isn’t much better for your physical health. Repetitive motion used in pushing around the ubiquitous pointing device can cause almost as much — if not more — damage than using a computer keyboard. And wiping the gunk off the trackball every few weeks really isn’t as exciting as it may sound.

Sooner or later something better has to replace these inconvenient input devices. With the help of Open Source programmers like Mike Pilone, that change may come even faster than you think.

At the end of last week, Linux and Open Source news sites and mailing lists were buzzing with mention of Pilone’s newest program, KGesture. The initial modest announcement posted to a KDE developer’s mailing list:

Hello All,

I wrote KGesture the other day. It is a gesture recognition application for KDE 2. As far as I know, it is the first of its kind and offers something MS doesn’t.

What KGesture offers is the ability to replace mouse clicks and keyboard commands with simple movements of the mouse. The program can interact with your KDE programs, even launching new applications as needed.

Gesture recognition with a desktop mouse is relatively new, but Pilone points out that the concept has some precedence in the computing world: “CAD apps have been doing it with a pen forever,” he writes.

Instead of pointing and clicking your way through Konqueror, for example, simply moving the mouse a bit to the left could signal the program to go back one page. Drawing an “e” on the desktop might launch your email client of choice, and so on.

The program relies heavily KDE’s Desktop Communications Protocol (DCOP), a fast interprocess protocol that, among other things, can be used to start applications. KGesture also takes advantage of Mark Willey’s libstroke gesture library — it’s included with the archived file for download.

KGesture won’t liberate users from the tyranny of today’s input devices, but it’s a step in the right direction. The program allows users to fully customize and record the strokes used to launch and interact with applications, cutting down on overall mouse movement, and eliminates a great deal of “click” from “point-and-click” interfaces.

Downloading and compiling KGesture was painless enough, the real task was getting comfortable with using the program. Years of hunt, peck, point, and click will not wash away overnight. It seemed that the program was a bit cumbersome at first, but a quick cleaning of the mouse underbelly took care of that problem.

The program’s Gesture Wizard enables users to record up to 26 different gestures. I soon learned the two-pronged approach to working in harmony with KGesture: keep it simple (but not too simple), and for heaven’s sake, pause!

Pilone recommends a minimum of three strokes per gesture. This prevents errors like the one I encountered when I mapped the “back” function on Konqueror to a simple “dash” movement. This caused a bit of trouble any time the mouse was moved. The problem was solved by re-recording that gesture as a lowercase “r”.

Pause a second (approximately 150 milliseconds, for those with perfect timing) before making a stroke, then leave the mouse still for the same length of time after the stroke. This lets KGesture figure out that you’ve completed the gesture.

My initial experiences with KGesture involved making Konqueror move back and forth between pages. I do plan to use the program on a daily basis to simplify loading programs and performing repetitive tasks. Overall, I’m very satisfied with my first foray into the realm of gesture recognition, and with the performance of KGesture.

Pilone explains: “It started as a little adventure in stroke recognition, but people seem to like it.” And, as he mentioned in his program announcement message, it’s something that Microsoft certainly doesn’t have for their graphical user interface.

This is just the dawn of alternative input methods for computers, and especially for Linux. With time and support, programs like KGesture will improve, as, I hope, will voice recognition software like IBM’s ViaVoice — or another alternative. In the next decade, it’s entirely possible that the new standard input devices could be a mouse and a microphone.

“On May 31, 2001 the PA-RISC Linux development community announced version 0.9, the latest version of Linux for
computers using Hewlett Packard’s PA-RISC processor. This release is the result of several years of work by developers in
the Free Software community including developers from The Debian Project, Hewlett Packard, and Linuxcare.” Release Info.

“KDE 2.2alpha2 is here! Blessed by release master Waldo Bastian only a few hours ago, this
release has a ton of improvements over KDE 2.1.x. You can view the ChangeLog or glance at
the alpha1 announcement for an overall idea of some of the changes versus the stable
branch. However, to discover the rest of the cool stuff — such as the new regexp filter in
KNewsTicker or the Kicker taskbar/extension improvements — you’ll have to download KDE 2.2alpha2 and
see for yourself. As usual, source is available as well as binary packages (read our policy) for Mandrake,
Red Hat, SuSE and Tru64. Debian users should check the regular sources. Keep in mind that this alpha
release is not for people who expect a stable desktop, there is a short list of known problems already.” Get the goods at KDE Dot News.

Montreal, Canada, May 31st, 2001-Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced the release of Matrox PowerDesk® for Linux, an
open source Graphical User Interface (GUI) based utility, providing Matrox Linux users with a faster more efficient means of
managing their desktops.
“As the adoption of Linux among corporate and novice users grows, we wanted to provide consumers with a desktop interface
that is easy to use and free of the sometimes complex coding required under the OS,” said Alain Thiffault, Matrox Global Software
Manager. “PowerDesk for Linux will dramatically increase productivity by allowing Linux users to change their desktop settings
using our point and click GUI, which is far more efficient then the current text-based approach.”

Now, Matrox Linux users can easily configure Matrox DualHead features such as Multi-Display, Clone, and TV Output, as well as
make monitor adjustments to resolution settings, pixel depths, and refresh rates. With PowerDesk for Linux, users simply load this
utility along with the accompanying driver and can then point and click to enable a desired feature, avoiding the errors that can
occur when configuration files are entered manually.

The Matrox open source PowerDesk for Linux runs under XFree86 versions 4.0.2 and 4.0.3 and is compatible with all Matrox
G200, G400 and G450 based graphics cards. It can be downloaded for free from the Matrox driver page at:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/home.cfm.

Matrox is a strong supporter of Linux with a dedicated team devoted to further enhancing its compatibility and feature support.
Matrox released specifications for its various Millennium graphics cards in 1997, 1998, and 1999 and became the first graphics card
company to support single-slot dual-display cards on the Linux operating system in 2000.

About Matrox
Matrox Graphics Inc. is the only graphics chip designer and graphics card manufacturer who draws on 25 years of industry
experience to provide customers with state-of-the-art 2D, 3D and digital video acceleration, vibrant image quality and real-world
functionality. A quality and innovation leader, Matrox has been recognized with over 1,000 international awards for the Millennium,
Marvel, Productiva and Mystique product lines. Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Matrox is a privately held company with
international offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Hong Kong. Information about Matrox
products, drivers, technical support and more can be found at http://www.matrox.com/mga

Matrox Graphics Inc. and Matrox are registered trademarks or trademarks of Matrox Graphics Inc. and/or Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd. Other company, product
and service names and/or logos indicated above may be trademarks or service marks of such other companies.

1 TV output support is currently limited to G400 board level products only. Please consult the Matrox website for details http://www.matrox.com/mga

2 Compatibility is dependent upon board level product. In the case of the G200 board level products, support does not include the MMS product line

GNU.FREE 1.6 is now available. New features include tamper-resistant logs, improved central data structures, out of the box support for PostgreSQL and MySQL, and other goodies.

From a press release at Enterprise Linux Today: “Bull and MandrakeSoft today announced that as a result of a successful technological collaboration in
the area of Intel Itanium architecture, MandrakeSoft is making a beta version of its award-winning Linux-Mandrake operating
system for Itanium-based servers available for immediate download from http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3#ia64.”

Wired News: “In a 40 KB brief filed late Wednesday, the studios say that just as federal law outlaws “gambling
devices, trafficking in satellite theft devices, and trafficking in cable signal theft devices,” Congress
has the duty to enact laws preventing U.S. websites from distributing DeCSS.

But to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the opposite side, DeCSS is more
like “instructions for a photocopier, recipes, books about fixing cars, and videos on baby care” that
are constitutionally protected by guarantees of free expression.”